Countdown for blast off. X minus five, four, three, two, X minus one, fire. From the far horizons of the unknown come tales of new dimensions in time and space. These are stories of the future, adventures in which you'll live in a million could-be years on a thousand maybe worlds. The National Broadcasting Company in cooperation with Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine presents X minus one. Tonight, Real Gone starring Al Jasbo Collins, playing of all things Al Jasbo Collins. Oh, come in, come in. Glad to see you. Albert here, your Collins friend. Just a minute. I'll close the door. You know, when you run a disc jockey show, the song plug is just seemed to ooze through the grain of the wood. There, we won't be bothered for a while. Have a seat. I'll take this record off the chair. Hound Dog, exclusive to me. Sung by Helen Trowbell with the Vienna State Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Felix Weingartner. Now sit down. You do the writing for that Real Gone show on NBC, don't you? That X minus one with the rocket ships and the three-headed men from Mars and all that jazz. Well, that's why I asked you up. I ran into a little something, just an idea, you know. I figured maybe you could English it up and use it. It's about a friend of mine, Ralph Therian. Did you ever hear of him? He's an artist. I don't mean records or a musician. I mean an artist, artist, sculptor. I ran into him during the war. He is the sit in the barracks making busts of the sergeants out of GI soap. When they had him on KP, they couldn't trust him to peel potatoes. He'd end up doing caricatures of the captain and the lieutenants out of raw spuds. Man, he was the greatest. He got the whole company restricted for a week when we were stationed somewhere near Boston. It snowed and he made a life-size statue out of snow and ice depicting the captain sitting in a howder on the back of an elephant. The captain didn't mind so much, but the elephant happened to look like the regimental colonel and he took a dim view of the entire affair. Ralph studied in France somewhere under the GI Bill of Rights and I used to run into him once in a while on 57th Street. He's looking kind of hungry and desperate. Then one day a couple of green weeks ago, I ran into him on Madison Avenue and man, he looked like he belonged. He had one of them Tyrolean chapeau with a shaving brush stuck on one side, an important German loading coat and he was carrying a snakeskin dispatch case. Al, Albert. Well, hello Ralph, my friend. Well, you're looking great, Al. Hey, I like that beard. Thanks. Trying to give your face the Mount Rushmore quality. It's generally admired, my friend, but what brings you over here on this street of dreams? I was under the impression an artist was immediately downgraded three degrees of integrity when he set foot on Madison Avenue. I was just up seeing a client. A client? You've given up the sculpting kick. Oh no, no, I'm just working in a new medium. Well, you look real prosperous. How do you like the shoes? Very dapper, very dapper. I don't believe I've ever seen lizard skin harachis before. Had them imported, made underwater by natives of Ecuador. Yeah. Takes about three hours to have them made. So they use about 12 natives per pair. Ralph, my friend, you give the general impression that you are loaded with loot. I am. There's money in art. Money. You've just got to get something new. Here, wait a minute. Let me open my case. Here, Al, take a look at this. What is that? An ice cube? Look inside. Now, man, that's real in trance. And what is it? That is a detailed copy of Rodin's The Kiss. Pretty sexy. How do you do it? Well, you see, I carve it from underneath the plastic block. Oh, it looks sort of solid to me. How do you get in? Well, look at the bottom. You see that little hole? I worked through there with my engraving instruments. Of course, this is just a sample. I've been doing originals mostly. What are the little cubes good for? Paperweights, I guess. This is art, Albert, art. Do you know how much I get for one of these? Beats me. Five thousand dollars. Oh, that's a pretty stiff price for a paperweight. Well, you just don't understand, Al. This is the hottest thing since Picasso. I just sold two original compositions to Morgenstern. You know, the dealer from Philadelphia, for twenty five thousand dollars. Twenty five? Wow. I should have paid attention when mama bought me that clay when I was a little boy. Well, it's about time the creative artist got a little bit of recognition. Recognition's not the point, man. At twenty five G's, I wouldn't care if people walk past me in high noon. That's because you're not an artist. The money is secondary. Money is never secondary. Money is the primariest thing there is. Al, would you be interested in a fine original composition? Well, I'll make a special price for you, Albert. Four thousand dollars. No, Ralph, my friend, I keep my papers from blowing off my desk with my right foot and my left piled one on top of the other, and I find that quite adequate to the needs and aspirations. Al, the trouble with you is you've got no soul. The trouble with me is I have not got four grand. Al, this sort of thing is happening to me all the time. For example, I have a barber who plays unaccompanied Bach chacons with a quarter inch drill and a length of steel pipe. I figured Ralph Thurian was stringing me until I ran into Vladimir Osepsky. Now, Vladi is one of these men who leads a double life. He composes concerti and avant-garde operas under his square moniker, but he's better known in the Brill building as Larry Oss. He got in on the ground floor of this rock and roll affair, and he took an already substantial fortune and ran it up to a fantastic munificence. Larry has money he hasn't even folded yet, and he collects art. I was up at his house one night discussing six things, this tin roof blues and wassack by Albin Berg, and Larry got around to showing me his collection. Now, this is Picasso. Larry, that's what I call cool brushwork, my man, cool. I homed it next to the Tintoretto for contrast. This stuff runs into a pile of loot. Well, I figure since I've launched rock and roll on an unsuspecting public, the least I can do is collect old masters and leave them to the nation when I die. It figures. I mean, that figures. Here's my latest. Look, isn't it beautiful? You mean this hunk of plastic? Yes. Look into it. That design, that composition, the delicacy of that line. This is the most exciting discovery in art since the invention of red paint. Larry, was this piece of Jim Crackery executed by one Ralph Therian? That's right. You know him? Mm-hmm. Remarkable talent, remarkable, a genius. And how much did this stroke of genius cost you, if you don't mind my mentioning a crude thing like money? Not at all, not at all. It was a steal, a steal. I got it from Morgenstern. Oh, I outfoxed him. I got it from him for only $30,000. Yeah, you outfoxed him, all right. Tell me something, Larry. What makes this worth $30,000? Albert, Albert, Albert, what makes a Stradivarius worth $30,000 in a fiddle plate on the street by a beggar? Three dollars, huh? You mean his stuff is that good? It's art, Albert. This is art. This is genius. To work with such delicacy and such control and such genius in so small a space. You see, that's it. This plastic block is how long? About two inches. About? And yet within this two inches is the majesty, the feeling of a sculpture 20, 30 feet high. This is an art which has not been known in the world since the painters of miniatures in the late Renaissance. Why, that is for real. For real. This is the gem of my collection. The Picasso, the Renoir, the Cezanne will in time fade into insignificance. This is a new art form. Brilliant, brilliant. And now let me play a new record we're putting out. It's called I Love You, Baby, because your lower lip drags on the ground. A real cool, you bangy beat. RALPH THURIAN Well, I let Ralph Thurian's new art form slip my mind for a while, while I struggled with song pluggers, advertising salesmen, account executives from the agency. And I met him again a few weeks ago at a small cultural establishment on the corner where I work. You might call it sort of branch public library with a brass rail. Hey, what's the idea of putting this lemon peel in? If I wanted a fruit salad, I'd ask for it. How do you do, Ralph, my friend? Oh, hello, Al. You look like you're thriving, my man. Well, as a matter of fact, I just signed a contract with Morgenstern to deliver $100,000 worth of my original compositions. I'm celebrating. In here? Ah, man, this place is only fit for sweating out the downhill phase on a manic depressive psychosis. Oh, I'm just starting here. I intend to work my way up. Albert, be my guest. Well, I just had a difficult morning with the station manager who has an illusion in his little ricky-ticky mind that my program is the answer to Lawrence Welk and Guy Lombardo. He'd been trying to convince me to program two solid hours of Wayne King, relieved by vocals by Frank Crumitt and Julia Sanderson. I had resisted, and I was in the mood for eating the lotus and forgetting. Several hours later, Ralph was feeling very confidential. Albert, Albert, my friend, I like you. Why don't you shave? Ralph, love me, love my beard. I will try. Albert, you have the look of an Abraham Lincoln gone hog wild among the cream pups. Ralph, you have an artist soul. Albert, I trust you, I trust you, I trust you. I am touched. And so, Albert, I'm going to take you to my studio, my secret studio. And I will reciprocate, my friend. Tomorrow, when I am doing my disc show, you may come to my secret studio. With the esteem that my program is held in today, tomorrow, I'll be doing my broadcast from a small hole with a round iron top and plenty of running water below. What time is it? I've passed something. I'm late, I'm late. Hurry. He took me to a loft somewhere down in the banana warehouse section. He had three locks on the door, and he opened them with three separate keys. I stepped inside and took a look around. The loft stretched a whole city block. The only thing that kept the New York Rangers from using it as a practice rink was the lack of ice. It was empty, except in one corner of the room, there was a mess of machinery. Looked as if someone had eviscerated a television set and left it to die of shock. There was a weaselly looking little man in a shiny blue suit standing in the middle of the floor tapping his foot. Sirian, I've been waiting for half an hour, half an hour. Where have you been? Now take it easy, Burson. Take it easy. Plenty of time. I've told you the active life of the catalyst is only... Who's this? This is my friend Al. Al Collins. Well, who is he? And what is he doing here? I've told you, we must have no one here. Now he's my friend. I trust him. Oh, I suppose you've told him all about it. Yes, I have. Have you got the stuff? Certainly I have. Three ampules, but it won't last. You've got to hurry. Roll up your sleeves. Oh, now, just a minute, both of you gentlemen. If I've been brought down here to witness the inoculation of a little happy juice into somebody's arm, I'm leaving. I have no desire to tangle with the Federal Narcotics Bureau. Now, Albert, do I look like I'm taking narcotics? I wouldn't swear to it. You don't understand. In those little glass bottles is a secret of $100,000. And I'm going to show you how I do it. First, we take a plastic cube out of my pocket. So, we put it down on the grid in the middle of the floor. So. Now, if you will kindly step to the outside of the white line painted on the floor. Back there. Go ahead. Now, Mr. Burson, we'll turn on the machinery. Now, I take this vial of catalyst, dust, and pour it over the plastic block. So, now, we wait. We stood there at the edges of that loft and watched that tiny little man who was standing there. He was a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very powerful man and after a while, again, he grew up into his daily, city retinopathy. He immediately reached the bottom of the выгляд, and look at the sides at the edges of that loft. Then watched that tiny plastic block sitting in a frame on the middle of the floor. And then suddenly, it began to grow. In about 20-minutes, that cute little plastic block stood about 20 feet on a side. It almost touched the skylight, and we can expand the cube to about this size, but there's an outside limit due to the cohesive charge on the molecules. Oh, naturally, naturally, of course, those molecules do stick together. Well, it's the catalyst that does it, and I make that. I make the catalyst. Do you hear that, Thurian? I make it. Now calm down, Berson. Without me, you'll just have a great big blob of plastic. I'm the one who turns it into money. You see, Albert, a cube this big is as soft as putty inside. Now I take my pneumatic drill and I make a hole in the bottom, and then my tools and I start to carve my pretty sculptures inside. Thurian, I'm warning you, I won't take this kind of treatment for long. Now calm down, Berson. You're getting your 10% cut. 10%? 10%? Why, before I brought you this process, the only artwork you could get people to look at was mustaches on subway advertisements. Berson, that is the typical wailing of the non-creative technician. Envy? Pure envy for genius. Now look out. I'm going under there and start work. I want 50%, Thurian, 50%. That's only fair, isn't it? I put it to you, Mr. Collins. Just keep me out of it, gentlemen. Leave me out of it. I'm warning you, Thurian. I'm warning you. Just get out of my way, grease monkey. Let an artist work. Ralph crawled under the giant cube and started to work. I could see what he was drawing, a collection of lovely ladies, something like the closing number at the Union City burlesque. It didn't look very good. The lines were kind of thick and muddy, had a kind of a soft and sloppy quality to it, just about as if you were carving in butter. It took him about an hour and then he crawled out. Just about in time. What does it say on that watch? You've got about 20 seconds left. You cut it pretty fine there, Thurian. It's all right. It's a masterpiece. Wait a minute. Okay now. There she goes. Well, now, what happened was that plastic cube that was blown up to about 20 feet on the side suddenly popped like a balloon with a cigarette stuck in it. And what ended up was that tiny little two-inch cube sitting in the middle of the floor. Ralph picked it up and brought it over. Look at it. Beautiful. Beautiful. The work of genius. The work of science. Makes a real nice paperweight. Albert, my friend, what you have just seen was the creation of a $20,000 masterpiece. Take a good look. I did take a good look. The whole design was there. But what had looked to me like kind of a muddy, buttery picture when it was 20 feet high was now sharp and beautiful and clear as a snowflake. I went back to the studio and demonstrated my independence by scheduling two solid hours of Dizzy Gillespie. The next day I got a telephone call just before I went on the air. It was Ralph asking me to come over to the studio. Said it was important. So, after the show, I shook the last song plugger out of my lapels and headed down to Ralph Therion's loft. I found that fellow Burson walking up and down at the edge of the room looking at a stopwatch nervously. They had another plastic cube blown up in the middle of the room and Ralph was inside the cube working. They were having quite an argument. I know you got paid off today, Therion. $100,000. I know you got it and I want by share. 50%. Don't bother me. I'm working. Hi, Ralph. Hi there, Albert. Just a minute. Wait till I crawl out. I warned you. You can't say I didn't warn you. There'll be no more of the catalyst. No more. Listen to him, Al. That's why I asked you over. I wanted a witness and you're the only one who knew all about it already. Oh, now look, gentlemen. I told you not to get me involved in this. Now listen. This little worm, this test tube termite, had the gall to threaten not to bring any more of that catalyst. But I warned you. I warned you. I want by share of that $100,000. If you'll excuse me, I'll get back into that masterpiece. That catalyst is only good for 2.7 hours. Hand me the drill, will you, Burson? Here it is. But I warned you. Boy, the plastic is tough today. I feel all great. I warned him. I warned him. He must have the money here somewhere. Yes, it must be somewhere. Pills. Pills. Check stubs. What are you doing over there, Burson? Looking. Just looking. Well, if you're looking for that $100,000, you can stop. I've got it right here in my pocket. Now don't bother me while I finish work. What? What? Therion. Therion, come out of there. Come out. Come out. I've got to finish just a little more. Come out, you don't understand. Come out. Get out of my way, Mr. Collins. With pleasure. Therion, hand me that money. Quick. Get out of my way, Burson. I'm working. But listen, you don't understand. The catalyst. Let go of me. Let go of me. The catalyst. I made it up half strength. Give me that money. Quick. The money. Well, that's all there was to it. I figured out that little fellow from the plastic company figured he'd get himself a new sculptor when he made up that catalyst half strength. The two of them were in there when the roof fell in. The roof and the walls. Well, that's about all there is to it. Figured you might be able to use the story. I wrote a few notes on it. They're here somewhere under the paperweight. Oh, would you like to see the paperweight? Little plastic cube about two inches. Look in there. Two fellows with their hands around each other's throat. Looks realistic, don't it? As if they were squeezing. Of course, this one's an improvement on the work Ralph Thurian did. This one's in full color. You have just heard X minus one presented by the National Broadcasting Company in cooperation with Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine, which this month features The Victim from Space. A time to sow, a time to reap, a time to live. All the Agathians agreed with this, but not when it came to a time to die. Galaxy Magazine, on your newsstand today. Tonight, X minus one has brought you Real Gone by Ernest Kenoy, based on an idea by Al Jasbo Collins and starring Al Jasbo Collins as himself. Featured in our cast were John Berregret as the late sculptor Ralph Thurian, John McGovern as his equally late scientific collaborator, and Harold Huber as the fabulous Larry Oss. This is Fred Collins. X minus one was directed by Kenneth McGregor and is an NBC Radio Network production. NBC takes you across the nation, around the world, with news on the hour and the exciting hotline service all day, every day, on most of these stations.
