Get Out of Our Skies!

by E. K. Jarvis.

_The long-suffering public went along with billboards and singing commercials; they tolerated half a dozen sales pitches in a half-hour radio or TV show; they suffered stoically through the "hard-sell" and the "soft-sell." But when the hucksters turned the wild blue yonder into a vast television screen, they howled----_

GET OUT OF OUR SKIES!

By E. K. JARVIS

On the first cloudy day in November, Tom Blacker, the shining light of Ostreich and Company, Public Relations Counsellors, placed a call to a shirtsleeved man on the rooftop of the Cannon Building in New York City.

His message brought an immediate response from the waiting engineer, who flicked switches and twirled dials with expert motions, and brought into play the gigantic 50,000-watt projector installed on the peak.

In his own office, Tom paced the floor in front of the three-window exposure, watching the heavens for the results.

They weren't long in coming.

The eyes came first. Eyes the size of Navy dirigibles, with pupils of deep cerulean blue, floating against the backdrop of the gray c.u.mulus.

The long lashes curled out almost a hundred feet from the lids. Then the rest of Monica Mitch.e.l.l's famous face appeared: the flowing yellow locks, the sensuously curved lips, parted moistly from even white teeth.

From chin to hairline, the projected image above the city was close to a thousand feet in diameter.

Then, as if the floating countenance wasn't alarming enough, the ruby lips began to move. Monica's sweet-sultry voice, like the first drippings from a jar of honey, overcame the city sounds, and began crooning the syrupy strains of _Love Me Alone_. Which happened, by no coincidence, to be the t.i.tle and theme song of Monica's newest epic.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Monica's image--plastered across the heavens--stopped traffic in all directions.]

It was a triumph. Tom knew it the moment he looked down at the crowded thoroughfare eighteen stories beneath the window. Traffic had come to a more than normal standstill. Drivers were leaving their autos, and hands were being upraised towards the gargantuan face on the clouds above.

And of course, Tom's phone rang.

Ostreich's big scowling face was barely squeezed within the confines of the visiphone screen. He said nothing intelligible for two minutes.

"Relax, Chief," Tom said brightly. "I've been saving this as a surprise."

Ostreich's reply was censorable.

"Now look, D. O. You gave me _carte blanche_ with this Mitch.e.l.l babe, remember? I figured we really needed a shot in the arm for this new picture of hers. The receipts on her last turkey couldn't pay her ma.s.seurs."

Ostreich, who had built his firm by establishing golden public images for various industrialists and their enterprises, had antic.i.p.ated trouble the moment he let the barrier down to admit such unworthy clients as Monica Mitch.e.l.l. But he had never antic.i.p.ated that his ace publicist would display such carnival tactics in their promotion. He growled like a taunted leopard.

"This is a cheap trick, Tom! Do you hear me? Turn that thing off at once!"

"Who, me?" Tom said innocently. "Gosh, D. O. I'm no engineer. I left instructions with the operator to keep the projector going for three hours, until sunset. Don't think I can do anything about it now."

"You'll d.a.m.n well _have_ to do something about it! You're ruining us!"

"Look at it this way, Chief. What can we lose? If anybody takes offense, we can blame it on that Hollywood gang."

"Turn that d.a.m.n thing off! If that blankety face isn't out of the sky in ten minutes, you can start emptying your desk!"

Tom was a redhead. He reached over and snapped the visiphone switch before his boss could have the satisfaction. He stomped to the window, still raging at Ostreich's lack of appreciation.

But he chuckled when he saw the activity in the street. The crowds were thickening at the intersections, and a special battalion of city police were trying to keep things moving. Behind him, the visiphone was beeping frantically again.

He waited a full minute before answering, all set to snap at Ostreich once more.

But it wasn't Ostreich. It was a square-faced man with beetling brows and a chin like the biting end of a steam shovel. It took Tom a while to recognize the face of Stinson, commissioner of police.

"Mr. Blacker?"

"Yes, sir?" Tom gulped.

"Mr. Ostreich referred me to you. You responsible for that--" the commissioner's voice was choked. "--that menace?"

"Menace, sir?"

"You know what I'm talking about. We've got half a dozen CAA complaints already. That thing's a menace to public safety, a hazard to air travel--"

"Look, Mr. Stinson. It's only a harmless publicity stunt."

"Harmless? You got funny ideas, Mr. Blacker. Don't get the wrong idea about our city ordinances. We got statutes that cover this kind of thing. If you don't want to be a victim of one of them, turn that d.a.m.ned monstrosity off!"

The commissioner's angry visage left a reverse shadow burned on the visiphone screen. It remained glowing there long after the contact was broken.

Tom Blacker walked the carpeted floor of his office, chewing on his lower lip, and cursing the feeble imaginations of Ostreich and the rest of them. When his temper had cooled, he got sober thoughts of indictments, and law suits, and unemployment. With a sigh, he contacted the engineer on the roof of the Cannon Building. Then he went to the window, and watched Monica's thousand-foot face fade gradually out of sight.

At four o'clock that afternoon, a long white envelope crossed Tom's blotter. There was a check to the amount of a month's salary enclosed, and a briefly-worded message from the office of the president.

When he left the office, Ostreich's rolling phrases buzzed in his head like swarming gnats. "... a mockery of a great profession ... lowering of dignity ... incompatible with the highest ideals of ..."

At ten o'clock that night, Tom was telling his troubles to a red-coated man behind a chromium bar on Forty-ninth Street. The man listened with all the gravity of a physician, and lined up the appropriate medicine in front of his patient.

By midnight, Tom was singing Christmas carols, in advance of the season, with a tableful of Texans.

At one o'clock, he swung a right cross at a mounted policeman, missed, and fell beneath the horse's legs.

At one-fifteen, he fell asleep against the shoulder of a B-girl as they rode through the streets of the city in a sleek police vehicle.

That was all Tom Blacker remembered, until he woke up in Livia Cord's cozy two-room apartment. He moved his head and winced with the pain.

"Hi," the girl said.