Heinlein, Robert A – Have Space Suit will Travel

The screen filled with soap bubbles; a quartet sang that this was the Skyway Hour, as if we didn’t know. Then the screen went blank and sound cut off and I swallowed my stomach.

The screen lighted up with: “Network Difficulty-Do Not Adjust Your Sets.”

I yelped, “Oh, they can’t do that! They can’t!”

Dad said, “Stop it, Clifford.”

I shut up. Mother said, “Now, dearest, he’s just a boy.”

Dad said, “He is not a boy; he is a man. Kip, how do you expect to face a firing squad calmly if this upsets you?”

I mumbled; he said, “Speak up.” I said I hadn’t really planned on facing one.

“You may need to, someday. This is good practice. Try the Springfield channel; you may get a skip image.”

I tried, but all I got was snow and the sound was like two cats in a sack. I jumped back to our local station.

“-jor General Bryce Gilmore, United States Air Force, our guest tonight, who will explain to us, later in this program, some hitherto unreleased pictures of Federation Lunar Base and the infant Luna City, the fastest growing little city on the Moon. Immediately after announcing the winners we will attempt a television linkage with Lunar Base, through the cooperation of the Space Corps of the-”

I took a deep breath and tried to slow my heartbeat, the way you steady down for a free-throw in a tie game. The gabble dragged on while celebrities were introduced, the contest rules were explained, an improbably sweet young couple explained to each other why they always used Skyway Soap. My own sales talks were better.

At last they got to it. Eight girls paraded out; each held a big card over her head. The M.C. said in an awestruck voice: “And now . . . and now -the winning Skyway slogan for the … FREE TRIP TO THE MOON!”

I couldn’t breathe.

The girls sang, “I like Skyway Soap because-” and went on, each turning her card as a word reached her: “-it … is … as … pure … as … the … sky … itself!”

I was fumbling cards. I thought I recognized it but couldn’t be sure- not after more than five thousand slogans. Then I found it-and checked the cards the girls were holding.

“Dad! Mother! I’ve won, I’ve won!”

Chapter 3

“Hold it, Kip!” Dad snapped. “Stop it.”

Mother said, “Oh, dear!”

I heard the M.C. saying, “-present the lucky winner, Mrs. Xenia Donahue, of Great Falls, Montana. . . . Mrs. Donahue!”

To a fanfare a little dumpy woman teetered out. I read the cards again. They still matched the one in my hand. I said, “Dad, what happened? That’s my slogan.”

“You didn’t listen.”

“They’ve cheated me!”

“Be quiet and listen,”

“-as we explained earlier, in the event of duplicate entries, priority goes to the one postmarked first. Any remaining tie is settled by time of arrival at the contest office. Our winning slogan was submitted by eleven contestants. To them go the first eleven prizes. Tonight we have with us the six top winners-for the trip to the Moon, the weekend in a satellite space station, the jet flight around the world, the flight to Antarctica, the-”

“Beaten by a postmark. A postmark!”

“-sorry we can’t have every one of the winners with us tonight. To the rest this comes as a surprise.” The M.C. looked at his watch. “Right this minute, in a thousand homes across the land . . . right this second- there is a lucky knock on a lucky door of some loyal friend of Skyway-”

There was a knock on our door.

I fell over my feet. Dad answered. There were three men, an enormous crate, and a Western Union messenger singing about Skyway Soap. Somebody said, “Is this where Clifford Russell lives?”

Dad said, “Yes.”

“Will you sign for this?”

“What is it?”

“It just says ‘This Side Up.’ Where do you want it?”

Dad passed the receipt to me and I signed, somehow. Dad said, “Will you put it in the living room, please?”

They did and left and I got a hammer and sidecutters. It looked like a coffin and I could have used one.