And just in time—maybe seeing Johnny helped me—I managed to remember that I’m pushing fifty and happily married. I took hold of Ma’s arm and hung on. “Sam,” I said, “what on Earth—I mean on whatever planet this is—”
Sam turned around and looked behind him. He said, “Miss Ambers, I’d like you to meet some old friends of mine who just dropped in. Mrs. Wherry, this is Miss Ambers, the movie star.” Then he finished the introductions, first Ellen, then me, and then Johnny. Ma and Ellen were much too polite. Me, I maybe went the other way by pretending not to notice the hand Miss Ambers held out. Old as I am, I had a hunch I might forget to let go if I took it. That’s the kind of girl she was.
Johnny did forget to let go.
Sam was saying to me, “Pop, you old pirate, what are you doing here? I thought you stuck to the colonies, and I sure didn’t look for you to drop in on a movie set.”
“A movie set?” Things were beginning to make sense, almost.
“Sure. Planetary Cinema, Inc. With me as the technical advisor on carny scenes. They wanted inside shots of a coin arcade, so I just brought my old stuff out of storage and set it up here. All the boys are over at the base camp now.”
Light was just beginning to dawn on me. “And that restaurant front up the street? That’s a set?” I queried.
“Sure, and the street itself. They didn’t need it, but they had to film the making of it for one sequence.”
“Oh.” I went on, “But how about the ostrich with the bow tie and the birds with the propellers? They couldn’t have been movie props. Or could they?” I’d heard that Planetary Cinema did some pretty impossible things.
Sam shook his head a bit blankly. “Nope. You must have come across some of the local fauna. There are a few but not many, and they don’t get in the way.”