Before I realized it, I was following her through the lounge and out to the jetty front. Grannie Annie hailed a hydrocar. Five minutes later we drew up before the big doors of the Satellite.
They don't go in for style in Swamp City. A theater to the grizzled colonials on this side of the planet meant a shack on stilts over the muck, zilcon wood seats and dingy atobide lamps. But the place was packed with miners, freight-crew-men—all the tide and wash of humanity that made Swamp City the frontier post it is.
In front was a big sign. It read:
ONE NIGHT ONLY
DOCTOR UNIVERSE AND HIS
NINE GENIUSES
THE QUESTION PROGRAM OF
THE SYSTEM
As we strode down the aisle a mangy-looking Venusian began to pound a tinpan piano in the pit. Grannie Annie pushed me into a seat in the front row.
"Sit here," she said. "I'm sorry about all this rush, but I'm one of the players in this shindig. As soon as the show is over, we'll go somewhere and talk." She minced lightly down the aisle, climbed the stage steps and disappeared in the wings.
"That damned fossilized dynamo," I muttered. "She'll be the death of me yet."
The piano struck a chord in G, and the curtain went rattling up. On the stage four Earthmen, two Martians, two Venusians, and one Mercurian sat on an upraised dais. That is to say, eight of them sat. The Mercurian, a huge lump of granite-like flesh, sprawled there, palpably uncomfortable. On the right were nine visi sets, each with its new improved pantascope panel and switchboard. Before each set stood an Earthman operator.
A tall man, clad in a claw-hammer coat, came out from the wings and advanced to the footlights.