Edith looked up momentarily at the sky, then lowered her gaze swiftly. "I ... I can't!" she whispered. Then she too ran from the roof and disappeared down the stairway.
Roy looked after her a moment, then shrugged and returned to his contour chair and settled himself deeply into it.
As the Big Show went on, he had no idea of the turmoil that was sweeping the world. It was only when the day's performance was over and he went down to his office that he got his first inkling. It consisted of the discovery that he had been fired—at the request of a certain breakfast cereals company.
By noon the next day every sponsor who had signed up for the Big Show had cancelled their contracts, and by midnight it became painfully obvious that although the contracts could easily be cancelled, it was not equally easy to cancel the show. That night the Big Show went on, depicting more of the family life of the Martians, taking Earth viewers through a typical day of a Martian couple on the day of the birth of their first child. To many of those who watched the show, it offered a tremendous fascination; but to others, more squeamish and unable to face the naked realities, both of the flesh and of the business of giving birth to a baby, neither of which spared any detail in their presentation, it was an experience past their ability to endure.
However, as one prominent physician said: "This is the way a baby should be born! Every woman on Earth can take a lesson from what we have just seen ... if they did we'd have little use for doctors, psychiatrists or psychologists. This is the miracle of birth as it was meant to be."
It was the unfortunate sponsor who made the loudest noise, though. His screams were heard the world over. His brand of beer, spoken of in such glowing terms before and after the broadcast, wasn't worth a nickel after the Martians did a re-run of the show depicting how the birth would have gone if the mother had been a drunkard. Now, indeed, were there faintings and mental blowups among the populace. The scene was rather ghastly. Some thought the Martians had overdone it, but as the president of the W.C.T.U. remarked triumphantly: "Exactly what we've been saying for decades!"
At midnight the FCC suspended the license of the NBC-CBS Big Show Merger, and Herman Fendler himself lost his job. Along with him, of course, Edith Miller became unemployed, although no woman in that category could claim to be more beautifully unemployed.
Roy Mallory, visiting his office to remove some of his personal belongings, found her emptying her own desk.