The Big Show opened with a commercial. Roy and Edith were sitting atop the roof of the central studio, relaxing in contour chairs. Roy's chair adjusted to his figure comfortably as he leaned back, but Edith's found the task impossible. She squirmed about until Roy glanced at her and remarked: "Why don't you give up? The chair isn't made that can fit those curves. You've just got too much of a good thing, that's all."
"It isn't the chair," she said, "it's that commercial. Just look at it!"
Roy stared at the huge box of breakfast food that loomed across the entire sky.
"The sponsor is probably delirious with joy," he said. "Did you ever see such color, and such sharpness of focus? It's so vivid you can almost reach right up and touch it. It's really there, not a picture!"
"But what a thing to open the most important historical event of all time—the establishment of visual communication with another planet!"
"I get what you mean," said Roy. "But if you don't stop squirming, I'll find myself unable to concentrate on the Big Show."
Footsteps behind them announced the late arrival of Herman Fendler, and he literally hurled himself into his contour chair as he puffed: "Stupendous! Utterly stupendous! And to think that we've got the contract for these commercials!"
Now the scene changed, and it was Fendler himself, announcing the Big Show. Fendler beamed as his own voice rolled out of the sky, sonorous and dignified and with the clarity of a golden bell, slightly amalgamated with bronze.
"Ladies and gentlemen of the world. We bring you now the Big Show. The sensational Martian television broadcast of the Pageant of Life as it is lived on Mars. It is with great pride that we announce that through the combined efforts of NBC-CBS we bring you the most historic event in television history, or in the Earth's history, for that matter.