It became unbelievable. Actually on the air! And then everything became unreal. Vic Wylie, glaring through the glass panels of the control-room, became a distorted Vic Wylie; the announcer’s voice hung lingeringly in space. Wylie’s commanding finger took on a dreamy haziness. The finger wavered away from the announcer and indicated Stella. Joe’s eyes were wide open and staring as though he were in a trance. In a queer sort of drugged fog he thought: “My cue’s coming.” The finger, as though moving leisurely in a timeless arc, wavered toward him.
He began to read his part. There was no nervousness nor anxiety. There was only that hypnotic sense of unreality:
Mother, don’t shake your head at me like that. You must listen—
He did not know that he had become an automaton. He did not know that he was suffering a form of mike fright that afflicts the young radio performer with an emotional paralysis. But Wylie had pounded at him, rehearsal after rehearsal, until a pattern had been carved deep in his mind. Subconsciously, his mind reproduced that pattern as though it were a platter. He read as Wylie had insisted that he read.
By and by all the dream-world voices were gone, and there was silence. People began to leave the control-room. Joe drew a breath and reality came rushing back upon him. Why, it was over. He’d been on the air—and it was over. All he could remember was fog and haze.
A wise, knowing Vic Wylie, who could be as tender as a woman, was in the studio. “All right now, kid?”
“What—what happened to me?”
“Something that happens to most of them. You came through, and it’ll never happen again.”
Joe wanted to ask a question and didn’t dare.
Wylie didn’t have to be asked. “You were tops, kid.” He smiled at the cast, and his haggard face was lighted. “You were all tops. Get something to eat and report at six.”