“’Tis a weary time that we’ll have with that lassie,” said Angus. “Twa nights ago, when I saw the moon, ’twas through trees, and it boded no good.”
The place was soon a roaring, smoking mass of sparks and clangs. The automagic horse named Stardust was beginning to take form.
During the ensuing six weeks Gadget O’Dowd was so busy that he had little if any time to devote to his gravity repulsor. The three test units of this machine and the parts of the main construction lay deep in a hidden and so far uninventoried recess of the laboratory.
Miss Franklin was kept busy paying a stream of engineers and delivery boys from RCA, General Electric and Bell Telephone who brought odds and ends of electronic gear, looked happily at the steed, made suggestions, and went on their way. Every tube, booster and transformer was carefully recorded in Miss Franklin’s black book. Meanwhile, she went on about her inventory with a grim little smile. Now and then she triumphantly confronted the badgered Gadget with some new item of his perfidy.
“Now look here,” Gadget said one morning when the horse was nearing completion, “you’ve just got to understand that you are a dame and you don’t know what I need around here and what I don’t.”
“I have nothing to do with that,” said Miss Franklin. “United Pictures doesn’t care how much equipment you have so long as you are using it or intend to use it on their projects. Personally, it seems to me that you would be well off to get rid of a great deal of this material. It is terribly expensive and too duplicated for any real use in the future. I think I shall recommend to the front office that we hold an electronic junk sale here.”
“No, no,” said Gadget hastily. “When I get time I’ll explain to you just why it is that we need every piece of this stuff.”
“The explanation had better be good,” said Miss Franklin.
“Oh, it is, it is,” said Gadget. “But right now I have a horse to finish. Has that taxidermist arrived yet?”
The taxidermist had. He was consoling himself at the bar where Tony had poured him a stiff drink. Gadget took the taxidermist and the drink back into the laboratory and showed him the completed skeletal structure.
“What an odd frame,” said the taxidermist. He tapped it approvingly. “Limbs in proper proportion, face structure perfect, and all in position and order. My word, Mr. O’Dowd, the National Museum could use you.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Gadget.
The taxidermist was shedding his maroon sport coat. “Stretching the hide over this shouldn’t be too difficult, providing you haven’t made it too large.”
“Can you make skin flexible?” said Gadget. “That’s the one problem that I haven’t been able to lick.”
“Oh, quite, certainly. I have some preservative oils here. But why should you want it flexible, Mr. O’Dowd?”
“Oh, just a whim of mine,” said Gadget.
The taxidermist had picked up the skin and was again examining the skeletal structure when, for the first time, he beheld the enormous maze of batteries, relays, tubes, antennae and electrical bric-a-brac which filled in the horse’s head and barrel. It had been covered with paper to keep out the dust and he had thought that it was just stuffing. But when he pulled the paper away there was the amazing mass of wires and tubes. He backed up as fast as if Frankenstein’s monster had just jumped him.
“My word!” he said. “Are you sure it isn’t intended to explode?”
“Not a bit of it,” said Gadget. “Now let’s get down to the business of skin-stretching, what?”
The taxidermist put on his saffron working coat and went solemnly to work, rehabilitating the head and hide of Stardust. Gadget puttered with the adjustment of some final sets in the interior.
The taxidermist had picked up the skin and was again examining the skeletal structure when, for the first time, he beheld the enormous maze of batteries, relays, tubes, antennae and electrical bric-a-brac which filled in the horse’s head and barrel.
“Now, cover up all those seams,” said Gadget, “and make sure all those joints will move without cracking the skin.”
“Move?” said the taxidermist.
“Move!” said Gadget.
“Well, my word,” said the taxidermist. “This is the first time I’ve ever had this kind of a job. Well—that’s the movie business.”
“Movie business,” agreed Gadget, nodding. Then he shoved his head deep into the maze of guts, busily setting the remote dials.
Angus McBane came in from the forge room and put a hot rivet through the tail-moving mechanism, which completed his work. He stood back and took a big bite from a plug of Brown’s Mule chewing tobacco and expectorated expertly clear across the room into the automatic-situating cuspidor they had had to build on a temporary loan of their services by United to Universal. The cuspidor located the brown projectile by means of a radar beam and rolled noisily and hastily to get under it.
The taxidermist, catching this movement out of the corner of his eye, started back and gaped at the spittoon. He rubbed suspiciously at his glasses and then hesitantly went back to work.
Angus did it a second time and the cuspidor clanged mightily to fulfill its mission. The taxidermist, this time, was alerted for it. He leaped as nervously as the spittoon.
“Whust, mon!” said Angus. “Hae ye never seen a trained goboon? Back to ye’re work, mon. Ye’ll take care there with whut ye’re doin’. ’Tis a dangerous beastie ye’re workin’ upon. One loose seam or an onnatural-fixed hair and he’s like to explode with a most terrible bang!”
With this, Angus spat once more and went away to work happily upon some part of his spaceship.
Gadget finished up some of the remaining set adjustments on the control box and then, bored, wandered out to the outer office to see what Miss Franklin had been up to now. He found a brightly dressed and briefcased young man talking to the accountant. Introduction discovered him to be Mr. Jules Weinbaum, first cousin of Artemis Weinbaum, producer of Queens in Scarlet, the picture for which the automagic horse was intended.
Naturally, Mr. Weinbaum had insurance to sell, and naturally Miss Franklin was buying it.
“Well, it’s all cared for now,” said Mr. Weinbaum. “I understand that you’ve almost completed the property, Mr. O’Dowd. I wish you a great deal of success with it.” He shook hands again, ceremoniously, and went outside.
Miss Franklin filed the policy. “Now just because it’s insured,” she said, “don’t get careless.”
With some heat, Gadget retorted, “You look after the dollars, Miss Franklin, and I’ll look after the property.”
“Well, now,” she said, “why be angry? I am after all only trying to do my job, Mr. O’Dowd, and you will admit that your scientific absent-mindedness has caused a great deal of mix-up in these records. If I don’t do my job, I’ll lose it, and I need it. I need it very badly.”
Gadget looked at her, feeling trapped and not knowing why. This accountant was not content to fight with all the weapons of her profession and the artillery of the front office, she was also using a woman’s tears on him. Suddenly furious, he went into the bar and poured himself fully half a quart of buttermilk.
After two days of hard work the taxidermist was at the end of his task. He was a good taxidermist, but then, the technicians of Hollywood are superlatively good. It occasioned no comment that the automagic horse was now Stardust indeed, in the flesh once more, unspotted by so much as a speck of museum dust. She was real down to the last hair. Stardust had a big white star on her forehead with flecks of white ranging back into the sorrel which sleekly covered the rest of her. She was indeed a very attractive horse.
Angus came in lugging a handsprayer and a bucket. They thoroughly doused her with invisible fireproofing.
“That’s a good-looking filly,” Gadget said to the taxidermist. “Thanks for a fine job.” He went over to the control box and lifted it by its handle to a desk.
“What do you intend to do with it?” said th
e taxidermist. “I never mounted anything before that had to have its joints flexible.”
Gadget was not paying any attention to him. He plugged in three relays, threw the switch and twisted a dial. Stardust instantly lifted up her head and let loose a shrill whinny, at the same time rearing and pawing air. She faced around and showed the taxidermist both of her front hoofs. That worthy did a back somersault, raced out the door, went past Miss Franklin and only paused long enough on the running board of his car to grab the check which she hastily brought to him. Then he was gone.
“What did you do to that man?” said Miss Franklin, thinking she heard Gadget at the door. But it was not Gadget, it was Stardust going through her first test, which was, of course, to batter down doors. The panel gave with a crash and the filly came through into the office, ducked under the front entrance and stood in the yard, rearing and plunging.
Miss Franklin lay where she had fainted until O’Dowd found her and revived her. She looked fearfully at the splinters and then into the garden where stood a statue of a horse arrested in mid-rear.
“She does look kinda real at that,” said Tony in appreciation. He and Gadget and Angus had, at this moment, become extremely fond of Stardust.
“Get me a horse trailer,” said Gadget, grinning. “I’ve got to take her out to Santa Anita for a trial.”
Miss Franklin made no protest and asked no questions. She promptly got up, went over to the telephone and dialed the San Fernando Trailers and ordered a horse trailer. She looked back at the horse as she laid down the phone. Then she looked at Gadget.
“It certainly looks real,” she said. “I thought it was going to tear me to pieces.”
“Well, she didn’t,” said Gadget, sadly.
Miss Franklin tidied up her hair and smoothed out her rumpled gown. “Well, that’s the movie business,” she said.
Gadget looked fondly at the horse. “Yes,” he said, “that’s the movie business.”
Tony drove the Cadillac at a fast clip towards Santa Anita. Gadget and Angus sat disconsolately in the rear seat. Behind them smoothly rolled a standard Hollywood horse trailer, satin-lined, painted a light blue to match the Cadillac, complete with visor, drinking fountain, feed box, and an automatic disposal unit. It was beginning to get dark as they drove down Colorado Street in Pasadena. They were almost there.
Gadget looked at his ruby-encrusted wristwatch. “I don’t understand it,” he said. “Everybody can rob the studios but us.” And he broke the rule which he himself had made. “It isn’t as if United wouldn’t get the benefit of it. Why, when those headlines hit the papers United will be in about every fourth paragraph. They couldn’t buy that publicity for ninety million bucks.”
“And they would’na finance it for ten measly cents,” said Angus.
“Maybe we can put the squeeze on somebody,” said Tony. “If kidnapin’ just wasn’t so illegal—”
“I don’t wish Miss Franklin any hard luck,” said Gadget, “but I wish she’d accidentally fall off the Colorado Street Bridge. It’s going to cost us a couple of hundred thousand dollars to buy back our own equipment. And after all the trouble we had chiseling it, too.”
“How much?” said Tony, shocked.
“Well, ninety thousand so far,” said Gadget sadly.
“Maybe we could crack a bank,” said Tony.
“Probably have to give up the whole expedition,” said Angus.
Instantly he was fixed with glares from both Tony and O’Dowd. And he sank back with some self-satisfaction to gnaw off his plug of Brown’s Mule. The expectoration into the windstream splattered the horse trailer.
They wheeled into the gate and made themselves known to the guard. Gadget’s studio card immediately availed them of an attendant’s services and dispersed the gathering dusk under an onslaught of floodlights.
They stopped the car. The track wheeled away from them in both directions. The grandstands gaped emptily above them. A few hostlers and touts were wandering around the stables in the far distance. Near at hand some belated losers still gloomed at the rail. Two other horse trailers were in sight. Gadget went beyond the starting gate so that his activities would be hidden from view.
Tony scrambled around and opened up the rear of the horse trailer. Gadget set up the control box under the rail. And Angus laid out a set of tools in case any adjustments had to be made. It was their intention to give Stardust a good, thorough test. Otherwise, they could very well hold up production on Queens in Scarlet for a day or two by a minor breakdown, which item would cost the studio at least a hundred thousand dollars, due to stars’ salaries, stage rentals and other overhead. One lost day’s work for Veronica Morris alone would be worth retiring on. Technicians have to be accurate in the movie business.
Tony set up two cases of soda and a package of sandwiches. Then he peeled off his chauffeur’s coat to don the frontier buckskin jacket which the stuntman would wear in the scene when he impersonated Veronica Morris. This was strictly rococo. But, as Tony explained, “I gotta get into the mood for the part.”
Stardust backed out of the trailer under her own power. She stood breathing quietly and occasionally snorting and flicking an ear, while Angus fixed the saddle on her. It was an English exercise pad about half of the size of a postage stamp. Even so, little Tony’s smallness made it seem quite adequate. Tony mounted and located the stirrups with his toes. He spoke encouragingly. Stardust moved her eyes, pawed and moved off with the sideways restlessness of a racehorse.
“Pretty good, huh?” said O’Dowd. “I spent two hours last night lookin’ at some films of her when she was in her prime. Now watch this.”
Stardust shook her head in a huge negative, snorted and cakewalked forward.
“Say, that’s pretty good,” said Tony. “I remember that. By golly, you got me half tricked into believin’ this is Stardust.”
“Wul, be keerful of her, laddie,” said Angus. “When she was alive she brought me nathing but travail and sorrow. I ken losing seventy-five cents on her to that scut of a bookie Finklestein.”
Stardust capered and cavorted. Tony had to do a little expert riding to stay with her. But then, this was in Tony’s line. In training up to be a bit player he had undertaken almost any sport you could name. He was fully as proficient on a saddle as he was in an airplane. The only thing which kept him from being a stuntman was an irrational desire to go on living in one piece.
Gadget sent the horse down to the starting gate. Without any attention from the operator Stardust was able to find a box and go into it, stopping when she approached the gate itself.
“You are not going to run her?” said Angus.
“Well, according to the script,” said Gadget, “she has to do a two-hundred-yard sprint after she gets out of that broken door. It’s all in one shot, to convince the customers. So she’d better know how to run. All right there, Tony. Are you ready?”
“Let’s go,” said Tony. “Shades of Man o’ War. I wish this was a real race.”
The floodlights glared down upon the track, the gate sprung and Stardust rushed forward, buckjumping the first six strides and then settling into a long, distance-devouring run. Tony, well into character now, laid on his quirt and yelled encouragingly into the horse’s ear. Gadget gestured at the control box and Angus took over. O’Dowd jumped up on top of the Cadillac so he could see better.
Stardust went around the turn, came into the back stretch and began to thunder home. She was splitting the air like a lightning bolt. Above the pound of hoofs Tony’s shrill “Git! Git! Git!” and “Hi! Hi! Hi!” resounded. Stardust came into the homestretch, speeded up and dashed across the finish line.
Gadget went down, took over the controls and brought the mount to a plunging halt. Stardust came trotting daintily back toward the parked trailer, tossing her head, jingling her bit and making snorty noises which indicated that she was out of wind.
Stardust went around the turn, came into the back stretch and began to thunder home. She was s
plitting the air like a lightning bolt.
“Boy, she sure can run,” said Tony.
“We’ll give her two more trials,” said Gadget. “And then we’ll go over to that old western town later tonight and batter down a couple of doors. She’s got to be all ready by Wednesday.”
He was about to turn a dial on the control box when he noticed three men standing at the rail, looking interestedly at the horse. He was about to ignore them when he recognized one of the men from his pictures. It was Cliff Neary, the comedian and racing dean, who squandered the millions he made acting, on horses. Beside him was his trainer and an exercise boy.
“Just watching your horse run,” said Cliff. “Didn’t know that Stardust had any colts.” Cliff put out his hand to Gadget. “I’m the owner of the Neary Stables,” he said. “This is my trainer, Hank.”
“Gadget O’Dowd,” said Gadget, shaking the extended skin.
“Oh, yes,” said Cliff. “The special-effects man. I remember that we contracted with United for some of your work on my Road to Smolensk.”
“Road to Smolensk,” said Gadget thoughtfully. “Oh, yes, that was the vodka that broke into flame every time Roy Ellis spat.”
“Good job,” said Neary.
“There was nothing much to that. The things that were difficult in that picture didn’t show at all.”
“I know. You fellows never get much credit for all the little odds and ends that it takes to make a show hang together. But what are you doing out here with a horse? I didn’t know that was in your line.”
“Well, she’s kind of a funny horse,” said Gadget.
“Mighty good-lookin’ one,” said the trainer, staring at Stardust hungrily.
“By the way,” said Cliff, “you wouldn’t like to put her up against three or four of mine, would you?” He was trying not to look sly. “Nothing like a good horse race after a long hard day’s work at the studio.”
Angus gaped and was on the verge of laughing when Gadget silenced him with a glare. “Well, now,” said Gadget, trying not to appear eager but negligently pulling half a dozen thousand-dollar bills out of his shirt pocket, “don’t mind if I do.”