was furious at her casual gay chatter mocking his churning desire for her. His glance caught a movement across the street and suddenly he went rigid with surprise and soft shock. A girl had come out of the saloon and the hussy was wearing men's trousers. His shock increased when he heard the delicate lady from Nashville say, "Oh, damn, who the hell is that?" and he was further startled to see an oddly dressed man wearing some sort of metal apparatus on his head follow the girl out of the saloon, gesticulating angrily at her.

"CUT!" the omnipresent voice commanded and now Jed Carter was utterly confused. The man wearing the metal apparatus crossed over to him and spoke. "Jason, please. You know the rules about visitors on the set. No one allowed during recording. Zack says we'll have to ask your sister to leave."

Jed Carter saw the townspeople just standing around staring in his direction. "What's goin' on?" he said to the odd man. "What are you talkin' about? Who are you?"

"Oh, oh," the man with the headset exclaimed, "here we go again." He made a signal with his hand and another man came running up. The man led Jason up the steps of the hotel and into the lobby with a promise to explain everything. He sat Jason in a chair. "Jason, Jason Rowe, Jason Rowe," the man's voice pulled at him. He kept repeating the name.

A minute later Zack came into the lobby. "Jason!"

"Hello Zack," Jason said.

"Oh, you're back with us," Zack said. He stared at Jason a long moment. "One of these days," he said with a wry grin, "you're not going to make it."

Bob Herschell came out of the magnificent crystal palace that was U-Live-It's New York feelie showcase and searched the garden plaza. "Cy! I thought I'd find you here wringing your hands."

"We should never have premiered cold like this," Lemson complained. "We should have at least had one private running for the reviewers. We wouldn't be dangling like this."

"Stop worrying, Cy. A first night lets the critics get caught up in the excitement. And even if they go sick and thumb down 'Land' it won't stand against the top power voodoo job the publicity gang is saturating the public with. And bigger than all the critics is Jason Rowe. He's filled six thousand couches in there with the biggest voluntary celebrity turnout for any preem."

"Jason Rowe," Lemson sighed, rolling supplicating eyes heavenward. "He jeopardized a ten million dollar feelie; almost gave me heart failure when he had that heart attack."

"Cy, for the sake of the studio don't let people hear you say that. It's not true! It wasn't a heart attack. He just played the death scene too fully. You know how deep he goes into a role. That's what makes him the world's greatest actor."

"I don't care what you call it," Lemson said heatedly, "the guy's heart stopped and it was only because of Zack's alertness that they got to him in time. He almost died. I don't want to be ghoulish about it, Bob, but the studio's putting a lot of time, money and sweat into making that boy a star—"

"Nobody's making him a star," Herschell cut in, "he was born one."

Herschell had spoken with such honest emphasis that Lemson replied, greatly subdued, "Okay, okay, but we have ourselves a pretty shaky investment if every time he dies in a feelie he's liable to really go over the edge."

"Zack thinks he can work out a receptor circuit to keep it from happening again. Sort of a subliminal survival monitor that won't show on the strip."

Lemson looked nervously at the theater entrance. "They should be coming out soon," he muttered.

"Ten minutes yet," Herschell assured him.

Inside the shining pleasure dome, six thousand Jed Carters lay dying on an afternoon hillside. The war was gone to another hill and he was alone now with the grass wind and the small summer sounds of the earth. His pain was a soft ache like a child's secret tears and his life was slipping reluctantly from him in a trickling red