The Troubled Air Read Online Free PDF

honor roll. Plus some that the magazine has given the red star on its own hook.”
    “They could be wrong, you know,” Archer said. “They’ve had to apologize before this.”
    “I know,” said O’Neill. “But they’ve been right an awful lot of the time, too. And they’re awfully strong. They’ve wrecked two or three programs already. And I don’t know whether you know this or not, but they’ve been responsible for getting about twenty-people quietly dropped from jobs throughout the business in the last year or so. Some pretty big people, too.”
    “Has anybody said that University Town is Communistic?” Archer asked. “The program itself?”
    “Not yet.” O’Neill lit a cigarette. He did not look as solid and as staunchly entrenched as he had earlier in the evening. “There’ve been a few letters. Cranks, I suppose. Too many stories about poor people, not enough religious feeling in some of the episodes …”
    “Oh, God, Emmet.”
    “I’m just telling you what we’ve already gotten,” O’Neill said. “But if the story comes out …” He shrugged. “They’ll need six extra mail carriers for the letters. And they’ll say everything. From telling us we buy our time with money direct from the Kremlin to accusing us of selling atomic secrets to the Russians.”
    “What a business we’re in!” Archer said.
    “Well, we’re in it.” O’Neill grinned palely. “So far.”
    “Well, what do you think?”
    “I think,” O’Neill said slowly, “that we’ve been a little close to the edge a couple of times. That Barbante’s such an irreverent bastard, and he makes fun of everything and who knows what little tricks and hints he slips in without our catching him?”
    “Now, Emmet …”
    “Now, Clement.” O’Neill imitated Archer’s tone, harshly. “You don’t know. You’re protected. You work at home, you come into the studio once a week and you pull out and nobody bothers you. I sit there eight hours a day and I get it all thrown at me.”
    “From now on,” Archer said coldly, “do me a favor. Stop protecting me. Let me know what’s happening.”
    “Anything you say.” O’Neill suddenly looked weary and he dug his fingers into his eyes. “But don’t think you’re going to be any happier when I do.”
    “Listen,” Archer said, “do you think we have the right to fire people from their jobs even if they are comrades?”
    O’Neill took a deep breath. “We have a right to fire any unpopular actor,” he said flatly.
    “Unpopularity,” Archer murmured. “New grounds for capital punishment.”
    “What do you want me to say to that?”
    “Nothing,” Archer said. “Not a thing.”
    “Don’t make me the heavy here,” O’Neill said. “I’m paid to sell a sponsor’s product. If I deliberately hurt the business, I’m out on my ear in a week. If the American people decide they don’t want to listen to a certain actor, all I can do is go along with them.”
    “The American people,” Archer said. “Who knows who they are and what they want? Do we take the word of one little magazine on the subject?”
    “This year, Clement,” O’Neill said, “I guess we do.”
    “And we take their word that whoever they call a Communist is a Communist?”
    “The sponsor says we do,” O’Neill said. “This year.”
    “The sponsor is willing to see the program crippled? This year?”
    “I suppose he is.”
    “And, later on,” Archer continued, “if somebody says I’m a Red or you’re a fellow-traveler, or Barbante, the sponsor will fire all of us, too?”
    “I guess so.”
    “What do you feel about that?”
    “It’s a tough world, Brother,” O’Neill said. “So put your money in the bank.”
    “And the people we fire won’t get any other jobs, either, will they?”
    “Probably not,” O’Neill said.
    “Conceivably, they’ll starve to death.”
    “Conceivably,” O’Neill nodded. His eyes were glazed now and he answered stubbornly and