Suspense. And the producer of radio's outstanding theater of thrills, the master of mystery and adventure, William N. Robeson.
Those who know about such things tell us that an engine delivers little more than 50 percent of the energy potential of its fuel.
The rest is dissipated in waste. Waste motion, waste energy, gases, ash.
The same can be said of man, has been said in fact. Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.
If an average man were trained to use his faculties to the utmost, he could be a superman.
If a superior man were so trained, what could he not accomplish?
The answer is implied in the upcoming story.
Listen, listen then, as Mr. and Mrs. Frank Lovejoy star in Man from Tomorrow, the last radio play written by the late Irving Reese, which begins in exactly one minute.
American folklore is filled with legends about men who were as tough as nails, like the one about Pecos Bill, who went out for a walk one day.
Unfortunately, a big ten-foot rattler crossed his path. I say unfortunately for the rattler.
See, Bill was a mighty fair fighter. Why, he gave that rattler the first three bites just to make things even.
Then he waded into that reptile and he everlastingly thrashed the poison out of him.
By and by that old rattler yelled for mercy and admitted that when it come to fighting, Bill started where he left off.
Yes, that was Pecos Bill, a legendary American.
Folklore belongs to every nation's legendary past, and I guess we Americans have our share of some tall ones, like the one about...
Ha ha, but we'll have to save that one for the next time we travel your way. See you then.
And now...
Man from Tomorrow, starring Mr. and Mrs. Frank Lovejoy.
A tale well calculated to keep you in...
suspense.
Even in these days of so-called full employment, you'd be surprised how few job opportunities come up for an ex-jet jockey.
So it was with more than passing interest that I read this ad while I was scanning the classified section of the Sunday paper.
It said, Wanted Ex-Jet Pilot. Unmarried, without family obligations, must be in perfect health and prepared for rigid tests.
Successful candidate will receive good pay and be given opportunity to contribute to daring experiment and world betterment.
Apply Tuesday, 10 a.m., Science Associates, 126 West Street.
Well, Science Associates, you just got yourself a boy.
It turned out there were quite a few boys with the same idea.
By 10 o'clock Tuesday morning, nearly 50 of us were crowded in a windowless air conditioned room in the windowless ultra-modern building of Science Associates.
Oh, hi. Hi, Major.
Well, hi, Randy.
It's been a long time.
Yeah.
Some of the faces were familiar, guys that had been in the Air Force with me in Korea and afterward.
We sat there and waited an hour, two hours.
Nothing happened.
I don't know about the rest of you guys, but this place is beginning to give me claustrophobia.
I'm getting out.
Hey, hey, it's locked.
Hey, we're locked in here.
Even before this had a chance to sink in, another door opened on the far side of the room.
A guy with a white mask on his face came in carrying a Thompson submachine gun.
Hit the guy!
Everybody quiet on the floor except me.
I made a dash for the man in the mask, but he disappeared as quickly as he'd come.
Hey, Major. Major, how come you didn't hit the floor? You tired of living?
Well, he was shooting blanks.
He was shooting blanks.
Couldn't you see that? There weren't any bullets chipping anything.
Besides, I knew it was a gag from the way he held that machine gun.
When those babies are loaded with live ammo, you've got to fire them from the waist.
Well, I don't like this.
Come on, guys, let's crash the door and get out of this rat trap.
Oh, save it, Randy. That won't do you any good. That door is as thick as a bank vault.
And then something else.
Thick, black, acrid smoke pouring out of the air conditioning vents.
And a sound from somewhere.
Of an airplane diving.
Every pilot remembers with horror the smell of burning oil from a plane out of control.
It hit us way back and deep down, and some of the guys got panicked.
And then the blowers reversed and the smoke was sucked out quickly.
Attention, please.
A loud speaker cut in from nowhere.
For the past two hours, you have been under close observation as a necessary part of this test.
You were warned in advance the test would be rigid.
As you file out past the guard, you will receive a token compensation for your time and discomfort.
We now ask you all to leave.
Except the man who ran for the gunner.
The door is now open. Thank you.
You're welcome, boy.
Well, Major, looks like you got the job.
Also looks like I'm going to shove it right back in their faces.
Well, I don't blame you.
Well, so long.
So long, Randy. Take it easy.
For a moment, I was alone in the empty room, and then an inner door opened,
and I wasn't so sure I wanted to shove the job in their faces.
Not in this face, anyway.
Your name, please.
Well, well.
I hardly expected to find a blonde at the bottom of this.
You will come with me, please.
Well, I'll do nothing of the sort. Now, don't give me orders, blondie.
I want to see the guy responsible for this, and then I'm getting out of here.
I take it you have lost interest in contributing to world betterment.
Oh, yes, that's what it said in the ad.
Well, whatever your lofty purpose, I don't like cold-blooded cruelty.
Unfortunately, we cannot allow personal feelings to interfere with our objectives.
Well, then your objectives are wrong.
You will be better able to judge that when you know what they are.
Well, I don't think I'm interested.
And if I may indulge a personal feeling,
callousness is unattractive enough in a man, but in an attractive girl.
Neither your feelings nor mine will matter in this project, Major.
I believe you were addressed.
It was just plain Mr. Kentman.
The war has been over for some time, Miss...
Dr. Frost.
That's appropriate.
I beg your pardon.
Oh, nothing. Nothing. I sometimes mutter to myself,
the last thing I said to you, Doctor, is that the war is over.
If it is possible for you to unlock your quite superior intelligence
from emotional reactions common to schoolgirls and housewives,
my senior colleague, Professor Baird and I will attempt to convince you
on the only basis that should appeal to the mature mind.
Facts.
Well, you go ahead and try, but I doubt you'll be successful.
The Second Act of Suspense continues in one minute.
This is Johnny Baker with Communism on the Spot.
The Communist attitude toward faith in God is based on the statement
by Karl Marx that religion is the opiate of the people.
In keeping with his view, the Soviets established as a primary aim
the destruction of all religious faiths.
Communism can't tolerate religion, which preaches that there is
a supreme being who is higher than any human authority.
For Communism itself is a political religion whose high priests
are the dictatorial rulers of the Soviet state.
They'll settle for nothing less than total control of the lives
of their subjects.
They're not only concerned with their victims' bodies and minds.
They seek equal domination over their hearts and souls.
And now we continue with Act Two of Man from Tomorrow,
starring Mr. and Mrs. Frank Lovejoy,
a tale well calculated to keep you in...
Suspense.
It was a big, aseptically bare room with an uncluttered desk at one end.
Behind the desk was the cartoonist conception of an egghead,
a thin, bespectacled man whose eyes were so intelligently alive
that I couldn't look away from them long enough to mark his other features.
This was Professor Baird, keeper of the facts.
You are asking yourself why we limited our appeal to former jet pilots.
Simple. Only one man in 10,000 was able to qualify mentally and physically
for jet training.
The Air Force, therefore, indirectly performed the first
of our processes of elimination.
Fact.
Additional eliminations due to flunk-outs, mortality in training,
and combat brings the total to one in 20,000.
Fact.
The standards we applied during the two hours in which we observed
your every action and reaction
raises the mathematical incidence of your sensory acuity
to approximately one in 100,000.
I'm flattered.
You will have greater reason to be if our experiment proves successful.
You will be the only man on earth possessed of your powers.
You will be the man from tomorrow.
How do you propose to go about that?
We will first show you how we've trained other individuals.
Dr. Frost, will you proceed with the demonstration?
Yes, Professor.
Come in, Mr. Logan.
Mr. Logan, have you ever been in this part of the laboratories before?
No.
Would you describe it, please?
It's a rectangular room, 40 by 20.
The ceiling is 18 and a half feet high.
There's a desk 12 feet from me, slightly to my right.
There are two people seated at it.
One has just risen.
That will be all. Thank you, Mr. Logan.
Well, Mr. Kentman.
It would be very impressive if any schoolboy with normal vision couldn't do as well.
Agreed. But Mr. Logan is totally blind.
Looking back now, I can hardly believe my own impressions.
The blind man was followed by a deaf mute
and a paraplegic who'd lost all sense of touch and smell.
Their demonstrations were incredible.
Not one of these persons possessed physical senses above the average, Mr. Kentman.
The deprivation of one sense or another in the case of the blind or deaf man
stimulated nature's desire to compensate for the loss.
But what are you trying to prove?
That man has powers even now that are beyond his comprehension.
We wish to explore those powers.
Suppose one nearly perfect man with superior sensory perception to begin with
could develop the extension of his five senses to the maximum degree we've just observed.
What do you think would happen?
I don't know.
Neither do we.
But it is our conviction that this man would also acquire a new sense,
a sixth sense that would endow him with a power never dreamed of before.
Don't you think it's a dimension worth exploring?
Maybe.
But how could anybody accomplish it?
Training.
By producing the circumstances that surround the blind man, the deaf man, the handicapped.
You would have to agree to cut yourself off from the outside world for three years.
You would spend six months living in a pitch dark laboratory.
You would sleep, eat, function in a world of darkness.
Various sound devices will be used to train and measure your hearing responses.
After that, six months would be devoted to simulating the world of the deaf mute.
And so on.
You will be paid $20,000 at the end of the three years.
All the necessities of living will be provided during that time.
Then a test will be made and if our predictions are realized,
you will be signed for an additional five years at $20,000 per year.
Dr. Frost will be in charge of the training program.
Do you wish to undertake it?
Well, it's a pretty serious move. I'd like to think about it.
You have all the facts, Mr. Kentman.
We would like a decision now.
Do you think feeling might enter into my considerations, Doctor?
Is that what you're afraid of?
Afraid? Fear is merely an emotion, Mr. Kentman.
I have learned to control all my emotions.
I wonder.
I beg your pardon.
I was muttering again, but what I meant to say is I agree to undertake the experiment.
I was led into a pitch dark room, blacker than the blackest night.
It was to be my home for six months.
It had a bed, bathroom, closets. All I had to do was to find them.
I won't waste time telling you what that was like.
Just close your eyes tight and try to find your way around a room that's familiar to you and you'll get the idea.
I was still stumbling around three days later when I reported for my training with Dr. Frost in the adjoining laboratory,
which was even blacker, if possible.
Oh, dear.
Are you hurt?
You wouldn't care if I broke a leg.
There's a chair nearby.
I know. I just fell over it.
We can begin as soon as you're settled.
Lucky it's so dark I don't have to apologize for wearing my pajamas.
Don't you like dressing?
I love it when I can find my pants.
Today's exercise will be recognition of pure tones.
Here is an example.
That is 1,000 cycles or 1,000 vibrations per second, stripped of all harmonics.
Now, what would you say that was?
Oh, 1,100.
It is 1,500 cycles.
Now, please tell me when you begin to hear the next tone and what the frequency is.
I couldn't make the slightest dent in that glacial reserve.
I tried to match her at her own game for a while, but she loved it and I'm human.
Anyway, at the end of the six months, I could ramble through the whole place and never stub a toe.
It was amazing how you learned to sense things in the dark and what your ears could do.
800. Out.
4,500. Out.
Good. Excellent.
Mr. Kenton, your threshold of hearing is 20 decibels greater than the average ear.
Dr. Frost, I can't see you, but do I detect a note of enthusiasm in your voice?
Satisfaction, perhaps, Mr. Kenton. The experiment so far...
Dr. Frost, have you ever let yourself go?
Mr. Kenton, I am not nearly so naive as you assume, nor have any of your innuendos or mumblings for the past six months escaped me.
I told you in the beginning that neither your personal feelings nor mine would have any bearing on this project.
You haven't answered my question.
I am fully aware of the nature of biological stresses.
In a scientific way, of course.
What distinguishes man from the animal is his understanding of these stresses, but mostly his control.
Well, control is a traffic cop with a stop sign, doctor, but eventually the traffic has to go somewhere.
I can understand the frustration of your masculine ego, especially in this enforced loneliness of the experiment.
Oh, thank you.
We have only begun. We have two years or more to go.
The first phase is highly successful. As a scientist, I am very pleased.
Strange, Doc, my hearing is so good, but I have yet to hear your heartbeat.
Act Three of Suspense follows in one minute.
Do you know the Social Security benefits to which you will be entitled when you separate from the service and take a civilian job?
Here's a tip from Social Security.
Here's one do-it-yourself project that costs you nothing and won't end up in cuts and bruises.
The Social Security Administration wants each one of you that pays Social Security taxes to check up on your account,
to make sure you are getting credit for every dollar that's coming to you.
With records of millions of people to maintain, it's a pretty big job to catch an error that you or your employer might make in reporting your wages and income.
You can help by checking every three years to see that your record is correct.
How? Easy.
Simply by mailing a special postcard.
Just write to Social Security, Department 15, Hollywood 28, California, and ask for Form 7004.
Mail it, and in a couple of weeks you'll receive a notice that will verify the spelling of your name,
your Social Security number, and the wages credited to you for each of the past three years.
Do it tomorrow. You'll be glad that you did.
And now we continue with Act Three of Man From Tomorrow, starring Mr. and Mrs. Frank Lovejoy.
A tale well calculated to keep you in suspense.
Now that my hearing was phenomenal, they turned off my ears.
They devised some newfangled earplugs, and I began six months of silence.
Six months of being deaf as a doorknob.
Deaf, but not quite deaf.
Because I began to see sounds, to feel sounds like waves against my skin,
I began to hear with my body and with my pores.
Have you ever touched a sound? Have you ever seen thunder?
You get so you look at sounds and almost see the waves they make trembling in the air.
Have you ever tried silence?
Try not saying a word, not uttering a syllable for an hour a day.
I tried it for six months, until all the unsaid words piled up inside my head.
They clung like unborn sounds at the back of my throat.
Whoever said silence is gold and never felt the lump of lint that accumulates inside you.
Silence.
And then the six months ended. The day came when she removed the fancy earplugs,
and a little canyon I'd been living in widened into a continent.
Can you hear me now? Can you hear me? Nod to me or raise your finger when you can hear the sound of my voice.
I heard you coming down the hall a minute ago.
Were the plugs defective?
Oh no. Incidentally, I take that it's all right for me to talk now?
Yes, of course.
Have I been a good boy? Have I done everything that you've wanted?
So much so, Mr. Ketman, that we're giving you a few days' rest before we begin your training for taste and touch.
Well, can I do anything I want?
Anything, within reason.
Well, then I'd like to have a drink, and strangely enough, I'd like to have you join me.
Perhaps that can be arranged.
Oh, that wonderful sound of the clink of glasses.
And I cannot tell you how dull a piano sounds when you only look at it.
You missed the sound of music, then?
Oh, yes, music and the sound of a woman's voice. Or maybe they're the same thing.
Oh, incidentally, Dr. Frost, when I say woman, I even include female doctors.
Kind of you.
By the way, do you have a first name, or are you only a title followed by Frost and followed by a long string of degrees?
My first name is Jessica.
Jessica? That's more like it. Jessica.
Jessica. Why, after all that silence, it's good just to say a woman's name.
Until the experiment is completely over, Mr. Kentman, it had better remain Dr. Frost.
Well, okay, Dr. Jessica Frost, plus degrees. I give you a toast to you.
You've been very cooperative about all this, Mr. Kentman.
I want you to know that I... I really like you very much.
Well, now I'm sure the experiment is a success. I've finally developed a sixth sense.
Oh?
I distinctly heard a lovely lady saying, I like you very much, and it couldn't possibly have been you.
I rather enjoyed the touch tests.
It was one area I'd never realized held such hidden possibilities.
After a few months, my fingertips knew the difference between crystals and diamonds.
I could tell if you had a suntan merely by touching your cheek.
As for the taste tests, food suddenly became a symphony concert.
Sourness had many degrees, and sweetness had a range as wide as the spectrum of a rainbow.
And then all of my highly developed senses brought on a new perception, something over and beyond and added to the rest.
By the time my training was finished, I knew I had acquired a knowledge beyond knowledge.
Sit down, Mr. Kentman.
Thank you.
Your period of training has been completed. You have passed the final tests, and we have decided to retain you.
Now, will you sign the contract, please, Mr. Kentman? It's the arrangement as agreed.
Twenty thousand dollars a year for the next five years.
Mr. Kentman, is anything wrong?
Oh, no. No, there's nothing wrong.
Mr. Kentman, what are you doing?
Well, obviously I'm not signing it.
But why?
Because I'm afraid.
What is there to be afraid of?
Myself. And what I know now, and what I'm going to know in the future, what you and Dr. Frost may ask me to do.
Afraid to make contributions to scientific progress?
Oh, I respect science. Progress, I'm for that, too.
But I can see beyond the microscopes and the telescopes and all your theories and experiments.
And I don't see one important thing.
I don't see happiness, only fear and falling buildings. That's what I see coming out of my super sense.
And you'd waste this great talent of yours. Throw it away, turn your back on progress.
I didn't say that. I'll look for a new kind of progress.
Slicing an atom sideways or sending a phony moon up into God's skies, these aren't the things people are crying for.
Not this year, next year, or ever.
They want security, dignity, and a little peace of mind.
I suppose then you think that all our work is to end in death and destruction.
It might.
That's not fair.
Isn't it?
But what happens if I sign the contract? Who makes the decisions?
These are things I can't honestly answer.
I know, and that's what I mean. It might be out of your hands, then.
Governments would pay billions for me. Our own country would guard me like Fort Knox.
I'd be the most valuable thing in the world alive, and even more valuable for some people dead.
A thing, not a man. Uh-uh. No, that's not going to be for me. Not that way.
All this work, everything we've done doesn't mean anything, then. It's all for nothing.
Well, I don't know. I'm sorry. I guess you picked the wrong man for the job.
What are you going to do now, Mr. Kentman?
Pack my things and go away. I don't know where. It doesn't really matter.
Jessica, I probably won't see you again before I go. Thank you for everything.
I'm sorry to let you down like this, but...
Well, so long.
Well, that is that.
Oh, I was just going to...
Try and talk me out of it?
No. Yes, I was. But not anymore.
I'm glad you changed your mind.
Will you tell me something? What? What are you going to do?
I don't know yet. It's kind of funny. I'm going out of here almost the way I came in.
One suitcase, one hat, one coat. The only difference, I've got all the knowledge of the world up here,
and I don't know what I'll do with it. I haven't been able to think. Not clearly.
I know one thing, though. There are a lot of things I can try.
What?
If I hear of cancer, heart disease, common cold, a dozen other things men don't know anything about.
Yes.
Might not be bad for a start.
No, that's not bad for a start.
Do you think you might need someone to help you?
Yes, I might.
I've talked to Professor Baird. I think perhaps he understands.
Does he?
Yes. It's a little uncomfortable for a woman. I'm not supposed to say anything until you do.
And you already know what I'm thinking, don't you?
Well, let's be old fashioned. I love you. Will you come with me?
Yes. I love you, too.
I know. Come on, let's go.
Suspense.
In which Mr. and Mrs. Frank Lovejoy starred in William and Robeson's production of
Man From Tomorrow, written for radio by Irving Reese. Listen.
Listen again next week when we return with another tale well calculated to keep you in
Suspense.
Supporting Mr. Lovejoy in Man From Tomorrow were Mrs. Lovejoy, Joan Banks as Dr. Frost,
John Hoyt as Professor Baird, Peter Leeds as Randy, and Norm Alton as Mr. Logan.
Suspense has been brought to you through the worldwide facilities of the United States Armed Forces Radio and Television Service.
The United States Armed Forces Radio and Television Service