Suspense.
And the producer of radio's outstanding theater of thrill, the master of mystery and adventure,
William N. Rogson.
During its long and distinguished career on the air, suspense has never taken an editorial
stand until now.
Now we state unequivocally that this program is against murder, or we play around with
the more titillating and entertaining aspects of murder from time to time, but fundamentally
we're against it as a personal, national, or international policy.
Only those in favor of murder will find anything objectionable or controversial in the next
half hour.
The story you are about to hear is but a tiny word of protest.
Perhaps it is too little, but please God, let it not be too late.
Listen then, as Everett Sloan stars in The Voice of Company A, which begins in just a
moment.
And now, The Voice of Company A, starring Everett Sloan, a tale well calculated to keep you
in.
Suspense.
I sat in my lab at Cape Canaveral near the giant missile that would launch our transmitter.
I looked at the powerful sending set knowing that soon we'd toss it into space to scream
crazily year after year at a crazy world.
We tried to keep the lab quiet, isolated, but in the last few days the tension of the
mess outside had somehow trickled in.
I was Bush.
Doctor?
Yes, Colonel?
I think it's coming.
Here, read this.
Top priority from defense to me.
From the Secretary of Defense to Commander, Operation Screamer.
International situation deteriorating.
Commence countdown zero five hundred Zulu.
Midnight our time.
That's right.
Is your section ready?
Yes, we're ready.
Here's the little monster.
I just loaded the tape.
You want to hear it?
Yes.
Oh, brother.
Yes, when we get all pictures in orbit, you might as well throw away your radio and TV.
This is all you'll hear.
But this is what we wanted.
Turn it off.
Okay.
Well, I guess we can do without the soap operas if it jams their military frequencies.
The soap operas will lose their audience anyway when the ballistic missiles hit.
You know, this thing will probably survive us, Colonel.
You ever think of that?
Screaming away up there when there's nobody left to hear it.
Kind of funny in a way.
George, you're tired.
Were you in London, Colonel, in World War II?
No, Burma.
Why?
I was in London when the V-2s first hit.
Second Louis, Company A, 16th Infantry.
I was on a 72-hour pass with some of my guys.
We thought the V-2s were the last word, Colonel.
A regular bomb you could hear coming.
You had somebody to be sore at that last few seconds.
Some pilot risked his tail to drop it anyway.
Somebody up there hated you.
At least you knew that.
It wasn't humane, but at least it was human.
But a V-2, Colonel, it goes so fast you don't hear it.
And there's nobody to hate except some guy sitting at a control panel a couple hundred
miles away.
And now we've got ICBMs, 5,000 miles through space.
Oh, yes.
We've come a long way, a long way.
Yes, yes.
Well, I'll report to the ready.
The Colonel looked at me strangely as he left.
I knew he thought I was cracking.
Maybe he was right.
Almost hating to do it, I flicked on the radio, knowing what I'd hear.
Plants under the age of 50 were called to the colors in France today.
Germany has mobilized the reserve components of the new Wehrmacht.
Ambassador Lippencahn arrived this afternoon at Washington National Airport and said that
he saw no hope of averting war.
ICBM.
I turned it off.
Once, I thought it could never happen again.
Lying in the broken plaster and spilled beer in a London pub with the sergeant's body pinning
me down and Pinky yelling for his mother and botch and groaning in a corner, I knew it
could.
But it was happening again.
And there seemed to be nothing I or anybody else could do to stop it.
I turned to the transmitter to unplug it from the test console.
That's when I saw him looking at the set.
Hey, how did you get?
Who are you?
Hello, Lieutenant.
Or it's doctor now, ain't it?
Botchner.
Is it Botchner?
Yeah, Lieutenant.
It's me, Fed Sac Botchner.
But you were killed.
You got killed in that pub.
Well, in a manner of speaking.
No, no, I must be cracking up.
No, Lieutenant, relax.
I got a message for you is all.
Me and Pinky and the sergeant and Pete, we drew cards to see who'd come back.
I won.
But I don't...
So you're gonna toss this thing into space?
Yes.
And it's got like a tape that plays over and over, fouls up the radios all over the world?
Yes, except our military frequencies.
Now ain't that clever?
Me and Pinky and the sergeant and Pete, we get creamed in that crummy pub in London.
And you come out smelling like a rose, and for what?
So you can figure out something like this?
Now look, Botchner, it wasn't only me, the defense department and the...
Yeah, yeah, I know.
I've been down that road, Lieutenant.
Well, me and Pinky and the sergeant and Pete figure you ought to put something better than what you got on that tape before it's too late.
Something better? Like what?
Well, I'll tell you, Lieutenant, Pinky thought it up.
Remember, he was always kind of screwy on religion.
So he told me, standing gray-faced and sloppy as ever in my lab.
I knew I was dreaming. I had to be.
He told me what to put on the tape. And I laughed.
What is this, a joke?
We don't do much joking, Lieutenant.
Mostly we sit around thinking.
Ten million guys in different uniforms thinking of the dames we didn't get to meet,
and the summer evenings we didn't get to smell, and the kids we never got to have.
Well, you better do what we say, Lieutenant,
because tough as it is at times, it's better here than it is there.
We know, Lieutenant. We know.
In a moment, we continue with the second act of Suspense.
And now, starring Everett Sloan, act two of The Voice of Company A.
I sat for a long time wondering if I'd really seen Botchaner, wondering if I was losing my mind.
And this idea of Pinky's or whomever it was, it was crazy.
But I knew suddenly that I had to try it. I had to try it, but I had to move fast.
Once the installation crew arrived to pick up the jammer, it would be too late.
There were almost a hundred technicians working in my section.
Like any group of Americans, they came from every background.
Some, like Van Terhoff, were newly naturalized citizens.
I buzzed my secretary on the intercom.
Yes, Doc.
Get Van Terhoff up here right away, Carolyn, and Pierre Duval.
He speaks French, doesn't he?
Yes.
And that new technician, Barbara Chung, does she speak Chinese?
Yes, I think so.
Send her up. Who speaks Russian?
Russian? I don't know.
Ah, Poznanski. A lot of Poles know Russian. Send him in, too. And Carolyn?
Yes, Doc.
I want to see them one at a time.
It was easy with Duval and Poznanski. They accepted my story without a question.
But Van Terhoff looked at me strangely.
I did not know you were a religious man here, Doctor.
He says this is for your minister.
Yes, just an idea he had for next Sunday's sermon, Von, if you'll just speak into the mic.
It seems to me a strange time to...
Well, it'll only take a minute.
All right. Ready?
Ready.
Du sollst dich töten.
The pretty Chinese microwave expert was so enthusiastic, I hated myself when I lied to her.
I hadn't been to church since World War II.
It couldn't matter to his congregation, Doctor, but a native Chinese wouldn't understand the religious significance.
Oh, why not?
Well, Confucius put it another way.
Well, recite that then.
Wul hui jiu gi xi go gi yi yi lo yi.
Wui yi guo da gaun jiu jiu.
Xi go gi yi yi lo yi. Wui yi guo da gaun jiu.
Da xi guo gaun jiu.
When she left, I held the mic in my hand for a long while.
Finally, feeling strangely humble, I recorded the English version myself.
When I was through, I spliced the tape into a loop like the jamming tape so that it would repeat over and over, over and over, year after year.
I took the jamming tape out of the transmitter and started to put in my new one.
Was I crazy?
Then I remembered the twisted bodies in the London pub, and Pinky and the Sergeant Pete, and of course, sad Zach Bochnak.
They seemed suddenly very close.
I finished.
The installation crew arrived and took the transmitter away, and soon it was midnight and the countdown began.
My launching station was in the block house, but if I got there too soon, I'd have to ground test the screamer and the colonel would learn what was on the tape.
And if I didn't get there at all, they might not launch.
So I waited and waited, watching through the lab window while the last man left the missile gleaming in the Florida moonlight.
It was the longest half hour in my life.
T minus three minutes, 30 seconds.
They were looking for me now.
It was time to go.
Running across the sand, I looked up at the missile.
There high in the nose rode the seer that carried the jammer.
T minus two minutes, condition red.
Had I cut it too close?
As I reached the concrete block house, the missile seemed to be straining at an invisible leash.
Vapor from its liquid oxygen was curling about its base.
T minus one minute.
Hey!
59.
Hey, let me in!
It's not the drink!
I looked again at the huge rocket.
I could hear the pumps beginning to deliver fuel to the nozzle.
In less than a minute, a quarter of a million pounds of fiery thrust would blast the area, and I shriveled like an ant on a hot coal.
Hey! Hey!
Doctor, Greek, hold it, Count, now get in here!
Where's the colonel?
Right here.
Where have you been? This thing hasn't been ground tested.
Well, it is necessary. It'll transmit.
Count, that procedure says do it, we'll do it. Now move, Doctor.
I checked it on the console. I tell you, it'll transmit.
I want to hear that signal.
It'll work, I tell you.
So, help me, Doctor, if you don't get going I'll stop the launch. Now tune it in.
I had to do it, as slowly as I could.
I twisted the knob on the test receiver.
Twelve. Eleven. Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven.
What's that? What's going on?
The colonel lunged from the panic button that would stop the launch. I can't hear you!
Let me go!
Oh, let... hold that bird!
You'll be...
Corporal!
You'll be...
He's under arrest! He's crazy! Or he's an enemy spy!
Thou shalt not kill! Thou shalt not kill!
Who is the enemy, Colonel? Who is the enemy?
In a moment, we continue with the third act of...
Suspense.
And now, starring Everett Sloan, Act 3 of The Voice of Company A.
They treated me all right in the detention cell at Cape Canaveral.
They gave me a radio, the morning papers, all the coffee I could drink.
They sent for a psychiatrist to see if I was crazy.
Two men from the FBI questioned me to see if I was a spy.
Then I was alone until the guard brought in breakfast.
Hey, Doc, what's going on?
You tell me.
Well, my wife and I, we sit down to eat this morning.
We turn on the radio to find out if we ought to be digging a hole somewhere.
And this voice comes on saying, Thou shalt not kill.
And in all foreign languages.
My wife, she thinks it's the end of the world.
Well, she may be right.
What are they going to do to you?
Cry me for espionage, they tell me.
If they don't figure I'm nuts.
Doc.
Yes?
We don't figure you're nuts.
When the guard left, I turned on the radio to hear the words.
And it was the words.
And launched a formal protest against what they call U.S. celestial propaganda.
From Washington, no word yet on what is intended by the strange screamer satellite.
Only instructions.
Instructions on what to do if it's passage jammed tunnel rat frequency during a ballistic missile bombardment.
Suddenly I heard it, gently, blanking out the announcer.
I looked at my watch.
Yes, that was it.
It was due overhead.
Thou shalt not kill.
I switched off the set.
I hadn't fully realized the power of our transmitter until that moment.
And I hadn't realized the power of the message.
A shiver raced up my spine.
I felt suddenly that I was not alone.
Then I saw him slouching at the window.
Bachner?
Hello, lieutenant.
In the guard house, huh?
Remember when you tossed me in the stockade for B&A walls?
Well, this ought to square it.
The Pinky and the Sarge and Pete and me, we've been watching things.
It's working out great.
Oh, yeah, just fine.
There's an awful lot of people who don't want to fight this war, lieutenant.
You ought to see them in Europe and China.
Yeah?
Don't you fret, lieutenant.
Things are going to turn out all right.
You see, lieutenant, we know.
Slowly he disappeared, slowly fading.
It was weird.
I knew that he only existed in my mind, but as the day wore on and the next day and the next, I wondered if he were right.
Every four hours, the satellite broke in with that simple message.
But in the interval, the radio began to talk of reports of a mutiny in the Hungarian Army,
a revolution against the Czech regime, small religious revivals starting in Germany.
The press department is mom about what was actually intended in the satellite launch Monday.
Results are clear.
Iron curtain countries are busy battling antiwar sentiment.
International tension has eased.
Ambassador Lippincott flew an hour ago to a hastily planned conference in Geneva.
More news after the 9 p.m. passage of the satellite.
And the fourth night, the cell door opened for the colonel.
Hello, George.
Hello, Colonel.
Did you bring the firing squad?
George, I got a dispatch from defense.
Yes?
You're to be released.
Relieved?
That's right.
We're not launching the rest of the screamers.
They decided that the crisis has passed.
Now that the thing's in perfect orbit, they want us to stop them.
But we can.
I know, I know, George. It's solar power to broadcast for the next 20 years.
50.
Yes. And when it quits, Colonel, maybe we better launch another one.
Hmm? Oh, yes. I see what you mean.
Uh, George.
Yes?
One question. We know about Duval and the Chang girl and Pozmanski.
Who recorded the English? Is that your voice?
I thought of the smashed bodies of my men in that London pub.
Pinky and the Sarge and Pete and Sad Sack Butchner.
My voice, Colonel?
No.
Let's just say that's the voice of Company A.
Duzorski's certain. Duzorski's certain.
We will give you the seagull in your eye.
Why you go to the gun? That's it.
Go ahead.
N'y oubille. N'y oubille. Tu ne tueras point. Tu ne tueras point.
Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not kill.
Suspense, in which Everett Sloan starred in William M. Rogerson's production of The Voice of Company A by Michael Frost.
In just a moment, the names of the supporting players and a word about next week's story of suspense.
Supporting Everett Sloan and The Voice of Company A were Lillian Byiff, John Danaer, Barney Phillips, Jack Crouchon, and Sam Pearce.
Listen. Listen again next week when we return with the Diary of Sephonia Winter starring Mercedes McCambridge.
Another tale well calculated to keep you in suspense.
Get the complete news first on the CBS Radio Network.