Ed was dreaming when the phone rang--a melange of movie images, schoolgirls and vampires, cowboys and lingerie, a line of dialogue from Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla, a buxom blonde in g-string and tassels strapped to an operating table. The ringing became incorporated into the dream for a few seconds as an alarm bell, before Ed opened his eyes, peered into the darkness, and fumbled under the bed for the receiver. "Uh ... yes, hello..." Probably Bela, no one else rang at this time of night ... no, Bela had died a few years ago. He considered the implications of this for a few seconds. "Yes, hello, Edward D. Wood Jr, who's speaking please?"
"Ed? It's Bill. There's been a sighting, just a couple of miles from your place; I'll be around in a minute."
"Uh..." Ed forced himself to think. Sighting ... oh, God. "Okay." Sighting. Flying saucer. Get dressed. Get gun. "Okay," he repeated. "See you soon."
It'd seemed like a good idea at the time, he thought, as he reached into his drawer for a bra. The government had been able to dismiss UFO reports since they'd started some ten years before, but not the recent spate of abductions in southern California. Ed knew of no hard evidence connecting the two phenomena, but once the link had been made, a growing number of Angelenos were coming to believe that Martians wanted California girls.
Ed prided himself on an open mind. He knew that they might not be Martians. There might be thousands of planets. He yawned as he pulled his pants up over his garter belt, and reached for his camera. One of the governor's advisers had recommended appointing a committee of science fiction writers to investigate the saucer sightings as a way of diverting the public, and the governor had agreed. However, as none of the selection committee were sf readers, Project Birdwatch was dominated by screenwriters, writer-directors, writer-director-producers, and the occasional typecast actor. Few of them were brilliant, but they knew one side of a television camera from the other, and at least none of them had been blacklisted. The novelists and short story writers who had joined Birdwatch had soon given up in disgust. Ed had signed up for the same reasons as most of the others; the possibility of publicity, and the badly-needed fifty dollars a month. Besides, seven pretty blonde women had been abducted, and someone was responsible!
He was out the door a few seconds before Bill's battered Ford pulled up on the kerb. "Come on; I want to get there before the reporters do. Just in case."
"What's the story?" asked Ed, yawning, as they careened through Hollywood like a low-budget James Dean. "Saucer? Missing girl?"
"Little old lady phoned in, super of an apartment block, said she saw what looked like a man with a big head standing in a column of violet light. That's all I know. Ours not to question why..."
"Do you think they're real? Any of them?"
Bill shrugged. "Search me. I guess somewhere between nine out of ten and maybe ninety-nine out of a hundred are mistakes, fakes or hysteria. The rest ... I don't know."
"You don't still think it's just a publicity stunt?"
"The first one, I did. Castle might've done it if he'd thought of it first ... the girl had done a couple of bit parts, she probably would've done it for a few bucks, but that was a year ago now, there's still no sign of her, even her parents say they haven't seen her, and the cops are still looking--they say. And six girls have disappeared since. If it was a stunt, it's gone too far. Why? You sound sort of blue."
"You know how it is," Ed replied. The two men had, between them, produced and directed Lugosi's last four films, and that created a bond like few others. "I can't raise the money to get Revenge of the Dead developed. I got just enough out of The Bride and the Beast to pay off some debts--"
"You pay debts?" asked Bill, his tone incredulous. He glanced at him, taking his eyes off the road for a few perilous seconds.
"I didn't have a choice," Ed grumbled.
"You'll find another backer," Bill reassured him. "You always have before. Girls who want to be actresses, men who want to be producers, make a quick buck in the movie business ... What was it P.T. Barnum used to say? 'There's a sucker born every minute, and another to take him?' You and I are the takers. The important thing is, the movies get made, right, without studio interference?"
"Right," said Ed, still sounding unhappy.
"And they're movies the studios could never have made, right?"
"Right," said Ed, a little more positively.
"So some of them don't make a profit. So some of the investors don't get their money back and some of the--Jesus, what the fuck is that?"
'That' was a dome on a tripod, the size of a house trailer, parked in the road outside an apartment block. As the two men watched in disbelief, they saw a humanoid figure emerge from the building, an unconscious woman cradled in his arms. The figure was dressed in a pale gray coverall, boots, gloves and a helmet with large dark eyeholes and a small mouth--either that, or he was gray-skinned and, apart from a belt, naked. The woman was dressed in a thin shift. The two film-makers were out of the car in an instant, Ed brandishing a 16mm camera, Bill reaching for the Liberator pistol in his pocket. The abductor halted when he saw the car, and then began stumbling more quickly towards the dome. A door irised on the dome's far side, and a ramp slid down to the pavement.
"Hey you!" snapped Bill. "Captain Video! Freeze! Now!"
Ed had always admired Bill's economy with dialogue, but was less sure of his marksmanship. "You can't shoot him," he whispered hoarsely. "Not at this range. You'll hit the girl!"
Bill snorted, then reconsidered. "Okay," he yelled, "drop the girl, and reach for the stars!"
The figure glanced at them, and stumbled forward even more quickly. Bill aimed low, and fired, hitting him just below the knee. The figure dropped the girl and began hopping towards the ramp.
"Shoot him again!" hissed Ed, without taking his eye from the camera eyepiece.
"With this thing? It's a single-shot job, takes longer to reload than it did to make. You want to stop him, you go after him."
Ed seemed to consider this. "Do you think the girl's okay?" The would-be abductor collapsed onto the ramp, which began retracting into the dome. Bill rushed cautiously towards the structure, frequently glancing towards the camera as if making sure that his face was visible, and reached the nearest tripod leg just as it lifted clear of the ground. He stepped away, and the legs likewise retracted into the dome as the craft gained altitude. Suddenly, when it was barely clear of the roofs of the surrounding buildings, there was an explosion of violet light. Bill clapped his hands over his eyes and hit the ground, hearing Ed yelling behind him.
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