30-day Wonder

Secretary of State Rupert Marriner usually has a press conference on Tuesday, but today he was getting ready for one of his trips. Ells is George Ellsworth, the State Department spokesman.

II, I told Ian, which is teletype shorthand for aye-aye, or OK.

Having read everything on our file, I pulled over the clipboard with the overseas news. This comes in from WW's London bureau on teletypes at the other side of the room. Our desk doesn't have anything to do with that operation except to react to any major story affecting the United States or the United Nations. The UN machine at my other elbow was still quiet. Normally nothing happens there till after 10.

There wasn't much overseas news, either, despite the fact that London is five hours ahead of New York time.

I went through the papers to see if there was anything Charlie Price had passed up which was worth stealing or following up. Times, Trib, News, Mirror. Nothing. Wall Street Journal. Damn good reading, as usual, but nothing in it for us. Journal of Commerce. Nope. Morning Telegraph, the voice of the turf. No overseas angles to the day's quota of horsey news. Variety wouldn't be out till tomorrow and the advance copies of Time and Newsweek would come in later in the morning, about the same time as the first afternoon papers. It looked like one of those days.

The domestic wire service we subscribe to was also in the doldrums. Its ticker had been silent for an hour except for the occasional CLR it sent to show it wasn't dead.

The Canadian Press machine was similarly moribund. I made a tour of the Western Union and cable-company machines at the sides of the news room to see if our national stringers or South American correspondents had produced anything the copy boy might have overlooked. Nothing.

"Any coffee?" I said to the boy.

"Heavy on the milk," he acknowledged.

"Thanks."

WW keeps a hot plate in one corner. There's also a kettle, a giant economy size jar of instant coffee, containers of milk from the Times Cafeteria upstairs, a five-pound sack of sugar and a dozen or so heavy army-surplus cups. We take our coffee breaks at the desk.

John Hyatt came in about 9:30. He's WW's general news manager.

"Nothing doing at all, John," I said.

"Well," he said, "the situation can't always be fraught." He went into his office off the news room.

Nancy Corelli put down the News and picked up the Mirror. The belt went round and round.

"I'm glad they don't pay us by the word," she said.

"Calm before the storm," I said. "You wait."

"I'm waiting." She turned to Walter Winchell.

I brought the portable radio out of the corner and plugged it in at the desk. Sometimes on a dull day NBC or CBS will dredge up an exclusive of its own which evokes comment--and a few hundred words of copy--from the White House or the Pentagon.

I heard the tail-end of Stardust on the independent station the radio had been tuned to; then, at 10 A.M., switched to NBC, turning down the volume till it had got the horrible electronic gongs with which it heralds its on-the-hour news out of its system.

"... aftermath of a freak tornado in Kansas, and then a special report from Washington on a possible harbinger of the interplanetary age. But first--this message for Anacin...."

I downed the volume again. The interplanetary item might be something, but I wasn't too hopeful. An NBC man could have got the editor of Missiles and Rockets Magazine to lift the tarp a bit on a development that was common knowledge in the trade but which Defense was keeping under a secret wrap.

"... and now the news ... twister ... no casualties reported.... We switch now to Washington ... early this morning ... Burning Tree Country Club's 16th green ... halo of blue flame ... alien creatures ... completely unsubstantiated but no one has offered an alternate explanation...."