"Martinson? This is Luck. You and Bently Brown and the Acme Film Company
can go where the heat's never turned off. This is final."

Whereupon Luck slammed the receiver into its brackets, trailed over to a
table and gleaned "the makings" from among the litter of papers,
programs, "stills," and letters, and rolled himself a much-needed smoke.
He was sorry chiefly because he had been compelled to use such mild
language over the telephone. It would be almost worth a trip to the
office just to tell Martinson without stint what he thought of him and
all his works.

He crawled back into bed and smoked his cigarette with due regard for the
bedclothes, and wondered what kind of a fool they took him for if they
imagined for one minute that he would produce so much as a sub-title
under the personal supervision of Bently Brown.

After awhile it occurred to him that, unless he relented from his final
statement to Martinson, he was a young man out of a job, but that did not
worry him much. Of course, if he left the Acme Company, he would have to
look around for an opening somewhere else, where he could take his Happy
Family and maybe produce....

Right there Luck got up and unlocked his trunk, which was also his chest
of treasures, and found the carbon copy of his range scenario. He had
not named it yet. In thinking of it and in talking about it with the
boys he had been content to call it his Big Picture. If he could place
himself and his Big Picture and his boys with some company that would
appreciate the value of the combination, his rupture with the Acme
Company would be simply a bit of good luck. While he huddled close to
the radiator that was beginning to hiss and rumble encouragingly, he