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COMING ATTRACTION 
Fritz Leiber 
The coupe with the fishhooks welded to the fender shouldered up over the curb like the nose of a 
nightmare. The girl in its path stood frozen, her face probably stiff with fright under her mask. For once 
my reflexes werent shy. I took a fast step toward her, grabbed her elbow, yanked her back. Her black 
skirt swirled out. 
The big coupe shot by, its turbine humming. I glimpsed three faces. Something ripped. I felt the hot 
exhaust on my ankles as the big coupe swerved back into the street. A thick cloud like a black flower 
blossomed from its jouncing rear end, while from the fishhooks flew a black shimmering rag. 
"Did they get you?" I asked the girl. 
She had twisted around to look where the side of her skirt was torn away. She was wearing nylon tights. 
"The hooks didnt touch me," she said shakily. "I guess Im lucky." 
I heard voices around us: 
"Those kids! Whatll they think up next?" 
"Theyre a menace. They ought to be arrested." 
Sirens screamed at a rising pitch as two motor police, their rocket-assist jets full on, came whizzing 
toward us after the coupe. But the black flower had become an inky fog obscuring the whole street. The 
motor police switched from rocket assists to rocket brakes and swerved to a stop near the smoke cloud. 
"Are you English?" the girl asked me. "You have an English accent." Her voice came shudderingly from 
behind the sleek black satin mask. I fancied her teeth must be chattering. Eyes that were perhaps blue 
searched my face from behind the black gauze covering the eyeholes of the mask. 
I told her shed guessed right. 
She stood close to me. "Will you come to my place tonight?" she asked rapidly. "I cant thank you now. 
And theres something else you can help me about." 
My arm, still lightly circling her waist, felt her body trembling. I was answering the plea in that as much 
as in her voice when I said, "Certainly." 
She gave me an address south of Inferno, an apartment number and a time. She asked me my name and I 

told her. 
"Hey, you!" 
I turned obediently to the policemans shout. He shooed away the small clucking crowd of masked 
women and barefaced men. Coughing from the smoke that the black coupe had thrown out, he asked for 
my papers. I handed him the essential ones. 
He looked at them and then at me. "British Barter? How long will you be in New York?" 
Suppressing the urge to say, "For as short a time as possible." I told him Id be here for a week or so. 
"May need you as a witness," he explained. "Those kids cant use smoke on us. When they do that, we 
pull them in." 
He seemed to think the smoke was the bad thing. "They tried to kill the lady," I pointed out. 
He shook his head wisely. "They always pretend theyre going to, but actually they just want to snag 
skirts. Ive picked up rippers with as many as fifty skirt snags tacked up in their rooms. Of course, 
sometimes they come a little too close." 
I explained that if I hadnt yanked her out of the way shed have been hit by more than hooks. But he 
interrupted. "If shed thought it was a real murder attempt, shed have stayed here." 
I looked around. It was true. She was gone. 
"She was fearfully frightened," I told him. 
"Who wouldnt be? Those kids would have scared old Stalin himself." 
"I mean frightened of more than kids. They didnt look like kids." 
"What did they look like?" 
I tried without much success to describe the three faces. A vague impression of viciousness and 
effeminacy doesnt mean much. 
"Well, I could be wrong," he said finally. "Do you know the girl? Where she lives?" 
"No," I half lied. 
The other policeman hung up his radiophone and ambled toward us, kicking at the tendrils of dissipating 
smoke. The black cloud no longer hid the dingy faades with their five-year-old radiation flash burns, 
and I could begin to make out the distant stump of the Empire State Building, thrusting up out of Inferno 
like a mangled finger. 
"They havent been picked up so far," the approaching policeman grumbled. "Left smoke for five 

blocks, from what Ryan says." 
The first policeman shook his head. "Thats bad," he observed solemnly. 
I was feeling a bit uneasy and ashamed. An Englishman shouldnt lie, at least not on impulse. 
"They sound like nasty customers," the first policeman continued in the same grim tone. "Well need 
witnesses. Looks as if you may have to stay in New York longer than you expect." 
I got the point. I said, "I forgot to show you all my papers," and handed him a few others, making sure 
there was a five-dollar bill in among them. 
When he handed them back a bit later, his voice was no longer ominous. My feelings of guilt vanished. 
To cement our relationship, I chatted with the two of them about their job. 
"I suppose the masks give you some trouble," I observed. "Over in England weve been reading about 
your new crop of masked female bandits." 
"Those things get exaggerated," the first policeman assured me. "Its the men masking as women that 
really mix us up. But, brother, when we nab them, we jump on them with both feet." 
"And you get so you can spot women almost as well as if they had naked faces," the second policeman 
volunteered. "You know, hands and all that." 
"Especially all that," the first agreed with a chuckle. "Say, is it true that some girls dont mask over in 
England?" 
"A number of them have picked up the fashion," I told him. "Only a few, thoughthe ones who always 
adopt the latest style, however extreme." 
"Theyre usually masked in the British newscasts." 
"I imagine its arranged that way out of deference to American taste," I confessed. "Actually, not very 
many do mask." 
The second policeman considered that. "Girls going down the Street bare from the neck up." It was not 
clear whether he viewed the prospect with relish or moral distaste. Likely both. 
"A few members keep trying to persuade Parliament to enact a law forbidding all masking," I continued, 
talking perhaps a bit too much. 
The second policeman shook his head. "What an idea. You know, masks are a pretty good thing, brother. 
Couple of years more and Im going to make my wife wear hers around the house." 
The first policeman shrugged. "If women were to stop wearing masks, in six weeks you wouldnt know 

the difference. You get used to anything, if enough people do or dont do it." 
I agreed, rather regretfully, and left them. I turned north on Broadway (old Tenth Avenue, I believe) and 
walked rapidly until I was beyond Inferno. Passing such an area of undecontaminated radioactivity 
always makes a person queasy. I thanked God there werent any such in England, as yet. 
The street was almost empty, though I was accosted by a couple of beggars with faces tunneled by Hbomb 
scars, whether real or of make-up putty I couldnt tell. A fat woman held out a baby with webbed 
fingers and toes. I told myself it would have been deformed anyway and that she was only capitalizing 
on our fear of bomb-induced mutations. Still, I gave her a seven-and-a-half-cent piece. Her mask made 
me feel I was paying tribute to an African fetish. 
"May all your children be blessed with one head and two eyes, sir." 
"Thanks," I said, shuddering, and hurried past her. 
"  Theres only trash behind the mask, so turn your head, stick to your task: Stay away, stay away 
fromthegirls!" 
This last was the end of an anti-sex song being sung by some religionists half a block from the circleand-
cross insignia of a femalist temple. They reminded me only faintly of our small tribe of British 
monastics. Above their heads was a jumble of billboards advertising predigested foods, wrestling 
instruction, radio handies and the like. 
I stared at the hysterical slogans with disagreeable fascination. Since the female face and form have been 
banned on American signs, the very letters of the advertisers alphabet have begun to crawl with sex 
the fat-bellied, big-breasted capital B, the lascivious double 0. However, I reminded myself, it is chiefly 
the mask that so strangely accents sex in America. 
A British anthropologist has pointed out that, while it took more than five thousand years to shift the 
chief point of sexual interest from the hips to the breasts, the next transition, to the face, has taken less 
than fifty years. Comparing the American style with Moslem tradition is not valid; Moslem women are 
compelled to wear veils, the purpose of which is to make a husbands property private, while American 
women have only the compulsion of fashion and use masks to create mystery. 
Theory aside, the actual origins of the trend are to be found in the antiradiation clothing of World War 
III, which led to masked wrestling, now a fantastically popular sport, and that in turn led to the current 
female fashion. Only a wild style at first, masks quickly became as necessary as brassieres and lipsticks 
had been earlier in the century. 

I finally realized that I was not speculating about masks in general, but about what lay behind one in 
particular. Thats the devil of the things; youre never sure whether a girl is heightening loveliness or 
hiding ugliness. I pictured a cool, pretty face in which fear showed only in widened eyes. Then I 
remembered her blond hair, rich against the blackness of the satin mask. Shed told me to come at the 
twenty-second hour10 P.M. 
I climbed to my apartment near the British Consulate; the elevator shaft had been shoved out of plumb 
by an old blast, a nuisance in these tall New York buildings. Before it occurred to me that I would be 
going out again, I automatically tore a tab from the film strip under my shirt. I developed it just to be 
sure. It showed that the total radiation Id taken that day was still within the safety limit. Im no phobic 
about it, as so many people are these days, but theres no point in taking chances. 
I flopped down on the daybed and stared at the silent speaker and the dark screen of the video set. As 
always, they made me think, somewhat bitterly, of the two great nations of the world. Mutilated by each 
other, yet still strong, they were crippled giants poisoning the planet with their respective dreams of an 
impossible equality and an impossible success. 
I fretfully switched on the speaker. By luck, the newscaster was talking excitedly of the prospects of a 
bumper wheat crop, sown by planes across a dust bowl moistened by seeded rains. I listened carefully to 
the rest of the program (it was remarkably clear of Russian telejamming), but there was no further news 
of interest to me. And, of course, no mention of the moon, though everyone knows that America and 
Russia are racing to develop their primary bases into fortresses capable of mutual assault and the 
launching of alphabet bombs toward Earth. I myself knew perfectly well that the British electronic 
equipment I was helping trade for American wheat was destined for use in spaceships. 
I switched off the newscast. It was growing dark, and once again I pictured a tender, frightened face 
behind a mask. I hadnt had a date since England. Its exceedingly difficult to become acquainted with a 
girl in America, where as little as a smile often can set one of them yelping for the police to say nothing 
of the increasingly puritanical morality and the roving gangs that keep most women indoors after dark. 
And, naturally, the masks, which are definitely not, as the Soviets claim, a last invention of capitalist 
degeneracy, but a sign of great psychological insecurity. The Russians have no masks, but they have 
their own signs of stress. 
I went to the window and impatiently watched the darkness gather. I was getting very restless. After a 
while a ghostly violet cloud appeared to the south. My hair rose. Then I laughed. I had momentarily 
fancied it a radiation from the crater of the Hellbomb, though I should instantly have known it was only 
the radio-induced glow in the sky over the amusement and residential area south of Inferno. 

Promptly at twenty-two hours I stood before the door of my unknown girl friends apartment. The 
electronic say-who-please said just that. I answered clearly, "Wysten Turner," wondering if shed given 
my name to the mechanism. She evidently had, for the door opened. I walked into a small empty living 
room, my heart pounding a bit. 
The room was expensively furnished with the latest pneumatic hassocks and sprawlers. There were some 
midgie hooks on the table. The one I picked up was the standard hard-boiled detective story in which 
two female murderers go gunning for each other. 
The television was on. A masked girl in green was crooning a love song. Her right hand held something 
that blurred off into the foreground. I saw the set had a handie, which we havent in England as yet, and 
curiously thrust my hand into the handie orifice beside the screen. Contrary to my expectations, it was 
not like slipping into a pulsing rubber glove, but rather as if the girl on the screen actually held my hand. 
A door opened behind me. I jerked out my hand with as guilty a reaction as if Id been caught peering 
through a keyhole. 
She stood in the bedroom doorway. I think she was trembling. She was wearing a gray fur coat, whitespeckled, 
and a gray velvet evening mask with shirred gray lace around the eyes and mouth. Her 
fingernails twinkled like silver. 
I hadnt occurred to me that shed expect us to go out. 
"I should have told you," she said softly. Her mask veered nervously toward the books and the screen 
and the rooms dark corners. "But I cant possibly talk to you here." 
I said doubtfully, "Theres a place near the Consulate  " 
"I know where we can be together and talk," she said rapidly. "If you dont mind." 
As we entered the elevator I said, "Im afraid I dismissed the cab." 
But the cab driver hadnt gone, for some reason of his own. He jumped out and smirkingly held the front 
door open for us. I told him we preferred to sit in back. He sulkily opened the rear door, slammed it after 
us, jumped in front and slammed the door behind him. 
My companion leaned forward. "Heaven," she said. 
The driver switched on the turbine and televisor. 
"Why did you ask if I were a British subject?" I said, to start the conversation. 
She leaned away from me, tilting her mask close to the window. "See the moon," she said in a quick, 
dreamy voice. 

"But why, really?" I pressed, conscious of an irritation that had nothing to do with her. 
"Its edging up into the purple of the sky." 
"And whats your name?" 
"The purple makes it look yellower." 
Just then I became aware of the source of my irritation. It lay in the square of writhing light in the front 
of the cab beside the driver. 
I dont object to ordinary wrestling matches, though they bore me, but I simply detest watching a man 
wrestle a woman. The fact that the bouts are generally "on the level," with the man greatly outclassed in 
weight and reach and the masked females young and personable, only makes them seem worse to me. 
"Please turn off the screen," I requested the driver. 
He shook his head without looking around. "Uh-uh, man," he said. "Theyve been grooming that babe 
for weeks for this bout with Little Zirk." 
Infuriated, I reached forward, but my companion caught my arm. "Please," she whispered frightenedly, 
shaking her head. 
I settled back, frustrated. She was closer to me now, but silent, and for a few moments I watched the 
heaves and contortions of the powerful masked girl and her wiry masked opponent on the screen. His 
frantic scrambling at her reminded me of a male spider. 
I jerked around, facing my companion. "Why did those three men want to kill you?" I asked sharply. 
The eyeholes of her mask faced the screen. "Because theyre jealous of me," she whispered. 
"Why are they jealous?" 
She still didnt look at me. "Because of him." 
"Who?" 
She didnt answer. 
I put my arm around her shoulders. "Are you afraid to tell me?" I asked. "What is the matter?" 
She still didnt look my way. She smelled nice. 
"See here," I said laughingly, changing my tactics, "you really should tell me something about yourself. 
I dont even know what you look like." 
I half playfully lifted my hand to the band of her neck. She gave it an astonishingly swift slap. I pulled it 

away in sudden pain. There were four tiny indentations on the back. From one of them a tiny bead of 
blood welled out as I watched. I looked at her silver fingernails and saw they were actually delicate and 
pointed metal caps. 
"Im dreadfully sorry," I heard her say, "but you frightened me. I thought for a moment you were going 
to  " 
At last she turned to me. Her coat had fallen open. Her evening dress was Cretan Revival, a bodice of 
lace beneath and supporting the breasts without covering them. 
"Dont be angry," she said, putting her arms around my neck. "You were wonderful this afternoon." 
The soft gray velvet of her mask, molding itself to her cheek, pressed mine. Through the masks lace the 
wet warm tip of her tongue touched my chin. 
"Im not angry," I said. "Just puzzled and anxious to help." 
The cab stopped. To either side were black windows bordered by spears of broken glass. The sickly 
purple light showed a few ragged figures slowly moving toward us. 
The driver muttered, "Its the turbine, man. Were grounded." He sat there hunched and motionless. 
"Wish it had happened somewhere else." 
My companion whispered, "Five dollars is the usual amount." 
She looked out so shudderingly at the congregating figures that I suppressed my indignation and did as 
she suggested. The driver took the bill without a word. As he started up, he put his hand out the window 
and I heard a few coins clink on the pavement. 
My companion came back into my arms, but her mask faced the television screen, where the tall girl had 
just pinned the convulsively kicking Little Zirk. 
"Im so frightened," she breathed. 
Heaven turned out to be an equally ruinous neighborhood, but it had a club with an awning and a huge 
doorman uniformed like a spaceman, but in gaudy colors. In my sensuous daze I rather liked it all. We 
stepped out of the cab just as a drunken old woman came down the sidewalk, her mask awry. A couple 
ahead of us turned their heads from the half-revealed face as if from an ugly body at the beach. As we 
followed them in I heard the doorman say, "Get along, Grandma, and cover yourself." 
Inside, everything was dimness and blue glows. She had said we could talk here, but I didnt see how. 
Besides the inevitable chorus of sneezes and coughs (they say America is fifty per cent allergic these 

days), there was a band going full blast in the latest robop style, in which an electronic composing 
machine selects an arbitrary sequence of tones into which the musicians weave their raucous little 
individualities. 
Most of the people were in booths. The band was behind the bar. On a small platform beside them a girl 
was dancing, stripped to her mask. The little cluster of men at the shadowy far end of the bar werent 
looking at her. 
We inspected the menu in gold script on the wall and pushed the buttons for breast of chicken, fried 
shrimps and two Scotches. Moments later, the serving bell tinkled. I opened the gleaming panel and took 
out our drinks. 
The cluster of men at the bar filed off toward the door, but first they stared around the room. My 
companion had just thrown back her coat. Their look lingered on our booth. I noticed that there were 
three of them. 
The band chased off the dancing girls with growls. I handed my companion a straw and we sipped our 
drinks. 
"You wanted me to help you about something," I said. "Incidentally, I think youre lovely." 
She nodded quick thanks, looked around, leaned forward. "Would it be hard for me to get to England?" 
"No," I replied, a bit taken aback. "Provided you have an American passport." 
"Are they difficult to get?" 
"Rather," I said, surprised at her lack of information. "Your country doesnt like its nationals to travel, 
though it isnt quite as stringent as Russia." 
"Could the British Consulate help me get a passport?" 
"Its hardly their" 
"Could you?" 
I realized we were being inspected. A man and two girls had paused opposite our table. The girls were 
tall and wolfish-looking, with spangled masks. The man stood jauntily between them like a fox on its 
hind legs. 
My companion didnt glance at them, but she sat back. I noticed that one of the girls had a big yellow 
bruise on her forearm. After a moment they walked to a booth in the deep shadows. 
"Know them?" I asked. She didnt reply. I finished my drink. "Im not sure youd like England," I said. 
"The austeritys altogether different from your American brand of misery." 

She leaned forward again. "But I must get away," she whispered. 
"Why?" I was getting impatient. 
"Because Im so frightened." 
There was chimes. I opened the panel and handed her the fried shrimps. The sauce on my breast of 
chicken was a delicious steaming compound of almonds, soy and ginger. But something must have been 
wrong with the radionic oven that had thawed and heated it, for at the first bite I crunched a kernel of ice 
in the meat. These delicate mechanisms need constant repair and there arent enough mechanics. 
I put down my fork. "What are you really scared of?" I asked her. 
For once her mask didnt waver away from my face. As I waited I could feel the fears gathering without 
her naming them, tiny dark shapes swarming through the curved night outside, converging on the 
radioactive pest spot of New York, dipping into the margins of the purple. I felt a sudden rush of 
sympathy, a desire to protect the girl opposite me. The warm feeling added itself to the infatuation 
engendered in the cab. 
"Everything," she said finally. 
I nodded and touched her hand. 
"Im afraid of the moon," she began, her voice going dreamy and brittle, as it had in the cab. "You cant 
look at it and not think of guided bombs." 
"Its the same moon over England," I reminded her. 
"But its not Englands moon any more. Its ours and Russias. Youre not responsible. Oh, and then," 
she said with a tilt of her mask, "Im afraid of the cars and the gangs and the loneliness and Inferno. Im 
afraid of the lust that undresses your face. And"her voice hushed"Im afraid of the wrestlers." 
"Yes?" I prompted softly after a moment. 
Her mask came forward. "Do you know something about the wrestlers?" she asked rapidly. "The ones 
that wrestle women, I mean. They often lose, you know. And then they have to have a girl to take their 
frustration out on. A girl whos soft and weak and terribly frightened. They need that, to keep them men. 
Other men dont want them to have a girl. Other men want them just to fight women and be heroes. But 
they must have a girl. Its horrible for her." 
I squeezed her fingers tighter, as if courage could be transmitted granting I had any. "I think I can get 
you to England," I said. 

Shadows crawled onto the table and stayed there. I looked up at the three men who had been at the end 
of the bar. They were the men I had seen in the big coupe. They wore black sweaters and close-fitting 
black trousers. Their faces were as expressionless as dopers. Two of them stood about me. The other 
loomed over the girl. 
"Drift off, man," I was told. I heard the other inform the girl, "Well wrestle a fall, sister. What shall it 
be? Judo, slapsie or kill-who-can?" 
I stood up. There are times when an Englishman simply must be maltreated. But just then the foxlike 
man came gliding in like the star of a ballet. The reaction of the other three startled me. They were 
acutely embarrassed. 
He smiled at them thinly. "You wont win my favor by tricks like this," he said. 
"Dont get the wrong idea, Zirk," one of them pleaded. 
"I will if its right," he said. "She told me what you tried to do this afternoon. That wont endear you to 
me, either. Drift." 
They backed off awkwardly. "Lets get out of here," one of them said loudly as they turned. "I know a 
place where they fight naked with knives." 
Little Zirk laughed musically and slipped into the seat beside my companion. She shrank from him, just 
a little. I pushed my feet back, leaned forward. 
"Whos your friend, baby?" he asked, not looking at her. 
She passed the question to me with a little gesture. I told him. "British," he observed. "Shes been asking 
you about getting out of the country? About passports?" He smiled pleasantly. "She likes to start running 
away. Dont you, baby?" His small hand began to stroke her wrist, the fingers bent a little, the tendons 
ridged, as if he were about to grab and twist. 
"Look here," I said sharply. "I have to be grateful to you for ordering off those bullies, but" 
"Think nothing of it," he told me. "Theyre no harm except when theyre behind steering wheels. A welltrained 
fourteen-year-old girl could cripple any one of them. Why, even Theda here, if she went in for 
that sort of thing  " He turned to her, shifting his hand from her wrist to her hair. He stroked it, letting 
the strands slip slowly through his fingers. "You know I lost tonight, baby, dont you?" he said softly. 
I stood up. "Come along," I said to her. "Lets leave." 
She just sat there. I couldnt even tell if she was trembling. I tried to read a message in her eyes through 
the mask. 

"Ill take you away," I said to her. "I can do it. I really will." 
He smiled at me. "Shed like to go with you," he said. "Wouldnt you, baby?" 
"Will you or wont you?" I said to her. She still just sat there. 
He slowly knotted his fingers in her hair. 
"Listen, you little vermin," I snapped at him. "Take your hands off her." 
He came up from the seat like a snake. Im no fighter. I just know that the more scared I am, the harder 
and straighter I hit. This time I was lucky. But as he crumpled back I felt a slap and four stabs of pain in 
my cheek. I clapped my hand to it. I could feel the four gashes made by her dagger finger caps, and the 
warm blood oozing out from them. 
She didnt look at me. She was bending over little Zirk and cuddling her mask to his cheek and 
crooning, "There, there, dont feel bad, youll be able to hurt me afterward." 
There were sounds around us, but they didnt come close. I leaned forward and ripped the mask from her 
face. 
I really dont know why I should have expected her face to be anything else. It was very pale, of course, 
and there werent any cosmetics. I suppose theres no point in wearing any under a mask. The eyebrows 
were untidy and the lips chapped. But as for the general expression, as for the feelings crawling and 
wriggling across it  
Have you ever lifted a rock from damp soil? Have you ever watched the slimy white grubs? 
I looked down at her, she up at me. "Yes, youre so frightened, arent you?" I said sarcastically. "You 
dread this little nightly drama, dont you? Youre scared to death." 
And I walked right out into the purple night, still holding my hand to my bleeding cheek. No one 
stopped me, not even the girl wrestlers. I wished I could tear a tab from under my shirt and test it then 
and there, and find Id taken too much radiation, and so be able to ask to cross the Hudson and go down 
New Jersey, past the lingering radiance of the Narrows Bomb, and so on to Sandy Hook to wait for the 
rusty ship that would take me back over the seas to England. 
Scan Notes: 
[14 jul 2001left to wander the world as UC txt] 
[10 feb 2004proofed by Escaped Chicken Spirits] 

