One of the technicians pointed out a rope already in position above their heads. Havelock asked for it to be uncoiled.
“Let’s run through it, see how it looks,” he said. “First we need a stand-in for a horny male. Where’s Rick?” This earned an easy laugh and brought Rick down from the control room. “Do we have some harness?” asked Havelock. “The safety thread should be attached to his back — is that right, Sarah?”
They spent the next half hour fixing rope, pulleys, and harness, to give Rick enough mobility. With two men off the set handling the line, the essential movements of the drop, swing, and climb were tried until they were passable.
“Okay, it’s not world class, but it’ll do for now,” said Havelock. “Sarah, my Spider Girl, would you please go up to your lair now and wait for vibrations on that signal thread? Let’s play it like the spiders would, so far as conditions allow. Scare him a couple of times with dashes to the center, then let him spin the mating thread — we’ll have to imagine it at this stage — and see if he turns you on by jerking the web. If he can’t, I guess you eat him.” This got another laugh, and Havelock added, “He’s not the main course — just standing in till your mate arrives for rehearsals. A beautiful boy straight out of drama school.”
“I like them on toast,” said Sarah, and they all laughed again. But as she climbed the web, she was uneasy about the hyped-up mood of hilarity. People laughed like that when they were nervous. She would have been happier with everyone relaxed.
The crevice where she was required to lie in wait was a small platform set on scaffolding among the lights, screened by wood and canvas. There really was a signal thread of nylon rope connecting it tautly with the center of the web. There was also a cushion Sarah had brought in the previous day. She made herself as comfortable as she could in the cramped space, her chin resting on her knees. Below was a side view of the web, spirals foreshortened into a single bar of gleaming white.
“Okay, let’s go,” called Havelock. “Action!”
She had no view of what was going on, but she heard the squeak of pulleys as Rick was lowered toward the web. The moment he made contact, she felt the signal thread twitch against her thigh. That was followed by a series of jerks as he transferred his weight to the web, and then he was in view, smaller than she expected, cautiously moving up the lower section.
She waited a few seconds, as the spider would, judging the moment to strike. The tension excited her like the make-believe games she had adored as a child.
She moved.
It was a rapid descent down the signal thread, and Rick reacted just as quickly, thrusting himself away from the web and into space. He dropped maybe six or seven feet and then reached the limit of the safety line. It gave his body a strong jerk and set it swinging. He rode it out for a couple of swings and then started climbing upward. The technicians helped by hoisting him up.
“Not bad!” declared Havelock. “It could work. Let’s go straight into the mating sequence. You both okay?”
Sarah nodded and Rick took off his shirt and let it fall. Climbing the rope had made him sweat.
“Can we keep you out on the web for this one, Sarah?” asked Havelock. “Does the female go back to base each time, or can we assume she is alerted to the possibility?”
“It’s okay to meet him halfway.”
“Good girl. So what happens when he hits the web?”
“He gets settled and begins plucking one of the lines to indicate his intentions. It’s a tentative signal at first; then it gets more confident. When he’s ready, he spins the mating bridge between two of the radial lines. His object then is to entice the female there by repeatedly jerking and tweaking the lines. If he succeeds, she’ll indicate submission by hanging upside down from his bridge. Then he moves in fast—”
“And that’s where the damn commercial break comes,” said Havelock. “But it should make good television. Did you get it all, Rick? Listen, we don’t have a mating bridge as of now, so until we can fix that, let’s use any place on the web that feels comfortable.”
So the mating sequence started with Sarah holding the signal thread two spirals above the hub of the web. She watched Rick on his line, lowered to a point way below her, almost on the perimeter, and she felt the tremor as he touched down. She pressed her torso against the web. She was in contact with the signal thread with her instep, inner thigh, abdomen, and face. It began to pulsate rhythmically. She was not sure if she liked the feeling. She moved her leg and hitched herself higher. From there she could watch Rick’s movements without straining. He was creeping higher, plucking the line as he came. His face was pale and he was not smiling. He looked small. Vulnerable.
If this was sex as spiders made it, at least it was a change from being humped on a lumpy mattress. It intrigued her that Havelock should have picked Rick for this role; maybe he had noticed Rick giving her the eye.
She eased her body closer to the signal thread and sampled the rhythm again. It was unsubtle. Just a repetitive beat, about as seductive as a jackhammer. And that was a pity, because Sarah could imagine ways in which love on a web might be made attractive.
She went through the motions, pretending to be enticed by the performance, descending by degrees. When she got the scent of his body, she leaned lower and put one hand on the bridge he had selected. His eyes met hers, and she looked into them and knew he was physically aroused by the ritual. She might have mocked him, but she returned a brief, sensuous look before swinging down and tucking her legs over the line to hang in the mating position.
“Thanks — it has possibilities,” said Havelock. “It needs a lot of work, obviously, and there are some major technical problems, but I’m encouraged. Okay, kids, we’ll pick it up again at two. Sarah, sweetheart, you and I have some talking to do.”
She lowered herself from the web. “Right now?”
“As soon as you’re ready. Why not get your coat and we’ll grab a sandwich someplace nearby where we can talk alone.”
He took her to a deli in the next block, a come-down from the Algonquin, but this time he wasn’t pitching for a contract. They ordered sandwiches and coffee, and Sloane waded in. “Sarah, my dear, you were lousy this morning. If you had been a trained actress, I’d have told you right there in the studio, but you’re not, so I spared your feelings. It was crap. If you can’t do better than that, I might as well tell all those people to go home. Do I make myself clear?”
It was such a savage put-down, she reacted like a dumb teenager — went pink, got to her feet, and started to walk out. As she passed Havelock’s side of the table, she felt him grab her wrist. She was swung around and her backside hit the padded banquette beside him.
“I hadn’t finished,” he told her in his slow way, without letting go. “I happen to believe you can carry this show for me. First we have to understand each other a little better. Will you give me credit for knowing how things work in this business and listen to my advice?”
She nodded, and he released her wrist. She looked ahead at a blank wall, shaking from the shock. Until this moment her life had seemed so well defended it could hold no unpleasant surprises. At home and at the university she knew just where she stood. She had lines out to each conceivable source of danger or attack. If Jerry had said her research was crap, she would have had an answer ready, because Jerry was on her list of two-faces. But Havelock had caught her off guard. All the ballyhoo over her TV potential had drawn her out of her safe limits. She faced the hideous prospect of a letdown as devastating as the day her parents had stopped her ballet classes.