Free Last Son of Krypton by Elliot S. Maggin

ridiculed and had trinkets tossed into his basket. The Master, who held court in a study at the apex of his pyramid-shaped home on Oric, acquired and dispensed worlds with the abandon of a traveling medicine salesman and was the most respected creature on the planet. He was the richest.
    The Master lay at a 30-degree angle with his head lower than his feet, four arms hanging below him. His head was directly below the pyramid's apex and the point of light that shone through the open tip. Carlo rolled into the chamber, groveling.
    "You may rise upon your wheels, Carlo." The Master's gracious grant of permission to rise was no less command than the unspoken one that moved Carlo to bow upon his entry. Anyone who entered this room had to swim through an energy that cauterized it, penetrated all within it. There was the conviction that here was greatness. Certainty. Decision.
    "Your report, Carlo?" Commands, of course, were quite illegal on Oric, but the Master could hardly help the fact that his requests were strong ones.
    "I have cajoled the holder of the last major expanse on the planet Rigel-12 to make a gift of it to you."
    "See that he is promised an appropriate gift once our dividend operation has been carried out."
    "Yes, Master. Is that all, Master?"
    "No, Carlo. Are you aware that a theorist in a nearby predeveloped world has reputedly formulated a solution to the trisection of an angle?"
    "Trisection? But that is impossible."
    "Obviously it is not. My sources are quite reliable."
    "Yes, Master. The simplification of that operation could free up untold time for designers, planners, surveyors."
    "I am aware of the implications. I have chosen a plan to send a highly visible messenger to this predeveloped world. His visibility will serve to mitigate against suspicion of his actual purpose. You will prepare for his departure.
    "Yes, Master. Is that all, Master?"
    "You may leave."
    The slave whizzed from the room on command.
     

Chapter 11 T HE B ROADCAST
    Here is the way the show was supposed to start:  
    At precisely 5:59 P.M. the rerun of whatever the network is rerunning in that time slot goes off and camera 2 in Studio B flashes on Clark Kent. Clark then reads a ten-second "billboard" from the teleprompter—a list of a few top headlines designed to entice viewers of the preceding show to watch the news fifty seconds later.
    Here is what happened today instead:
    At precisely 5:59 P.M. in the control room adjoining Studio B, Josh Coyle, the director of the news, pressed a button that put the image currently being immortalized by camera 2 over the WGBS-TV air. The teleprompter clearly showed Clark his well-timed 35-word billboard. The red light on the camera which served to alert Clark that he was on the air short-circuited out. So a million viewers across the Metropolis Area of Dominant Influence—a television euphemism referring to the communities a station's signal reaches—were treated to ten seconds of valuable television time during which the inoffensively handsome face of Clark Kent stared blankly out of their picture tubes.
    It was not Clark's day.
    Somewhere out in space, Clark often thought, there was someone who would receive these television broadcasts that flew off the Earth at the speed of light. Somewhere somebody would figure out that Clark and Superman were the same person. Somebody whose mind was not clouded by human perceptions and prejudices would notice without a touch of effort that two men were one. If that someone was also capable of grasping the idea that no one on Earth knew it, that this was a disguise and a very effective one, that someone would probably catch the irony in Clark's first words today.
    "Good evening, this is Clark Kent of WGBS-TV News in Metropolis, on a day when Lex Luthor, the escaped criminal scientist, made a fool out of Superman."
    It was times like this when Clark wished he were genuinely schizoid, not just a consummate actor. He had to sit here and challenge his own