Earth Has Been Found (8 page)

At first Arcasso thought the plane had come down in a small clearing, but he quickly realized the plane had made the space itself. The aircraft lay on its back, the remnants of the undercarriage pointing upwards. He guessed it had hit the treetops with its wheels down; they’d caught, the aircraft somersaulted, spun, and plunged to the jungle floor.

Both wings had been torn off; one hung impaled on a branch, the other was missing. The engine, ripped loose on impact, had carved a path to its resting place twenty meters away; the tail plane was half wrapped around the base of a tree. It was a very bad crash.

Looking at the stripped fuselage, torn and pierced by shattered tree stumps, he thought it resembled a giant slug, shrunken in death. On its crumpled side was a white five-pointed star in a blue roundel.

Arcasso wandered around, picking up pieces of mangled metal, dropping them, hardly aware he did so. The guide stood back respectfully while the attaché took photographs, privately anxious to get the job done before the heat of the day clamped down.

There had been a good many shocks in Frank Arcasso’s life, even before ICARUS. Only the thought that he’d met them and somehow gotten by gave him any help now; no matter what, he had to do the routine things.

He inspected the engine, confirming what he already knew. He’d seen one before, in a museum: a Packard-built Rolls-Royce Merlin. He noted the number, his fingers trembling.

Unless he was crazy, or in a nightmare, this was the wreck of an F-51, a Mustang. Offhand, he could not recall when the plane had been phased out of the USAF — the 1950s? Certainly no later.

The wing stuck on the tree provided the greatest shock of all — three broad white stripes were painted from forward to aft. Arcasso’s history was rusty, but he was pretty sure those three stripes had been first used as standard identification for Allied aircraft taking part in the invasion of Europe in June, 1944.

And those three stripes, bright and clean, might have been painted yesterday.

*

Arcasso remembered little of the return journey to Colombo. As they passed through the jungle, the attach
é
tried to discuss the crash, but was silenced once Arcasso realized he knew next to nothing about aviation.

The attach
é
prattled on about the ancient culture of Sri Lanka, pointing out a two hundred meter tall dagoba, a relic of a civilization virtually unknown in the West, and went on about a sacred tree under which the Buddha had sat, a tree more than twenty-two hundred years old, and very likely the oldest in the world.

Frank Arcasso let it all roll over him, nursing his apprehensions, yet a fragment of his mind wondered what the contemplative powers of the Buddha would have made of this awful dream.

By the time they reached the outskirts of Colombo, battling with ox carts and crammed buses, he had gotten his mind working, forcing himself to ignore the stunning implications of what he had seen, concentrating on the immediate problem.

The visit to the morgue was an anticlimax. The sad, hideously torn body of a young man conveyed little. But the clothes, the personal possessions, were something else entirely.

The pilot had worn an old-fashioned overall flying suit, a fur-lined zip-up jacket, and an ancient Mae West life preserver. His identity book was the clincher. His face, recognizably that of the corpse, stared up at Arcasso — bright, hopeful eyes, carelessly knotted silk scarf, crew-cut hair. The official stamp, half on the photograph, half on the paper, bore a date: September 9, 1943. Elsewhere, a date of birth: 1923. Arcasso was strangely moved by the face. If they’d met, the youth would have stiffened to attention before a full colonel, yet in years he would have been damn near old enough to be Arcasso’s father.

It was crazy, impossible, but a stone cold fact.

Frank managed to take possession of the clothing, papers and dog tags. He thanked the inspector for his cooperation, hinting that the plane had gotten lost on a submarine tracking operation. As a story it had nothing to commend it, but he couldn’t dream up a better one, and the chances were the police inspector knew even less about aircraft than the attaché, and was not likely to ever set eyes on the wreck.

He told the attaché the story was false. In fact the plane had been on a spy mission, and the less the attaché knew, the better. He saw the ambassador, produced his letter of authority signed by the President, and requested the body and wreckage be recovered from the local authorities and flown back to the States as soon as possible; the USAF would provide transportation. The ambassador too was left with the impression that he was stuck with a CIA spy operation which had gone sour.

Arcasso collected the attaches undeveloped film and sent a secret message to “Smith” — which meant the ICARUS secretary, Sarah.

EVENT FOUR POSITIVE STOP COMMENCED 1944 REPEAT 1944 STOP LOCAL SITUATION UNDER CONTROL STOP RETURNING ARCASSO

Exhausted, maddened by insect bites on his neck and ankles, he climbed back into the B-l. He’d said the local situation was under control, and as far as was humanly possible it was. But the security of ICARUS couldn’t last. The central question of who or what was responsible for these inexplicable returns from the dead remained unanswered.

The new factor was the sudden expansion in the time scale. If a plane could come back thirty-nine years late, why not one from an even earlier day? Suppose some stick-and-string crate from the twenties or World War I got down safely?

XIII.

Landing at Washington National, Arcasso went straight to an emergency ICARUS meeting. He had no option — a State Department car met the plane.

In terse sentences he reported his findings and actions. As before, the committee made short work of the immediate practicalities. Arcasso would check out the pilot’s USAF records, his AI4 section would examine the wrecked fighter. CIA Joe had the facilities to conduct a postmortem and dispose of the remains. The chairman would arrange for express transportation via the secretary of defense, who was one of the Ten.

And then they were back with the impossible question: Why? Arcasso shied away from that, stating bluntly that whatever the cause, he was convinced the secret could not be kept for long. He added forcefully that they’d better do some heavy thinking on that angle, and soon. “Meanwhile,” he concluded, “I need some sleep, even if Jesus Christ is the Prime Mover.” No one smiled, least of all Arcasso.

*

The phone woke him from five hours of uneasy sleep. The President had called a meeting — the first — of the ICARUS Ten for the next day, timed to dovetail with the postmortem report on the body, already airborne in a B-l fire truck. “It’s about time,” snarled Arcasso, and tried to get back to sleep.

The rank and prestige of those attending the late night meeting in the White House bespoke the alarming nature of the ICARUS problem. President Robert J. Knowlton waited silently as his guests — Secretary of State Erwin J. Lord, Secretary of Defense Herbert F. Morton, FBI and CIA chiefs Malin and Langbaum, the other members of the ICARUS Committee, and Colonel-General Lebedev of the Soviet Union — made themselves comfortable. Sarah, the secretary, was also in attendance, ready to record the minutes.

The tension was so great that Arcasso, who rated zero in this high-rank collection, felt in no way inferior. They were people bound together by a common, fearful secret, a secret which made rank a triviality.

The President, his famous vote-catching smile conspicuously absent, spoke briefly, introducing Lebedev calmly, unemotionally, as if the presence of a KGB general at a secret presidential conference were an everyday affair. He stated the object of their meeting: to establish, if possible, the cause of the Events. An update would begin the session.

CIA Joe reported on the body of the F-51 pilot. “I hate to be an alarmist,” he said, “but I can’t avoid it. I can only tell you what the doctors found.”

The cause of death had not been established with complete certainty. The postmortem had identified two distinct types of injuries; either could have been fatal. One type was the result of impact, and included a broken neck, a severed jugular, and multiple injuries to chest and arms. But the second set …

The body contained metal fragments, widely distributed over chest, abdomen, and legs. The fragments had been identified by ballistics as bits of twenty-millimeter cannon shells, probably German.

As he listened, Arcasso’s mind leaped ahead. The back of his neck seemed to crawl and his hair seemed to stand on end. Instinctively he looked at Lebedev, the only other aviator present: His heavy Slavic face had sagged, and sweat glistened on his brow.

CIA Joe went on. The second type — wounds as opposed to injuries — would have caused death by severe hemorrhaging within four or five minutes. But in the case of the impact injuries, death would have been instantaneous. If the pilot had died of wounds, there would have been no loss of blood from the severed jugular — certainly a result of the crash, since a sliver of bamboo had been found in the wound. But owing to the state of the body, the doctors could not state positively that the blood on the neck had come from the severed vein.

Here Joe interrupted the hard facts of the report to make his own comment. Naturally, since the doctors had no idea of the truth, they’d concluded that the pilot, wounded by flak, had lost control and crashed — what more was there to say? But Joe had pressed them. Okay, they couldn’t be sure, but weighing all the probabilities, when did they think the man died — in the air, or on hitting the ground?

Although puzzled by what struck them as an irrelevant and academic question, the three doctors reexamined the evidence. Reluctantly, all three agreed that the pilot had died in the crash.

CIA Joe laid the report gently on the desk and looked around the table. “Mr. President, gentlemen: I interrogated the doctors myself; they didn’t like giving a firm answer, but answer they did. I am left in no serious doubt that the pilot sustained combat injuries in 1944 which would have killed him within minutes, but that he died in 1983.”

Arcasso was not the only one who felt physically sick. The President broke the silence. “Joe, why 1944?”

“Colonel Arcasso has the collateral evidence, sir.”

Frank cleared his throat. His mouth was dry and his voice seemed to belong to someone else. Haltingly, he made his report. Pilot and plane had been traced. Both had been logged as missing on operations over Normandy, France, on June 7, 1944.

“Gentlemen, what we’ve heard is impossible — yet it’s happened! I don’t know what to say … ”

The cry for help in the President’s voice was not missed by Erwin Lord. The secretary of state was reputed to be the coldest, most logical brain in the government, a man whose surname came in for much sardonic word play. “Mr. President,” he said, trying to contain the incipient hysteria, “it is said that the solution to a problem lies less in the answers than in the questions posed. Let me ask one. It may appear a flat-footed approach, but I believe we won’t get anyplace if we don’t take things slowly, one step at a time. My question is this: is ICARUS, in our opinion, of this world — or is it not?” He held up a restraining hand. “Back in my Navy days, it was the custom for the junior officer to answer first — to make sure he was not influenced by his seniors. One more thing. I want a straight yes or no — the supplementaries come later.”

To the surprise of some, he directed his cold gaze at Sarah. “You, miss. You’ve been in this as long ‘as any of us, and are just as entitled to give a view as anyone sitting around this table.”

She looked straight at the secretary of state, her voice low, but under control. “ICARUS is not of this world. I think — ”

Lord’s hand stopped her. “One thing at a time.” He glanced sharply at Arcasso.

“I have to agree,” said Frank heavily. “Extraterrestrial.”

“Colonel-General Lebedev?”

The Russian said bleakly, “I am only an observer.”

Defense Secretary Morton threw down his pencil in disgust. “Jesus! This isn’t the UN! Don’t pussyfoot around — answer as a human being, not a goddam commie!”

Lebedev remained unmoved. “It is not a fair question,” he said stolidly.

The President glowered, his gray eyes cold. “A fair question! This isn’t a court of law, general!”

“If I may,” said Lord softly. “I think I understand our colleague’s position. My question was intended to clarify, to clear the way for other questions, based on preceding answers — in fact, the dialectical approach, which he naturally recognized.”

Lebedev inclined his head fractionally. The rest of the group eyed the secretary curiously. This was kindergarten stuff, not his normal style.

“For me,” Lord continued calmly, “the general’s failure, or unwillingness, to answer is no surprise.” He looked directly at the Russian. “And let me say I’m not trying to score cheap political points.” He smiled. “If I was, this wouldn’t be the audience I’d choose. My lack of surprise is grounded primarily on the belief that the only answer to my first question is that ICARUS is extraterrestrial.” He gestured apologetically. “So I’ve blown my own seniority system of answering. But does anyone believe otherwise?”

“It’s crazy!” said Joe angrily. “We
know
we’re not responsible, and with the time scale shifted back as far as 1944, neither the Soviet Union nor China were in any state to play technological games — so who else? The British?” He shook his head. “No. And no other combatant nation had any power potential for ICARUS. Much as I dislike saying it, I vote for extraterrestrial. And it scares the hell out of me.”

“And you, Mr. President?” Quietly Lord had taken charge of the meeting.

Robert Knowlton’s “I concur” was barely audible.

“Anyone disagree? No? So we are agreed that ICARUS is not of this world. This surely means that we accept as a fact that a non-human, extraterrestrial agency, with powers we cannot even begin to grasp, is responsible.

“Let’s get back to our Russian colleague’s problem, one which is, I think, a great deal worse than ours. Gentlemen, I’m no theologian, but isn’t ICARUS beginning to look something like a god? I’m quite certain that if this matter becomes public, an awful lot of people will think so, and maybe act accordingly. There lies General Lebedev’s dilemma. He will forgive me for quoting Marx: ‘Religion is the opium of the people’ …

“Atheism is a cornerstone of communism of whatever shade — Marxist/Leninist, Maoist, Trotskyite. Okay, we in the West may not be very religious, but at least we leave the door open. ICARUS doesn’t look like our idea of God, and it would come as a hell of a shock to us, but we’d adjust.” He looked directly at the Russian, “But what happens to a creed that for a hundred years has denied the existence of
any
sort of God?”

“No!” Lebedev’s, fist crashed on the table, his heavy-lidded eyes glaring at the secretary of state. “No! ICARUS is a natural phenomenon which we have not met before — no more than that! Compared with the earth’s age, man has only been here a few seconds!” His fierce gaze moved from face to face. “Ice ages changed the world; do you not believe in them because you have never seen one? ICARUS may be a power storm, an event that only happens every thousand years! Until man flew, he had no idea they existed. It is a natural force we do not understand — yet!” He glared. “It is
not
a god!”

Arcasso broke the silence which followed. “How d’you account for the holes in the Ilyushin and the Jumbo, General?”

Lebedev turned his smoldering gaze on the speaker. “They have no significance!” Arcasso did not answer; his expression was enough.

“May I?” The secretary of state glanced inquiringly at the President, who nodded. “General, I did not say ICARUS
was
a god. I said what I think the average person
will
think. Your definition — ‘a natural force we do not understand’ — fits a god as easily as it does a power storm — whatever that may be. We’re playing with words; the reality doesn’t change. Humanity has worshiped practically every damned thing at one time or another. Okay, call it a power storm. In no time flat ICARUS will become ‘the god of the storm.’ The return of those two planes is the most incredible event ever — unless,” he added, “you happen to be a Christian. No, General. As I said before, we in the West have at least kept the door ajar. You slammed yours shut back in 1917. Now it’s been torn off its hinges!”