Illegal Aliens (4 page)

“Fifty two minutes and counting,” Dr. Wu answered, her lithe fingers working a wrist calculator. “If that color bar is indeed a timepiece and not merely a decoration.”

His brow furrowed, Bronson removed the cigar from his mouth and inspected its soggy end. “What frequency was that broadcast on?” the soldier asked.

“All of them,” Dr. Malavade replied. “And as far as I can tell, it was received clearly by everyone on the planet.”

With unhappy thoughts, the general returned his cigar to its normal position. Well, that certainly seemed to kill the hoax idea. No nation on Earth could do that. Merely to generate the crude electricity alone would require a hundred, a thousand, Niagara Falls power stations. Or controlled nuclear fusion. Neither of which Humanity had yet.

“It's a wonder we didn't pick it up on our teeth,” General Bronson stated aloud, thinking about an article he had once read in a newspaper describing a truly bizarre college prank.

“Many people did,” Sir John said, industriously scribbling away on his note pad. “Sixty two feet of ferroconcrete is probably the only thing that saved us from suffering a similar fate.”

In reply, Wayne grunted. The walls of their bunker were a lot thicker then that, but Courtney had never seemed very interested in concrete, in spite of those fascinating lectures on Advanced Defensive Architecture that the general had dragged him to so often. Odd fellow. Becoming rich must have driven him mad. Good poker player, though. That's what mattered.

“No,” Rajavur stated firmly into his UN hotline. “I’m sorry, Mr. Secretary General . . . yes, I understand that you have an interest in this matter. But . . . I’m very busy now, sir. Look, I will talk to you later, Emile. Goodbye.” Firmly he cradled the gold UN receiver between his red, Russian, and blue, American, hotline phones. Damn. The last thing he needed was some frightened politico bothering him in the middle of a crisis. Agitated, Sigerson ran nervous fingers through his wiry crop of gray hair, which was a sign of his heritage and not age, as the diplomat was barely 50 years old.

“Mohad, have you had any success in contacting the aliens?” Rajavur asked. Dr. Malavade replied no. Communications were nil. The aliens must be deliberately ignoring him.

The diplomat swiveled his chair to the right. “What is your opinion, Jonathan?”

“On what, professor?” Sir John asked looking up from a computer printout on emotional factor responses that he was perusing.

“On the chance that this Idow and his people are a First Contact Team similar to ourselves?”

“Zero,” General Bronson interrupted hotly. “Because if they are, then they’re doing a damn poor job!”

Behind his glass wall, Nicholi nodded in heartfelt agreement. It was true, the aliens must be either insane or fools. The status lights were crimson again, and his American CBW unit had just volunteered to do a suicide attack on the invaders.

Irritably, the Russian general stretched out his cramped legs. Damn consoles were designed for midgets, he decided. Probably built that way to literally keep him on his toes. Ha!

Mentally switching tracks, Nicholi wondered what the man in the street was doing. He knew there would be no trouble with his NATO troops. They were good soldiers, tried and true, the best. But what was the population of Earth doing right now? Laughing? Screaming? Running around in circles? Only Sir John knew the up-to-the-minute details, and he relayed his findings through Sigerson. Good or bad, Rajavur alone got the whole picture. With a loud buzz, the NATO hotline broke into his chain of thought and Nicholi resumed his more pressing work, deciding for the moment to forsake his attempt to out-guess Man, a thing that God himself had trouble doing. Not that he believed in such superstitious prattle, of course.

Concurrently, Prof. Rajavur bowed his head in thought. If Courtney's preliminary report was correct, then the Earth was in terrible shape. What with most of humanity laughing, screaming, and running around in circles. Things could go from bad to worse when the aliens commenced broadcasting again in 47 minutes. But until then he must retain control.

The diplomat suddenly noticed how quiet the bunker had become and clapped his hands together. “To work, people!” he cried, and the room bustled with activity.

THREE

While the FCT prepared to investigate, study and defend, the population of the world reacted as it always has in times of trouble: inconsistently.

TV reporters dashed out of their air conditioned buildings to buy a newspaper. Newspaper reporters hid in the bathroom and turned on the dreaded television. Survival groups, who had been patiently waiting for nuclear war, decided that this was good enough and went to their secret mountain shelters, taking their family, neighbors, pets and TV sets with them. Alcoholics swore off the sauce forever. Junkies ordered more of whatever it was they were taking. In California, Unitarians built, and then burned, a giant question mark. In New York, landlords with buildings overlooking Central Park put them up for sale, then changed their minds and instead, doubled the rent.

The real-life landing of an alien spacecraft on Earth caused UFO clubs to disband, six science-fiction movies to be cancelled, and twelve more initiated. Video tapes battled it out with aspirins for record sales. History-making traffic jams clogged the arteries of the world's highways, as drivers: (A) parked their cars and ran for the hills, (B) drove for the hills, (C) fainted in their cars, bringing the unknown word gridlock to such places as Tasmania, Nova Scotia and Outer Mongolia.

In the United States of America, the FAA ordered the nation's airways cleared of all traffic immediately. Every non-military plane in flight was given fifteen minutes of grace in which to find someplace, anyplace, in which to land. Helicopters dropped like stones straight to the ground. Small planes landed on any flat, open land: farms, parking lots, or football fields. One unfortunate 747, with time running low, was forced to make an emergency landing on an interstate highway. Gunning his engines to warn motorists of the approach, the jetliner swooped low over the roadway, neatly hopping over underpasses and a rest stop. With smoking tires the giant plane touched down and throttled to a squealing, roaring halt only meters away from a hastily evacuated toll booth. As a ragged cheer arose from the onlookers and passengers, some damn fool in a Cadillac behind them started blowing his horn for the colossal aircraft to clear the way. Heroically, the 747 pilot refrained from firing up the #2 engine and melting the idiot into slag.

In Lebanon, the PLO demanded to know if the aliens were Jewish. Zurich asked if they valued gold. Hollywood begged for the rights to film their life story. New Zealand longed to hear their favorite lamb recipes. Poland asked how many of them it took to change a lightbulb. At first, the Pope declared the alien beings devils, then angels, devils again, Protestants, and then he was unavailable for comment.

The independent countries of South America found themselves in a quandary. The aliens had landed in the much hated United States of America. If the creatures proved hostile, then this might be their big chance to help destroy the filthy Yankee pigs. But if the aliens were friendly, America might receive advanced technology that could make them undisputed masters of the world, someone you don't want mad at you. How they should act was solved by the brilliant political strategy of aligning themselves with Switzerland. With much eagerness, the always neutral Swiss bankers accepted this commission as they had so many others, positive that, somehow, they could make a buck out of it.

Ireland got drunk.

England ordered out for tea.

Italy got drunk.

Japan sent out industrial spies.

France paid its UN dues.

In a small Arab nation, a fanatical Moslem leader stood on the balcony of a tall minaret and told his faithful followers assembled below that while they could handle the evil American devils, blue monsters from space was an entirely different matter. So in order to save his nation, he would have to destroy it with a hydrogen bomb. He raised the detonator switch for all to see. Oddly, the crowd in the courtyard below didn't react very favorably to this idea.

While they were breaking down the locked door to the minaret, their ex-beloved leader said a prayer and pressed the detonation switch. This only resulted in a loud click, as his aides had long ago stolen the plutonium from the bomb and sold it for drugs. When the howling mob of outraged Arabs finally reached the top of the prayer tower, the Moslem zealot saved them from the messy task of tearing him into bloody gobbets by simply diving over the ornate metal railing of the balcony and falling to his death.

* * *

Meanwhile, orbiting high above the troubled Earth was a large golden rectangle about the size and shape of an industrial packing crate. Skimming along the very edge of the planet's atmosphere, the strange box passed unnoticed by the incredible profusion of spy satellites that filled the sky, and by the ground-based military radar installations that stared directly at it with blind electronic eyes.

Those who had placed the enameled machine in orbit had been assured by their research staff that the box was, on the exterior, a perfect reproduction of a scientific device made by something called Westinghome Industries, and this was true. But the design had come from the wrong division of the international conglomerate. The golden rectangle was the exact duplicate of a Westinghome refrigerator; from the exposed cooling grid on the back, to the price tag on the door handle. (The technical staff had wondered about the function of those items, but had included them anyway in the noble interest of Science and to promote job security, which was a basic urge in most sentient beings throughout the known galaxy.)

At the present moment, that refrigerator-shaped device was receiving some very curious transmissions from the normally peaceful world below. Hungrily, the machine consumed the incoming signals as fast as it could, chewed up the data into byte sized pieces, digested them thoroughly, and then burped out a most unappetizing answer.

Crystal programming cubes, nestled in multi-compartment ionized tin power trays, became activated and the rectangle began to rotate about, until it was facing away from the Earth towards the distant stars. Then the door opened wide and out erupted a mighty tachyon particle beam, steady at 14 seconds of arc above the orbit of Pluto. The refrigerator's message was terse, concise and left nothing to the imagination. Much too soon, the golden light beam terminated and the enameled door closed with a soundless thump. Next, tiny jets flared from underneath the water drip pan, and the golden box moved off to relocate itself above the North American continent, in a geosynchronous orbit that would hold it relatively motionless above the source of those extremely disturbing transmissions:

The 81st Street ballfield of Central Park, New York.

FOUR

Leader Idow reclined in his formfitting chair and scowled at the viewscreen before him, his hairy face a sober study in blue.

The first contact with an alien species was always a ticklish job at best. So far, everything had gone well. He could only hope that succeeding events would justify this expedition.

The control room of the starship
All That Glitters
flowed around the humanoid being like a sine wave, with the ship's Leader placed at the apex of his pristine, high tech domain. This position gave him a comfortable feeling, as his primitive ancestors had often perched in the top of trees, dropped onto unsuspecting creatures traveling below and blithely sold them insurance.

Glitters
was a modified Mikon #4 space module, exactly four hundred meters in diameter, precisely the same size of your average Mikon. Powered by their justifiably famous exothermic reactors, the spacecraft had a mean cruising speed of light to the twelfth power, making the ship just about the fastest thing in the galaxy. Only a single planet had faster ships, and those were not for sale at any price. The 24 levels of the vessel varied in height and width, depending entirely upon their owner's wishes and intended use. Only the control rooms were standardized.

On the curved walls aft of Leader Idow, were the tech stations of his crew: Protector, Engineer, Communicator and Technician. The latter station was rarely used, and was situated here in the control room only because of the irrefutable fact that the damn thing had to be somewhere. An armored Security Door closed off the base of the room and provided the sole means of entry into this, the nerve center of the starship. At present that door was ajar, which permitted a glimpse of the outside corridor, whose seemingly endless walls were lined with a multitude of wires, pipes and junction boxes.

The control room and its furnishings were composed entirely, and on purpose, in multiple shades of white. Only the operating beings themselves adding a splash of color: blue, gray, brown, green, and even those were toned down by the ivory uniforms the crew wore. Every tech station aboard the
All That Glitters
had an independent viewscreen, but at present Idow had them slaved to his, so that each showed the same unremarkable scene.

Amid the stark white immensity of the Test Chamber, which occupied the entire middle portion of the starship, there stood a handful of figures, the tremendous distance making them appear weak and frail, which in every probability they were. Idow could see them marching up and down, shaking angry limbs at the ceiling. No doubt they were shouting questions, threats and pleas. All the usual things. But the audio pickups in the chamber had yet to be activated, so their verbal barbs never reached the ears of Those-Who-Command.

Besides, Leader Idow liked to watch the test subjects first. It helped him to better evaluate their chances of success. And furthermore, being pointedly ignored seemed to drive most primitives into a splendid frenzy, and these Dirtlings showed every indication of running true to form. Why, at this moment, the largest Dirtling was attempting to tunnel through the cushioned floor. His fellow subjects appeared to be cheering him on, although with alien species it was often difficult to tell exactly what they were really doing. Ah! Now a hairy subject pulled the big male to his feet and struck him several times in the face with the flat of a hand. For some reason that calmed the large male down and he demurely rejoined his companions. The hairy Dirtling stayed apart from the group, though, and they began addressing their comments to him.

So you’re their Leader,
observed Idow coldly.
Then as one to another, I greet you, brother.

Just then a hand of living granite descended weightily upon the blue alien's shoulder and Idow glanced up into the immobile face of his starship's Protector.

“So much for your rule-by-strength contention,” Gasterphaz rumbled, his atonal voice sounding like rocks mating. “Obviously you were wrong.”

“How can you say that?” Idow asked in surprise. “You saw the hairy male beat the big male into submission. Thus, they have rule by strength, as I surmised.”

The stony giant blinked with a loud
click-click
. “That? Beat? Why, that was but a caress. More likely they are lovers.”

Leader Idow smiled deep inside himself. Gasterphaz was a Choron, a huge, heavily muscled, rock plated species of fantastic strength. The Protector could easily rip the control room Security Door right off its hinges with his bare hands. His mountainous race constantly faced the problem of identifying anything short of a warobot armed with an X-ray laser as an actual attack. This aloof attitude really annoyed some of the more excitable races in the galaxy, and in fact, the Chorons were presently engaged in at least two wars of which they were blissfully unaware.

“Trust me,” Idow reassured. “These Dirtlings are sufficiently primitive for our needs. I am sure that they will do fine in the forthcoming tests.”

“Primitive garbage!” a high-pitched voice screeched in disagreement.

The two beings turned to see Boztwank, the ship's Engineer gliding towards them, the invisible forcefield legs of his electronic pot noiseless on the ship's soft plastic floor.

“Garbage!” the petulant mushroom repeated, his fronds quivering. “And useless to us! Those?” A translucent hand gestured at the figures on the viewscreen. “Why, they won't even pass the first test, much less all three!” Located on his stalk, the fungi's diminutive face contorted with frustration. “Let's leave this wretched place and find us a real planet, with some real people to test!”

Better tasting dirt too, no doubt, added Idow privately. The analysis had shown it to be high in hydrocarbons, metallic salts and animal urine. While the later was a nice touch, it was not enough to satisfy Boztwank. But then, his fungus race lived in an almost perpetual state of seething annoyance at the universe in general. This emotional upheaval eventually culminating in a pyrotechnic display of fury that caused the enraged mushroom to literally explode, scattering spores for over a kilometer.

Most likely, Boztwank's vociferous species would have long ago been eradicated by the galaxy at large just because of a near universal desire for peace and quiet, but for the fact that their pre-sentient young were considered a delicacy by almost every being that possessed the sense of taste, and by several who merely had a fine sense of propriety. It was only his superior ability as an Engineer that kept him from getting stuffed into the starship's reactor core for fuel.

Then Idow frowned. The mushroom did have a point, though. On the whole, the Dirtlings appeared to be a pretty unimpressive lot. But as Leader, the blue being felt duty-bound to defend his decision to come here.

“Nonsense,” he began in a friendly tone.

“They still call their planet Dirt!” Boztwank raged. “How stinking primitive can you get?” The fungi's sprayers chose that moment to moisten his dome and stalk with a watery pink fluid.

Idow took the opportunity to continue. “Every race calls its home planet Dirt in the beginning, Boztwank,” he explained patiently. “You know that.”

“But they’ve had over 4,000 solar revolutions in which to change it! What in the Void are they waiting for? The Prime Builder to name it for them?”

“Terra,” a dry voice interrupted. “They call their planet Terra.”

Vastly annoyed, the mushroom closed his lipless mouth.

Squee, the ship's Communicator, waddled forward, his enormous atrophied tail dragging behind him along the floor. Squee was the last known surviving member of his lizardoid race. The rest of his home world population having gone on to evolve into a higher species while he was touring the galaxy with Leader Idow.

Nowadays, in a valiant attempt to resurrect his old species, Squee seduced and mated with every egg-laying, cold-blooded female he could find. Current medical theories claimed that such interspecies breeding was impossible. Yet Squee succeeded again and again in impregnating his alien lovers, and they subsequently gave birth to tiny duplicates of Squee—who promptly evolved into a higher species. This bothered the poor lizard to no end.

Suspicious as always, Boztwank squinted at the Communicator. “Everybody uses that name?” he demanded rudely.

With a start, Squee stopped the perpetual scratching at the scales on his tail. The limb didn't itch, the act was just something he did while thinking. The way humanoids rubbed their chins, or bloopoids hit themselves with a fish.

“Well, no,” Squee admitted honestly. “Not everybody.”

“And what is the root word for this name, Terra?”

“Earth,” he answered proudly.

The mushroom scowled, a hard thing for him to do.

Leader Idow was unmistakably pleased by this exchange. Plainly, Squee had done an excellent job of analyzing Dirt's primary tongue.

Furious at being thwarted in anything, Boztwank rallied to the attack once more. “And in their major language, Earth translates into what?”

Squee bit his forked tongue. Oh Void, he had hoped they wouldn't ask that.

“Well?” Boztwank demanded.

“Dirt,” Squee sighed sadly. “It means dirt.”

“Ah HA!” the mushroom cried in righteous victory. “I told you so! I told you so! I told you so!”

With true lizard dignity, Squee turned tail on the Engineer and waddled back to his station, where his instruments lit up, overjoyed to see their scaly master again. A vegetarian, from a race of vegetarians, Squee wondered what Boztwank would taste like. Probably bitter as stinkweed, the nasty old 'shroom.

Privately, Idow also viewed the jubilant fungi with disflavor. Boztwank had many bad habits, being a poor winner among them. And didn't the name of his home planet translate into something like, “The Place That Holds Our Roots in Safety” ? Hmm . . . hmm. . . .

“Is it true, Idow?” Gasterphaz asked, resuming the original line of conversation. “Might they be too primitive a race for us to use?”

“No, my friend,” Idow stated firmly, crossing his legs and meticulously straightening the cuff on his dusky uniform. “They are not. Dirt has a planetary government, crude space flight and a world communications system. These alone prove that they are sufficiently advanced for our needs.”

The rock shrugged. “Acceptable then. We have dealt with worse.”

“And we have dealt with better,” Boztwank cried irritably. “Let's go home!”

“BUT WE ARE HERE RIGHT NOW!”
Idow thundered, using his throat of command. “And it was quite an effort to get
here now,
so we will test these—”

“Humans,” Squee interjected.

“Dirtlings,” Idow continued, “And simply hope for the best.”

Grumbling to himself, Boztwank directed his floating pot back to his tech station, where he ordered his squirter to splash him with more of the pink liquid, but it didn't cheer him up a drop.

Royally blue, Idow returned to his viewscreen, the picture on it the same as before. The test subjects had hardly moved a foot. What was wrong with them? No curiosity? He flexed his eyebrows in pique. “How much longer, Squee?”

“Three hundred seconds.”

Void. “Is everything ready for the broadcast of the tests?”

“Of course, my Leader.”

“Fine. Oh, did Trell ever get around to replacing that broken camera in the Test Chamber?” As he spoke, Idow's viewscreen shifted to a different angle of the humans. “Acceptable. Gasterphaz?”

The mighty Choron rotated his head without bothering to move his shoulders. “Yes, Idow?”

“Do try and keep your warobot under better control this time. We only have so many of those cameras with us, you know.”

“Affirmative.”

“Why, only yesterday Trell was telling me,” Idow paused and glanced about the room, noticing the absence of the Technician for the first time. “Where is Trell anyway?”

Boztwank muttered something inaudible.

“What did you say, Engineer?” Idow asked, eyeing the fungi.

“Maintenance. He's doing some maintenance.”

“Oh really?” Idow inquired, swiveling about. “Just what is broken on my starship?”

“Broken?” Boztwank hedged. “Why, ah, nothing is broken. He's just doing some minor repair work, you know, here and there, a ship this big . . .”

“Where is Trell,” Idow asked using his throat of polite conversation. Again Boztwank answered vaguely, so the blue being switched to his throat of command.
“WHERE IS TRELL?”

“Core. He's in the reactor core.”

“WHAT?” Idow double-throated, rising from his chair.

Talking fast, Boztwank had his pot retreat from the furious humanoid. “No danger! Trell is in no danger, Leader! The power levels are at 9/9 and steady. He's completely safe! As if he was in his mother's mandibles!”

Idow considered the statement, knowing that the cowardly mushroom wouldn't dare lie to him, and grudgingly sat back down. True enough. Nine over nine was well within the Technician's radiation tolerance level. It would merely be very uncomfortable for him. But why would Boztwank send Trell to the reactor just as they were about to start the all important tests?

“You’re still angry about that mistake he made last trip,” he accused.

Visibly, the mushroom steamed. “He confused my pink for the window cleaner again! I won't stand for that!”

Lizard and rock roared with laughter, while Idow openly smiled.

Yes, it had been a near tragedy and only time had made the incident funny. “Okay Boz, you may do with Trell as you wish, but there are to be no mysterious power surges through the core which would fry our Technician into carbon ash. IS THAT CLEAR, ENGINEER?”

The fungi heard the change in throats and got the hint. “Yes, my Leader, of course my Leader, whatever you say Idow.” Boztwank then stealthily turned down the power dial on his control board that he had been inching upward.

Satisfied that Trell was safe for the moment, Idow returned to the business at hand. “Time?” he asked.

“One hundred seconds,” Squee replied.

Close enough. “Squee, please activate your translator, I wish to converse with our . . . guests.” A slim rod extended from beneath the viewscreen at his station and Idow cleared his throats. “Attention, your attention, please.”