When They Come from Space (11 page)

That he was probably quite wrong was in itself an asset. The human mind, somehow, seems much more attracted by the false than by the true; and, being wrong, therefore, we were able to satisfy the brass and braid, and send them on their happy way.

Being wrong in so many ways assisted me in another respect. Since the wrong answers differed so widely in their substance that they couldn't all be the right wrong, I began to doubt the rightness of any of the wrongs. A little more time and I would have begun to doubt the reality of the ominous discs overhead at all.

It was in this mood that I talked at the White House conference. There, in that soundproofed room, presumably not bugged by more than a half-dozen foreign powers, although certainly bugged by our own secret services who would record each word spoken and try to confound its author twenty years later if he began to give trouble, the reality of the maneuvering discs overhead seemed less believable, and the smell of their Evil seemed not to penetrate.

I had almost convinced the General Staff and the President that, since we hadn't yet been hurt, only frightened, and didn't really know these things were our enemy (but only smelled bad enough to raise the hackles on our animal necks), perhaps our best course was to do more sampling, collating, and correlating of statistics, to learn more about them—particularly since we had already shot everything except our ultimate weapon against them without effect.

It was then that Senator Higgins had been called out of the conference. When he came back, I could see at once that I had lost. With a few terse words, spoken through grim lips which hardly moved, he pointed out that the enemy discs were hovering over every major city of the world, that they were in a position to strike the killing blow without giving us the chance to defend ourselves; and that it was the height of irresponsible cowardice to wait until they had done it.

It was the semantics of “cowardice,” of course, which turned the tide. Better-to-be-cautious-and-alive-than-brave-and-dead was not a concept of speculative extrapolation comfortable to the military mind. The President, after a shrewd look at Higgins, and an apparently correct interpretation of the message he read in the Senator's sick eyes, switched polarity with the practiced ease of a winning politician, and added his argument that it was time America recaptured its leadership of the world, that other nations were faltering in the face of duty, and that once more we had opportunity to be First.

I was peremptorily dismissed with the implication that in the face of all this opportunity I had counseled cowardice, which was no more than might have been expected from a civilian. As a working arrangement it was conceded that I had some kind of commission in the Space Navy, but no one knew, yet, the exact status. Each time the ranking board settled on a rank for me and started the red tape moving through channels, by the time it had cleared I had hired more people in my department than such a rank was permitted to command, so the process had had to begin again. At the time of these proceedings they were up to Semi-Planet Admiral, Rear Side (or, more succinctly, in the words of my Space Cadet chauffeur when he came into the department to tell me the car was ready, “Where is that half-assed Admiral I have to drive to the White House?").

I did not know of the General Staff's decision to use the H-Bomb until later.

I picked up Sara from the Entourage Waiting Room, and we left. We were being driven by our respectful Space Cadet down an almost deserted street when the trumpet called up yonder.

With the first note he crimped the wheels sharply over to the curb, braked the car to a halt, and with a gasped, “I gotta report to the Parade Ground,” he slid out of the car and started running down the street. Apparently his Pavlovian response to a bugle call was in good working order, and apparently it had not been contemplated in his conditioning that he might ever be so far away from the parade ground when the bugle called that driving an automobile might have got him there faster. Naturally, since if he were that far away he couldn't hear the bugle call, could he? So the one-to-one response of “Run when you hear the bugle” had been deemed sufficient. He started running.

All this was the merest flash in my mind, as Sara and I climbed out of the car, for the golden notes flooding us filled us with an ecstasy to drive out every other thought.

Sara and I stood there on the curbing and gazed upward into the heavens.

There were the projectiles, dimly red in the night sky, seeming to draw together now. But high above them, apparently so high they still caught the light from the sun below our horizon, a new set of ships had appeared. Each an iridescent globe. They flew in a wing formation, a vast wing. It was like a wing of shining pearls.

They came closer. They began to shade into an iridescent blue.

And like the star sapphire, even at this distance we could see the symbol on each of them—a shining white cross of radiant light.

"Oh, Ralph,” Sara breathed. “How beautiful! They're the most beautiful things."

"Come on,” I gasped, and pulled at her arm. “Get under cover. They're going to attack the projectiles!"

I knew, I don't know how.

Standing in doorways, under awnings and canopies, leaning out of windows, the other people knew too. We ran, as people run in a drenching rain, to take shelter under an archway which led into an arcade of shops. Yet, no more than there, joining some others, we turned and craned our heads to look upward again. The protection of the arch was of less value than the sight. We stepped back out into the clear where we might see the whole dome of the sky. All thought of personal safety was lost in the sheer, blinding wonder of the spectacle above. We were dimly conscious that the other people, too, were creeping out of hiding places, to stand in the open streets, rapt in awe.

The vast wing of iridescent globes, at first so high it was like a piece of jewelry set with pearls, sapphires, opals, was now close. They were swooping downward, but without spin, twist, or obvious force. Somehow this movement without thrust of force heightened the illusion of their serenity. The symbol of their crossed, white lines gleamed brighter now, telling us it was not an effect of the distant sun, but a glow which came from within them, a radiant purity of purpose.

Yet the red projectiles had not been thrown into panic and confusion by the sudden appearance. Now it became clear to us people in the streets below why the discs had hovered and waited over the city all these hours. Through some source of their own, they must have known that the radiant globes were on their way to attack them. Sharply, with its own effortless burst of speed, but this time sinister rather than serene, the Black Fleet, black in the day and dull ember red in the night, the Black Fleet veered off in a long arc of flight; hurtled westward; formed into tight combat units of four or five ships each; faced around to meet the challenge.

We had first thought it was the flight of cowardice; now we realized it was the viciousness of the cornered rat.

Down in the streets below the people murmured their thoughts and hopes and fears to other people, man spoke to man, neighbor to neighbor, without first calibrating the number of pigment cells per square inch of skin, or demanding status credentials. The ground swell of conviction grew that this was not the first time these two alien forces had joined in battle. Had Milton in his dreams of Heavenly Hosts and Satan's Minions been visited with some reality of this long ago and far away? We knew, everyone knew, this was one of a long series of such engagements.

There was no question of whose side we were on, who we hoped would win, must win.

There grew the conviction this was the decisive encounter. This was to be no hit-and-run skirmish, settling nothing. No, this was it.

Either the Black Fleet must be vanquished or it must be driven so far away that it would never return to threaten Earth's people again. Where were the scoffers now who doubted that the universe had been constructed solely for the benefit of Man, and that Man, as its Supreme Achievement, must not be harmed?

On came the star-sapphire globes, huge now that they were near, leveling their dive enough to offset the enemy's shift to the west. It was obvious that the new path of descent would hurtle them headlong into the discs in a few seconds more.

Long tentacles of blood light flickered out from the projectiles like the darting tongues of snakes. In and out they flashed, so many they surrounded the discs, creating a deadly, protective screen of twisting, corrosive fire.

As if they could not stop, or had a courage beyond human comprehension, the vanguard shock unit of the globes smashed into the fire-tipped tentacles. And the impact flooded the streets below with a sound of molten steel being poured into icy water. There was a flare of intolerable blindness.

And when our eyes cleared and we could see again...

There was nothing left of the first wave of globes.

As if it possessed but one throat, one voice, from the city below there was one long groan of anguish.

Heroically, the other globes did not hesitate.

Another wave plunged into the writhing tentacles. This time the blinding flash seemed less. Perhaps, expecting it, we slitted our eyes against its coming? This time the destruction of the new wave of globes seemed not instantaneous, nor did they wink out completely. This time there were vapor clouds billowing white against the black heavens as the second shock unit more slowly disintegrated. It was destruction, but not so easy; perhaps no more than the force of an ordinary atomic bomb. The mushrooming clouds of vapor, boiling upward, seemed the same.

A third wave of globes came in. Ah, the courage, the guts! From the streets of the city there was the murmur of wonder, hope renewed. The evil rays of the discs seemed weaker the second time than the first, didn't they? Men asked this of one another and drew comfort from assurance and agreement.

The discs did not waver in their defensive formation. They seemed to draw a little closer together. A screen of dead black against the lighter sky flickered first, then joined ship to ship.

Our murmur of hope changed to a groan of despair.

Our despair was realized.

This time there was no sound of molten steel in icy water, no billowing clouds of vapor, no blinding flash of light. At first touch of the shining globes against the dead black blood screen, the globes were no more.

Yet not in vain. Now we saw one solitary globe still alive, coming from another direction, taking advantage of that instant when the Black Fleet had concentrated all its defensive screen against the wing of onrushing globes, somehow getting behind, inside the defensive screen.

To loose a violet-white radiance.

And for a long, interminable, hopeful instant, the radiance persisted. We saw four of the black ships explode into poison-fetid gobbets of rotten offal.

The other discs wavered, then the pack swarmed all over the gallant, lone globe. And still the hopeful instant endured the squirming nest of blood-black tentacles.

And then hope died.

The radiant light faltered, flickered. The globe surface seemed eaten away like swimming spots of black on an aged bubble.

Then, like the bursting of the bubble, it, too, was no more.

We clung together there in the street, Sara and I, drawing human comfort from the contact, staring upward, staring upward, completely engrossed in the titanic battle—the incredible heroism of the globes—the incredible power and malignancy of the discs to withstand them. The ache of our shoulders and necks was as nothing in the throat pain of our apprehension.

It seemed not to occur to anyone, then, to wonder that the air about us was still fresh and clean, that we had felt no atmospheric shocks, that there were no falling objects of debris, that even the scabrous gobbets of offal from the exploded discs had somehow disappeared before reaching Earth.

High in the heavens, another wing of pearls appeared.

"This time they must win, they must!” Sara was moaning.

As with the previous wing, this one sank toward Earth and battle.

Then hesitated!

Wavered in indecision!

Then seemed to withdraw. A long, wailing groan from the city below seemed surely enough to reach up to them. How high can a prayer fly?

"No-o-o! Oh-no-o-o!” Sara was echoing the groans of despair all about us. “They can't give up! They must not fail us now!"

"They won't!” I exclaimed in complete certainty. “You'll see!” And then I added something all out of context with how I felt, how we all felt. Something which filled me with self-loathing, made me despise myself. “The script calls for it,” I said.

And fortunately no one heard me. Not even Sara.

And I was right.

As the jeweled wing faltered, seemed about to break apart in confusion, the discs shot forward, lured out of their protective formation, blazed their blood-red rays outward for the kill.

And a score of the globes, darting away in all directions, as if utterly demoralized, suddenly reversed direction at incredible speed and converged upon the now scattered discs. From high above, wing after wing of globes swept in until the sky was filled, crowded with darting globes and discs, enjoined now in mortal conflict of individual duel.

As if some protecting screen of our own had rotted and burst (or as an afterthought?), now, all at once, our own atmosphere was sulphurous with choking gases. We felt the blasts of heated air sweep down. Yet, after our first panic flight back to protecting overhangs, our first surprise that we still lived, not unendurable.

And then somehow to increase our sense of participation, identification with the battle.

The dueling battle endured. How long? How long?

Time had ceased to exist. Body need had ceased to exist.

And yet, involuntarily must have asserted itself. For, at some time, during the night, I became conscious that Sara and I were now sitting on the curb, leaning against a lamppost between us, bracing ourselves so that we, too, might endure as long as the battle.

All about us were the dim shapes of other people, some still standing, some sitting as we were, some lying supine with moist eyes wide and reflecting the vault of darting lights above. No one slept or wanted sleep.