When They Come from Space (2 page)

But he fooled me. He came back on the wire just after our own switchboard operator had won an argument with the long-distance operator about keeping the line open. The clerk-yeoman didn't radiate the same kind of warm personal cordiality as his boss. He just started talking, rapidly.

"Now you listen here, Dr. Kennedy,” he began severely, although he made me feel at home to note his voice did contain those overtones of hysteria which are a trademark among personnel clerks. “We absolutely cannot consider a stay of time in your case. Your personal inconvenience is of small consequence compared with the needs of the United States Government, Space Navy, and our responsibility to keep the Universe under control. This lack of discipline and proper attitude from you civilians—well, now let me tell you right off that the Space Navy cannot be run to suit the whims of—"

"There's-been-a-mistake!” I managed to shout him down.

There was complete silence, catatonic shock silence. It was broken again by the impatient long-distance operator.

"Are you still on the line?” she asked crisply.

"I am,” I answered patiently. “I suspect the party at the other end may have fainted."

"This is the busiest time of day,” she reproved me. “Other calls are waiting for trunk lines."

"Then tell your company to build more trunks,” I suggested reasonably. She was silent. Perhaps she too had fainted.

The clerk-yeoman came back on the wire at that point. Now his voice was slow, ominous. He quoted my social-security number at me. I checked my wallet, found my card among my status symbols, and admitted to him it was my number. He quoted my middle name, without laughing. I confessed to it. He told me my mother's maiden name. I admitted he had me pegged down, but I made another try.

"You've got the right data,” I said. “But the wrong man. Somewhere in these United States there must be a Dr. Kennedy who wants that job, and you've got the files mixed up."

There was a gasp at the other end of the line.

"Then why would we have your file at all?” he asked.

"Don't ask me how you should run your office,” I snapped back. “Computer Research, where I work, has had a lot of past dealing with the Pentagon. I've had personal brushes with quite a few high-ranking officers in various branches. Doubtless someone, sometime, has run up a dossier on me, and that's the one you've got. But I'm not a Dr. Kennedy. I'm a plain Mr. Kennedy. It makes a difference."

"Certainly it makes a difference.” His tone was growing waspish now. “Space Navy does not hand out commissions to any status level below that of doctor. Star Admiral Lytle has given you a commission. Therefore you must be the correct Dr. Kennedy."

"Then Lytle has made the mistake,” I said reasonably.

There was a double gasp this time. “I'm to tell Star Admiral Lytle he has made a mistake?” he asked. “Oh, my God,” he groaned. “This is what comes of making civilians into commissioned officers. A star admiral does not make mistakes. He cannot make mistakes. The Space Navy does not make mistakes. It cannot make mistakes. You are therefore Dr. Kennedy, the correct Dr. Kennedy, and all this is an evasion, a subterfuge you are using to avoid performing your patriotic duty to your country. I am amazed to find a man who would deny the responsibility and ethics of his status to dodge his country's need."

He paused for breath, and when his voice came again, it was a full octave lower in tone. Apparently he had stuck out his chest, pulled in his stomach and chin.

"You will report at the designated time and place of your own free will,” he said slowly. “Or you will report in irons. It makes no difference to me."

He hung up.

The long-distance operator immediately snapped me off the line so her company could be saved the expense of building more trunks.

I hung up too, slowly. I'd better go see Old Stone Face, Mr. Henry Grenoble, the General Manager. He had also had a lot of past dealings with the Pentagon, and at levels higher than my contacts. Maybe he could help.

I pushed back from my desk, stood up, and walked over to stand in the doorway.

"Sara,” I said. “Will you call Old Stone Face's secretary and ask if I can see him right away?"

"Trouble, boss?” she asked. And now there was no flippancy in her manner. “That letter?"

"Sara,” I said. “You are now looking at Dr. Kennedy, a commissioned officer in Space Navy.” I thought for a moment. “I don't know what rank,” I added.

For an instant I was afraid she might stand up and salute. But she didn't.

"Then you really are in trouble,” she said instead. “I'd better get you in to see him right away."

"Either that or come to visit me when I'm languishing in a dungeon for high treason,” I agreed.

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Old Stone Face, at his half acre of desk and surrounded by the rich walnut panels glowing warm in the muted indirect light, was confident that one telephone call would straighten it all out for me. I didn't often ask his help in running my department, to say nothing of my personal affairs, and he seemed glad to demonstrate he could do things I couldn't. He was willing for me to sit down and watch how much weight he could swing around the Pentagon.

But as the series of frustrating telephone calls wore out the long morning, he progressed from high confidence, to exasperation, to self-disciplined patience, to bewilderment, to anger, to defeat.

He sat back finally in his overstuffed chair, beetled his heavy brows, and peered at me suspiciously across the desk.

"You say you didn't apply for the job. Let's say I believe you."

I straightened up from a weary slouch and raised my hand in the scout-oath position.

"Wouldn't have done you any good if you had,” he rumbled from somewhere down in the granite façade. “After some of the things you've done to some of those officers, you'd have been turned down like a shot. They all agree with me that the sheer safety of our nation depends on keeping you away from the Pentagon. They emphatically would go far beyond the call of duty to keep you away. After some of the things you've done to them."

"Well, then?” I asked. I might not be exactly flattered, but at least it looked hopeful.

"So they're all hot to intercede until I mention it is Space Navy. Then they cool down a bit."

"But Space Navy still speaks to the rest of them, doesn't it? At the top, of course."

"Then when I mention it is the Extraterrestrial Psychology Department they back off and want no part of trying to spring you. Sandfordwaithe says maybe they need you in that department after all, that no sacrifice is too great for the rest of the Pentagon, if ... He didn't say, if what. Something's going on, and they're as skittish as an old maid in a pool hall.” I didn't smile. I have never been accused of being an organization man.

"All those jabbing pool cues..."

"I know, I got the picture,” I said sourly. “I'm thinking there's now just forty-four more hours until I'm court-martialed for high treason. I'm practically swinging from the gallows tree, and you're daydreaming about ... Well, so what'm I going to do?"

"Guess you'd better make the trip,” he said slowly. “Somehow I think maybe Computer Research wouldn't have to close its doors if you were gone for a day or so. You go see this bird, this Kibbie fellow. You tell him, in person, you're not the man he thought you were. Soon as he sees you, he'll believe it. But it looks like it has to be in person. I can't get even a general or an admiral to so much as call him on the phone."

"And I saw the run-around you got when you tried to get through to Kibbie yourself,” I had to admit. “So I suppose I'd better go. On expense account?"

He rared up at that.

"It's your personal neck,” he roared. “Why should the company have to pay for saving it?"

"Now, Henry.” I looked at him and shook my head sadly.

"Oh, all right. I'll set it up. I was going to, anyway.” There was a fleeting crack in the granite of his face. He'd been kidding me—I hoped. He settled back comfortably in his chair.

"I wonder what's going on?” he mused thoughtfully, and put his finger tips together. “There's something they're not telling us. You find out what it is, Ralphie, my boy."

I sprang up out of my chair as if I'd been stung.

"Yeah,” I said coldly, bitterly, and stood glaring down at him. “And see if we can't get the job of making a computer to solve it, whatever it is. You couldn't possibly pay my expenses just because it's me; just because of all the years I've worked my heart out for dear old Computer Research."

I whirled around angrily and started for the door. His voice, slow and measured, followed me, stopped me.

"We got a Board of Directors,” he was saying. “We got Stockholders. If it took one lousy nickel out of their pockets to save you, they'd see you hang without batting an eye. You know that, well as I do. But now, say, suppose it was my best judgment to send you to Washington to drum up some more business..."

I turned around and stared at him, incredulous. Far down in the glacial ice blue of his eyes I thought I detected the faintest possible gleam of affection.

"You'd better watch that, Henry,” I advised professionally, and was astonished to find my throat was tight. “You might turn into a human being if you're not careful."

He stood up and came around the desk. He held out his hand. It was a momentous occasion. In all the years, I couldn't remember ever having shaken hands with him before. Although once, at a séance, he'd let me take hold of his hand—the time I established that he had extrasensory powers. Looking back, now, I wonder if he had some premonition, even then, that I wouldn't be back. I hadn't. Even with all my experience in dealing with the military, I was still thinking it was a little error I could clear up with a few words of explanation once I got to the right person.

It took me an hour to set up the routines of my department to cover my absence for the next couple of days. I had a good assistant who could step in, although I hoped not too perfectly, and with Sara's help...

It took me the next hour to rush over to my bachelor's apartment to throw some overnight things into a bag. And fight off the usual temptation to overload it by reminding myself that there surely must be stores in Washington, just as here.

Another precious hour to get over to the airport. Two more of pulling strings and fighting clerical red tape to get a seat on one of the planes which usually left half empty anyway. The airlines were still running to suit the convenience of the clerks rather than the customers. Once in the air, something less than an hour to fly the three thousand miles across the continent, but more than another hour to get from the Washington airport to the Pentagon building.

That left me thirty-seven hours to find the right department, which was shaving it pretty fine.

Even Space Navy; after another long hassle of my trying to tell them I wasn't Dr. Kennedy, and their stubbornly maintaining that I was; and the still-longer procedures of signing me in and clearing me for low-level security; weren't sure they ought to let me in on the secret of how to find Dr. Frederick Kibbie.

But they were damned sure they would court-martial me if I didn't find him. Something was, indeed, going on.

Security prevents me from Revealing the Word of how to find the Department of Extraterrestrial Life Research in the Pentagon. Not that the top hierarchy of Russia doesn't know where it is down to the square inch, but John Q. Public, who pays the bills, mustn't be told.

And there are reasons.

Take away the trappings of security regulations, and our special qualifications to meet them, and what have we got left to mark us as superior to the common herd? It's a status symbol, pure and simple, and the gradations from Confidential on up to Q.S. have nothing whatever to do with enemy spies—they merely mark the status relationship of the elect within the select. And, after this passage of events I am about to relate, since I am now one of the, THE, Q.S., and have the awesome weight of knowing things that even—well, I mustn't reveal who isn't allowed to know what I know—I guess that makes me pretty hot. Sometimes even Sara (yes, I had to send for her) begins to show signs of going Government in her attitude toward me.

But once inside the department door, it was pretty much the same as any other suite of offices. There was first an anteroom where a narrow-eyed and suspicious young man examined the sheaf of credentials Space Navy Personnel had prepared for me while running me through their dehydrated equivalent of six weeks in boot camp. Reluctantly, he passed me on to the next anteroom, where a secretary's secretary confirmed that I had an appointment. In the next room the Secretary, himself, pretended he'd never heard of me, and we had it all to go through again. Of course I insisted to each one of them that a mistake had been made, that I was the wrong man, that I should be turned away and not allowed to see Dr. Kibbie, and that may have hurried the process of letting me through.

When I grew especially vehement with the Secretary that they were all making a mistake and would regret it, he shuffled through the remaining papers in a hurry, stood up, and walked over to open The Door.

Against my will, I liked Dr. Kibbie as soon as I stepped inside his office. He was rushed, but he was cordial. It was evident he had a thousand things on his mind, but he was willing to give me that thousandth part of his mind which was my rightful share.

He was about twenty years older than I, around fifty-eight to sixty, I'd say. I'm tall and thin, he was short and round. I'm dark-haired and can still wear it in the young-blade fashion of the day; he was shiny bald with a gray fringe around the sides and back. I'm inclined to be a little dour at times, so they tell me; he was as phony happy and bouncy as a marriage counselor—and, at once, I suspected he was about as useful.

He had that open enthusiasm, that frank revealment of the superior con-man, as he told me all about his department and its four hundred employees.

Four hundred employees to do research on life forms which hadn't yet been discovered. I, personally, wouldn't have known what to do with them all, but this was government. They were all working like little beavers on fancy charts and graphs, statistics and analyses—covering something which doesn't exist—which is about par for government, which models its approach to reality from the academic.