by Jerry
“All right, Watkins, I’m awake.”
The pounding ceased.
He swung his feet out of the bed, looked at the luminous dial on his alarm clock—two-twenty-five. What the devil? He slipped on a robe, a tall, ruddy-faced man—chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Watkins saluted when the general opened the door. “Sir, the President has called an emergency cabinet meeting.” The orderly began to talk faster, his words running all together. “There’s an alien spaceship big as Lake Erie sailing around the earth and getting ready to attack.”
It took a second for the general to interpret the words. He snorted. Pulp magazine poppycock! he thought.
“Sir,” said Watkins, “there is a staff car downstairs ready to take you to the White House.”
“Get me a cup of coffee while I dress,” said the general.
Representatives of five foreign nations, every cabinet officer, nine senators, fourteen representatives, the heads of the secret service, FBI and of all the armed services were at the meeting. They gathered in the conference room of the White House bomb shelter—a paneled room with paintings around the walls in deep frames to simulate windows. General Llewellyn sat across the oak conference table from the President. The buzzing of voices in the room stopped as the President rapped his gavel. An aide stood up, gave them the first briefing.
A University of Chicago astronomer had picked up the ship at about eight P.M. It was coming from the general direction of the belt of Orion. The astronomer had alerted other observatories and someone had thought to notify the government.
The ship had arrowed in at an incredible rate, swung into a one-and-one-half-hour orbit around Earth. It was visible to the unaided eye by that time, another moon. Estimates put its size at nineteen miles long, twelve miles wide, vaguely egg-shaped.
Spectroscopic analysis showed the drive was a hydrogen ion stream with traces of carbon, possibly from the refractor. The invader was transparent to radar, responded to no form of communication.
Majority opinion: a hostile ship on a mission to conquer Earth.
Minority opinion: a cautious visitor from space.
Approximately two hours after it took up orbit, the ship put out a five-hundred-foot scout which swooped down on Boston, grappled up a man by the name of William R. Jones from a group of night workers waiting for a bus.
Some of the minority went over to the majority. The President, however, continued to veto all suggestions that they attack. He was supported by the foreign representatives who were in periodic communication with their governments.
“Look at the size of the thing,” said the President. “An ant with an ant-size pea-shooter could attack an elephant with the same hopes of success we would have.”
“There’s always the possibility they’re just being prudent,” said a State Department aide. “We’ve no evidence they’re dissecting this Jones from Boston, as I believe someone suggested.”
“The size precludes peaceful intent,” said General Llewellyn. “There’s an invasion army in that thing. We should fire off every atomic warhead rocket we can lay hand to, and . . .”
The President waved a hand to silence him.
General Llewellyn sat back. His throat hurt from arguing, his hand ached from pounding the table.
At eight A.M., the spaceship detached a thousand-foot scout as it passed over the New Jersey coast. The scout drifted down over Washington, B.C. At eight-eighteen A.M., the scout contacted Washington airport in perfect English, asked for landing instructions. A startled tower operator warned the scout ship off until Army units had cleared the area.
General Llewellyn and a group of expendable assistants were chosen to greet the invaders. They were at the field by eight-fifty-one. The scout, a pale robins-egg blue, settled to a landing strip which cracked beneath it. Small apertures began nicking open and shut on the ship’s surface. Long rods protruded, withdrew. After ten minutes of this, a portal opened and a ramp shot out, tipped to the ground. Again silence.
Every weapon the armed services could muster was trained on the invader. A flight of jets swept overhead. Far above them, a lone bomber circled, in its belly THE BOMB. All waited for the general’s signal.
Something moved in the shadow above the ramp. Four human figures appeared at the portal. They wore striped trousers, cutaways, glistening black shoes, top hats. Their linen shone. Three carried briefcases, one had a scroll. They moved down the ramp.
General Llewellyn and aides walked out to the foot of the ramp. They look like more bureaucrats, thought the general.
The one with the scroll, a dark-haired man with narrow face, spoke first. “I have the honor to be the ambassador from Krolia, Loo Mogasayvidiantu.” His English was faultless. He extended the scroll. “My credentials.”
General Llewellyn accepted the scroll, said, “I am General Henry A. Llewellyn”—he hesitated—“representative of Earth.”
The Krolian bowed. “May I present my staff?” He turned. “Ayk Turgotokikalapa, Min Sinobayatagurki and William R. Jones, late of Boston, Earth.”
The general recognized the man whose picture was in all of the morning newspapers. Here’s our first Solar quisling, he thought.
“I wish to apologize for the delay in our landing,” said the Krolian ambassador. “Occasionally quite a long period of time is permitted to elapse between preliminary and secondary phases of a colonial program.”
Colonial program! thought the general. He almost gave the signal which would unleash death upon this scene. But the ambassador had more to say.
“The delay in landing was a necessary precaution,” said the Krolian. “Over such a long period of time our data sometimes becomes outmoded. We needed time for a sampling, to talk to Mr. Jones, to bring our data up to date.” Again he bowed with courtly politeness.
Now General Llewellyn was confused: Sampling . . . data . . . He took a deep breath. Conscious of the weight of history on his shoulders, he said, “We have one question to ask you, Mr. Ambassador. Do you come as friends or conquerors?”
The Krolian’s eyes widened. He turned to the Earthman beside him. “It is as I expected, Mr. Jones.” His lips thinned. “That Colonial Office! Understaffed! Inefficient! Bumbling . . .”
The general frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“No, of course,” said the ambassador. “But if our Colonial Office had kept track . . .” He waved a hand. “Look around at your people, sir.”
The general looked first at the men behind the ambassador. Obviously human. At a gesture from the Krolian, he turned to the soldiers behind himself, then toward the frightened faces of the civilians behind the airport fences. The general shrugged, turned back to the Krolian. “The people of Earth are waiting for the answer to my question. Do you come as friends or conquerors?”
The ambassador sighed. “The truth is, sir, that the question really has no answer. You must surely notice that we are of the same breed.”
The general waited.
“It should be obvious to you,” said the Krolian, “that we have already occupied Earth . . . about seven thousand years ago.” THE END
OPERATION EARTHWORM
Joe Archibald
Septimus Spink didn’t need to read Jules Verne’s “Journey to the Center of the Earth.” He had more amazing ideas of his own.
Interplanetary Press, Circa 2022—Septimus Spink, the first Earthman to reach and return from New Mu in a flying saucer, threw a hydroactive bombshell into the meeting of the leading cosmogonists at the University of Cincinnatus today. The amazing Spink, uninvited, crashed this august body of scientists and laughed at a statement made by Professor Apsox Zalpha as to the origin of Earth and other planets.
“That theory is older than the discovery of the antiquated zipper,” Spink orated. “Ha, you big plexidomes still believe the Earth was condensed from a filament, and was ejected by the sun under the gravitational attraction of a big star passing close to the Earth’s surface. First it was a liquid drop
and cooling solidified it after a period of a few million years. You citizens still think it has a liquid core. Some of you think it is pretty hot inside like they had atomic furnaces all fired up. Ha, the exterior ain’t so hot either what with taxes we have to pay after seven wars.”
Professor Yzylch Mgogylvy, of the University of Juno, took violent exception to Septimus Spink’s derisive attitude and stoutly defended the theory of adiabatic expansion. It was at this juncture that Spink practically disintegrated the meeting.
“For the last seventy years,” he orated, “all we have thought about was outer space. All that we have been hepped up about is what is up in the attic and have forgot the cellar. What proof has any knucklehelmet got that nobody lives far under the coal mines and the oil pockets? Something lives everywhere! Adam never believed anythin’ lived in water until he was bit by a crab. Gentlemen, I am announcin’ for the benefit of the press and everybody from here to Mars and Jupiter and back that I intend to explore inner space! I have already got the project underway.”
A near panic ensued as representatives of the press made for the audio-viso stellartypes. “You think volcanoes are caused by heat generated far down inside the earth. They are only boils or carbuncles. Awright, where do earthquakes come from?” Here Spink laughed once more. “They are elastic waves sent out through the body of the Earth, huh? Their observed times of transmission give a means of finding their velocities of propagation at great depths. I read that in a book that should be in the Terra-firmament Institute along with the Spirit of St. Louis.”
Septimus Spink walked out at this point, surrounded by Interplanetary scribes, one of whom was Exmud R. Zmorro. Spink informed the Fourteenth Estate that he would let them have a gander at the model of his inner space machine in due time. He inferred that one of his financial backers in the fabulous enterprise was Aquintax Djupont, and that the fact that Djupont had recently been brain-washed at the Neuropsychiatorium in Metropolita had no bearing on the case whatsoever.
I AM seeing and listening to that news item right now which has been repeated a dozen times the last twenty-four hours as if nobody could believe it. I am Septimus Spink, and descended from a long line of Spinks that began somewhere back at the time they put up the pyramids.
All my ancestors was never satisfied with what progress they saw during when they lived, and they are the reasons we have got where we are today. And if there was no Spinks today the scientists would get away with saying that the Earth was only a drop from the sun that got a crust on it after millions of years. And they want to send me back to get fitted for a duronylon strait jacket again.
An hour after I shut off the viso-screen, and while I am taking my calves’ liver and onion capsules, my friend and space-lanceman, D’Ambrosia Zahooli comes in. He just qualifies as a spaceman as he takes up very little and is not much easier to look at than a Nougatine. Once D’Ambrosia applied for a plasticectomy but the surgeons at the Muzayo clinic just laughed and told him there was a limit to science even in the year 2022. But the citizen was at home when they divided the brains. Of course that is only my opinion. He is to fly with me into inner space.
“Greetin’s and salutations, and as the Martians say, ‘max nabiscum,’ Sep,” Zahooli says. “I have been figuring that we won’t have to go deeper than about four thousand kilometers. All that is worryin’ me is gettin’ back up. I still do not fully believe that we won’t melt. Supposin’ Professor Zalpha is right and that we will dive down into a core of live iron ore. You have seen them pour it out of the big dippers in the mills, Sep.”
“Columbus started off like us,” I says. “Who knew what he would find or where he ended up? Chris expected to fall right off the edge of the world, but did that scare him? No!”
“Of course you can count on me,” Zahooli says. “When do we start building this mechanical mole?”
“In just two days,” I says. “Our backers have purchased an extinct spaceship factory not far from Commonwealth Seven. Yeah, we will call our project ‘Operation Earthworm,’ pal.”
D’Ambrosia sits down and starts looking chicken. “We wouldn’t get no astrogator in his right mind to go with us, Sep. How many times the thrust will we need over what we would use if we was just cutting space? We start out in about a foot of topsoil, then some hard rock and then more hard rock. Can we harness enough energy to last through the diggin’ ? Do you mind if I change my mind for a very good reason which is that I’m an awful coward?”
“Of course not,” I says. “It would be a coincidence if you quit though, my dear old friend, and right after Coordinator One found out who was sipping Jovian drambuie on a certain space bistro last Monday with his Venutian wife.”
“You have sold me,” Zahooli says. “I wouldn’t miss this trip for one of those four-legged turkey farms up in Maine. It is kind of frustratin’ though, don’t you think, Septimus? We are still not thirty and could live another hundred years what with the new arteries they are making out of Nucrolon and the new tickers they are replacing for the old ones.”
“Let us look over the model again,” I says. “You are just moody today, D’Ambrosia.”
It still looks like it would work to me. It is just a rocket ship pointed toward terra firma instead of the other way, and has an auger fixed in place at the nose. It is about twenty feet long and four feet wide and made out of the strongest metal known to modern science, cryptoplutonite. It won’t heat up or break off and it will start spinning around as soon as we cut loose with the tail blasts.
“How much time do we need and how much energy for only four thousand kilometers?” I asks Zahooli. “We got enough stored up to go seventy million miles into space? We’ll cross that bridge when we get to the river.”
“You mean the Styx?”
“That is one thing I will not believe,” I sniff. “We will never find Attila the Hun or Hitler down there. Or Beelzebub.”
All at once we hear a big rumbling noise and the plexidomed house we are in shakes and rattles and we are knocked out of our chairs and deposited on the seats of our corylon rompers. The viso-screen blacks out, I get to all fours and ask, “You think the Nougatines have gone to war again, D’Ambrosia?”
“It was not mice,” Zahooli gulps. “It is either a hydroradium plant backfired or a good old-fashioned earthquake.”
After a while we have the viso-screen working. The face of Coordinator Five appears. He says the worst earthquake in five centuries has happened. There is a crack in the real estate of Department X6 near the Rockies that makes the Grand Canyon look like a kid just scraped a stick through some mud. Infra-Red Cross units, he says, are rocketing to the area.
“There might be somethin’ goin’ on inside this earth,” I says. “If you don’t poke a hole in a baked potato its busts right open from heat generated inside. Our project, D’Ambrosia, seems even more expedient than ever.”
“That is a new word for ‘insane’ I must look up,” Zahooli says.
Professor Apsox Zalpha comes out with a statement the next morning. He says the quake confirms his theory that the inside of the Earth is as hot as a Venutian calypso number, and that gases are being generated by the heat and that we haven’t volcanoes enough on the surface to allow them to escape.
Exmud R. Zmorro comes and asks me if I have an opinion.
“Ha,” I laugh. “I have many on file in the Neuropsychiatorium. Just go and take your pick. However, I will give you one ad lib and sub rosa. There is more downstairs than Professor Zalpha dreams about. Who is he to say there is no civilization in inner space as well as outer? How do we know that there is not a globe inside a globe with some kind of space or atmosphere in between?”
Exmud R. Zmorro says thanks and leaves in quite a hurry. I snap off the gadget and head for my rocket jeep, and fifteen seconds later I am walking into the factory where a hundred citizens are already at work on the inner spaceship. It is listing a little to port from the quake but the head mech says it will be all straightened out in a few hour
s. It is just a skeleton ship at the moment with the auger already in place and the point about three feet into the ground.
D’Ambrosia Zahooli comes in and says he has been to see Commander Bizmuth Aquinox. “He will give just enough of the atom pile for seventy million miles,” he says. “And only enough superhydrogenerated radium to push us twenty million miles, Sep. I think we should write to Number One. I explained to the space brass that we have got to come up again after going down and have to reverse the blast tubes. It is radium we have to have to make the return trip. I says a half a pound would do it. You know what I think? I bet they don’t believe we’ll ever git back. And was their laughs dirty!”
“Skeptics have lived since the beginnin’ of time,” I scoff. “They laughed at Leonardo da Vinci, Columbus, Edison, a guy named Durante. Even the guy who first sat down at a pianer. We will take what we can git, pal, and then come back and laugh at them.”
“I wish you was more convincin’,” D’Ambrosia says. “I have claustrophobia and would hate to git stuck in an over-sized fountain pen halfway to the middle of this earth.”
“Hand me those plans,” I says sharply. “And stop scarin’ me.”
Three months later we have it made. Technicians come from four planets to look at the Magnificent Mole. The area is alive with members of the Interplanetary Press, the Cosmic News Bureau, and the Universe Feature Service. Two perspiring citizens arrive and tear up two insurance policies right in front of my eyes. An old buddy of mine in the war against the Nougatines says he wants to go with me. His name is Axitope Wurpz. He has been flying cargo between Earth and Parsnipia and says he is quite unable to explain certain expense items in his book. A Parsnipian D.A. is trying to serve him a subpoena.
“You are in, Axie,” I says. “A crew of three is enough as that is about all the oxygen we can store up. Meet D’Ambrosia Zahooli.”
“Why is he wearing a mask?” Wurpz quips.
“You are as funny as a plutonium crutch,” Zahooli says.