by Ben Bova
Anyway, there I am waiting for the President in good old Hangar Nine, which had been so Top Secret since Forty-six that not even the base commander’s been allowed inside. We’d partitioned it and decked it out with nice furniture and all the modern conveniences. I noticed that Jazzbow had recently had an interociter installed. Inside the main living area we had put up a big water tank for Jazzbow and his fellow Martians, of course. The place kind of resembled a movie set: nice modern furnishings, but if you looked past the ten-foot-high partitions that served as walls you saw the bare metal support beams crisscrossing up in the shadows of the ceiling.
Jazzbow came in from Culver City in the same limo that brought Prof. Schmidt. As soon as he got into the hanger he unhooked his exoskeleton and dived into the water tank. Schmidt started pacing nervously back and forth on the Persian carpeting I had put in. He was really wound up tight: letting the President in on this secret was an enormous risk. Not for us, so much as for the Martians.
It was just about midnight when we heard the throbbing motor sound of a helicopter in the distance. I walked out into the open and saw the stars glittering like diamonds all across the desert sky. How many of them are inhabited? I wondered. How many critters out there are looking at our Sun and wondering if there’s any intelligent life there?
Is there any intelligent life in the White House? That was the big question, far as I was concerned.
Jack Kennedy looked tired. No, worse than that, he looked troubled. Beaten down. Like a man who had the weight of the world on his shoulders. Which he did. Elected by a paper-thin majority, he was having hell’s own time getting Congress to vote for his programs. Tax relief, increased defense spending, civil rights—they were all dead in the water, stymied by a Congress that wouldn’t do spit for him. And now I was going to pile another ton and a half on top of all that.
“Mr. President,” I said as he walked through the chilly desert night from the helicopter toward the hangar door. I sort of stood at attention: for the office, not the man, you understand. Remember, I voted for Nixon.
He nodded at me and made a weary smile and stuck out his hand the way every politician does. I let him shake my hand, making a mental note to excuse myself and go to the washroom as soon as decently possible.
As we had agreed, he left his two aides at the hangar door and accompanied me inside all by himself. He kind of shuddered.
“It’s cold out there, isn’t it?” he said.
He was wearing a summer-weight suit. I had an old windbreaker over my shirt and slacks.
“We’ve got the heat going inside,” I said, gesturing him through the door in the first partition. I led him into the living area and to the big carpeted central room where the water tank was. Schmidt followed behind us so close I could almost feel his breath on my neck. It gave me that crawly feeling I get when I realize how many millions of germs are floating through the air all the time.
“Odd place for a swimming tank,” the President said as soon as we entered the central room.
“It’s not as odd as you think,” I said. Jazzbow had ducked low, out of sight for the time being.
My people had arranged two big sofas and a scattering of comfortable armchairs around a coffee table on which they had set up a fair-sized bar. Bottles of every description, even champagne in its own ice bucket.
“What’ll you have?” I asked. We had decided that, with just the three of us humans present, I would be the bartender.
Both the President and Schmidt asked for scotch. I made the drinks big, knowing they would both need them.
“Now what’s this all about?” Kennedy asked after his first sip of the booze. “Why all this secrecy and urgency?”
I turned to Schmidt, but he seemed to be petrified. So absolutely frozen that he couldn’t even open his mouth or pick up his drink. He just stared at the President, overwhelmed by the enormity of what we had to do.
So I said, “Mr. President, you have to stop this moon program.”
He blinked his baggy eyes. Then he grinned. “Do I?”
“Yessir.”
“Why?”
“Because it will hurt the Martians.”
“The Martians, you said?”
“That’s right. The Martians,” I repeated.
Kennedy took another sip of scotch, then put his glass down on the coffee table. “Mr. Hughes, I had heard that you’d gone off the deep end, that you’ve become a recluse and something of a mental case—”
Schmidt snapped out of his funk. “Mr. President, he’s telling you the truth. There are Martians.”
Kennedy gave him a “who are you trying to kid” look. “Professor Schmidt, I know you’re a highly respected astronomer, but if you expect me to believe there are living creatures on Mars you’re going to have to show me some evidence.”
On that cue, Jazzbow came slithering out of the water tank. The President’s eyes goggled as old Jazzie made his painful way, dripping on the rug, to one of the armchairs and half collapsed into it.
“Mr. President,” I said, “may I introduce Jazzbow of Mars. Jazzbow, President Kennedy.”
The President just kept on staring. Jazzbow extended his right hand, that perpetual clown’s grin smeared across his face. With his jaw hanging open, Kennedy took it in his hand. And flinched.
“I assure you,” Jazzbow said, not letting go of the President’s hand, “that I am truly from Mars.”
Kennedy nodded. He believed it. He had to. Martians can make you see the truth of things. Goes with their telepathic abilities, I guess.
Schmidt explained the situation. How the Martians had built their canals once they realized that their world was dying. How they tried to bring water from the polar ice caps to their cities and farm lands. It worked, for a few centuries, but eventually even that wasn’t enough to save the Martians from slow but certain extinction.
They were great engineers, great thinkers. Their technology was roughly a century or so ahead of ours. They had invented the electric light bulb, for example, during the time of our French and Indian War.
By the time they realized that Mars was going to dry up and wither away despite all their efforts, they had developed a rudimentary form of space flight. Desperate, they thought that maybe they could bring natural resources from other worlds in the solar system to revive their dying planet. They knew that Venus, beneath its clouds, was a teeming Mesozoic jungle. Plenty of water there, if they could cart it back to Mars.
They couldn’t. Their first attempts at space flight ended in disasters. Of the first five saucers they sent toward Venus, three of them blew up on takeoff, one veered off course and was never heard from again, and the fifth crash-landed in New Mexico—which is a helluva long way from Venus.
Fortunately, their saucer crash-landed near a small astronomical station in the desert. A young graduate student—who eventually became Prof. Schmidt—was the first to find them. The Martians inside the saucer were pretty banged up, but three of them were still alive. Even more fortunately, we had something that the Martians desperately needed: the raw materials and manufacturing capabilities to mass-produce flying saucers for them. That’s where I had come in, as a tycoon of the aviation industry.
President Kennedy found his voice. “Do you mean to tell me that the existence of Martians—living, breathing, intelligent Martians—has been kept a secret since Nineteen Forty-six? More than fifteen years?”
“It’s been touch and go on several occasions,” said Schmidt. “But, yes, we’ve managed to keep the secret pretty well.”
“Pretty well?” Kennedy seemed disturbed, agitated. “The Central Intelligence Agency doesn’t know anything about this, for Christ’s sake!” Then he caught himself, and added, “Or, if they do, they haven’t told me about it.”
“We have tried very hard to keep this a secret from all the politicians of every stripe,” Schmidt said.
“I can see not telling Eisenhower,” said the President. “Probably would’ve given Ike a fatal heart
attack.” He grinned. “I wonder what Harry Truman would’ve done with the information.”
“We were tempted to tell President Truman, but—”
“That’s all water over the dam,” I said, trying to get them back onto the subject. “We’re here to get you to call off this Project Apollo business.”
“But why?” asked the President. “We could use Martian spacecraft and plant the American flag on the moon tomorrow morning!”
“No,” whispered Jazzbow. Schmidt and I knew that when a Martian whispers, it’s a sign that he’s scared shitless.
“Why not?” Kennedy snapped.
“Because you’ll destroy the Martians,” said Schmidt, with real iron in his voice.
“I don’t understand.”
Jazzbow turned those big luminous eyes on the President. “May I explain it to you . . . the Martian way?”
I’ll say this for Jack Kennedy. The boy had guts. It was obvious that the basic human xenophobia was strong inside him. When Jazzbow had first touched his hand Kennedy had almost jumped out of his skin. But he met the Martian’s gaze and, not knowing what would come next, solemnly nodded his acceptance.
Jazzbow reached out his snaky arm toward Kennedy’s face. I saw beads of sweat break out on the President’s brow but he sat still and let the Martian’s tentacle-like fingers touch his forehead and temple.
It was like jumping a car battery. Thoughts flowed from Jazzbow’s brain into Kennedy’s. I knew what those thoughts were.
It had to do with the Martians’ moral sense. The average Martian has an ethical quotient about equal to St. Francis of Assisi. That’s the average Martian. While they’re only a century or so ahead of us technologically, they’re light-years ahead of us morally, socially, ethically. There hasn’t been a war on Mars in more than a thousand years. There hasn’t even been a case of petty theft in centuries. You can walk the avenues of their beautiful, gleaming cities at any time of the day or night in complete safety. And since their planet is so desperately near absolute depletion, they just about worship the smallest blade of grass.
If our brawling, battling human nations discovered the fragile, gentle Martian culture there would be a catastrophe. The Martians would be swarmed under, shattered, dissolved by a tide of politicians, industrialists, real estate developers, evangelists wanting to save their souls, drifters, grifters, con men, thieves petty and grand. To say nothing of military officers driven by xenophobia. It would make the Spanish Conquest of the Americas look like a Boy Scout Jamboree.
I could see from the look in Kennedy’s eyes that he was getting the message. “We would destroy your culture?” he asked.
Jazzbow had learned the human way of nodding. “You would not merely destroy our culture, Mr. President. You would kill us. We would die, all of us, very quickly.”
“But you have the superior technology . . . “
“We could never use it against you,” said Jazzbow. “We would lay down and die rather than deliberately take the life of a paramecium.”
“Oh.”
Schmidt spoke up. “So you see, Mr. President, why this moon project has got to be called off. We can’t allow the human race en masse to learn of the Martians’ existence.”
“I understand,” he murmured.
Schmidt breathed out a heavy sigh of relief. Too soon.
“But I can’t stop the Apollo project.”
“Can’t?” Schmidt gasped.
“Why not?” I asked.
Looking utterly miserable, Kennedy told us, “It would mean the end of my administration. For all practical purposes, at least.”
“I don’t see—”
“I haven’t been able to get a thing through Congress except the moon project. They’re stiffing me on everything else: my economics package, my defense build-up, civil rights, welfare—everything except the moon program has been stopped dead in Congress. If I give up on the moon I might as well resign the presidency.”
“You are not happy in your work,” said Jazzbow.
“No, I’m not,” Kennedy admitted, in a low voice. “I never wanted to go into politics. It was my father’s idea. Especially after my older brother got killed in the war.”
A dismal, gloomy silence descended on us.
“It’s all been a sham,” the President muttered. “My marriage is a mess, my presidency is a farce, I’m in love with a woman who’s married to another man—I wish I could just disappear from the face of the earth.”
Which, of course, is exactly what we arranged for him.
It was tricky, believe me. We had to get his blonde inamorata to disappear, which wasn’t easy, since she was in the public eye just about as much as the President. Then we had to fake his own assassination, so we could get him safely out of the way. At first he was pretty reluctant about it all, but then the Berlin Wall went up and the media blamed him for it and he agreed that he wanted out—permanently. We were all set to pull it off but the Cuban Missile Crisis hit the fan and we had to put everything on hold for more than a month. By the time we had calmed that mess down he was more than ready to leave this earth. So we arranged the thing for Dallas.
We didn’t dare tell Lyndon Johnson about the Martians, of course. He would’ve wanted to go to Mars and annex the whole damned planet. To Texas, most likely. And we didn’t have to tell Nixon; he was happy to kill the Apollo program—after taking as much credit for the first lunar landing as the media would give him.
The toughest part was hoodwinking the astronomers and planetary scientists and the engineers who built spacecraft probes of the planets. It took all of Schmidt’s ingenuity and the Martians’ technical skills to get the various Mariner and Pioneer probes jiggered so that they would show a barren dry Venus devastated by a runaway greenhouse effect instead of the lush Mesozoic jungle that really exists beneath those clouds. I had to pull every string I knew, behind the scenes, to get the geniuses at JPL to send their two Viking landers to the Martian equivalents of Death Valley and the Atacama Desert in Chile. They missed the cities and the canals completely.
Schmidt used his international connections too. I didn’t much like working with Commies, but I’ve got to admit the two Russians scientists I met were okay guys.
And it worked. Sightings of the canals on Mars went down to zero once our faked Mariner 6 pictures were published. Astronomy students looking at Mars for the first time through a telescope thought they were victims of eyestrain! They knew there were no canals there, so they didn’t dare claim they saw any.
So that’s how we got to the moon and then stopped going. We set up the Apollo program so that a small number of Americans could plant the flag and their footprints on the moon and then forget about it. The Martians studiously avoided the whole area during the four years that we were sending missions up there. It all worked out very well, if I say so myself.
I worked harder than I ever had before in my life to get the media to downplay the space program, make it a dull, no-news affair. The man in the street, the average xenophobic Joe Six-Pack forgot about the glories of space exploration soon enough. It tore at my guts to do it, but that’s what had to be done.
So now we’re using the resources of the planet Venus to replenish Mars. Schmidt has a tiny group of astronomers who’ve been hiding the facts of the solar system from the rest of the profession since the late Forties. With the Martians’ help they’re continuing to fake the pictures and data sent from NASA’s space probes.
The rest of the world thinks that Mars is a barren lifeless desert and Venus is a bone-dry hothouse beneath its perpetual cloud cover and space in general is pretty much of a bore. Meanwhile, with the help of Jazzbow and a few other Martians, we’ve started an environmental movement on earth. Maybe if we can get human beings to see their own planet as a living entity, to think of the other animals and plants on our own planet as fellow residents of this spaceship earth rather than resources to be killed or exploited—maybe then we can start to reduce the basic xenophobia in the human p
syche.
I won’t live long enough to see the human race embrace the Martians as brothers. It will take generations, centuries, before we grow to their level of morality. But maybe we’re on the right track now. I hope so.
I keep thinking of what Jack Kennedy said when he finally agreed to rig project Apollo the way we did, and to arrange his own and his girlfriend’s demises.
“It is a far, far better thing I do, than I have ever done,” he quoted.
Thinking of him and Marilyn shacked up in a honeymoon suite on Mars, I realized that the remainder of the quote would have been totally inappropriate: “it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.”
But what the hell, who am I to talk? I’ve fallen in love for the first time. Yeah, I know. I’ve been married several times but this time it’s real and I’m going to spend the rest of my life on a tropical island with her, just the two of us alone, far from the madding crowd.
Well, maybe not the whole rest of my life. The Martians know a lot more about medicine than we do. Maybe we’ll leave this Pacific island where the Martians found her and go off to Mars and live a couple of centuries or so. I think Amelia would like that.
Introduction to “The Supersonic Zeppelin”
I worked for a number of years in the aerospace industry, most of that time at a high-powered research laboratory in Massachusetts. Our lab specialized in studying the physics of high-temperature gases. We were known world-wide as hot air specialists.
I saw firsthand how great ideas can be shot down for totally dumb reasons. And how dumb ideas can gain a momentum of their own and cost the taxpayers billions of dollars while they accomplish nothing.
“The Supersonic Zeppelin” is somewhere in-between those extremes. It’s a fully feasible piece of technology that will never get to fly. But it was fun writing the story and thinking about those fabulous days of yesteryear when we were going to the Moon and thinking great thoughts.