The Invaders Are Comming!

by Alan Edward Nourse

  Riley went to bat for him, but DEPCO was immovable. Bahr did not go to Commissioned Officer’s School.

  He swallowed the first blow, even though he realized intuitively that he had gone as far as he could go as a noncom in his first two years at Riley, and was not satisfied to stop there. The second blow was even more unexpected. Revised placement tests, again sifted through the DEPCO filters, pulled him from guerrilla-training status. He had blundered unknowingly in the tests; he had tried too hard and done too well, and particularly scored unusually high in electronics and mathematics aptitude sections. The DEPCO sorter, looking for candidates in these priority scientific fields, dropped his card in the hopper, and he, of all Riley graduates, was assigned to Communications Command and sent to Antarctica.

  His appeal was immediate, vehement, and futile. Even BRINT, which had been following his career at Riley with interest, was unsuccessful in its subtle efforts to alter the assignment. With the new upgrading of the social sciences resulting from the Vanner-Elling innovations, and the witchhunts against physical scientists and technical people during the crash years, there was an urgent demand for any talent available. And with the signing of the Yangtze semi-truce, guerrilla activities were unpopular. Communications priority was high.

  Bahr’s tenure in Antarctica, terminating with his court-martial from the Army at twenty-nine, had seemed to him like the first spadeful of dirt dumped back into the grave he had been digging himself out of all his life. He had taken his new civilian green-card assignment as a maintenance man and wire-jockey in the DEPOP computer center with apathetic resignation, burying old memories and bitternesses under a pile of empty whiskey bottles and long moody silences. Maybe Libby Allison might have broken through the apathy eventually, but even she had almost given up when the past, like the proverbial penny, turned up in the form of Frank Carmine.

  Carmine had been a year ahead of Bahr at Riley, and with many other veterans of the 801st, had wound up in DIA after his ten-year tour. McEwen, founder and director of DIA, was looking for a man to keep his field units co-ordinated and working under pressure; he advertised his desires to some of the new people, hoping they might know somebody from the 801st or BRINT who could fill the bill. There were a few reticent suggestions; then one of the veterans of Baker Three said wistfully, “What we really need is a man like Julie Bahr to light a fire under this outfit!”

  Carmine was assigned the task of locating and approaching Bahr. Bahr knew little about DIA, but the appeal of the old camaraderie, and the opportunities for control and power rang a bell. With the reorganization of the field units that he demanded, and his political jockeying to get his friends into key positions, Bahr soon began to exert much more power under McEwen than the organizational charts credited him.

  McEwen recognized the man’s voracious ambition quite early; he realized that Bahr was, eventually, after his job. Soon McEwen could not sleep, his eyes became sunken and bloodshot, his mind wandered, he complained bitterly to his underlings about anything and everything except Julian Bahr. He took vacations, came in to work late, overslept, muddled and whined, and retreated further and further into himself, with the inevitable result that he was forced, irresistibly, to depend more and more on Bahr to keep his organization running. McEwen feared him, but he did not stop him.

  And if Bahr ever realized that it was he who was forcing the change in McEwen, he never showed it. He worked with people, with groups, with scattered individuals. As his power increased, imperceptibly, he found people who were eager, willing, desperate to help him, people who wanted his friendship, who sought his influence, who surrendered their confidences to him, and moved in to his side in loyalty that bordered on blind devotion. In a world of unstable personal relationships and obviously cardboard leader figures—senators, congressmen, and especially chief executives who were put in office chiefly on the basis of appeal, good looks, friendliness and the knack of projecting “sincerity” through the TVs—the segment who wanted someone powerful and confident to identify with gravitated their affections, fixations, and complexes on men like Bahr.

  The true extent of his personal contacts probably was not known even to Bahr. People who said they hated him, or ridiculed him, or distrusted him, went out of their way consciously or unconsciously to help him. Rumor was that he had contacts, friends and informants in the fringe-underworld, in BURINF, in BRINT, even in the KMs, and that within DIA itself he had a private power-group of former Riley men who held their grim loyalty to him above dieir contracts, oaths, or national obligations.

  Of all these dependables the most loyal, the most devoted, the most unswerving of legmen was Frank Carmine.

  Which was why, when Bahr found a discontinuity in his space-plan, coming unexplained and unheralded from a source that would have seemed least suspect, he did not surround himself with other DIA subordinates who were close to him.

  It was not by accident that he had not been notified of Harvey Alexander’s capture. And if Carmine could defect . . . .

  He moved alone, slit-eyed, the Volta speeding through the vague shallow fogginess of the Jersey flatlands, his mind unraveling threads of contacts, relationships, and attitudes, probing for a motive, preparing himself to inflict the necessary, just, inevitable punishment upon the errant who stood in his way.

  The first stop was a southwestern Newark suburb near the Newark Jetfield. Bahr drove into a shabby housing development, parked near the lobby of the main building, hurried inside to the elevator.

  The building was silent, the halls dimmed down, the carpet quiet to his footsteps. He picked a door, checked the number, and rang. Inside, some stirring sounds and a muffled answer. A moment later the door opened into a black room, and a brooding, questioning silence yawned at him.

  “Julie?”

  Bahr stepped into the room, swung the door quietly shut behind him. “Chard? A job. I need help. Are you with me?”

  A hand tapped his shoulder in a gesture of reassurance. “In a minute, soon’s I get dressed. Say, honey, this is . . . .”

  “Better keep her out of it,” Bahr said.

  “Oh.”

  The man dressed quickly in the darkness, and soon he and Bahr were in the Volta, picking their way through the apparently endless tiers of housing developments, then out on a road strip and into the dark, hostile, run-down fringe area,

  still dotted with last-century buildings, that had once been Elizabeth.

  “You’ve worked with Stash Kocek before,” Bahr said.

  “The nervous one? Yeah. But he makes me . . . you know . . . .”

  “I hope he’s in,” Bahr said. “I didn’t call ahead.” He stopped the Volta, motioned Chard to stay inside, and walked across the street to the rooming house that was Kocek’s current residence. He went up two flights of stairs quietly, down the hall, and paused in front of the door with the ribbon of light showing under it.

  Bahr tapped a pattern on the door and the light went out instantly. In a minute the door opened a crack. “Bahr?”

  “Yes. A job.”

  The dimmer went up a little, and a thin, weasel face looked out at him, the eyes dark-circled slits. “Jesus, Bahr . . . .”

  “You on that stuff again?”

  Kocek shrugged. “What’ll I need?”

  “A stunner. Two. Chard’s working with us.”

  There was a flash of hostility on Kocek’s face, then resignation. “No stunner.”

  “What do you mean?” Bahr said, sudden anger rising. “If you sold that stunner . . . .”

  “I’ll get it back, Jule, I just hocked it today, I’ll get it back. I needed some credits fast . . . .”

  Bahr pushed into the room. On the drab iron bed someone ducked quickly under the covers.

  “Get your credits from him,” Bahr said in a harsh tone.

  “I didn’t know, Julie, I didn’t know you’d want me tonight. I’ll get it back.” The high-pitched voice was whining, cowed. Bahr looked at the lump on the bed again. Kocek had been boot
ed from the 801st for that trouble; he had always been such a mixture of fear, viciousness, guilt and hatred that Bahr could never have gotten him a rating to work as a janitor in DIA. Kocek was a mess, but Bahr had enough dossier on his sundry illegal addictions to get him recooped any hour of the day or night. Kocek lived in mortal terror of Bahr, so Bahr could trust him. At least, he could trust him while he watched him. “What have you got? Burps?”

  “No, a couple of Wessons. With silencers. And some concussion grenades. You think we’ll need them? I only got a couple.”

  “Bring them,” Bahr said. “And step on it. I’ve got a Volta outside.”

  “Let’s go, let’s go.” Kocek grabbed a trenchcoat off the chair, zipped his tailored coveralls with the flashy, overdone jumptrooper look. He picked up his briefcase arsenal, and dimmed the light, ignoring the lump on the bed.

  Outside in the hall Kocek paused, in the habit of long military discipline, to let Bahr go ahead, then remembered Bahr’s aversion to letting people walk behind him, and resignedly started down the stairs.

  “Two Wessons and a stunner,” Bahr growled disgustedly. “And God knows what they’ve got!”

  It was two-forty, and Bahr rubbed the side of his face impatiently, looking out of the phone booth at Kocek, who was sprawled indifferently on one of the benches in the Red Bank Ground Terminal, and then up at the clock.

  Two-forty, and there had been no sign of Carmine, nor of the double who was supposed to have arrived at the terminal by monorail ten minutes before. Bahr wondered, in sudden angry reflection, if his whole DIA organization had been infiltrated and seduced into an anti-Bahr putsch. Unconsciously his hand went to his stunner as he considered the prospects that even Chard and Kocek might be part of the enemy. But the motivation—that was the puzzle to him. He could not credit Carmine—small, sad-faced, balding Carmine—with the drive, the personality, the political ambition or the money to mount a secession against him.

  It didn’t wash. Carmine was an order-taker, not an order-giver. Someone was behind Carmine, someone with drive, money, and a ruthless desire to get him, Bahr, out of the way.

  He saw Chard, across the lobby, throw down a cup of coffee at the vendor and hurry across the nearly deserted station, his stocky body almost bouncing, heels smacking down on the concrete floor.

  “What’s wrong, Chief? I thought Carm w?s going to show.”

  “Something got fouled. There should have been a mono in here ten minutes ago. Check with the station officer and find out what went wrong.”

  Chard hurried off. He returned a moment later, almost running. “Crackup,” he panted. “The mono jumped off the L-ramp just north of the station, went through a guard rail. Eighty foot fall. They haven’t even put out the fire yet.”

  So that was the way it was, Bahr thought. And if he knew Carmine, he would be right there in the throng of onlookers, waiting to make sure that Bahr had really been on that train. “All right, fine,” Bahr said. “It’ll take Carmine a while to get back to the DIA HQ here to smooth out an alibi.” He looked at Chard and Kocek. “Carmine’s got a surprise coming, I think.”

  Back in the Volta, Bahr sat knotted in anger, boiling slowly while Chard drove. “We may find they have a prisoner there,” he said. “Keep him alive. The rest are yours, except Carmine. He’s mine.”

  Chard nodded and swung the wheel harshly. Kocek was half-smiling, his eyes shut, humming to himself, his mind obviously still back in the rooming house. Finally Bahr turned and smashed him across the mouth with the back of his hand. “Stop thinking about that stuff,” he said as Kocek blinked, uncomprehending. “If you can’t get your mind on killing people, I’m better off without you.”

  Kocek’s face turned white with fear and rejection and hate, his thin lips trembling. Behind the mask of anger Bahr felt a surge of bitter satisfaction.

  Loyalty was unpredictable, but fear and hate he knew how to handle.

  Three A.M., and from the cruising Volta, Bahr saw there were lights on the second floor of the three-story building that housed the local DIA HQ. The first floor was a launderette, a notoriously good group-gossip center, and also useful for stoolies as a cover destination. The building was on a corner, but there was an apartment building next to it one floor higher. The small dweller-town was silent, partly obscured in the low wet mist the East wind brought in, building eaves dripping, streets glistening under the dim streetlamps.

  Chard drove around behind the apartment so they could get in the service entrance. Bahr checked his watch. “Wait for my signal, then get the wires,” he said to Chard. He waited with Kocek until the Volta moved off into darkness. Then they started up the stairs for the apartment roof.

  Two minutes later they had slid down the fire-escape poles onto the roof of the DIA building, and with Kocek’s skeleton key let themselves into the roof kiosk.

  It was dark and silent on the third floor. Light came from the stairs at the end of the corridor; downstaus there were voices, talking in the clipped monotone of bored, sleepy underlings. Bahr could pick out three voices. There was a certain amount of cover-noise: a humming and clack-clack-clack that Bahr identified as one of the card machines running a job. The noise of the cardos and the sporadic rattle of the teletype seemed loud enough to have covered any noise they might have made forcing the trap door.

  But then, suddenly, Bahr wasn’t listening to the sounds below. It was a long corridor, with doors opening off it on either side, and its familiarity slammed into his mind with sledge-hammer force. He had never been in Red Bank before, yet this hallway, lined with its closed, silent doors was familiar, horribly familiar. A chill went through him; suddenly he felt sweat trickle down his back, and the sound of his breathing was harsh in his ears. He clenched his right hand with the still-bruised knuckles . . . .

  There should be something at the end of the hall . . . .

  With a violent effort of will he shrugged, trying to throw off the overpowering feeling of fear. There was nothing. There was the present, only the present. Somewhere below was Frank Carmine. He had to kill Carmine.

  But something was screaming out in his mind that it was he, not Carmine, who was being killed!

  “Check the rooms on that side,” he whispered to Kocek, his throat so tight his voice came in a croak. Kocek nodded and faded into one of the curious angular patches of shadow. Bahr, crouching, moved to a door and put his hand softly on the knob.

  He whirled, stunner out, but the hall was empty. There was nothing behind him.

  He slid the stunner knob down, almost to the inactive point. At that level it would not hit very hard, but the usual ripping sound was effectively muffled. He did not want to alert the men downstairs if he had to shoot.

  The door opened silently, no click, no alarm jangling, the room dark, shades drawn. Bahr stood absolutely still for two minutes, listening to hear if there were any breathing sounds, letting his eyes adjust to the deeper unexplored darkness of the room.

  The room was empty. There was a couch, a table and a few chairs. Obviously a sleeping room for DIA personnel on alert. He turned on the power on his infrascope, scanned the room with a fluid spot of light.

  His ears had been right. The room was bare.

  At the next room he was less tense, but his hands were still slimy with sweat when he touched the knob. He was angry with himself, and puzzled. He had never thought about being afraid before. Even in Antarctica there had never been a flicker of fear, just anger and a sense of necessity. He could find no single, sensible reason why he should be afraid now; and yet his knees felt like jelly and he wanted, uncontrollably, to urinate, and cold, unreasoning sweat ran down his back and broke out on his palms and forehead.

  He opened the door a crack, stood listening, and faintly, almost inaudible over the sudden pounding of his pulse, was the sound of someone breathing.

  He pushed the door, slid into the room. The breathing was still there, regular, a little shallow. His eyes were adjusted to darkness now, and he made out a bod
y lying face up on the day couch. He moved across the room for a closer look, relief flooding him as he realized that the body was alive, real, human.

  Vulnerable.

  The eyes were open. Light glinted off them, made little bright spots in the face, the dark featureless face that stared mummy-like at the ceiling. He listened carefully. The respiration was faster, shallower. The body knew he was in the room . . . knew . . . but the eyes did not move.

  Please, tiger. Devour me, gulp me down quickly.

  Fear. The body was afraid to move. The immobility was a plea.

  Please, tiger. Don’t cat-mouse me. One blow. One smashing blow. Kill me. Please, tiger.

  But first he had to see the face. He had to know whom he was going to kill. He had to see the face, the tight, fear-ridden face . . . .

  He clutched the scope, and could not raise his arm.

  It came so swiftly he could only gasp, a wave of stark terror that clamped shut his throat and froze him immobile. The hallway, the room, the thing at the end of the hall, slammed down in his mind with a jolt, and his mind was screaming, It’s coming! It’s coming! Get out while you can!

  The door had swung shut, and he threw himself across the room at it, wrenching at the knob, fighting it, his breath coming in great sobbing gasps of terror. Then it gave and he fell into the hall, the dark, silent hall, with voices below and the clack-clack-clack of the cardos.

  He straightened up against the wall, fighting to drive the elephant-terror from his mind, brushing through thick cobwebs of fear. It was a nightmare, only a nightmare, he had been dreaming.

  Yes. That was right. Suddenly he was ice-calm. His knees were steady, there was no pain in his chest, no clenching across the diaphragm. His hands were dry and steady; die stunner balanced in his right hand was cool.

  He had to hurry. There were more rooms down the hall, but it was all right, the rooms would be empty, all of them would be empty, like the last two.

  Two? Of course not. He smiled vaguely. He shook his head, as if to clear away some shadow. He’d only been in one room. One empty room.