by D. F. Jones
She read his mind. “I must explain,” she said, glancing at him, “for you to understand. I have been your medical representative with the Americans. Forced by events, they have seven or eight specialists; also this Dr. Freedman, who has a considerable knowledge of natural history, especially of insects and arthropods.”
She was speaking faster, the words tumbling out, desperate to finish before they interrupted.
“No doubt they could answer your question. I cannot. Theirs is a much wider approach which transcends my biomedical background, which goes back to more philosophical, elemental questions.”
“Comrade Doctor,” said the president sternly, “are you sure you want to continue this line?”
She hesitated, then, “Yes! For the good of us all — yes!” Both men frowned at her. Undaunted, she turned her attention to her document wallet. “I will show you.” She produced two full-plate color enlargements, passing them across the table. She tapped the photograph before the general secretary, noting his tremor of disgust.
“Xeno.” She spoke coldly, reciting facts. “Born of a man, aged sixty-eight. The dissection of this specimen revealed a brain greatly superior to any earthly insect. Exact comparison is not possible, but it may be as intelligent as the brain of a dog.”
Thinking she had veered from her earlier approach, the president sounded less frosty. “Well, that is not much. And the Americans think some of these creatures have survived?”
“Yes. Freedman has no doubts at all, thinking it will survive because of its intelligence, speed, and adaptability. He feels it may even have adapted in some ways since it arrived. That is incredible, but adaptation has to be a matter of degree; even Xeno cannot become something totally different in one generation in a new environment.”
“You have already said that!” the premier said sharply.
She nodded, a tremulous gesture of defiance. “Yes. It is part of the vital, elemental question. Even allowing for some adaptation, one is forced to the conclusion that in its other world it parasitized a life form not unlike ours.”
“Pure supposition!” the president snapped.
“The Americans don’t think so, Comrade President. This is a complex creature, with complex needs. Clearly those needs are met by man, therefore Xeno’s normal host must have similar characteristics — and that is only a beginning.” She spoke slowly. “The Americans believe that out of our space and time there are Beings vastly superior to us — how else could they break through barriers we did not even know existed? They have the ability to pluck aircraft from our skies — and enough consideration to return them. The Americans think Xeno is an accident — that it is a tiny parasite on the body of one of these Beings, even as we have parasites on and in us. The physical size of the Beings the Americans infer from die effect Xeno has on us. For humans it can be a life-or-death situation. If the accidental theory is correct, then — Xeno is no more troublesome to these Beings than — ” she hesitated, then pressed on boldly — “than the seventy or eighty different sorts of life in your mouth, Comrade President, right now!”
“I am amazed,” the general secretary spoke with deliberation, “that you, Comrade Doctor, should repeat these fairy tales! You sound like an old peasant woman! You seriously say the Americans believe in a race of superhuman giants?”
Tatyana nodded, not trusting her voice.
“Total, absolute rubbish!”
“Comrade President,” she said doggedly, “that is the American view.”
“And you, Tatyana Ivanovna.” The general secretary gave her one more chance. “Do you subscribe to this belief?” His tone was reasonable, his voice soft, but the warning was plain.
Ever since leaving Freedman she had dreaded this moment, unsure how she would face it. She felt as if she were two separate persons, one sitting back horrified at what the other said.
“Comrades! All my life I have worked for Mother Russia and the party!” She placed one hand on her Order of Lenin. “I am no dissident. I know the future is ours. But I also know it is no service to our cause to blindly follow an incorrect path.” She could not turn back now. “Because it was thought Lysenko’s theories were in accordance with party doctrine, he was believed: The damage that did to Soviet science took years to repair! Truth is absolute; it cannot be bent to meet doctrine. To do so is to be a traitor to party and state.”
“In other words,” said the general secretary idly, “you agree with the Americans.”
“What else can we believe? General Lebedev’s power storm cannot be true.” She appealed again to the president. “What can I believe?”
“This is pure speculation, creating a new world from a single insect!” The president paused. Tatyana did not have the nerve to contradict him, but her expression left him in little doubt of her true feelings.
“The Americans” — contempt showed in his voice — “are inventing another world, peopled by superhuman giants! A cosmic Disneyland. Really, Tatyana Ivanovna, how can a woman of science like yourself believe this fantasy? What do these superhumans want with our aircraft — do they play with them or what? And why do they return them? For a race as intelligent as your American friends would have us believe, it seems to me to be a pointless pastime.” He smiled thinly, but getting no response from Tatyana, his tone hardened. “Admittedly, these Events are inexplicable so far, but the American answer is not intellectually satisfying to me, or,” he added pointedly, “to any good Communist.”
*
After the meeting, she wandered aimlessly, her mind in chaos. Outside the Kremlin, instead of heading northeast, across Red Square for the metro and her flat in Sokolniki, she walked south, past the barbaric splendors of St. Basil’s Cathedral, finding herself at last beside the Moscow River, staring blindly at the turbid, muddy water.
Whatever the leaders might say, the American theory struck her as both plausible and practical. Their total rejection of the U.S. hypothesis staggered her — particularly as no alternative solution was offered. Worse still, her intuition told her that the president had been less than honest. He had denied the idea not because he didn’t believe it, but because he was afraid to believe it. Lysenko’s genetics had fitted party dogma. Hard, practical results had proved him wrong, but the party had stuck by its favorite, long after the scientific world had rejected him. Not that the party loved Lysenko. But the invalidation of his theories inevitably hurt the party.
Across the river in Gorky Park the leaves were falling, a chill warning of the approach of the dreaded Russian winter. She turned away, feeling suddenly ill.
*
In North America Fall had come, too. The riot of color in the Northeastern States gave way to bare branches, whose decaying leaves had carpeted the ground.
But this year was different. Beneath the warm protective covering of the leaves lay the Xenos, making the magical change from larva to pupa.
No human found one, but birds and small animals noted them. They were slightly iridescent and irregular in shape, yet no more bizarre than the pupae of a moth. Still, some inner sense caused all earthly life to instinctively withdraw.
So, in the gathering strength of a North American winter, the aliens lay unmolested, imperceptibly changing, growing.
In the somewhat milder climate of Louisiana, a few more grew in peace; another lay quiescent beneath a dogwood tree in Georgia. And across the world others were in limbo, in Odessa in the Soviet Ukraine, in India, and in Frankfurt, Germany. But if the Xenos remained hidden, ICARUS did not. What both the Russians and Americans had feared happened, and in circumstances totally beyond their control.
*
London’s Heathrow Airport, one of the busiest in the world, had a feature not found in all airports. Many British children and quite a few adults were addicted to plane-spotting, and the airport authority had thoughtfully provided an observation deck where, for a small fee, the enthusiasts could indulge their sport.
The essential equipment for plane-spotting was a pair of binocula
rs, a notebook, and pencil. Less vital, but still desirable, was a VHF transistor radio. The devotees would watch and listen to the arrival and departure of planes throughout daylight hours, noting the type of each aircraft, its airline, and its side number. To those not addicted, the pastime seemed pointless. But the enthusiast, often wet and cold, would return home delighted to have spotted a real exotic — a private flying harem with an Arabian registration, or an ancient DC-3 wearing the colors of some minor African state.
Around 11:00 A.M. on a fine mid-September day, the deck was crowded. One deck higher a television camera crew waited for a VIP arrival. The crew boss had his own transistor, and the cameras practiced on incoming aircraft.
Behind the blank tinted windows of the control tower an endless game of three-dimensional chess is played. Information pours in nonstop, from West Drayton — Air Traffic Control for Southern England — from aircraft, and from the airport’s own radar.
At 11:00 A.M. the complex organization ticked over quietly, a Rolls-Royce of air control, with West Drayton watching all planes, no matter how small, from the ground up to forty thousand meters, and out to three-fifty kilometers. Cover was complete, down to anything that moved on the ground, even trucks in the remote service areas.
A GCA — Ground Control Approach — operator relaxed to light a cigarette. His visual display unit told him nothing was scheduled to land on his runway, 28 Left, until 11:04 — a long wait in Heathrow’s scale: of operations. All the same, he watched his radar.
Suddenly he sat bolt-upright, staring in incredulous horror. Well within his radar’s range, perhaps a thousand meters from the runway’s threshold, a green-glowing blob materialized out of nowhere, slowly approaching, left of the runway centerline.
He reacted automatically, one hand pressing the alarm button alerting every position in the control room, the other thumbing his transmitter switch.
“Aircraft on approach-come right!” Urgently he repeated his message. “Come right!”
Whoever the stranger was, the safest action was to bring him in. The operator sweated; the bloke was so damn low.
“Maintain present height!”
He’d brought thousands of planes in; his sixth sense screamed that the plane was in trouble. To order him to climb at that speed could be fatal.
Only seconds had elapsed, but the senior controller, Roger Ford, was peering at the scope over his shoulder. “Christ!”
He too saw the Jumbo taxiing round for takeoff on Runway 28 Right. He knew that nothing he could do in the next ten seconds could alter events. He jumped back to his desk, calling another assistant. “Hold all traffic for 28 Left!” He pressed an emergency call button. “Fire and ambulance — threshold of Runway 28 Left — go!”
The shock waves generated by the green blob spread fast. Orders were issued diverting the incoming line of planes. The ambulance call triggered other alerts: the operating theater, the airport police, the local hospital, and that least publicized part of any airport, the morgue.
The plane did not answer. To the GCA operator the seconds crawled; he could only watch the slow, remorseless approach of the two planes.
Roger Ford struggled to keep his binoculars steady. In twenty years of experience he’d never had an emergency like this. He held the plane, so close to the Jumbo, and so low. Unconsciously, his body bent as he willed the stranger to come left. Come left!
At the very last moment the stranger’s port wing lifted, almost scraping over the Jumbo’s high tail plane. For a second Ford could see the shadow of the intruder darken the after end of the Jumbo — which, unaware of its narrow escape, trundled on. Ford had no time to relax; but at least one disaster had been avoided. Now he had a better view — and he almost dropped his binoculars.
Never had he seen an aircraft like it, or one in such a condition. It had four ancient propeller engines, one feathered; part of the port wing and the tail plane were missing, and there appeared to be a large jagged hole in the fuselage. As he watched, a red flare arched upwards from the plane.
The spindly undercarriage — no nose wheel — hit the runway hard. The aircraft bounced sickeningly, coming down again on one wheel, tail well up. The other wheel touched and the tail dropped. As it careened crazily down the runway, Ford saw the starboard undercarriage slowly buckling. The machine slued round, off the concrete and onto the grass, the starboard wing brushing the surface. Tensed up, pulling for the pilot, Ford could not help shutting his eyes. When he looked again the machine had come to rest, one wing and the remnants of the tail in the air, like a singed moth.
Ambulances and fire trucks closed in. Foam was jetted onto the engine cowlings. He sighed with relief, but his strongest emotion was admiration: whoever he was, the pilot was a real aviator. What the hell it was all about he’d soon find out; right now his prime consideration was the airport. Streaking past that pile of junk might not do the cash customers’ morale much good. But at least Runway 28 Left was clear. Firemen had ladders up, hacking at the canopy. With luck the crew had made it, thanks to an outstanding pilot.
But lower down, on the observation deck, the expert eyes of a score of school children knew what they saw, even if they were astonished by the sight. Some guessed they were watching a movie in the making.
For the real buffs, one glance had been enough. The plane was a B-17, and the sharper-eyed had spotted the insignia of the 8th U.S. Air Force.
Above them, the waiting TV cameras had followed the whole incident, zoom lenses giving vivid close-up shots.
Beyond all hope of concealment, Eager Virgin, lead plane of 497 Bombardment Group, USAF, had returned — thirty-nine years late.
*
The news reached Washington at 6:45 A.M. local. Again Arcasso was the Duty ICARUS officer. By 7:00 A.M. he had awakened the committee and President Knowlton with the bad news, and was on the phone to the U.S. embassy in London, yelling for the ambassador. Five hours ahead (in London it was midday) all radio and TV channels carried the flash. The whole system of selective release of presidential letters failed even to start, a victim of its own security. Had they known, the British authorities would have done their best to clamp down on ICARUS. As it was, the President saw the TV film via satellite over breakfast.
A flying saucer would have caused less comment. UFO’s had been in and out of the news for fifty years; many photographs and some film existed, much of it undoubtedly bogus. But this was very different.
The crew included a sergeant gunner who had married an English girl in 1943; they had had a son, born a week before the father had been lost over the Ruhr. The child had followed his father, joining the Royal Air Force.
The film of the father, twenty-four when he disappeared, meeting his son, a squadron leader of forty, was a scoop of incredible strength.
The bewildered, youthful sergeant, still in flak jacket and baseball cap, was faced with a shocked and tearful wife of sixty, each clearly recognizing the other. But the most poignant moment was when the confused father, confronted by this senior version of himself, called him “sir.”
An interview with little green men would have been nothing in comparison; most viewers would have thought them a gag. But anyone with eyes in his head, watching the faces of father, wife, and son reunited after thirty years, could see that this was real and human.
ICARUS’s cover was hopelessly blown. After a hurried hot-line consultation, the presidents of the United States and the Soviet Union issued a joint statement admitting the return of three planes, emphasizing that the truth had been concealed for the best of reasons, but offering no explanation — and no mention of Xeno.
The immediate world reaction was one of total shock. The Western news media, recognizing not just the story of the century but maybe of all time gave it all they had. But for all their effort, the U.S. government refused access to the B-17 crew. Their isolation was necessary for their own good — “space sickness” remained a possibility. Many newsmen scented something, but soon learned — off the re
cord — that Fort Knox was a piggy bank compared to the B-17. Unauthorized intruders would be shot on sight.
The press pounced on the story worldwide, dredging up all available details on Papa Kilo, running stories on the new and incredible time travel device the U.S. Army had. But the stories, however fantastic they might be, were less than the whole truth, for one secret remained intact — the press had no idea of Xeno’s existence.
At first, the Soviet government released nothing for internal consumption, but news of this caliber could not be long concealed. Like a slow-rising tide, it seeped through a thousand crevices into the Communist fortress. The statement in Pravda referring to the “space-time continuum” came far too late. The Kremlin release made it sound like a matter of no great importance, even a trifle boring, an attitude quickly abandoned when an Armenian physicist came up with a theory that suggested the planes had gotten mixed up with “black holes.” Without inquiring too deeply how he knew about the planes, the Kremlin jumped at his theory. It looked good, explaining ICARUS in purely mechanistic terms. He received a sudden promotion, a fast transfer to Moscow University, and orders to develop his thesis. The only snag was his total ignorance of Xeno.
In the States, speculation ran wild, and took in everything from black holes to the Second Coming. But there again, Xeno was not known.
Freedman thought it unwise to withhold this vital item, but on that point the Soviets had been adamant — no reference to Xeno. The secretary of state could hardly believe the Kremlin could be so short-sighted; but, placating soul that he was, he was only too happy to go along with them. If nothing more was heard of the aliens, so much the better — but if Doctor Freedman was right …
Secretary Lord apart, the rest of the committee quietly prayed that they’d heard the last of the Abderan Xenos, and they took good care of the crew of Eager Virgin. Isolated in a wing of an Air Force hospital when not being tested, interrogated, or lectured, they had nothing to beef about. The food and accommodations were excellent, and the nurses were obliging enough to meet other urgent needs. In a reeducation seminar, the crew agreed that the Pill was one giant advance since 1944.