by Ira Tabankin
Stalin puffed his pipe twice then took it out of his mouth and dumped the smoking remains in an ashtray he poured water on, “Please wait. What do you want of the Motherland?”
“I want to know you want to survive and are willing to fight our common enemy when they arrive. I want to know I can trust you.”
“I will. I don’t want to see the Earth turned into another Mars, a lifeless, dead world.”
“A very wise decision. Let us now discuss your required initial steps.”
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Upon their return from Moscow, Kalteck suggested America begin testing the launching of missiles from ships, airplanes, and from fixed and mobile ground launchers. Everett made a call to Truman, who suggested to the Navy they test the feasibility of fielding strategic naval missiles. The navy quickly and happily agreed as they were locked into a fight with the Air Force over which would be able to deliver the nation’s nuclear weapons. The U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Midway (CV-41) launched a V-2 rocket off her flight deck while steaming in the Atlantic Ocean off the island of Bermuda. Most naval officers had never considered it feasible to launch a missile from a ship.
Three months after Kalteck handed General Everett Yahnig the formulas to modify the Bell X-1’s engine, and a month after the US Air Force was created, U.S. Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager piloted the Bell X-1 through the sound barrier. General Yahnig smiled when he was handed the report of the successful flight. He received a call from Truman thanking him for assisting in the flight. Earth was beginning to use Kalteck’s technology. The night after the X-1 broke the sound barrier, Everett sat alone behind his desk. He’d turned off every light. There were times sitting in quiet dark enabled him to think, such a small baby step. After flying to Moscow in the pod, I know how far we have to go. While one hundred years seems like it’s a long time, how are we going to move from where we are to where Kalteck wants us to be? Our entire society and manufacturing sectors are going to have to undergo a massive change.
Everett walked outside of his secure building. He didn’t even notice the two guards who snapped to attention when they saw the general walking through the doorway. He paused to look up at the dark sky filled with the pinpricks of lights. Each of them is a star, most have planets, many of those planets have life on them. Who would have thought? Are we one day going to have to fight each of them? We’re going to go from fighting world wars to fighting interstellar wars. How many will die so far from home? Will we end up conquering some of those planets and making them our new homes, or will they enslave us?
Will the Soviets and we take our own planets? Will the threats between us continue as we move to the stars? I think I was happier before I learned what I now know. Every night my wife asks me what’s wrong and every night I tell her nothing’s wrong. How much longer can I continue to lie to her without her figuring out I’m lying?
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The last three months of 1947 were filled with many firsts in aviation. Most people had no idea how American and Soviet aviation companies were able to launch so many completely new types of aircraft in such a short time and how so many previous problems in jet propulsion appeared to be so quickly solved. These firsts were:
October 1 — North American XP-86, the prototype of the F-86 “Sabre.”
October 21 — Northrop YB-49 jet-powered “Flying Wing.”
November 2 — Yakovlev Yak-25
November 24 — Grumman XF9F-2, the prototype of the F9F-2 “Panther.”
December 3 — Bedrive Be-8 (NATO reporting name “Mole”)
December 17 — Boeing XB-47, the prototype of the B-47 “Stratojet.”
December 30 — Mikoyan-Gurevich I-310, the prototype of the MiG-15 “Fagot.”
The world didn’t know Kalteck was feeding technology and resolving technical issues to help Earth leap forward at a breakneck pace. One evening over a beer, General Yahnig asked Kalteck, “Why don’t you just give us the plans to ships like yours, that would enable us to be ready much quicker, we might even be able to improve on your designs.”
Kalteck laughed and spilled his beer, “My young friend, if I handed you the plans for my pod, which is much less difficult to manufacture than my ship, you’d be lost. You still don’t understand how to create or program nanites. Do you have even a crude computer yet? Have you been able to launch a living thing into orbit, not counting you coming with me in my pod? The only path forward is to assist you in taking each step up each step on the technology ladder. You wouldn’t try to jump up a twenty-story building without steps, would you? Of course not. It’s the same with technology, each step relies on the previous step. If you miss a step, you fall backward. I’m attempting to stop your backward fall.
“You have to learn how things operate and how to build things, so if something happened to me, you could continue to advance. It may appear to be a slow process but look at the progress you’ve already made, Tomorrow is the start of 1948, in 45 years your people have gone from a short flight to breaking the sound barrier. My goal is to assist you in landing on your moon within another twenty years and to build space stations followed by space-based defensive weapons. You so much to learn before you’ll be able to live and fight in space.
“You have to learn how to manufacture new materials, how to build computers small enough to wear, then artificial intelligence, followed by nanites. There’s a saying on Earth, ‘Karma is a cold-hearted bitch,’ You have no idea what an impossible environment space is. One misstep will kill you in an instant. Programming AI without the proper safeguards will enable them to turn on you, as happened to my people. If you think fighting other nations is difficult wait till you attempt to fight super intelligent computers.
Everett sipped his beer, he looked into the dark eyes of the strange alien sitting across from him in his office, “Do you think we can make it?”
“To be honest, no. Neither you nor the Soviets trust each other; every advance your companies make, which is more advanced then the Soviets, Stalin screams that I’m playing favorites even if his companies had the same information, but due to his micromanaging they tend not to take any risks. His economy can’t keep up with America. I am afraid the day will come when they decide to attack you or one of your major allies to slow your advance down so they can catch up or jump ahead of you. Stalin doesn’t want to share technology, he wants to use it to rule.”
“What should we do?”
“That question is up to your leaders. I can tell you that in the long run, economies like his can’t survive for long, they simply implode. By the way, how is your other assignment coming along?”
“You mean Project Blue Book? I have thirty investigators running around covering up either the flights of your pod or your enemy’s ships; of course, there are the situations we set up so we could cover them up.”
“I have looked at the reports they send in. Very few are our enemy and the others are ships which belong to races who are looking at the Earth.” Kalteck sipped his beer, waiting for Yahnig to respond.
“Other races? Whoa? When were you going to say something? What should we do? Who are they?”
“You asked, so I responded.”
Everett shook his head, “We have to work on this exchange of information. If you know something you believe we need to know, please don’t wait for me to ask. Please share it with me.”
“How do I know what you know and don’t know? I’ve told you our enemy has allied races as do my people. According to my ship’s AI, there have been four different races’ ships that have visited your planet. Some of the races are just curious about you, humans. They want to see for themselves if the stories about you are true.”
Chapter 8
1948 started off with a bang, the newly created Department of Defense authorized production of at least one hundred fifty nuclear weapons. The Air Force B-29 super fortress bomber completed testing the air to air refueling and the Navy’s first all-jet fighter squadron deployed on an aircraft carrier. General Yahnig was wor
king eighteen hours a day trying to keep up with his responsibilities, managing Project Blue Book while also acting as the conduit for information and questions from Kalteck and the defense industry. His hair had turned a premature gray which his wife laughed at. She didn’t know anything about Kalteck and didn’t understand why her husband had been jumped so quickly in rank, but she wasn’t complaining due to the large increase in Everett’s status and the service car and driver available twenty-four hours a day. She lorded it over her friends that her husband had been promoted so early.
Everett was woken in the very early hours of April 5 when the red phone rang, the president told him, “The damn Soviets just flew fighters over Berlin and harassed our planes coming in and out of the city. I want you to go to Moscow and ask Stalin what he’s up to. Remind him, we’re not supposed to be threatening or fighting each other.”
“Yes, sir.”
Everett’s wife rolled over, he whispered, “Sorry, that was the President. I have to go to the office.”
“What time is it?”
“4 AM. Go back to sleep. I’m sure my driver will be outside waiting for me.”
“Everett, please make me one promise…”
“Huh? What do you want?”
“One day, tell me what you really do. I know that a program manager doesn’t get calls from the President in the middle of the night. Nor do they travel like you do or disappear for long periods of time. None of my friends’ husbands keep the hours you do or get middle of the night calls sending them back to their offices or on long trips.”
“Honey, you know I can’t talk about…”
“I know, just promise me that one day you’ll tell me.”
Everett crossed his fingers behind his back, “I promise, now go back to sleep.”
“Okay, I love you.”
“I love you too.” What the hell is Stalin up to? He knows Kalteck warned him not to push the animosity between our two countries too much. I hate visiting Moscow. I wonder if Kalteck will give me a ride. It sure beats the two- or three-day trip it takes on the slow air force planes. Here I am complaining that 500 mph is slow. If they only knew what I know.
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Kalteck asked to see President Truman before he took General Yahnig to Moscow. “Mr. President, I have a question for you. Who in the American chain of command is able to give the order to use nuclear weapons?”
“Local commanders, why do you ask?”
“I suggest with the current situation happening in Berlin with the Soviets that you change the release policy so only you can release your nuclear weapons. I worry about the commanders misusing your nuclear weapons if other alien crafts land on the Earth. Think of what could happen if one of your generals misreads something the Soviets do.”
Truman thought about the question for a while. “I agree, I’ll issue a presidential order today. Are you sure you and the general can bring Stalin into line?”
“Mr. President, I can assure you, either Chairman Stalin will agree or he will have a very quick death.”
“What?”
“Don’t concern yourself with it. Even in the best case, he only has less than five years left.”
“You know when he will die? Do you know when all of us will die too?”
“I know when he will because I arranged it. After I warned him, he still started to tell his senior officers about me. I stopped him by placing nanites in his mind to stop him from speaking about me. An unfortunate side effect of that version of nanite is it limits his life span.”
“Oh, my God! I had no idea. Let me ask you a sensitive question, Is the general the right person for the position we’re using him in?”
“Mr. President, he is an excellent member of the team. I do not wish to break in another. He is intelligent and eager to learn everything he can. He is creative and an excellent manager. In addition, he is a pilot which will become very important in the not too distant future.”
“Thank you, Kalteck. Be careful of Chairman Stalin. He isn’t trustworthy.”
“Mr. President don’t worry about me. He can’t hurt me, and I won’t allow him to touch the general. I believe it’s the Chairman who needs to be concerned. I told him the two of you should act like your enemies, but I think this move of his in Germany is taking things too far. He may cause a war without realizing it. I am concerned one of your allies or his will do something very stupid. I am sure he will understand once I explain it to him again. He likes to push in order to see how much he can get away with.”
“I understand. From my side, I will not allow the American military to open fire on the Soviet forces.”
“Thank you. We will leave once the general arrives at Camp David.”
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Stalin wanted to demonstrate how far his air defenses had come since the last time Kalteck had been to Moscow. He ordered the Soviet military to open fire on anything unusual flying over Soviet airspace. When the pod began landing over Moscow, six antiaircraft cannons opened fire which was their last action before bright flashes shot from the bottom of the pod, one beam struck each of the artillery positions. The only thing left were six smoking holes in the ground.
Kalteck smiled at Everett. “Watch this. I believe it’s time we demonstrated to Chairman Stalin he shouldn’t screw around with me.”
“What are you going to do to him?”
“Watch and learn. I’m going to give him something other than us to think about. We are going to make a little detour before we land at the Kremlin. It won’t take long.”
The detour took less than five minutes. Everett always wondered why he never felt any g-forces in the pod, he decided he’d ask Kalteck when they returned home. They were met in Moscow by six of Stalin’s personal guards. When they entered, Stalin’s office staff were running in and out. Stalin looked up, “I’m sorry, you’ll have to wait a minute, we’ve just had a major earthquake. It’s very bad, the worst we’ve ever suffered.”
“I know. I caused it,” whispered Kalteck.
Stalin spun around, pulling his pistol out of his desk. “You did what?”
“I believe the earthquake was a 7.3 on your Richter scale, which destroyed much of Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. You are correct that this is the worst earthquake you’ve suffered. You may suffer worse if you cross me again. We had an agreement. I don’t want to see you and the Americans enter into a war. It will set your planet’s defenses back and I will then leave. If I leave, you will all die. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
“How the hell did you cause an earthquake?”
“I can do much more if you don’t remember our agreement. Do you have any questions?”
“I understand. It wasn’t me who started the situation in Berlin, it was one of my officers, he must have gotten out of line. I’ll have him a shot this evening. Would you like to watch?”
“That won’t be necessary. Remember our agreement. One other thing, if one of your people open fire on my ship again, I will destroy one of your cities. I’ve told you, you can’t touch my ship. Do not try and test my will. I told you, the Soviet Union and America can have a ‘Cold War.’ Yell at each other, flex your military muscle, and use the Cold War as a cover why you're both increasing your military spending. You can support others to fight against each other and use such wars as a testing ground for your new weapons. However, NO nuclear weapons are to be used. You cannot harm each other’s homelands as they will be needed to prepare for the real war. Your little wars are to be contained and in small areas that do not spread. Do we understand each other?”
Stalin silently nodded his head.
“Excellent, then tell your armed forces to be careful about what they do in Germany. I won’t accept your arguing over Berlin turning into your third world war. If you break our agreement, I will destroy your country. I’m sure we’ll meet again soon. How have your headaches been?”
“How do you know about my headaches? Did you cause me to have them? What did you do to me?”
“You cause your own headaches every time you attempt to break the secrecy about my existence. Remember, every time you try to tell anyone about me, you will suffer a massive headache.”
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If the second half of 194t saw a lot of new aircraft unveiled, 1948 surprised everyone, American and Soviet jet aircraft advanced more quickly than anyone thought possible. The following aircraft were launched;