by Larry Niven
His throat tried to cough but it couldn’t get a grip.
Wes bounced against a wall, couldn’t find a handhold, bounced away. Losing control. Dying? The black man caught something. but kept one arm around Wes’s waist. Rogachev looked like a puffer-fish. He was fighting to tear open a plastic wall panel. It jerked open and he bounced away.
Bulky disks, four feet across, turned out to be flattened plastic bags. Wes skimmed one at Rogachev. He pulled another open, crawled inside and pulled the black man in too. Zipper? He zipped them inside. Tight fit. Some kind of lock at the end of the zipper. With his chin on the black man’s shoulder Wes reached around the man’s neck and flipped the lock shut, he hoped.
Air jetted immediately.
Reverse pressure in his ears. He pulled in air, in, in, no need to exhale at all. They were going to live. They were floating loose, and nothing to be done about it, because the pressure packages were nothing but balloons with an air supply attached. Rogachev’s too was bouncing about like a toy, but at least he’d gotten inside.
Wes’s passenger was beginning to struggle. It was uncomfortable. Wes wanted to say something comforting, or just tell him not to rip the goddam beach ball! Rut now his throat had air to cough with, and he couldn’t stop coughing. He sounded like he was dying. So did Giorge.
Nothing happened for a long time. Giorge discovered the blood pooling in his ears. He wailed. He fought his way around until he could look into Wes’s face, and then he wailed again. His eyes showed bloody veins, as if he’d been on a week-long drunk. Wes’s own eyes must look just that bad. His nose was filled with blood; a globule swelled at the tip.
He had no idea how much air there was in these things.
Something showed through the ripped wall, just for an instant: reflecting glass that might hide eyes, and a glimpse of what might be a tentacle, a real honest-to-God tentacle.
Giorge made a mewling sound and ceased struggling. Wes froze too. He hadn’t believed. He’d fought like a demon to be at this event, but somewhere inside him he’d been ready for disappointment.
There had been the pulsars: precisely timed signals coming from somewhere in interstellar space. Beacons for Little Green Men? He’d been in college when the pulsars were shown to be rapidly spinning neutron stars, weird but natural. Much younger when the canals of Mars became mere illusion. The dangerously populated swamps of Venus were red hot, dry, and lifeless.
The starship too would be something else, some natural phenomenon—
The alien approached cautiously. A quick look, dodge back, maybe report to a companion. Look again, reflecting faceplate swinging side to side, along with the snout of what must be a weapon.
It crawled through, being careful not to snag its pressure suit. It was compact and bulky and three or four times the size of a man. A dull black pressure suit hid most of it, but it wasn’t even vaguely man-shaped. It was four-footed. The boots were armed with . . . claws? Pincers? There was a tail like the blade of a paddle. The transparency at the front might indicate its face. Reflection hid the detail behind it. But a single rubbery-looking tentacle reached out from just below the transparent plate, and then branched, and branched again.
There was no doubting that the branched tentacle held a large bore gun. The handle was short and grotesquely broad, but the rest was easy to recognize: magazine, barrel, trigger halfway up the barrel—
Packs at the alien’s sides puffed gas from fore-and-aft snouts. The alien’s approach slowed, and it floated toward Wes with the gun barrel and the reflecting faceplate looking right at him.
Wes lifted his hand in greeting, for lack of a better idea; waved, then opened and closed his thumb across the palm. He said, inaudibly, with vacuum between them, "I’m a tool user too . . . brother." The alien didn’t react.
He’d been prepared for disappointment, but not for war. Idiot. Yet he could hope. He wasn’t dead yet, and a border skirmish did not constitute a war.
The tentacle swept backward, slid the gun into a holster on the creature’s back. The tentacle pulled a line from a backpouch, fixed something to the end, something sticky. Yes. The alien was mooring the beach ball to a line, using adhesive tape. Wes began to believe that he would not be killed just yet.
Ambassador to the Galactic Empire . . . he could still make it. Maybe they were only paranoid, only very cautious. He would have to be cautious himself. A diplomat, was Wes Dawson, good at finding the interfaces between disparate viewpoints. Let him come to understand them: he could find the advantage in friendship between Earth and aliens.
Unless they really had come to conquer Earth. The specter of Herbert George Wells was very much with him.
* * *
Everyone in the Oval Office was shouting. Jenny stared at the screen, not quite comprehending what she’d seen.
"Major Crichton!"
The President! "Sir!"
"Please call Admiral Carrell. You people, make room for her, please. Jack, help her get over here."
"Yes, sir." Jack Clybourne shouldered through the crowd, then helped her get to the President’s desk. Coffey was still seated. His face was ashen. Jeanne Coffey sat beside him, her eyes staring at the blank TV screen.
"I don’t think we need the newspeople here just at the moment," the President said. "Or the staff. Or the Cabinet, except for Dr. Hart and Mr. Griffin—"
State and Defense. Yes, we’ll need them.
Hap Aylesworth stayed also. Jenny almost giggled. The political advisor. Political implications of war with the aliens—how would this affect the next election? There were three telephones on the stand behind the President’s desk. Jenny lifted the black one and punched in numbers before she realized there was no dial tone. "Dead," she said. The President looked at her uncomprehendingly. "Should I use this one?" she asked. She indicated the red telephone.
"Yes."
There was no dial tone on that one either, but the Air Force officer on duty in the White House basement came on. "Yes, sir?"
"Priority," Jenny said. "HQ NORAD."
"Right. Wait one, there’s something coming in—they’re calling you. Here you are."
"Mr. President?" a familiar voice said.
"Major Crichton, Admiral. The President is here." She held out the telephone.
His calm is going. Mrs. Coffey looks horrible, and—
"What happened, Admiral?"
The Secret Service had managed to clear nearly everyone out of the room. Jack Clybourne stood uncertainly at the door.
The President touched a button. Admiral Carrell’s voice filled the mom.
"— little left. We have no operational satellites. Just before we lost the last observation satellite, it reported a number of rocket plumes in the Soviet Union."
The President looked up and caught the eye of the Secretary of State. "Arthur, get down to the hot line and find out!"
"Right." Dr. Hart ran to the door.
Secretary of Defense Ted Griffin went pale. "If the crazy bastards have launched at us, we’ve got to get our birds up before theirs hit!"
"We can’t just shoot!" the President shouted. "We don’t know they’ve attacked us. We have to talk to them—"
"I doubt that you can get through," Admiral Carrell said. "I took the liberty of trying. Mr. President, it appears that a large nuclear device has been detonated in the very high stratosphere, far too high to do any harm to ground installations—except for the pulse effect, which has severely damaged our communications capabilities. especially on the East Coast."
"We must get through—Admiral, do you believe the Soviets are attacking us?"
"Sir, I don’t know. Certainly the aliens have attacked our space installations—" Admiral Carrell’s voice broke off suddenly.
"Admiral!"
There was a long silence. "Mr. President, I have reports of ground damage. Hoover Dam has been destroyed by a large explosion."
"A nuclear weapon?"
"Sir, I don’t know what else it could be. A moment .
. ." There was another silence.
"God damn!" Ted Griffin shouted. "They did it, the crazy Russian bastards did it!"
The Admiral’s voice came on faintly. "One of my advisors says it could have been what he calls a kinetic energy weapon. Not nuclear. It could not have been a Soviet rocket, they couldn’t have reached here in time." Another pause. "I’m getting more reports. Alaska. Colorado. Mississippi—Mr. President, we are being bombarded. Some of the attacks are coming from space. May I have permission to fight back?"
David Coffey looked at his wife. She shuddered. "Fight who?" the President demanded.
"The aliens," Admiral Carrell said.
"Not the Soviets?"
"Not yet."
"Ted?" David Coffey asked.
"Sir?" The Secretary of Defense looked ten years older.
"Is there any way I can authorize Carrell to fight a space battle without giving him the capability to launch against the Soviet Union?"
"No."
"I see. Jeanne, what do you think?"
"I think you’re the President, David."
Jenny held her breath.
"You don’t have any choice," Hap Aylesworth said. "What, you’ll let them attack our country without fighting back?"
"Thank you," Coffey said quietly. "Admiral, is Colonel Feinstein there?’
"Yes, sir. Colonel—"
Another voice came on. "Yes, Mr. President."
"Colonel, I authorize you to open the code container and deliver the contents to Admiral Thorwald Carrell. The authentication phrase is ‘pigeons on the grass, alas.’ You will receive confirmation from the Secretary of Defense and the National Security Council duty officer. Ted—"
"Yes, sir." Ted Griffin took the phone, almost dropped it, and read from a card he’d taken from his wallet. Then he turned to Jenny. "Major—"
"Major Crichton here," Jenny said. "I confirm that I personally have heard the President order the codes released to Admiral Carrell. My authentication code is Tango. X-ray. Alfa. Four. Seven. Niner. Four." And that’s done. Lord, I never—
"Admiral," the President said. "You will not launch against the Soviet Union until we have absolute confirmation that they have attacked us. I don’t believe they’re involved in this, and Earth has troubles enough without a nuclear war. Is this understood?"
"Yes, sir. Mr. President, I suggest you come here as quickly as you can. Major Crichton, assist the President, and stay with him as long as you’re needed. I’ll put Colonel Hartley on now."
* * *
Something rang in his head.
Harry Reddington woke, and thrashed, and slapped the top of his alarm clock: the pause, to give him another ten minutes sleep. The ringing went on. The room was pitch dark, and it wasn’t the clock ringing, it was the telephone. Harry picked up the receiver. His voice was musical, sarcastically so. "Hellooo . . ."
A breathy voice said, "Harry? Go outside and look."
"Ruby? It’s late, Ruby. I’ve got to get up early tomorrow."
There was party music in the background, and a woman’s voice raised in laughing protest. Ruby’s voice was bathetically mournful, She must be ripped; at a late party she was bound to be. "Harry, I went outside for a hit. You know Julia and Gwen, they don’t like anyone smoking anything in there. They don’t like tobacco any better than pot—"
"Ruby!"
"I went out and it’s, it’s . . . It looks so real, Harry! Go out and look at the sky. It’s the end of the world."
Harry hung up.
He rolled off the Dawsons’ water bed and searched for his clothes.
He’d stayed up too late anyway. It would have been a good night to get drunk with friends, but word of honor on record. He’d come home and had a few drinks as consolation for being alone while interstellar ambassadors made first contact with humanity. The clock said 2:10, and he’d been up past midnight watching the news. There hadn’t been any; whatever the Soviets were learning, they hadn’t been telling. Eventually he went to bed. Now—
His eyes felt gritty. The cane was leaning against the bedstead. He gave up on finding a jacket; he wouldn’t be out long. He unlocked the back door and stumbled out onto the Dawsons’ lawn.
Ruby had been using marijuana, and spreading the word of it like any missionary, since the mid-sixties. She worked as a clerk in the head shop next to the Honda salesroom. What had Harry outside in a coolish California May night was this reflection: a doper might see things that aren’t there, but she might see things that are.
The sky glowed. Harry was an Angeleno; he judged the mistiness of the night by that glow, the glow of the Los Angeles lights reflected from the undersides of clouds. The glow wasn’t bright tonight, and stars showed through.
Something brighter than a star showed through, a dazzling pinpoint that developed a tail and vanished, all in a moment.
A long blue-white flame formed, and held for several seconds, while narrow lines of light speared down from one end. Other lights pulsed slowly, like beating hearts.
The sky was alive with strange lights.
Harry got back inside, fished the tiny Minolta binoculars out of a drawer, found his windbreaker on a chair, and stumbled out, all without turning on a light. He wanted his night vision. The sky seemed brighter now. He could see streaks of light rising from the west, flaring, disappearing. Narrow threads of green lanced west: down. There were phosphorescent puffs of cloud, lazily expanding.
On another night Harry might have taken it for a meteor shower. Tonight . . . He’d read a hundred versions of the aliens conquering Earth, and they all sounded more spectacular than this flaring and dying of stars and smudges of lights. Any movie would have had sound effects too. But it looked so real.
Still without turning on the lights he fumbled his way back into the house to find a transistor radio. He carried it outside with him and tuned to the all-news station.
" . . . have fired on the Soviet Kosmograd space station," the newsman’s voice said. "The President has alerted all military forces. People are asked to stay in their homes. We cannot confirm that the United States Air Force has fired on the alien spacecraft. Pentagon spokesmen aren’t talking. Here is Lieutenant General Arlen Gregory, a retired Air Force officer. General, do you think the United States will fight back?"
"Look at the sky, you silly buzzard," a gravelly voice said. "What the hell do you think all the lights are?"
Harry watched and thought as a flame curved around the western horizon, flared and died. Then two more. No question what that was. And now what do I do?
Stay and watch the house. Only—Jesus. Congressman Wes was in Kosmograd! And Carlotta Dawson would be in western Kansas by now, present situation unknown. If she’d taken the gun . . . if she’d been the type to take the .45. But she wasn’t.
The radio began the peculiar beep beep of an incoming news bulletin.
"We have an unconfirmed report that San Diego harbor has suffered a large explosion," the announcer said. He sounded like a man who’d like to be hysterical but who’d used up all his emotions.
Maybe I should go help Carlotta. Wes would want me to. Jesus, how?
The Kawasaki was in pieces. There hadn’t been nearly enough money for everything that should have been done to it, and Harry hadn’t wanted to push. He’d done most of the work himself, as much as he could. But only the Honda shop could rebuild the engine: He’d finished taking the bike apart and carried the engine in, and as far as he knew it was ready. It had better be.
There must be others watching tonight. They’d sure as hell know by morning.
Harry watched and thought and made his plans. (That long blue flame had formed again, and this time it didn’t seem to be dying. Stars rising from the west seemed to be reaching for it until threads of green light touched them; then they flared and vanished. The blue flame crept east, accelerating. The binoculars showed something at the tip. Harry’s eyes watered trying to make out details.)
Then he went inside and washed his face.
Carlotta didn’t like him. And so what? Harry opened Dawson’s liquor cabinet and opened a bottle of Carlos Primera brandy. Sixty bucks a bottle; but it was all that was left. He poured a good splash, looked at it, thought of pouring some back, and drank half.
Carlotta doesn’t like me. The country’s at war with aliens. Wes asked me to look after things. Nothing I can do here, and if I stay here long I’ll be here, and for good.
He went to the telephone and dialed the Kansas number Carlotta had left. It rang a long time. Then a voice, not sleepy. Male. "Mrs. Carlotta Dawson. Please," Harry said. He could sound official when he wanted to.
It took a moment. "Yes?"
"Harry Reddington, Mrs. Dawson. Is there anything you want me to do?"
"Harry—Harry, they don’t know what happened up there."
"Yes, ma’am. Can I help you?"
"I don’t know."
Carlotta Dawson’s voice dissolved in hisses. Another voice came on the line. "Is this an official telephone call?" it asked through the static. Then the line went dead.
Harry emptied his glass. Now what? She didn’t say. And if I stay in Los Angeles tomorrow, I’ll be in Los Angeles forever . . .
He drank half an inch more brandy and closed the bottle. Firmly.
When he left he was in clean shirt and a sports jacket that was years old but had almost never been worn. He carried ID and a sleeping bag and Congressman Dawson’s letter. At 3:30 A.M. he was on the front steps of the Security Pacific National Bank, spreading his sleeping bag.
* * *
Pavel Bondarev stared at the blank screen. All around him officers and aides at the command and communications consoles began to speak at once, and the babble brought him to life. "Colonel, I wish this chatter to cease."
"Da, Comrade Director." Colonel Suvorov was efficient if unimaginative. He shouted, and the cacophony of voices died away.