A Century of Science Fiction

by Damon Knight

  DAY OF SUCCESSION

  BY THEODORE L. THOMAS

  General Paul T. Tredway was an arrogant man with the unforgivable gift of being always right. When the object came out of the sky in the late spring of 1979, it was General Tredway who made all of the decisions concerning it. Sweeping in over the northern tip of Greenland, coming on a dead line from the Yamal Peninsula, the object alerted every warning unit from the Dew Line to the radar operator at the Philadelphia National Airport. Based on the earliest reports, General Tredway concluded that the object was acting in an anomalous fashion; its altitude was too low too long. Accordingly, acting with a colossal confidence, he called off the manned interceptor units and forbade the launching of interceptor missiles. The object came in low over the Pocono Mountains and crashed in southeastern Pennsylvania two miles due west of Terre Hill.

  The object still glowed a dull red, and the fire of the smashed house still smoldered when General Tredway arrived with the troops. He threw a cordon around it and made a swift investigation. The object: fifty feet long, thirty feet in diameter, football-shaped, metallic, too hot to inspect closely. Visualizing immediately what had to be done, the general set up a command headquarters and began ordering the items he needed. With no wasted word or motion he built toward the finished plan as he saw it.

  Scientists arrived at the same time as the asbestos clothing needed for them to get close. Tanks and other material flowed toward the impact site. Radios and oscillators scanned all frequencies seeking—what? No man there knew what to expect, but no man cared. General Tredway was on the ground personally, and no one had time for anything but his job. The gunners sat with eyes glued to sights, mindful of the firing pattern in which they had been instructed. Handlers poised over their ammunition. Drivers waited with hands on the wheel, motors idling. Behind this ring of steel a more permanent bulwark sprang up. Spotted back farther were the technical shacks for housing the scientific equipment. Behind the shacks the reporters gathered, held firmly in check by armed troops. The site itself was a strange mixture of taut men in frozen immobility and casual men in bustling activity.

  In an hour the fact emerged which General Tredway had suspected all along: the object was not of earthly origin. The alloy of which it was made was a known high-temperature alloy, but no technology on Earth could cast it in seamless form in that size and shape. Mass determinations and ultrasonic probes showed that the object was hollow but was crammed inside with a material different from the shell. It was then that General Tredway completely reorganized his fire power and mapped out a plan of action that widened the eyes of those who were to carry it out.

  On the general’s instructions, everything said at the site was said into radio transmitters and thus recorded a safe fifty miles away. And it was the broadcasting of the general’s latest plan of action that brought in the first waves of mild protest. But the general went ahead.

  The object had lost its dull hot glow when the first indications of activity inside could be heard. General Tredway immediately removed all personnel to positions of safety outside the ring of steel. The ring itself buttoned up; when a circle of men fire toward a common center, someone can get hurt.

  With the sound of tearing, protesting metal, a three-foot circle appeared at the top of the object, and the circle began to turn. As it turned it began to lift away from the main body of the object, and soon screw threads could be seen. The hatch rose silently, looking like a bung being unscrewed from a barrel. The time came when there was a gentle click, and the hatch dropped back a fraction of an inch; the last thread had become disengaged. There was a pause. The heavy silence was broken by a throbbing sound from the object that continued for forty-five seconds and then stopped. Then, without further sound, the hatch began to lift back on its northernmost rim.

  In casual tones, as if he were speaking in a classroom, General Tredway ordered the northern, northeastern and northwestern regions of the ring into complete cover. The hatch lifted until finally its underside could be seen; it was colored a dull, nonreflecting black. Higher the hatch lifted, and immediately following it was a bulbous mass that looked like a half-opened rose blossom. Deep within the mass there glowed a soft violet light, clearly apparent to the eye even in the sharp Pennsylvania sunshine.

  The machine-gun bullets struck the mass first, and the tracers could be seen glancing off. But an instant later the shaped charges in the rockets struck the mass and shattered it. The 105s, the 101 rifles, the rocket launchers, poured a hail of steel onto the canted hatch, ricocheting much of the steel into the interior of the object. Delay-timed high-explosive shells went inside and detonated.

  A flame tank left the ring of steel and lumbered forward, followed by two armored trucks. At twenty-five yards a thin stream of fire leaped from the nozzle of the tank and splashed off the hatch in a Niagara of flame. A slight correction, and the Niagara poured down into the opening. The tank moved in close, and the guns fell suddenly silent. Left in the air was a high-pitched shrieking wail, abruptly cut off.

  Flames leaped from the opening, so the tank turned off its igniter and simply shot fuel into the object. Asbestos-clad men jumped from the trucks and fed a metal hose through the opening and forced it deep into the object. The compressors started, and a blast of high-pressure air passed through the hose, insuring complete combustion of everything inside. For three minutes the men fed fuel and air to the interior of the object, paying in the metal hose as the end fused off. Flames shot skyward with the roar of a blast furnace. The heat was so great that the men at work were saved only by the constant streams of water that played on them. Then it was over.

  General Tredway placed the burned-out cinder in charge of the scientists and then regrouped his men for resupply and criticism. These were in progress when the report of the second object came in.

  The trackers were waiting for it. General Tredway had reasoned that when one object arrived, another might follow, and so he had ordered the trackers to look for it. It hit twenty-five miles west of the first one, near Florin. General Tredway and his men were on their way even before impact. They arrived twenty minutes after it hit.

  The preparations were the same, only more streamlined now. The soldiers and the scientists moved more surely, with less wasted motion than before. But as the cooling period progressed, the waves of protest came out of Washington and reached toward General Tredway. “Terrible.” “First contact ...” “Exterminating them like vermin . . .” “Peaceful relationship . . .” “. . . military mind.” The protests took on an official character just before the hatch on the second object opened. An actual countermanding of General Tredway’s authority came through just as the rockets opened fire on the half-opened rose blossom. The burning out proceeded on schedule. Before it was complete, General Tredway climbed into a helicopter to fly the hundred miles to Washington, D.C. In half an hour he was there.

  It is one of the circumstances of a democracy that in an emergency half a dozen men can speak for the entire country. General Tredway stalked into a White House conference room where waited the President, the Vice-President, the Speaker of the House, the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, the House Minority Leader, and a cabinet member. No sooner had he entered than the storm broke.

  “Sit down, General, and explain to us if you can the meaning of your reprehensible conduct.”

  “What are you trying to do, make butchers of us all?” “You didn’t give those . . . those persons a chance.” “Here we had a chance to learn something, to learn a lot, and you killed them and destroyed their equipment.”

  General Tredway sat immobile until the hot flood of words subsided. Then he said, “Do any of you gentlemen have any evidence that their intentions were peaceable? Any evidence at all?”

  There was silence for a moment as they stared at him. The President said, “What evidence have you got they meant harm? You killed them before there was any evidence of anything.”

  General Tredway shook his head, and a familiar super
cilious tone crept unbidden into his voice. “They were the ones who landed on our planet. It was incumbent on them to find a way to convince us of their friendliness. Instead they landed with no warning at all, and with a complete disregard of human life. The first missile shattered a house, killed a man. There is ample evidence of their hostility,” and he could not help adding, “if you care to look for it.”

  The President flushed and snapped, “That’s not the way I see it. You could have kept them covered; you had enough fire power there to cover an army. If they made any hostile move, that would have been time enough for you to have opened up on them.”

  The House Speaker leaned forward and plunked a sheaf of telegrams on the table. He tapped the pile with a forefinger and said, “These are some of thousands that have come in. I picked out the ones from some of our outstanding citizens—educators, scientists, statesmen. All of them agree that this is a foolhardy thing you have done. You’ve destroyed a mighty source of knowledge for the human race.”

  “None of them is a soldier,” said the general. “I would not expect them to know anything about attack and defense.”

  The Speaker nodded and drew one more telegram from an inner pocket. General Tredway, seeing what was coming, had to admire his tactics; this man was not Speaker for nothing. “Here,” said the Speaker, “is a reply to my telegram. It is from the Joint Chiefs. Care to read it?”

  They all stared at the general, and he shook his head coldly. “No. I take it that they do not understand the problem, either.”

  “Now just a min—” A colonel entered the room and whispered softly to the President. The President pushed his chair back, but he did not get up. Nodding, he said, “Good. Have Barnes take over. And see that he holds his fire until something happens. Hear? Make certain of that. I’ll not tolerate any more of this unnecessary slaughter.” The colonel left.

  The President turned and noted the understanding in the faces of the men at the table. He nodded and said, “Yes, another one. And this time we’ll do it right. I only hope the other two haven’t got word to the third one that we’re a bunch of killers.”

  “There could be no communication of any kind emanating from the first two,” said General Tredway. “I watched for that.”

  “Yes. Well, it’s the only thing you did right. I want you to watch to see the proper way to handle this.”

  In the intervening hours General Tredway tried to persuade the others to adopt his point of view. He succeeded only in infuriating them. When the time came for the third object to open, the group of men were trembling in anger.

  They gathered around the television screen to watch General Barnes’s handling of the situation.

  General Tredway stood to the rear of the others, watching the hatch unscrew. General Barnes was using the same formation as that developed by General Tredway; the ring of steel was as tight as ever.

  The familiar black at the bottom of the hatch came into view, followed closely by the top of the gleaming rose blossom. General Tredway snapped his fingers, the sound cracking loud in the still room. The men close to the set jumped and looked back at Tredway in annoyance. It was plain that the general had announced in his own way the proper moment to fire. Their eyes had hardly got back to the screen when it happened.

  A thin beam of delicate violet light danced from the heart of the rose to the front of the steel ring. The beam rotated like a lighthouse beacon, only far, far faster. Whatever it touched, it sliced. Through tanks and trucks and guns and men it sliced, over and over again as the swift circular path of the beam spun in ever widening circles. Explosions rocked the site as high explosives detonated under the touch of the beam. The hatch of the object itself, neatly cut near the bottom, rolled ponderously down the side of the object to the ground. The beam bit into the ground and left seething ribbons of slag. In three seconds the area was a mass of fused metal and molten rock and minced bodies and flame and smoke and thunder. In another two seconds the beam reached the television cameras, and the screen went blank.

  The men near the screen stared speechless. At that moment the colonel returned and announced softly that a fourth object was on its way, and that its probable impact point was two miles due east of Harrisburg.

  The group turned as one man to General Tredway, but he paid no attention. He was pacing back and forth, pulling at his lower lip, frowning in concentration.

  “General,” said the President, “I ... I guess you had the right idea. These things are monsters. Will you handle this next one?”

  General Tredway stopped and said, “Yes, but I had better explain what is now involved. I want every vehicle that can move to converge on the fourth object; the one that is now loose will attempt to protect it. I want every plane and copter that can fly to launch a continuing attack on it. I want every available missile zeroed in and launched at it immediately. I want every fusion and fission bomb we’ve got directed at the fourth object by means of artillery, missiles and planes; one of them might get through. I want a request made to Canada, Brazil, Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia and Italy to launch fussion-headed missiles at the site of the fourth object immediately. In this way we might have a chance to stop them. Let us proceed.”

  The President stared at him and said, “Have you gone crazy? I will give no such orders. What you ask for will destroy our middle eastern seaboard.”

  The general nodded. “Yes, everything from Richmond to Pittsburgh to Syracuse, I think, possibly more. Fallout will cover a wider area. There’s no help for it.”

  “You’re insane. I will do no such thing.”

  The Speaker stepped forward and said, “Mr. President, I think you should reconsider this. You saw what that thing could do; think of two of them loose. I am very much afraid the general may be right.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  The Vice-President stepped to the President’s side and said, “I agree with the President. I never heard of such an absurd suggestion.”

  The moment froze into silence. The general stared at the three men. Then, moving slowly and deliberately, he undid his holster flap and pulled out his pistol. He snapped the slide back and fired once at point-blank range, shifted the gun, and fired again. He walked over to the table and carefully placed the gun on it. Then he turned to the Speaker and said, “Mr. President, there is very little time. Will you give the necessary orders?”

  Now I propose to show you how another writer, granted his own premises, can turn the picture upside down again. Here (from Galaxy, June 1951) is a story of an alien invasion; it begins with the landing of a spaceship and ends, like “The First Days of May,” on a note of resignation and humility. But these resemblances are superficial. If Veillot’s Shrills are pure horror (1 pass over Thomas’ invaders, whom we never see), then Pangborn’s angel is pure delight.

  Edgar Pangborn was educated at Harvard and the New England Conservatory of Music and planned a musical career, but switched to writing in 1951, Traces of his musical background appear in this story; it might even be suggested that the story itself is a kind of music.

  Pangborn’s style is exceedingly delicate and precise compared with the typical magazine writer's blunt-instrument prose. A workman of such skill deserves to have his copy printed as he wrote it, but this does not always happen. The editor who first published “Angel’s Egg” is infamous among s.f. writers for having altered the phrase, “with her speaking hands on his terrible head,” to “with her telepathic hands on his predatory head”

  In different ways, both Veillot's and Thomas’ stories can be read as arguments for Western values—efficiency, decisiveness, ruthless self-interest. Here is an equally eloquent argument for the Eastern values of humility, love, selfsacrifice, embodied in an unforgettable story.

  ANGEL’S EGG

  BY EDGAR PANGBORN

  LETTER OF RECORD, BLAINE TO MC CARRAN, DATED AUGUST

  10, 1951

  Mr. Cleveland McCarran

  Federal Bureau of Investigation
/>   Washington, D.C.

  Dear Sir:

  In compliance with your request I enclose herewith a transcript of the pertinent sections of the journal of Dr. David Bannerman, deceased. The original document is being held at this office until proper disposition can be determined.

  Our investigation has shown no connection between Dr. Bannerman and any organization, subversive or otherwise. So far as we can learn, he was exactly what he seemed, an inoffensive summer resident, retired, with a small independent income—a recluse to some extent, but well spoken of by local tradesmen and other neighbors. A connection between Dr. Bannerman and the type of activity that concerns your Department would seem most unlikely.

  The following information is summarized from the earlier parts of Dr. Bannerman’s journal, and tallies with the results of our own limited inquiry. He was born in 1898 at Springfield, Massachusetts, attended public school there, and was graduated from Harvard College in 1922, his studies having been interrupted by two years’ military service. He was wounded in action in the Argonne, receiving a spinal injury. He earned a doctorate in biology in 1926. Delayed aftereffects of his war injury necessitated hospitalization, 192728. From 1929 to 1948 he taught elementary sciences in a private school in Boston. He published two textbooks in introductory biology, 1929 and 1937. In 1948 he retired from teaching; a pension and a modest income from textbook royalties evidently made this possible. Aside from the spinal deformity, which caused him to walk with a stoop, his health is said to have been fair. Autopsy findings suggested that the spinal condition must have given him considerable pain; he is not known to have mentioned this to anyone, not even to his physician, Dr. Lester Morse. There is no evidence whatever of drug addiction or alcoholism.

  At one point early in his journal Dr. Bannerman describes himself as “a naturalist of the puttering type—I would rather sit on a log than write monographs: it pays off better.” Dr. Morse and others who knew Dr. Bannerman personally tell me that this conveys a hint of his personality.