Invaders of Earth

by Groff Conklin

  At that moment there came a faint clicking from his experimental receiver. At first he thought that he just imagined it, but then turned around and stared at the receiver set. He did not have any lights on, but the moon was full and the sky clear and he could clearly see that the pen of the receiving set was moving. More by instinct than by voluntary action he reached over and released the catch of the clockwork which pulled the paper tape out from under the pen. The sound of the running clockwork drowned the faint clicking of the mechanism, but he could see that there were dots and dashes on the tape. He made a minor adjustment and waited until the apparatus stopped.

  Then he tried to read the message:

  …. . …-..-.-. . …- and so on. Transliterated into normal letters, it said:

  Hesternev dei ingendemoni enemi elangis? Nwgae rempo! lnedef henna! These words were repeated several times.

  Justus read the tape over and over. It made no sense to him; he could not even guess what language it was. Some few words such as dei and nugae might be Latin. The word enemi could be French, although the French word for “enemy” is spelled ennemi. But all the others, hesternev, elangis, rempo, inedef, and especially the strange ingendemoni, remained mysterious. The word henna had a meaning, of course, but was not likely to mean what it normally meant.

  Was this the first message of the kind that his set had received? How many other nights had there been when radio waves carried these mysterious words? But then the clockwork in the set had not been running, and the whole message would have made just one blot on the unmoving tape. Justus remembered that he had found such a blot several times, but had thought it the result of some accidental jarring of the set.

  Justus, normally cool and calm, grew increasingly excited the longer he thought about the message and its unknown meaning. The set remained silent. Finally, at three in the morning, Justus went to. bed, leaving the set switched on. And in spite of his unabated excitement he did fall asleep; the monotonous sound of the running clockwork had a soporific effect.

  When he woke up in the morning his first glance was at the receiving set. There was a big heap of paper tape on the table, spilling over to the floor. And while much of it was empty, there were lengths of tape covered with the same words: Hesternev dei ingendemoni enemi elangis? Nugae rempo! Inedef henna! repeated over a hundred times.

  Justus felt that he was not able to decipher the message, which seemed a job for professionals. But there were offices which coded and decoded commercial messages for companies, and he entrusted one of them with the work. Not that he did not try himself just the same. And what he had silently been afraid of did happen: the decoding office reported that the words of the message did not correspond to any one of the commercially used cable codes and that they were in all probability just random combinations of letters. A second decoding office gave him the same answer. And a third.

  Justus began to wonder whether atmospheric electricity could have influenced his set to write dots and dashes at random. But if so, would it have repeated a hundred times? Precisely the same random combination ?

  He sent a copy of the message to the Long Range Radio Corporation, where it was felt that they owed the rejected inventor a small favor. They checked the commercial messages of that time and even inquired of radio stations in other countries. The result was negative. Justus had foreseen this because his set had not been tuned to any wave length used commercially. He sat, office hours over, in front of his receiver, fingering a copy of the mysterious message that had ruined his sleep for many nights by now. He saw the letters mirrored in the shiny brass of the set, and suddenly there was a word he could read. The reflection had been the word elangis; it meant Signale (signals).

  He felt as though he were coming out of a dark cave. It had been so ridiculously simple: All one had to do was to read the words backward. He looked at the copy of the message: hesternev. But that gave venretseh, and the one made as much sense as the other. All the other words were senseless, too; only that one word “signals” was really a word. And that might be an accident.

  But Justus did not believe that it was an accident. If one word of the message made sense, the others should too. Perhaps the words should not be treated alike. If one became a meaningful word just by being spelled backward, others might yield some sense when treated as anagrams. He tried, and it was just that disappointing nine-letter word hesternev that he solved first. The same letters, rearranged, spelled verstehen (to understand). The Latin-looking word dei produced (tentatively) the German plural article die. And the apparently French enemi resolved itself into the German meine (mine or my). The remaining words were deciphered even more rapidly. Nugae rempo resulted in Augen empor (eyes high), and Inedef henna gave Feinde nahen (enemies approach).

  He now had eight of the nine words, and the message read:

  Verstehen die.....meine Signale? Augen empor! Feinde nahen!

  (Do the.....understand my signals? Eyes high! Enemies approach!)

  The one word, not yet resolved, was ingendemoni. Justus realized that it was this very word that gave the key to the meaning. He tried countless combinations of these eleven letters. He was aware of the mathematical fact that a very few symbols can be arranged in a very large number of ways. He remembered that even four symbols can have two dozen arrangements. The possible number of variations of eleven letters was astronomical! He did not realize clearly how many hours he had been working on that one word. He had missed his meals and his eyes were burning. And then he found a combination that not only made sense as a word but also fitted the message. It was Ein-mondigen, not an established word at all, but one which could be understood. One-Mooners. “Do the One-Mooners understand my signals?...”

  ~ * ~

  Justus, by sheer waiting, succeeded in speaking to the Secretary of State. He put on the desk the yards of paper tape with the countless repetitions of the message. He explained about his receiving set and produced his interpretation. Somewhat to his surprise, the Secretary treated the matter with great seriousness and promised to look into it. Justus would be invited.

  He was, and found a number of experts, astronomers, meteorologists, and radio specialists assembled in one room. His receiving set was on a table in the center, connected with an antenna on the roof of the building that was a precise replica of the one he had used. Except for being in a different location, the set was as it had been that night several weeks ago.

  The Secretary made Justus speak first, and Justus, after repeating the circumstances, did his best to convince his listeners that this message had not originated on Earth but somewhere in space, possibly on one of the neighboring planets, Venus or Mars. But he did not make much of an impression. The electrical experts, in particular, declared that this must have been a freak caused by atmospheric electricity, that the discoverer had deceived himself, that even a deliberate hoax should not be ruled out completely.

  “Is the discoverer of this message able to explain,” one of them asked smilingly, “how the operator of this heavenly transmitter picked up both the knowledge of our international Morse code and the German language?” His smile was mirrored on the faces of most of those present.

  “And if we, for the sake of discussion, assume these two impossibilities to be fact,” added another, “can Mr. . . . er, Mr. Starck tell us why this extraterrestrial telegrapher so garbled his message that it required an admittedly unusual amount of brainwork even to read it?”

  “Under the assumption,” a third jumped in, “that Mr. Starck did decipher it correctly. Perhaps an Englishman or a Frenchman or a Russian, working along similar lines and with similar diligence, would have deciphered something different, expressed in his own language.”

  “Well, I have to defend our young friend in one respect,” said the old director of the city observatory slowly. “In my opinion that term “One-Mooners” is an excellent way of characterizing an inhabitant of Earth from an astronomical point of view. A presumed inhabitant of Venus, which has no moon, migh
t well think of Earth as the planet with one moon, since Mars has two. Similarly a Martian, because he has two moons, might also think of Earth as the planet with one moon.”

  One of the wireless experts shook his head. “I must say that I have the uncomfortable feeling of being right in the middle of a Jules Verne story. Even the circumstances of this conference fail to make this any more scientific or credible to me. We all know fantastic stories of that kind, which have been written again and again ever since Kepler’s Somnium, but that such things are being treated seriously here . . .”

  “I beg your pardon, sir,”—it was the Secretary of State who spoke for the first time—”I have to interrupt you at this point. As far as I know the facts, this is not a Jules Verne story being acted out.” He pushed a button on the desk and in a low voice gave an order to the male secretary who had come in. The man left the room and came back almost immediately, carrying a locked brief case. The Secretary unlocked it, took out a folder, and said:

  “What I am going to tell you now is confidential. About three months ago something happened near the missionary post of Ylinde, in southeast Africa. A meteorite fell, with loud noises, around noon, literally out of a clear sky. The natives who saw it were frightened and ran to the missionary, who immediately went to the place where the meteorite had landed. He found a still smoking hole and in it, partly buried, a large half-molten piece of metal which he naturally took to be meteoric iron. Here are a few photographs the missionary took on that occasion.” He handed them out.

  “But,” he continued with emphasis, “this meteorite was not an ‘honest’ meteorite. It was, gentlemen, a product of intelligent beings beyond our atmosphere. When the missionary had the natives dig up the piece, the other side showed a . . . well, yes, I have to use that word, it showed a trade-mark.”

  He pulled a drawing from the brief case.

  “Yes, a trade-mark just like the trade-marks that our large industrial firms stamp on their products. You’ll see that the center of the trademark shows a small circle, and next to that circle, to the right, is the sickle of the moon. Around them are a number of small elliptical figures, each of which has a stylized stroke of lightning in front. And all these points are directed against the circle with the sickle. I freely admit I did not understand that symbol until Mr. Starck came in with his telegraph tape. That word ‘One-Mooners’ made me remember the picture you are looking at now.”

  “Sir, may I have the floor?” asked the director of the meteorological station, a still young man. “I wish to report a mysterious occurrence that took place in connection with our work. About three years ago we prepared a research balloon designed to go to very high altitudes and to carry only recording instruments, no person. A date had been set for the ascent, which was to take place with the cooperation of the airship garrison. The balloon was shipped to their landing field and was made ready the night before. When we got out there in the early morning hours the balloon was not there and the ropes that had held it down had been untied. At first we thought this was merely an unpleasant accident, but then we were very happy when both the balloon and the instruments in the gondola were shipped to us, from some place at the southern part of Hungary. Of course, we developed the light-sensitive tape with the readings, all normal meteorological information. The barograph showed that the peak altitude reached was 25,000 meters [82,000 feet], and just at that point we detected some writing scratched into the paper with a point of a needle. It said: ‘Black airships, looking like fish, hunt the balloon and…’ That was all. [Actually the height o£ 82,000 feet had been reached in 1907 only by unmanned balloons, carrying recording instruments. The altitude record for manned aircraft, which came close to this figure, was established on November 11, 1935, by the stratosphere balloon Explorer 11, with 72,394 feet. This record has recently been beaten by the research rocket airplane Skyrocket, which, on August 15, 1951, climbed to about 80,000 feet. If the pilot had kept the Skyrocket on a steeper ascent path it would easily have gone beyond 90,000 feet.]

  “I have to add now that one of my best assistants, one Dr. Valens, disappeared on that day. We reported this to the police, but he has never been found. Of course, we all suspected at one time or another that Dr. Valens may have ascended with the balloon, against orders and without any authorization. And I do think so now, even though

  I may be accused of telling another Jules Verne story. Maybe he was captured by those ‘black airships,’ which suddenly appeared twenty-five kilometers up. Of course, I’ll now forward the tape with the inscription. Up to now we’ve kept quiet about it because there was a fine chance that some practical jokester in the meteorological station had scratched the letters after the paper tapes had been removed from their containers.”

  “I wish to add here,” said a government official, “that during recent years there have been several balloon disappearances, more than can be statistically explained. And the disappearances are mostly balloons which for special reasons were built to go very high. For that reason they were also especially large, which makes their disappearance all the more mysterious. Of course, there are oceans and jungle and the icy North which may hide the remains.”

  “Now,” said one of the electrical experts, “does the discoverer of the message have any idea whether, and how, the things we have just heard jibe with the message he received?”

  Justus rose slowly and spoke slowly, organizing his thoughts while he replied:

  “My hypothesis was that the message originated with intelligent beings outside the Earth. Certainly nothing we have heard speaks against my hypothesis. Obviously, the inhabitants of some other planet, of higher technological development than our own, have found means to conquer the space separating them from the ‘one-mooners.’ Flying through our atmosphere at very high levels, they captured one or several balloons and the people in the gondolas. Since these happened to be Germans, the aliens learned the German language. And any one of those captured may have known Morse code; they were all people who were likely to know it. That piece of metal found at Ylinde is probably a piece of wreckage of one of the ‘black airships’; there may have been a collision or another mishap.”

  “Yes,” somebody interrupted, “but all this sounds rather belligerent. Your message, Mr. Starck, is a well-meaning warning. How does that work out?”

  “The one difficulty,” Justus continued, “is that most of what we have heard seems to point to a warlike intent, while the message looks like a friendly intent. The one makes the other sound inexplicable. But couldn’t there be a parallel to political conditions on Earth? I believe that a planet is unlikely to adopt a policy of expansion until it has to— provided, of course, that it can. And there may be some who can’t await the day of conquest, some who are hesitant, and some who arc simply opposed. The first group, presumably in the majority, built the black ships. One of the last group sent the warning.”

  “But then why the nonsense of anagrams?”

  “This is what makes me think that it was a member of the opposition party. If one of our captured men had had an occasion to send a message, he would not have coded anything; he would have been in a hurry. He also would have used different words. If somebody opposed to an expansion policy sent the message, he probably would have had time but also would have had to stay under cover. He has to count on the message being received on his own planet. By using both an Earth language and a not too difficult (for us) coding system, he will at least ensure himself time before he is detected.”

  There was a time of quiet in the conference room. Everyone was busy with his own thoughts. But when the Secretary asked for opinions, most of those present were cautiously against Justus and against any protective measures; only the old astronomer and the young meteorologist were definitely on his side. Justus could not tell about the Secretary. But as he glanced in his direction, he saw the pen of his set moving. He raised the catch of the clockwork mechanism and guided the tape into his hand, while the others crowded around the table. Loo
king at the dots and dashes he suddenly said: “Gentlemen, this is not code, this is clear and understandable German. Let me read it to you. . . .

  “‘ . . . danger to the inhabitants of Earth. I am Dr. Valens of the Meteorological Institute in Berlin and I was kidnaped out of the gondola of a balloon three years ago. For three years I have waited for a chance to warn my country and all on Earth. My kidnapers are masters of the natural forces and lords of interplanetary space. It is night here and I got into a transmitting station, hoping that my words will reach Earth and be understood by somebody. Watch your skies, protect yourselves. They have airships which ... I am discovered, mankind beware of the inhabitants of…’ “

  The clockwork continued to pull the tape out of the set. But no more signs appeared on it.

  “Gentlemen,” the Secretary said after a long pause, “we have just become distant witnesses of a sacrifice for humanity on an unknown planet by one of us. He probably had to pay with his life for it but achieved what he tried to achieve: a warning to us.”

  The same night a long coded wire was addressed to all embassies and legations, for immediate transmittal to their respective governments.