Weinburger’s face wore the expression of a man who talks rapidly to cover the fact that he has not thought of the idea being presented to him. “Could they do it?” he asked.
“Dr. Thierrin,” said Dayton.
The scientist addressed put on his nose a black pince-nez which promptly tilted to one side. “When I originally designed the V-68, it was with long-range space experiment in mind,” he said. “With the war-head removed, each should carry several dozen people, and if they were to go as colonists, with no return in mind, several score. After all, we have attained Mars with weaker rockets, but alas! it is not habitable.”
Marechal Laporte lifted a hand. “Ah, the project exposes itself!” he said. “Very well, Mars is not habitable; but no more is Venus. I am not ignorant, my friend. It is blanketed in cloud and CO2, as Dr. Sanchez describes our own planet as becoming.”
Dr. Thierrin regarded him solemnly, then began to fumble in a portfolio, talking the while. “That, my friend, is precisely a point on which we lack certainty,” he said. “A century ago, it was true beyond doubt. Even it was thought that there might be no water on Venus; that it was a planet of perpetual dust. In my younger days, we could make out nothing on the surface. But by accident one of our stratosphere weather rockets, in making photographs four months ago, turns its camera against our sister planet. The results are incredible; now I show them to you.”
He extended a sheaf of photographs toward the three military men.
“The upper one,” he said, “is the picture originally taken by our weather rocket; the others were taken in consequence. Observe how all the banks of cloud are penetrated by large, dark holes, by gaps of varying shape. The climate, the upper atmosphere of Venus is undergoing a radical alteration.”
The three military men bent over the pictures. Marechal Laporte said: “You go too fast. Have you made spectroscopic analysis to prove the existence of oxygen? Of water? Without these how can you say that Venus is even remotely habitable? The whole atmosphere might be of a poisonousness most deadly.”
Dr. Thierrin shook his head, his rather disorderly hair bobbing. “It is true that the clouds in our own atmosphere and the destruction of the astronomical stations have prevented analysis. However, we know from the law of planetary similarity, so well demonstrated in the case of Mars, that the chances are favorable.”
The marshal frowned. “To me, the demonstration—”
General Weinburger seemed to have adjusted his sights. Now he cut in. “Laporte, you are wasting your time,” he said, “in arguing the details of this cowardly and treasonable proposition. Brought down to its essentials, what these civilians are telling us is simply this: that instead of punishing the beasts who have brought this destruction upon the Earth, and incapacitating them from doing any further damage, we should run away and leave them in possession of just what they are fighting for. Mr. Dayton, members of the Civilian Authority, I remind you that your proposal requires the assent of the Staff. You shall never have it; never. My oath as an officer would be violated if I gave it.”
Clifford Dayton sighed. “I was afraid you would take that attitude, General,” he said. “And therefore, not altogether unprepared for it.” He turned to one of the guards at the door. “Will you show in the visitors who are waiting in Chamber Number Six?”
The guard snapped to attention and went out. Within the room there was an ominous silence, in which the sound of Dr. Thierrin fiddling with a pencil was distinctly audible. Then the door opened again and the guard stood aside to permit the entrance of two officers in the grey-green uniform of the Cominworld.
Weinburger’s face turned beet-red and Laporte sprang to his feet, fingering his moustache. Dayton said: “In case you do not recognize our guests, gentlemen, permit me to introduce Agronomist Nicholas Vladisoff, of the University of Vilnius, holder of the Lysenko Banner, and Upper Physicist Jurevich, of the Peiping Foundation.”
Jurevich’s heavy features seemed utterly unperturbed as he took the chair that was placed for him. Vladisoff had a thin, scraggly beard, behind which he seemed to be smiling.
Weinburger turned coldly to Dayton. “By what authority do you bring Cominworld prisoners to a Council meeting?” he demanded.
“Both these gentlemen are here under a flag of truce, and specifically for the purpose of discussing the flight to Venus,” said Dayton, calmly.
“The Staff refuses to consent to the flight,” said Weinburger, “or to hold any conversation with war criminals.”
VladisofFs smile became overt. “General Weinburger is at the head of the Cominworld’s list of war criminals,” he said. “But in view of the nature of the present discussion, our Central Committee has voted to waive that document.”
Sir Barnaby touched the high commander’s arm. “May as well listen to them. Good intelligence practice.”
Weinburger slowly sank into his seat again as Dayton nodded to Vladisoff, saying: “Will you explain?”
The agronomist nodded. “General Weinburger,” he said, “when I began my journey here, it was as an ambassador of the Central Committee to demand the surrender of the Western Alliance. The Red Banner army has prepared a fleet of penetrating rockets capable of finding and destroying every underground city of the Western Alliance at a single blast.”
He paused. Sir Barnaby’s face wore a look of interested skepticism. Weinburger said: “White of you not to do it—if you could.”
“One moment. The project was not halted by any inability to carry it through, I assure you. Here are the calculations.” He drew several sheets of papers held by a clip from his pocket and passed them down the table. “I was instructed to present these to the members of your Civilian Authority as proof that we could accomplish what we claimed. Before I could make this presentation, our geographers determined that the world had become nearly uninhabitable, and the explosion of further concentrations of sub-surface hydro-bombs would render it wholly so. The scientific members of the Central Committee therefore refused to allow the firing of the rockets at your cities under any conditions.”
Sir Barnaby Malcolm laughed. Vladisoff regarded him with mild eyes. The Englishman said: “Excuse me for seeming discourteous, but I find the picture of anyone refusing to allow old Marshal Mourevitch to do anything he wishes rather absurd.” He glanced at Vladisoff.
The Russian merely blinked twice. “Marshal Mourevitch is no longer in authority,” he said. “My instructions were changed. I am to present you with these figures, and offer the Western Alliance a certain number of our rockets for joint attempts to explore and colonize either Venus or Mars, the pro tempore colonial government to be neither Cominworld nor Western Alliance, but simply Earthian. What I have learned since coming here confirms this decision.”
General Weinburger regarded him steadily for a long minute, then swung to face Dayton. “Perhaps I am not very intelligent today,” he said, “but I don’t quite see what you expect to gain by engaging with these Russians in this transparent and treacherous trickery. I have sworn to defend the peoples of the Western Alliance against external and internal enemies, and believe me, I shall do my duty.” He got up, stepped to the phone on a stand, and said: “General Weinburger speaking. I want an armed guard detail in the command post. At once.” Without paying him the slightest attention, Thierrin said to Jurevich: “Your people also must have hit upon the plan of doubling the jet velocity by an induced secondary explosion.”
“No,” said Jurevich. “Ours is a different solution. We have a feed tank, so.” He drew an imaginary outline with his finger. “Into it there comes—” The door opened. A lieutenant and four armed soldiers came in.
Weinburger pointed to the civilians. “Arrest those men,” he said. “All of them.”
The lieutenant stood still.
“Arrest those men,” Weinburger repeated. “It’s an order.”
The lieutenants hands seemed to be trembling. “I’m sorry, sir,” he stammered, “but—but—he’s the Chairman!”
&nb
sp; Dayton said: “A little while back Sir Barnaby remarked that civilians had been swallowed up by military necessity. I think, General, that you will find the process has reached the end of the pendulum swing, and that the military have been swallowed by civilian necessity. You may go, Lieutenant.”
The door closed behind the men. Sir Barnaby said: “If you people are going to make peace behind our backs, it would seem to me more logical to try to save what is left of our world.”
Vladisoff shook his head. “Our scientists have reached the same conclusion as yours. Humanity has lost its chance on Earth. Whether it can survive elsewhere—”
“Urgent! Priority!” suddenly blared the speaker beside the screen. “Attention, Staff! Unknown objects approaching command post, approximate position over northern Scotland.” The screen flashed suddenly and all eyes turned toward it. “We have a spy rocket up, General, and were watching,” said the speaker. The picture showed, against the star-studded black of space—something that looked like a tiny seed, and then, as the spy rocket rose higher, grew to a series of marbles, then of tennis-balls, shining along their edges like crescent moons where they reflected the fight of the sun.
Weinburger turned furiously toward the Russians. “Is this some of your work?” he demanded.
“No,” said Jurevich. “These are not Russian. I never saw anything like them before.”
Weinburger threw a switch. “Weinburger. What are the co-ordinates?”
The dark sides of the spheres began to twinkle with little lights, like so many fireflies, and then the spheres began to diminish in size again.
“Our spy rocket is coming down now, but were sending another,” said the speaker. “The spherical objects are approximately three hundred fifty miles beyond the atmosphere, approximately two miles per second, speed rapidly diminishing. Commander Holmgren thinks they are of extraterrestrial origin.”
“So do I,” said Dr. Thierrin, and Jurevich nodded, as the spy rocket’s picture faded into the greyness of the clouds that banked the Earth.
An excited babble of conversation broke out in the group, but Weinburger held up his hand and said into the communication box: “Get a beam on them if you can.”
“We’re setting it up now, sir. There’s something already coming in the radio, like a kind of regularly spaced static. The commander thinks they’re trying to communicate.”
As the second spy rocket rose, the spheres came into view again, arranged in a long triangle, like a flight of wild geese. “Diameter of each sphere, about 400 meters,” announced the speaker. “They appear to be falling into an orbital course around the Earth. Over North Atlantic—” The speaker clicked a couple of times, then another voice said: “Priority! Chairman Dayton.”
Dayton stepped to the box beside Weinburger. “Dayton here.”
“Alaskan outpost has a message from Cominworld Central Committee. Asks your reaction to Vladisoff proposal, urgent, in view of current event.”
“Tell Alaskan outpost to signal back that Vladisoff and we are in full agreement,” said Dayton, and immediately stepped aside for Weinburger, who was plucking at his arm. The screen had gone blank.
“Weinburger here,” the general said. “Have operations set up a battery of S-13S for radar-controlled fire on those spheres if they prove unfriendly.”
“Yes, sir,” said the speaker. “They shot down our second spy rocket, and they appear to be fitted with radar absorbers, but they have made no attempt to attack, and they seem to be trying to use our beam to get a reaction on video.”
“Very well. If you pick up anything, flash it in here.” Dr. Thierrin said: “Whoever is operating those spheres seems to be a highly intelligent form of life. They didn’t want stray rockets prowling around until they knew more about our purposes.”
“Well armed, too,” remarked Jurevich, a trifle grimly.
The screen gave another series of flashes. “We got a picture sequence. Here it comes,” said the speaker.
Those in the room saw an outline of an equilateral triangle, apparently formed of narrow strips of metal standing on edge. An invisible hand placed a series of little blocks along each edge; then rapidly these detached themselves into two groups, one from the hypotenuse, one from the two sides.
“The Pythagorean theorem,” said Sanchez, smiling.
But Marechal Laporte frowned. “My General,” he said to Weinburger, “we shall never communicate with these beings on this level. I suggest that we have two or three stations flash them simple mathematical problems in systems of dots and dashes.”
“Do you hear that, Communications?” said Weinburger. “Make it so.”
On the screen the geometric drawing had been replaced by one, still worked in metal, that evidently represented the solar system. Out from the second planet toward the third arched a line of dots.
“We might have guessed as much,” said Dayton. “I wonder what they look like?”
“They aren’t giving that away yet,” said Weinburger. He seemed to have recovered some of his poise, now that the problem before him had become one of translating a policy into executive detail. “Communications, what are you getting?”
The box spoke metallically. “They’ve put out a couple of beams of their own, and are sending pictures accompanied by sound. We have the cryptographers on it. Some of them are meaningless, but we re building up a word-bank, and we believe we’ll get it, sir.”
“Report progress.” The General turned back to the waiting room. He said: “Gentlemen, in view of the fact that I have apparently been relieved as a policy-making officer, I ask you to determine what line we shall take toward these visitors.”
Vladisoff cleared his throat.
“Go ahead,” said Dayton.
“Mm,” said the agronomist. “One little thing. Visitors, yes, but why so many? It seemed to me there were hundreds of those spheres. This is not a visit; it is a mass movement, a colonization.”
Dr. Sanchez gave a grim little laugh. “An irony; they choose a moment to colonize when Earth has lost the ability to support its own population.”
“We can resist an invasion,” said Sir Barnaby.
“We don’t know yet whether they intend one,” said Dayton. “In fact, we don’t know what they look like or what they can do—except that their science is highly—”
“Command post,” pronounced the box. “Cryptography reports the Venusians use an agglutinative language. They are requesting that we show them pictures of the surface of the planet.”
“Can you say the same sort of thing to them?” said Weinburger. “Of course, or you couldn’t have understood. All right, send them that volcano sequence— and the pictures of the lower Mississippi valley. Ask them their intentions. Tell them that the High Council of Earth wants to know.” He glanced at the two Russians, then at Dayton, who nodded approvingly, and then swung to Vladisoff. “Will your Central Committee accept the result of our negotiation here?”
“As a member of it, yes,” said Vladisoff, “unless there is already a negotiation being carried on by other means.”
“Hadn’t thought of that,” said Dayton. “General, will you contact the Cominworld Central Committee via Alaska Outpost, and cut them in on this circuit? They may soon have to be our allies, and we should withhold nothing from them.”
The General grunted, and seemed about to object; then he shrugged and gave the order. Nobody seemed to have anything more to say; Laporte shifted in his chair and twisted at his moustaches. Then, suddenly, the box said: “Command post. We are ready.”
The screen sprang into light. There was a series of gasps around the table as the members of the Council saw themselves looking at a humanoid—but what a humanoid! Two massive, pillar-like legs supported a squat, almost shapeless body that seemed to be clad in something gleaming, like fishskin. The arms were disproportionately thin—but it was the head that really drew attention. It was as if all the features of a human face had been pushed to the top of the head: a pair of small eyes, a
broad nose with nostrils pointed upward, and an extraordinarily broad mouth that was opening and closing on an even row of flat cubic teeth.
A series of high-pitched sounds came through the speaker, then cut out, and the voice from Communications took up again. “He is speaking to us. I will translate:
“… means of destruction. We have seen the pictures of the surface of your planet. It is’—I don’t get a phrase in here—‘by our mathematicians you have shown us the portions of your surface that are least attractive to you’ Make him go slower, Ed … ‘have observed your surface for a long period. We know that unless there has been some great change, these pictures show places that can only be on your equator.
“‘However, we do not resent this deception. It is exactly because we hoped your planet contained such areas that we have come as beggars. They must be unsuitable for your species, but they would be ideal for ours. We ask permission to settle on your swamps and volcano-lands. We will give the necessary guarantees against proceeding beyond whatever bounds you set.
“‘If you refuse us, our race will have lost its last chance. I think we have learned our lesson, but we have learned it too late. For listen, people of the third planet, who have been living in comfort with each other ever since we have observed you. We have made our own planet unsuitable for life. Through a tragic error, the two great’—I think he says empires—‘of which our planet is composed, fell into conflict with each other. They employed means of combat that have nearly stripped our atmosphere of carbon dioxide and of the cloud blanket which kept our heat from escaping into space. Our planet has become too terribly cold to support life. At the same time diseases were introduced which caused our food plants to turn into wholly inedible hard grains. As proof of what we say, here is a picture of the surface of our planet, taken as this fleet was leaving it forever’”
The strange, hippo-like humanoid disappeared. In his place was a picture of a landscape, taken from a low altitude and gradually rising. It showed wide patches of fields with yellow grain ripening in the wind; here and there a little grove of unfamiliar trees, and a little lake. At one edge of the picture some building had tumbled into ruins; the bright sunlight shone starkly on the broken walls. The viewpoint rose; now it was above the clouds and little white cloudlets chased each other across the scene, almost obscuring the view of a river that wound gently toward a blue sea.
Space, Space, Space - Stories about the Time when Men will be Adventuring to the Stars Page 20
