Fade Out

by Patrick Tilley

  It was Wedderkind’s turn to look at Connors. Connors looked at his watch, then smiled. ‘It’s no more outrageous than any other theory.’

  ‘True,’ Wedderkind said. ‘But – and God forgive me that as a scientist I should talk like this –’ Wedderkind tapped his navel. ‘Something in here tells me we’re in line for more than just an iron bedstead.’

  Saturday/August 11

  CROW RIDGE/MONTANA

  Puzzled by the radiation burns and the inexplicable power failure in the helicopter, the Air Force decided to send a Crash and Rescue Unit and an Aircraft Recovery Team to Crow Ridge by road to pick up the body of the crewman and the downed helicopter.

  When they drove up the winding track to the Ridge, they found a pickup truck sent by the Rosebud County sheriffs office stalled alongside Volkert’s patrol car. As the Crash and Rescue truck drew alongside, their motor cut out too. The big recovery truck stopped a safe fifty yards behind and the crew hurried forward to help. They found that fuses had blown in all three vehicles.

  After checking the area for ultraviolet radiation, the Air Force team walked up through the trees on to the plateau. They found the body of the crewman carefully wrapped in an old, patched canvas truck top. His feet were sticking out at one end. At the other end, someone had planted a rough cross made of branches and tied together with wire. On top of it was the crewman’s bloodstained crash helmet.

  The Recovery Team went over to the crashed helicopter, circled around it carefully, then exchanged surprised glances. When it had left Glasgow AFB, it had been a drab, regulation olive green. It was now a light pinkish-brown, and the blue around the white star insignia had turned a bright purple.

  THE WHITE HOUSE/WASHINGTON DC

  In the conference room, they all took the seats they had occupied the previous Saturday.

  Army General Wills and Admiral Garrison had had the news about the spacecraft laid on them by the President over supper on Friday. They still looked a little punchy, but Fraser didn’t waste any time coming out of his corner.

  ‘All we’ve got out of this encounter so far is death, damage, and destruction. I say to hell with the possible advances to scientific knowledge. This fade-out constitutes a clear case of aggression. What we have to decide now is when and how to hit back.’

  ‘With what?’ asked Connors. ‘A ground-to-air missile? With all our electronic guidance systems out of action we’ve got nothing more sophisticated than an artillery shell. The point I think Arnold is trying to make is that if it is not intentional, then it can’t really be classified as aggression.’

  ‘I don’t buy that line of logic,’ said Fraser. ‘A dog doesn’t intend to catch rabies, but when he does you kill him before he bites somebody.’

  True enough, thought Connors. Your ball, Arnold.

  Wedderkind tapped his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. ‘If the basic assumptions we’ve made so far are correct, this interference could be accidental. On the other hand, it could be part of a planned program.’

  ‘To paralyse our defences.’ Fraser looked pleased.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Garrison. ‘The – ’

  Wedderkind upped the volume and drowned him out. ‘The point I’m trying to make is that such a move need not necessarily be interpreted as aggressive. It could be defensive. It depends.’

  ‘On what, Arnold?’

  Wedderkind turned to the President. ‘On what happens next.’

  ‘That brings us right back to the mad dog.’ said Wills.

  Fraser smiled. ‘I think Arnold wants us to wait until it bites somebody.’

  ‘I don’t think there’s any need for us to get paranoid about this.’ Wedderkind’s blink rate had begun to edge up. ‘We didn’t land on the moon with the intention of blasting everything in sight. There’s no reason to treat a similar landing on this planet as a hostile invasion.’

  ‘The reason we didn’t have any trouble on the moon and Mars,’ said Fraser, ‘was because there was nobody around to shoot back.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Garrison.

  ‘And is that what you want us to do?’ asked Connors.

  ‘I think we ought to be ready. Don’t you, General?’ Fraser turned to Wills.

  General Wills pulled the cigar from his mouth and breathed out smoke. He had a soft spot for Wedderkind, but he and Fraser spoke the same language. ‘Arnold, this flying crapheap of yours has knocked out our radar, grounded most of our aircraft, and screwed up our global communications. If the Russians or the Chinese had done the same kind of thing, I’d be inclined to say they were being hostile – wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Exactly.’ Garrison was beginning to sound as if he was stuck in a groove.

  ‘But it’s not the Russians or the Chinese,’ said Connors. ‘They’re as much in the dark as we are.’

  ‘We’ve only got their word for that,’ said Fraser.

  ‘Oh, come on, Mel,’ said Connors. ‘Admittedly we’re still hung up over disarmament but in general terms our relationship is on an upward curve, and we’ve got massive trade treaties with both Russia and China.’

  ‘I’m not going to dispute that,’ said Fraser. ‘You’ve collected a lot of autographs.’

  ‘It’s more than just ink on paper. A lot of these are solid working agreements.’ The President’s voice had a sharp edge.

  ‘And they’ll go on working, Mr President – just as long as we’re packing a big gun. But if we get thrown into a survival-type situation, those Red ant heaps will swarm right over us.’

  ‘Mel, we already know how you feel about our foreign policy. Right now, I don’t think that’s the point at issue. However, in regard to what you have just said, I believe that the American people as a whole still possess the basic resilience, virtues, and vigour that made this country great. There is no doubt in my mind of our ability to survive pretty well in any kind of situation.’

  ‘Mr President, could I –?’

  ‘Go ahead, Arnold.’

  ‘Look –’ It was palm-spreading time. ‘Suppose you were a blind man who had to meet five strange guys in a basement. You have no idea whether they are going to pat you on the back or beat you over the head. What’s the safest thing to do?’

  ‘Turn out the lights as you go in?’ suggested Connors.

  ‘Right,’ said Wedderkind. ‘The great equalizer. Might even put you ahead.’ He turned to Fraser. ‘And it’s better than a gun, because if they turn out to be friendly, you can always switch the light back on. Our friend up there has been in orbit for more than a week. He’s covered every part of the globe. He’s flown past our satellites and all the other junk that NASA’s left up there, so he knows he’s dealing with an advanced technological society that has a global communications network – ’

  ‘Had,’ said Fraser.

  ‘And that we’re into space flight,’ continued Wedderkind. ‘An organized society with a mixed economy inhabiting a world of irregularly-shaped land masses separated by water. He’s now low enough to pick out cultivated areas and large urban centres. He also knows that we know he’s up there checking us out. Reaction from us so far? None. No space flight to check him out. No nuclear rocket to blow him up. From the steady static we’re getting now, I believe he could have jammed our radar from so far out, we would never have known he was on his way in. But he didn’t. We got twenty minutes of fade-out as he slowed down prior to going into Earth orbit, then he let us get a fix on him, scrambling the scopes briefly as he dropped into a lower orbit. Perhaps to see what the reaction would be. Maybe even to warn us.’

  ‘In that case,’ said the President. ‘I’m glad we decided to maintain a low profile.’

  ‘All right, Arnold,’ said Fraser. ‘We’ve sat tight all this time. We didn’t try to knock this thing out of the sky. We are now on our way to being totally fouled up. At what point in your theory of nonintervention do we start to feel some of the built-in benefits?’

  ‘It’s not down yet.’

  ‘But it could be on i
ts way,’ said Garrison, finally getting it together. ‘You think this communications fade-out will continue until it lands safely?’

  ‘It’s not too wild an assumption.’

  ‘What would you like us to do then, Arnold? Put out flags?’ Fraser found it hard to resist a smile.

  ‘No, I agree with Chuck. I think we should be ready to defend ourselves if that proves necessary.’ His glasses didn’t need pushing back up his nose, but he pushed them back anyway. ‘I also happen to think that Man’s most powerful weapon is an open mind.’

  ‘Arnold,’ said Fraser, ‘the Defense Department has always encouraged scientific and intellectual curiosity.’

  Without which, thought Connors, we would never have had napalm…

  ‘Chuck?’ It was the President sounding out General Clayson.

  ‘I think we should keep our options open at this point in time. Right now we don’t have a great deal of choice. Tactically, we’re at a temporary disadvantage, but –’ Clayson smiled. ‘I’m trying to master my martial reflexes. Arnold’s right. We ought not to consider this situation simply in terms of offence and defence. I go along with his openminded policy, but I’m not too happy about open arms.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Fraser. ‘The Aztecs of Mexico welcomed Cortez with open arms. What happened? The Spaniards took them apart.’

  ‘They were taken apart by men like you and me,’ said Wedderkind. ‘The mistake the Aztecs made was in thinking that the Spaniards were gods. The one thing we can be almost sure about is that we’re not dealing with men. My guess is it’s a machine.’

  ‘That could be a helluva lot worse,’ said Wills.

  ‘The only thing worse than Man,’ said Wedderkind, ‘is a machine made by Man.’

  ‘That’s philosophy, not fact,’ said Fraser. ‘At this point, we don’t know where it is, what it is, or who it is.’

  ‘We’ve been calling it a lot of things,’ said the President. ‘From now on, I propose we use the code name “Crusoe”.’ The name had surfaced from his subconscious while the others had been speaking.

  It was an appropriate parallel. Connors smiled. ‘He was a fairly peaceful character.’

  ‘And he didn’t screw up the environment of the island he landed on,’ added Wedderkind.

  ‘Exactly.’ The President allowed himself a brief smile of satisfaction. ‘It may turn out to be wishful thinking, but right now, I’d like to think that the choice was intuitive.’

  ‘Let’s hope he’s read the book,’ said Fraser.

  Sunday/August 12

  OMAHA/NEBRASKA

  At eight o’clock on Sunday morning, Fraser took off from Friendship Airport north of Washington and headed westward aboard a privately-owned Learjet. The aeroplane had been discreetly loaned to Fraser by an old friend and major stockholder in an industrial conglomerate to which a recently-awarded defence contract had given the kiss of life.

  Fraser had got special clearance for his flight from the Air Force. As the Air Force was subordinate to the Department of Defense, it hadn’t been too difficult, but for the less fortunate on the ground below him, the temporary ban on all civil flying had really begun to bite.

  The airlines had been sweetened by a suggestion of financial support, but the owners of light planes, executive aircraft, and nonscheduled charter companies were already phoning their Congressmen and associations, and the luckless Federal Aeronautics Administration had been snowed under by a blizzard of protest wires. Not that the FAA needed any prompting. It had summoned representatives from the Civil Aeronautics Bureau, the Air Traffic Control Board, and the airlines to Washington to try and hammer out an emergency service that could be safely handled by the major airports and air crews using a medium-wave network. The meeting had got under way on Saturday morning and was still in progress. By the time Fraser took off, the fade-out had lasted for almost forty-eight hours. And it seemed to be getting worse.

  Two and a half hours later, the sleek white aeroplane crossed the Missouri, dipped its starboard wing over the sprawling stockyards of Omaha, then throttled back for the approach run into the Municipal Airport.

  The pilot turned off at the first taxiway and parked in front of the tower. As the fuselage door opened and the power steps unfolded, a lovingly-restored dark green Shelby Mustang, like Steve McQueen drove in ‘Bullitt’ a long, long time ago, pulled up by the port wing.

  Fraser zipped up his blue windbreaker. It had the badge of the ‘Big E’ sewn on the left breast. The captain of the Enterprise had given it to him to mark his stay aboard the carrier during Pacific fleet manoeuvres. The pilot opened the cabin locker and pulled out Fraser’s set of golf clubs. Fraser looked at his watch. It was 9:30 A.M. local time.

  ‘I’ll be back at three-thirty.’ Fraser ducked out of the door and waved to the driver of the Mustang as he walked down the steps. General Allbright got out of the car and took Fraser’s outstretched hand.

  ‘Mitch – great to see you.’

  ‘It’s been a long time,’ said Allbright. ‘How’s Joan?’

  ‘Furious because I didn’t bring her along. But she sends her love and says she’s just redone the guest room. I think she’s expecting you to use it.’

  ‘We’d love to, but we won’t be in Washington until November.’

  ‘Could be sooner,’ said Fraser. He ran his eye over the Mustang’s immaculate showroom finish. It was more than twenty years old but it was still the kind of car a man could leave home for.

  SPRING LAKE GOLF CLUB/OMAHA

  Allbright and Fraser trundled their golf carts up to the first green and got the game underway.

  As they progressed around the course, Fraser briefed Allbright on everything he knew about Crusoe and the crippling fade-out – whose effects had already caused Allbright so much trouble – and the course of action the White House had decided upon.

  ‘I know it’s a million-to-one outside chance, but if Crusoe does land in the USA in the circumstances I’ve described, the President is almost bound to let Connors go on masterminding the project. Wedderkind will be in on it too. Connors is working up some kind of cover with McKenna over at the CIA. You know what slippery bastards they are. I want to make sure there’s a military element in this operation. Chuck Clayson played it down the middle as usual, but it’s pretty clear that the Air Force is going to be involved. The plan is to get them to grab as much of the operation as possible. But in order to do that, Chuck is going to have to put up someone to organize the logistics of the operation, maintain security of the landing site, and who can, if necessary, take over if anything goes wrong. That means it has to be someone nobody is going to argue with. Someone like you, for instance.’

  Allbright looked surprised. ‘Why me?’

  ‘First, because we both believe in the same things,’ said Fraser. ‘Second, because this seat is even hotter than the one you’ve been sitting in for the last three years. I know that, compared to running SAC, it will be a real pinball operation, but for the next few weeks – or months – this is where the action is going to be. And it could turn out to be a lot more dangerous than anything the Russians could throw at us.’

  ‘I realize that,’ said Allbright. He thought for a moment. ‘How long are we going to stay at DefCon Status 3?’

  ‘Until the end of this emergency. You have a good man as vice-commander. He can hold the fort till you get back. We can cover your appointment by co-opting you on to the National Security Council till this problem gets straightened out.’ Fraser grinned. ‘At least Fran will enjoy being in Washington. I can’t guarantee where you’ll be.’

  ‘No…’

  ‘Will you take the job?’

  ‘Let me think about it while we finish the game,’ said Allbright.

  Fraser won by three strokes at eight over par for the course. For lunch, they worked through two charcoal-grilled T-bone steaks at the far table on the terrace.

  ‘What do you see as the real problem with the present setup?’ asked Allbright.

 
; ‘There’s a danger of Connors and, through him, the President, ending up in Wedderkind’s pocket. We can’t afford to let the scientists run away with this thing. Wedderkind is also buddies with the Old Man. He’s a real flimflam artist. He can dress up Doomsday and make it sound like as much fun as Halloween. You know what these guys are like, one minute they’re happy as sandboys building an atom bomb to blow Japan out of the water, next thing you know, they’re spilling their guts to the Russians so they can blow us out of the water.’ Fraser shook his head and cut into some more red meat. ‘That’s why I want someone in on this who is aware of the real priorities.’

  ‘But Connors will be in overall charge.’

  ‘On paper, yes. But while he’s out of town I plan to cut some of the ground from under him.’

  ‘From what you’ve said he sounds quite an operator.’

  ‘He’s a pretty smooth son of a bitch,’ admitted Fraser. ‘They call him Snoopy, over at State.’

  ‘What’s he like physically?’

  ‘Under medium height. A bit soft at the edges.’ Fraser chewed on his steak and searched for an apt but uncharitable description. ‘The kind of guy you find in a frilly shirt playing violin in a Hungarian restaurant.’

  ‘Can he be ignored just as easily?’ asked Allbright.

  ‘No, but whatever it says on paper, you’ll be the one in control on a day-to-day basis out there on the ground, backed up by your own people – and you’ll have a direct line to me. Connors and Wedderkind may be close to the Old Man, but you and I know what’s good for the country.’

  ‘I like to think we do,’ said Allbright.

  ‘Will you take the job, Mitch?’

  ‘Yes – if the President orders me to.’

  ‘He will,’ said Fraser. ‘But just remember one thing – it wasn’t my idea.’