The Second Fredric Brown Megapack: 27 Classic Science Fiction Stories

by Fredric Brown

  “And just how did I act with her? I danced with her, twice. Twice in a whole evening. Dammit, Ida, I’m getting sick of your acting this way. And beside—” Mr. Evans took a deep breath to go on, and thereby lost his chance. “Treat me like dirt. When we get back—”

  “All right, all right. If that’s the way you feel about it, why wait till we get back? If you think I’m enjoying—”

  Somehow that silence of only a fraction of a second on the radio stopped him. “And now a word from our sponsor…”

  And half a minute later, with the radio again playing Strauss, Wade Evans was still staring at it in utter bewilderment. Finally he said, “What was that?” Ida Evans looked at him wide-eyed. “You know. I had the funniest feeling that that was talking to us, to me? Like it was telling us to g-go ahead and fight, like we were starting to.”

  Mr. Evans laughed a little uncertainly. “Me, too. Like it told us to. And the funny thing is, now I don’t want to.” He walked over and turned the radio off. “Listen, Ida, do we have to fight? After all, this is our second honeymoon. Why not—listen, Ida, do you really want to go night-clubbing this evening?”

  “Well—I do want to see Singapore, a little, and this is our only night here, but—it’s early; we don’t have to go out right away.”

  I don’t mean of course, that everybody who heard that radio announcement was fighting, physically or verbally, or even thinking about fighting. And of course there were a couple of billion people who didn’t hear it at all because they either didn’t have radio sets or didn’t happen to have them turned on. But almost everybody heard about it. Maybe not all of the African pygmies or all of the Australian bushmen, no, but every intelligent person in a civilized or semicivilized country heard of it sooner or later and generally sooner.

  And the point is, if there is a point, that those who were fighting or thinking of fighting and who happened to be within hearing distance of a turned-on radio…

  Eight-thirty o’clock continued its way around the world. Mostly in jumps of an even hour from time-zone to time-zone, but not always; some time-zones vary for that system—as Singapore, on the half hour; as Calcutta, seven minutes short of the hour. But by regular or irregular intervals, the phenomenon of the word continued its way from east to west, happening everywhere at eight-thirty o’clock precisely.

  Delhi, Teheran, Baghdad, Moscow. The Iron Curtain, in 1954, was stronger, more impenetrable than it had ever been before, so nothing was known at the time of the effect of the broadcast there; later it was learned that the course of events there was quite similar to the course of events in Washington, D. C., Berlin, Paris, London…

  Washington. The President was in special conference with several members of the cabinet and the majority and minority leaders of the Senate. The Secretary of Defense was speaking, very quietly: “Gentlemen, I say again that our best, perhaps our only, chance of winning is to get there first. If we don’t, they will. Everything shows that. Those confidential reports of yours, Mr. President, are absolute proof that they intend to attack. We must—”

  A discreet tap on the door caused him to stop in mid sentence.

  The President said, “That’s Walter—about the broadcast,” and then louder, “Come in.”

  The President’s confidential secretary came in. “Everything is ready, Mr. President,” he said. “You said you wished to hear it yourself. These other gentlemen—?”

  The President nodded, “We’ll all go,” he said. He stood, and then the others. “How many sets, Walter?”

  “Six. We’ve turned them to six different stations; two in this time belt, Washington and New York; two in other parts of this country, Denver and San Francisco; two foreign stations, Paris and Tokyo.”

  “Excellent,” said the President. “Shall we go and hear this mysterious broadcast that all Europe and Asia are excited about?”

  The Secretary of Defense smiled. “If you wish. But I doubt we’ll hear anything. Getting control of the stations here—” He shrugged.

  “Walter,” said the President, “has there been anything further from Europe or Asia?”

  “Nothing new, sir. Nothing has happened there since eight-thirty, their time. But confirmations of what did happen then are increasing. Everybody who was listening to any station at eight-thirty heard it. Whether the station was in their time zone or not. For instance, a radio set in London which happened to be turned to Athens, Greece, got the broadcast at eight-thirty, London—that is, Greenwich—time. Local sets in Athens tuned to the same station had heard it at eight-thirty Athens time—two hours earlier.”

  The majority leader of the Senate frowned. “That is patently impossible. It would indicate—”

  “Exactly,” said the President drily. “Gentlemen, shall we adjourn to the room where the receiving sets have been placed? It lacks five minutes of—eight-thirty.”

  They went down the hall to a room hideous with the sound of six receiving sets tuned to six different programs. Three minutes, two minutes, one—Sudden silence for a fraction of a second. From six sets simultaneously the impersonal voice, “And now a word from our sponsor.” The commanding voice gave the one-word command.

  Then, again, the six radio sets blared forth their six different programs. No one tried to speak over that sound. They filed back into the conference chamber.

  The President looked at the Secretary of Defense. “Well, Rawlins?”

  The Secretary’s face was white. “The only thing I can think of that would account for it—” He paused until the President prodded him with another “Well?”

  “I’ll grant it sounds incredible, but—a space-ship? Cruising around the world at the even rate of its period of revolution—a little over a thousand miles an hour. Over each point which it passes—which would be at the same hour everywhere—it momentarily blanks out other stations and puts on its own broadcast.”

  The Senate’s majority leader snorted. “Why a space ship? There are planes that can travel that fast.”

  “Ever hear of radar? With our new installations along the coast anything going over up to a hundred miles high would show. And do you think Europe hasn’t radar too?”

  “And would they tell us if they spotted something?”

  “England would. France would. And how about all our ships at sea that the thing has already passed over?”

  “But a space ship!”

  The President held up his hand. “Gentlemen. Let’s not argue until we have the facts. Reports from many sources are even now coming in and being sifted and evaluated. We’ve been getting ready for this for over fifteen hours now and I’ll see what’s known already, if you’ll pardon me.”

  He picked up the telephone at his end of the long conference table, spoke into it briefly and then listened for about two minutes before he said, “Thank you,” and replaced the receiver.

  Then he looked straight down the middle of the conference table as he spoke. “No radar station noticed anything out of the ordinary, not even a faint or blurred image.” He hesitated. “The broadcast, gentlemen, was heard uniformly in all areas of the Eastern Time Zone which have daylight saving. It was uniformly not heard in areas which do not have daylight saving, where it is now seven-thirty P.M.”

  “Impossible,” said the Secretary of Defense.

  The President nodded slowly. “Exactly. Yet certain reports from borders of time zones in Europe led us to anticipate it, and it was checked carefully. Radio receivers were placed, in pairs, along the borders of certain zones. For example, a pair of receivers were placed at the city limits of Baltimore, one twelve inches within the city limits, the other twelve inches outside. Two feet apart. They were identical sets, identically tuned to the same station, operated from the same power source. One set received ‘a word from our sponsor’; the other did not. The set-up is being maintained for another hour. But I do not doubt that—” He glanced at his wrist watch. “—forty-five minutes from now, when it will be eight-thirty o’clock in the non-daylight-sav
ing zones, the situation will be reversed; the broadcast will be received by the set outside the daylight saving zone border and not by the similarly tuned set just inside.”

  He glanced around the table and his face was set and white. “Gentlemen, what is happening tonight all over the world is beyond science—our science, at any rate.”

  “It can’t be,” said the Secretary of Labor. “Damn it, Mr. President, there’s got to be an explanation.”

  “Further experiments—much more delicate and decisive ones—are being arranged, especially for the non-daylight-saving areas of the Pacific Time Zone, where we still have four hours to arrange them. And the top scientists of California will be on the job.” The President took out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead. “Until we have their reports and analyses, early tomorrow morning, shall we adjourn, gentlemen?”

  The Defense Secretary frowned. “But, Mr. President, the purpose of our conference tonight was not to discuss this mysterious broadcast. Can we not get back to the original issue?”

  “Do you really think that any major step should even be contemplated before we know what happened tonight—is happening tonight, I should say?”

  “If we don’t start the war, Mr. President, need I point out again who will? And the tremendous—practically decisive—advantage of taking the first step, gaining the offensive?”

  “And obey the order in the broadcast?” growled the Secretary of Labor. “Why not? Weren’t we going to do just that anyway, because we had to?”

  “Mr. Secretary,” the President said slowly. “That order was not addressed to us specifically. That broadcast was heard—is being heard—all over the world, in all languages. But even if it was heard only here, and only in our own language, I would certainly hesitate to obey a command until I knew from whom that command came. Gentlemen, do you fully realize the implications of the fact that our top scientists, thus far at any rate, could not conceivably duplicate the conditions of that broadcast? That means either one of two things: that whoever produced the phenomenon is possessed of a science beyond ours, or that the phenomenon is of supernatural origin.”

  The Secretary of Commerce said softly, “My God.”

  The President looked at him. “Not unless your god is either Mars or Satan, Mr. Weatherby.”

  The hour of 8:30 P.M. had, several hours before, reached and passed the International Date Line. It was still 8:30 P.M. somewhere but not of June 9th, 1954. The mysterious broadcast was over.

  It was dawn in Washington, D. C. The President, in his private office, was still interviewing, one after another, the long succession of experts who had been summoned—and brought by fast planes—to Washington for the purpose.

  His face was haggard with weariness, his voice a trifle hoarse.

  “Mr. Adams,” he said to the current visitor, “you are, I am given to understand, the top expert on electronics—particularly as applied to radio—in this country. Can you offer any conceivable physical explanation of the method used by X?”

  “X?”

  “I should have explained; we are now using that designation for convenience to indicate the—uh—originator of the broadcast, whether singular or plural, human, extraterrestrial, or supernatural—either diabolical or divine.”

  “I see. Mr. President, it could not have been done with our knowledge of science. That is all I can say.”

  “And your conclusion?”

  “I have none.”

  “Your guess, then.”

  The visitor hesitated. “My guess, Mr. President, outrageous as it seems, is that somewhere on Earth exists a cabal of scientists of whom we do not know, who have operated in secret and carried electronics a step—or several steps—beyond what is generally known.”

  “And their purpose?”

  “I would say, again a guess, their purpose is to throw the world into war to enable them to take over and rule the world. Indubitably, they had other—and more deadly—devices for later use, after a war has weakened us.”

  “Then you do not believe war would be advisable?”

  “My God, no, Mr. President!”

  “Mr. Everett,” said the President. “Your theory of a cabal of scientists corresponds with one I heard only a few minutes ago from a colleague of yours. Except for one thing. He believes that their purpose is evil—to precipitate war so they can take over. You believe, if I understand you correctly, that their purpose is benevolent.”

  “Exactly, sir. For one thing, if they’re that good in electronics, they’re probably that good in other fields. They wouldn’t need to precipitate a war in order to take over. I think they are operating secretly to prevent war, to give mankind a chance to advance. But they know enough of human nature to know that men are pretty apt to do the opposite of what they are told. But that’s psychology, which is not my field. I understand you are also interviewing some psychologists?”

  “Yes,” said the President, wearily.

  “Then, if I understand you correctly, Mr. Corby,” said the President, “you believe that the command to fight was designed to produce the opposite effect, whoever gave it?”

  “Certainly, sir. But I must admit that all of my colleagues do not agree with me. They make exceptions.”

  “Will you explain the exceptions?”

  “The major one is the possibility that the broadcast was of extra-terrestrial origin. An extra-terrestrial might or might not know enough of human psychology to realize that the command in question is likely—if not certain—to have the opposite effect. A lesser possibility is that—if a group of Earth scientists, operating secretly, produced the broadcasts, they might have concentrated on the physical sciences as against the mental, and be ignorant of psychology to the extent that—well, they would defeat their purpose.”

  “Their purpose being to start war?”

  “Not my opinion, Mr. President. Only a consideration. I think they are trying to prevent war.”

  “In which case the command was psychologically sound?”

  “Yes. And that is not opinion solely. Mr. President, people have been awake all night organizing peace societies, not only here, but all over the world.”

  “All over?”

  “Well—we don’t know, of course, what is going on behind the Iron Curtain. And circumstances are different there. But in my opinion, a movement for peace will have arisen there, too, although it may not have been able to organize, as elsewhere.”

  “Suppose, Mr. Corby, your idea of a group of benevolent scientists—or ones who think they are benevolent scientists—are back of it. What then?”

  “What then? We’d damn well better not start a war—or anybody else either. If they’re that good in electronics, they’ve got other stuff. They’ll like as not utterly destroy whatever country makes an aggressive move first!”

  “And if their purpose is malevolent?”

  “Are you joking, Mr. President? We’d be playing right into their hands to start a war. We wouldn’t last ten days.”

  “Mr. Lykov, you are recommended to me as the top expert on the psychology of the Russian people under Communism. What is your opinion as to how they will react to what happened last night?”

  “They’re going to think it’s a Capitalist plot. They’re going to think we did it.”

  “What purpose could they conceivably think we had?”

  “To trap them into starting a war. Of course they intended to start one anyway—it’s just been a question of which of us started it first, now that, since their development of atomics, they’ve had time to stock-pile—but they probably think right now that for some reason we want them to make the first move. So they won’t; at least not until they’ve waited a while.”

  “General Wilkinson,” said the President, “I know it is early for you to have received many reports as yet from our espionage agents in Europe and Asia, but the few that you have received—indicate what?”

  “That they’re doing just what were doing, sir. Sitting tight and wondering. There
have been no troop movements, either toward borders or away from them.”

  “Thank you, General.”

  “Dr. Burke,” said the President, “I have been informed that the Council of United Churches has been in session all night. From the fact that you look as tired as I feel, I judge that is correct.”

  The most famous minister in the United States nodded, smiling faintly. “And is it your opinion—I mean the opinion of your council—that last night’s occurrence was of supernatural origin?”

  “Almost unanimously, Mr. President.”

  “Then let’s ignore the minority opinion of your group and concentrate on what you almost unanimously believe. Is it that the—we may as well call it miracle, since we are discussing it on the assumption that it was of supernatural origin—was of divine or diabolical origin? More simply, was it God or the devil?”

  “There, Mr. President, we have an almost even split of opinion. Approximately half of us believe that Satan accomplished it somehow. The other half that God did. Shall I outline briefly the arguments of either faction?”

  “Please.”

  “The Satan group. The fact that the command was an evil one. Against the argument that God is sufficiently more powerful than Satan to have prevented the manifestation, the Satan group countered quite legitimately that God—in his infinite wisdom—may have permitted it, knowing the effect is likely to be the reverse of what Satan intended.”

  “I see, Dr. Burke.”

  “And the opposing group. The fact that, because of the perversity of human nature, the ultimate effect of the command is going to be good rather than stupid. Against the Satan group’s argument that God could not issue an evil command, even for a laudable purpose, the counter-argument is that man cannot understand God sufficiently to place any limitation whatever upon what He can or cannot, would or would not, do.”

  The President nodded. “And does either group advocate obeying the command?”

  “Definitely not. To those who believe the command came from Satan, disobedience is automatic. Those who believe the command came from God aver that those who believe in Him are sufficiently intelligent and good to recognize the command as divine irony.”