When They Come from Space

by Mark Clifton

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  CHAPTER TWO

  Old Stone Face, at his half acre of desk and surrounded by the rich walnut panels glowing warm in the muted indirect light, was confident that one telephone call would straighten it all out for me. I didn't often ask his help in running my department, to say nothing of my personal affairs, and he seemed glad to demonstrate he could do things I couldn't. He was willing for me to sit down and watch how much weight he could swing around the Pentagon.

  But as the series of frustrating telephone calls wore out the long morning, he progressed from high confidence, to exasperation, to self-disciplined patience, to bewilderment, to anger, to defeat.

  He sat back finally in his overstuffed chair, beetled his heavy brows, and peered at me suspiciously across the desk.

  "You say you didn't apply for the job. Let's say I believe you."

  I straightened up from a weary slouch and raised my hand in the scout-oath position.

  "Wouldn't have done you any good if you had,” he rumbled from somewhere down in the granite façade. “After some of the things you've done to some of those officers, you'd have been turned down like a shot. They all agree with me that the sheer safety of our nation depends on keeping you away from the Pentagon. They emphatically would go far beyond the call of duty to keep you away. After some of the things you've done to them."

  "Well, then?” I asked. I might not be exactly flattered, but at least it looked hopeful.

  "So they're all hot to intercede until I mention it is Space Navy. Then they cool down a bit."

  "But Space Navy still speaks to the rest of them, doesn't it? At the top, of course."

  "Then when I mention it is the Extraterrestrial Psychology Department they back off and want no part of trying to spring you. Sandfordwaithe says maybe they need you in that department after all, that no sacrifice is too great for the rest of the Pentagon, if ... He didn't say, if what. Something's going on, and they're as skittish as an old maid in a pool hall.” I didn't smile. I have never been accused of being an organization man.

  "All those jabbing pool cues..."

  "I know, I got the picture,” I said sourly. “I'm thinking there's now just forty-four more hours until I'm court-martialed for high treason. I'm practically swinging from the gallows tree, and you're daydreaming about ... Well, so what'm I going to do?"

  "Guess you'd better make the trip,” he said slowly. “Somehow I think maybe Computer Research wouldn't have to close its doors if you were gone for a day or so. You go see this bird, this Kibbie fellow. You tell him, in person, you're not the man he thought you were. Soon as he sees you, he'll believe it. But it looks like it has to be in person. I can't get even a general or an admiral to so much as call him on the phone."

  "And I saw the run-around you got when you tried to get through to Kibbie yourself,” I had to admit. “So I suppose I'd better go. On expense account?"

  He rared up at that.

  "It's your personal neck,” he roared. “Why should the company have to pay for saving it?"

  "Now, Henry.” I looked at him and shook my head sadly.

  "Oh, all right. I'll set it up. I was going to, anyway.” There was a fleeting crack in the granite of his face. He'd been kidding me—I hoped. He settled back comfortably in his chair.

  "I wonder what's going on?” he mused thoughtfully, and put his finger tips together. “There's something they're not telling us. You find out what it is, Ralphie, my boy."

  I sprang up out of my chair as if I'd been stung.

  "Yeah,” I said coldly, bitterly, and stood glaring down at him. “And see if we can't get the job of making a computer to solve it, whatever it is. You couldn't possibly pay my expenses just because it's me; just because of all the years I've worked my heart out for dear old Computer Research."

  I whirled around angrily and started for the door. His voice, slow and measured, followed me, stopped me.

  "We got a Board of Directors,” he was saying. “We got Stockholders. If it took one lousy nickel out of their pockets to save you, they'd see you hang without batting an eye. You know that, well as I do. But now, say, suppose it was my best judgment to send you to Washington to drum up some more business..."

  I turned around and stared at him, incredulous. Far down in the glacial ice blue of his eyes I thought I detected the faintest possible gleam of affection.

  "You'd better watch that, Henry,” I advised professionally, and was astonished to find my throat was tight. “You might turn into a human being if you're not careful."

  He stood up and came around the desk. He held out his hand. It was a momentous occasion. In all the years, I couldn't remember ever having shaken hands with him before. Although once, at a séance, he'd let me take hold of his hand—the time I established that he had extrasensory powers. Looking back, now, I wonder if he had some premonition, even then, that I wouldn't be back. I hadn't. Even with all my experience in dealing with the military, I was still thinking it was a little error I could clear up with a few words of explanation once I got to the right person.

  It took me an hour to set up the routines of my department to cover my absence for the next couple of days. I had a good assistant who could step in, although I hoped not too perfectly, and with Sara's help...

  It took me the next hour to rush over to my bachelor's apartment to throw some overnight things into a bag. And fight off the usual temptation to overload it by reminding myself that there surely must be stores in Washington, just as here.

  Another precious hour to get over to the airport. Two more of pulling strings and fighting clerical red tape to get a seat on one of the planes which usually left half empty anyway. The airlines were still running to suit the convenience of the clerks rather than the customers. Once in the air, something less than an hour to fly the three thousand miles across the continent, but more than another hour to get from the Washington airport to the Pentagon building.

  That left me thirty-seven hours to find the right department, which was shaving it pretty fine.

  Even Space Navy; after another long hassle of my trying to tell them I wasn't Dr. Kennedy, and their stubbornly maintaining that I was; and the still-longer procedures of signing me in and clearing me for low-level security; weren't sure they ought to let me in on the secret of how to find Dr. Frederick Kibbie.

  But they were damned sure they would court-martial me if I didn't find him. Something was, indeed, going on.

  * * * *

  Security prevents me from Revealing the Word of how to find the Department of Extraterrestrial Life Research in the Pentagon. Not that the top hierarchy of Russia doesn't know where it is down to the square inch, but John Q. Public, who pays the bills, mustn't be told.

  And there are reasons.

  Take away the trappings of security regulations, and our special qualifications to meet them, and what have we got left to mark us as superior to the common herd? It's a status symbol, pure and simple, and the gradations from Confidential on up to Q.S. have nothing whatever to do with enemy spies—they merely mark the status relationship of the elect within the select. And, after this passage of events I am about to relate, since I am now one of the, THE, Q.S., and have the awesome weight of knowing things that even—well, I mustn't reveal who isn't allowed to know what I know—I guess that makes me pretty hot. Sometimes even Sara (yes, I had to send for her) begins to show signs of going Government in her attitude toward me.

  But once inside the department door, it was pretty much the same as any other suite of offices. There was first an anteroom where a narrow-eyed and suspicious young man examined the sheaf of credentials Space Navy Personnel had prepared for me while running me through their dehydrated equivalent of six weeks in boot camp. Reluctantly, he passed me on to the next anteroom, where a secretary's secretary confirmed that I had an appointment. In the next room the Secretary, himself, pretended he'd never heard of me, and we had it all to go through again. Of course I insisted to each one of them
that a mistake had been made, that I was the wrong man, that I should be turned away and not allowed to see Dr. Kibbie, and that may have hurried the process of letting me through.

  When I grew especially vehement with the Secretary that they were all making a mistake and would regret it, he shuffled through the remaining papers in a hurry, stood up, and walked over to open The Door.

  Against my will, I liked Dr. Kibbie as soon as I stepped inside his office. He was rushed, but he was cordial. It was evident he had a thousand things on his mind, but he was willing to give me that thousandth part of his mind which was my rightful share.

  He was about twenty years older than I, around fifty-eight to sixty, I'd say. I'm tall and thin, he was short and round. I'm dark-haired and can still wear it in the young-blade fashion of the day; he was shiny bald with a gray fringe around the sides and back. I'm inclined to be a little dour at times, so they tell me; he was as phony happy and bouncy as a marriage counselor—and, at once, I suspected he was about as useful.

  He had that open enthusiasm, that frank revealment of the superior con-man, as he told me all about his department and its four hundred employees.

  Four hundred employees to do research on life forms which hadn't yet been discovered. I, personally, wouldn't have known what to do with them all, but this was government. They were all working like little beavers on fancy charts and graphs, statistics and analyses—covering something which doesn't exist—which is about par for government, which models its approach to reality from the academic.

  Mainly because I couldn't find a pause to interrupt, I let him finish the quick once-over of his department, since it was apparent he liked to talk about all the wonderful things they were thinking of doing. Then I dropped my bomb.

  I wasn't the right man for the job—whatever it might be!

  Apparently that thousandth part of his mind he was giving me wasn't enough for him to grasp that I meant I was the wrong Kennedy.

  "Now, now, now, Dr.!” he chattered absently, hurriedly, and bounced out of his executive chair to pace about the room. “We haven't time for the usual polite self-deprecations. All very commendable, of course. Shows you had the proper training. Gives me confidence in you. Understand your reluctance to succeed where the rest of us have failed. Natural teamwork spirit. Commendable, most commendable. Ah yes, better to fail and keep the approval of your fellow scientists than to succeed and make enemies of them.

  "Proper attitude. Most acceptable. Proud to have you on my team, Dr. Kennedy. Knew you were just the man. Knew that right away."

  I leaned my elbow on his desk and braced my head with my hand. Too late, I realized what my procedure should have been. I should have told him I was eager for the job, just had to have it. That would have made him judiciously consider and reject me. I should have done it with Space Navy. Then they'd have been sure to find some reason why I couldn't make the grade.

  "...proper humility, modesty,” Kibbie was still rambling along. He whirled around and shook an admonitory finger at me, which made me lift my head again. “But that's all out now. For the duration. Can't afford to fail this time. Not even if the other scientists get peed off with you for admitting that you know whatever it is you know. In a war emergency, individuals have to rise to self-sacrifice. Martyrdom!"

  He beamed upon me proudly from the center of the room, where his feet had been following the intricate design of the rug, and struck a pose which might have appeared noble had not his round stomach, short legs, and pink complexion reminded me so much of a Kewpie doll won at a carnival booth.

  "What war emergency?” I was finally able to get down to the question.

  "Why—ah—” He looked startled, and then came to a quick recapitulation of my state of ignorance. For a moment I thought the added burden might be too much for him, but he shouldered it manfully. He gave up trying to step on each of the yellow dots in the rug, and paced in short, rapid steps over to the window, where he gazed at the impressive row of shining white government buildings stretching to the horizon. There was a silence while he collected his thoughts. Apparently he decided I could take the full brunt of it, all at once.

  "We're going out to Jupiter's moons!” He made the announcement portentous.

  "Of course,” I said indifferently. “So?"

  His face took on a hurt expression.

  "You already know that?” he asked, disappointed.

  "It's been in all the papers for days, weeks."

  "Those congressmen!” he exclaimed bitterly. “Always sucking up to news reporters, hoping they'll get their names in the papers or even mentioned on TV."

  "But anybody could have figured it out,” I consoled him. “We've already got contingents on Mars and Venus. We're not equipped to start mining the Asteroid belt just yet. The state of the art won't permit landing on Jupiter, itself. Naturally, its moons would be next."

  "I suppose you're right,” he agreed ruefully. “Not really much of a secret."

  "But what has that got to do with a war emergency?” I asked curiously.

  "Don't you see?” he admonished me, and shook his finger at me again. “We don't know much about those moons. What if there is some kind of life form there? What if it is technically advanced? What if it is hostile? What if we weren't prepared? So—a war emergency!"

  "Oh, come now!” I made no secret of my disgust. “That's going pretty extreme, even if you had a military mind—which you haven't."

  He looked at me piercingly, and then his eyes began to twinkle.

  "Shrewd!” he congratulated me. “Very shrewd. Oh, I knew you were the right man for me. Doesn't take you in for a minute. Took in that congressional committee without a murmur of doubt. Secret session of course. Very, very hush-hush. I asked for four billion. They gave me only two billion, so, later when it can be told, they can show the voters how economy minded they were. Paid me two billion dollars, well, for running my department, of course, for the status satisfaction of being in on something nobody else knows. In open session they wouldn't have given me a dime."

  "So the war emergency is just a con,” I said.

  He paced the floor for a moment more. His face was serious, drawn in worry.

  "No,” he said at last. “It's real.” He came across the room to stand at my elbow. “So now I'll tell you the real reason. The one known to the top men here in the Pentagon. The one we couldn't tell Congress because they're such blabbermouths, and so we had to con them."

  He took up his pursuit of the yellow dots in the rug design again while he assembled his thought.

  "Mustn't leak this to the reporters, son,” he began in a warning. “Public mustn't know, mustn't find out."

  "Why?” I asked.

  He drew a quick breath.

  "Oh my! Oh my! You really are from the Outside! Have to do something about that Outside attitude, right away. You're in government now. First rule of government of the people, by the people, for the people: Never tell the people!"

  He came over and stood in front of me. He peered at me through narrowed eyes. Apparently he was waiting for a loyalty oath. I raised my fingers in scout's honor. It seemed to satisfy him.

  "The Black Fleet has struck four times!” he whispered hoarsely.

  "The WHAT?” I shouted.

  "Sh-h-h!” he put his fingers to his lips hurriedly, and looked around the room.

  "The what?” I asked, more normally.

  "The Black Fleet."

  "What the hell is the Black Fleet?"

  He snapped his fingers in delight.

  "Good! Oh, good! Then that news hasn't leaked yet. Sometimes those generals and admirals are as anxious to get their names in the paper as a congressman.” He was as delighted as a child successfully playing button-button.

  "Tell you all about it,” he said.

  He came back and settled down in his chair behind his desk at last. My neck muscles appreciated it.

  "Best if we start at the beginning,” he said. “We'll review the charts and analyses o
f all my departments on it. You're going to need to know every detail. Because, as the expert in extraterrestrial psychology, that's your job.

  "To interpret what it all means.

  "To find out who they are.

  "What they are.

  "What they're up to."

  I waited, for he had spaced each item with a long impressive pause, and wasn't finished.

  "And how we can drive them off before the people find out that Earth has been invaded!"

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  CHAPTER THREE

  The announcement proved more impressive than the evidence.

  Dr. Kibbie's staff tried. He combined introduction of his various department heads with a full-dress presentation of their material; but since neither then nor later did I have more than the most casual relations with the men, their names remained only names.

  This half dozen or so assorted names brought in their charts and graphs, and charts and graphs explaining their charts and graphs. They produced maps and statistics and analyses, and analyses of maps and statistics and analyses. As the office walls, tables, desks, and even the floor became littered with these impressive evidences of loving labor, I began to get the feeling I was in a room of mirrors, where images of images were being repeated to infinity.

  One such chart I remember as being a prototype of most. It was the pride and joy of Dr. Er-Ah. Meticulously, beautifully drafted, it covered an entire worktable. He went to some pains to assure me that this was only the working copy, that the master remained locked in their vault except at times it was mandatory to make further entries upon it, after such entries had been charted and approved on the working copy.

  The purple vertical lines represented the hours. The red vertical lines represented the minutes. If I cared to verify the chart's accuracy, I would find there were always fifty-nine red lines in between the bolder purple lines. The still bolder black horizontal line represented the actual passage of time through the minutes and hours. The dotted pencil line, stretching out beyond the black horizontal, represented the prediction of time passage through the minutes and hours of the future.