by Mark Clifton
I did not know of the General Staff's decision to use the H-Bomb until later.
I picked up Sara from the Entourage Waiting Room, and we left. We were being driven by our respectful Space Cadet down an almost deserted street when the trumpet called up yonder.
With the first note he crimped the wheels sharply over to the curb, braked the car to a halt, and with a gasped, “I gotta report to the Parade Ground,” he slid out of the car and started running down the street. Apparently his Pavlovian response to a bugle call was in good working order, and apparently it had not been contemplated in his conditioning that he might ever be so far away from the parade ground when the bugle called that driving an automobile might have got him there faster. Naturally, since if he were that far away he couldn't hear the bugle call, could he? So the one-to-one response of “Run when you hear the bugle” had been deemed sufficient. He started running.
All this was the merest flash in my mind, as Sara and I climbed out of the car, for the golden notes flooding us filled us with an ecstasy to drive out every other thought.
Sara and I stood there on the curbing and gazed upward into the heavens.
There were the projectiles, dimly red in the night sky, seeming to draw together now. But high above them, apparently so high they still caught the light from the sun below our horizon, a new set of ships had appeared. Each an iridescent globe. They flew in a wing formation, a vast wing. It was like a wing of shining pearls.
They came closer. They began to shade into an iridescent blue.
And like the star sapphire, even at this distance we could see the symbol on each of them—a shining white cross of radiant light.
"Oh, Ralph,” Sara breathed. “How beautiful! They're the most beautiful things."
"Come on,” I gasped, and pulled at her arm. “Get under cover. They're going to attack the projectiles!"
I knew, I don't know how.
Standing in doorways, under awnings and canopies, leaning out of windows, the other people knew too. We ran, as people run in a drenching rain, to take shelter under an archway which led into an arcade of shops. Yet, no more than there, joining some others, we turned and craned our heads to look upward again. The protection of the arch was of less value than the sight. We stepped back out into the clear where we might see the whole dome of the sky. All thought of personal safety was lost in the sheer, blinding wonder of the spectacle above. We were dimly conscious that the other people, too, were creeping out of hiding places, to stand in the open streets, rapt in awe.
The vast wing of iridescent globes, at first so high it was like a piece of jewelry set with pearls, sapphires, opals, was now close. They were swooping downward, but without spin, twist, or obvious force. Somehow this movement without thrust of force heightened the illusion of their serenity. The symbol of their crossed, white lines gleamed brighter now, telling us it was not an effect of the distant sun, but a glow which came from within them, a radiant purity of purpose.
Yet the red projectiles had not been thrown into panic and confusion by the sudden appearance. Now it became clear to us people in the streets below why the discs had hovered and waited over the city all these hours. Through some source of their own, they must have known that the radiant globes were on their way to attack them. Sharply, with its own effortless burst of speed, but this time sinister rather than serene, the Black Fleet, black in the day and dull ember red in the night, the Black Fleet veered off in a long arc of flight; hurtled westward; formed into tight combat units of four or five ships each; faced around to meet the challenge.
We had first thought it was the flight of cowardice; now we realized it was the viciousness of the cornered rat.
Down in the streets below the people murmured their thoughts and hopes and fears to other people, man spoke to man, neighbor to neighbor, without first calibrating the number of pigment cells per square inch of skin, or demanding status credentials. The ground swell of conviction grew that this was not the first time these two alien forces had joined in battle. Had Milton in his dreams of Heavenly Hosts and Satan's Minions been visited with some reality of this long ago and far away? We knew, everyone knew, this was one of a long series of such engagements.
There was no question of whose side we were on, who we hoped would win, must win.
There grew the conviction this was the decisive encounter. This was to be no hit-and-run skirmish, settling nothing. No, this was it.
Either the Black Fleet must be vanquished or it must be driven so far away that it would never return to threaten Earth's people again. Where were the scoffers now who doubted that the universe had been constructed solely for the benefit of Man, and that Man, as its Supreme Achievement, must not be harmed?
On came the star-sapphire globes, huge now that they were near, leveling their dive enough to offset the enemy's shift to the west. It was obvious that the new path of descent would hurtle them headlong into the discs in a few seconds more.
Long tentacles of blood light flickered out from the projectiles like the darting tongues of snakes. In and out they flashed, so many they surrounded the discs, creating a deadly, protective screen of twisting, corrosive fire.
As if they could not stop, or had a courage beyond human comprehension, the vanguard shock unit of the globes smashed into the fire-tipped tentacles. And the impact flooded the streets below with a sound of molten steel being poured into icy water. There was a flare of intolerable blindness.
And when our eyes cleared and we could see again...
There was nothing left of the first wave of globes.
As if it possessed but one throat, one voice, from the city below there was one long groan of anguish.
Heroically, the other globes did not hesitate.
Another wave plunged into the writhing tentacles. This time the blinding flash seemed less. Perhaps, expecting it, we slitted our eyes against its coming? This time the destruction of the new wave of globes seemed not instantaneous, nor did they wink out completely. This time there were vapor clouds billowing white against the black heavens as the second shock unit more slowly disintegrated. It was destruction, but not so easy; perhaps no more than the force of an ordinary atomic bomb. The mushrooming clouds of vapor, boiling upward, seemed the same.
A third wave of globes came in. Ah, the courage, the guts! From the streets of the city there was the murmur of wonder, hope renewed. The evil rays of the discs seemed weaker the second time than the first, didn't they? Men asked this of one another and drew comfort from assurance and agreement.
The discs did not waver in their defensive formation. They seemed to draw a little closer together. A screen of dead black against the lighter sky flickered first, then joined ship to ship.
Our murmur of hope changed to a groan of despair.
Our despair was realized.
This time there was no sound of molten steel in icy water, no billowing clouds of vapor, no blinding flash of light. At first touch of the shining globes against the dead black blood screen, the globes were no more.
Yet not in vain. Now we saw one solitary globe still alive, coming from another direction, taking advantage of that instant when the Black Fleet had concentrated all its defensive screen against the wing of onrushing globes, somehow getting behind, inside the defensive screen.
To loose a violet-white radiance.
And for a long, interminable, hopeful instant, the radiance persisted. We saw four of the black ships explode into poison-fetid gobbets of rotten offal.
The other discs wavered, then the pack swarmed all over the gallant, lone globe. And still the hopeful instant endured the squirming nest of blood-black tentacles.
And then hope died.
The radiant light faltered, flickered. The globe surface seemed eaten away like swimming spots of black on an aged bubble.
Then, like the bursting of the bubble, it, too, was no more.
We clung together there in the street, Sara and I, drawing human comfort from the contact, staring upward,
staring upward, completely engrossed in the titanic battle—the incredible heroism of the globes—the incredible power and malignancy of the discs to withstand them. The ache of our shoulders and necks was as nothing in the throat pain of our apprehension.
It seemed not to occur to anyone, then, to wonder that the air about us was still fresh and clean, that we had felt no atmospheric shocks, that there were no falling objects of debris, that even the scabrous gobbets of offal from the exploded discs had somehow disappeared before reaching Earth.
High in the heavens, another wing of pearls appeared.
"This time they must win, they must!” Sara was moaning.
As with the previous wing, this one sank toward Earth and battle.
Then hesitated!
Wavered in indecision!
Then seemed to withdraw. A long, wailing groan from the city below seemed surely enough to reach up to them. How high can a prayer fly?
"No-o-o! Oh-no-o-o!” Sara was echoing the groans of despair all about us. “They can't give up! They must not fail us now!"
"They won't!” I exclaimed in complete certainty. “You'll see!” And then I added something all out of context with how I felt, how we all felt. Something which filled me with self-loathing, made me despise myself. “The script calls for it,” I said.
And fortunately no one heard me. Not even Sara.
And I was right.
As the jeweled wing faltered, seemed about to break apart in confusion, the discs shot forward, lured out of their protective formation, blazed their blood-red rays outward for the kill.
And a score of the globes, darting away in all directions, as if utterly demoralized, suddenly reversed direction at incredible speed and converged upon the now scattered discs. From high above, wing after wing of globes swept in until the sky was filled, crowded with darting globes and discs, enjoined now in mortal conflict of individual duel.
As if some protecting screen of our own had rotted and burst (or as an afterthought?), now, all at once, our own atmosphere was sulphurous with choking gases. We felt the blasts of heated air sweep down. Yet, after our first panic flight back to protecting overhangs, our first surprise that we still lived, not unendurable.
And then somehow to increase our sense of participation, identification with the battle.
The dueling battle endured. How long? How long?
Time had ceased to exist. Body need had ceased to exist.
And yet, involuntarily must have asserted itself. For, at some time, during the night, I became conscious that Sara and I were now sitting on the curb, leaning against a lamppost between us, bracing ourselves so that we, too, might endure as long as the battle.
All about us were the dim shapes of other people, some still standing, some sitting as we were, some lying supine with moist eyes wide and reflecting the vault of darting lights above. No one slept or wanted sleep.
Sometime during the night (perhaps in early morning hours?) the arena of battle moved toward the west. Now it was centered no longer over the city. Now it was fading over the horizon.
Now it was gone.
"We're not to know how it comes out?” Sara murmured plaintively, querulously.
"We'll know,” I said strongly. And this time caught my following, despicable remark before it left my throat. “This is the intermission."
I started to say, “Let's go out into the lobby to get some popcorn,” but had sense enough to change it into something rational.
"However it comes out, Sara, you and I will have a hard day at the Pentagon tomorrow. We may get no sleep, but we should try to find something to eat. We have to keep going."
We were lucky that the thought occurred to us before it had to many others. We stood up, stretched our aching muscles, and with stiff, unwieldy legs we threaded our way through the dazed and huddled groups of people to the community kitchen. We hadn't expected to find any attendants on duty, but the cybernetic cooking machinery was apparently unresponsive to the battle going on over our heads. Nor had there been a complete breakdown in supplying the machines with the raw produce.
Coins in the beef-stew slot produced the usual containers which would be taken home and consumed, container and all, in front of the television set; or for oddballs stranded in a strange community, as we were, consumed at some tables here in front of the kitchen television set.
A montage program was in progress to bring us up to date. Everywhere the battle was the same, everywhere it followed the same pattern. Everywhere it had moved away over the horizon to the west. What we had seen here in Washington had been witnessed over every large city on Earth. No one commented on this strange coincidence.
For all her usual sharpness, Sara seemed not to have caught it either. I held my peace. I was a cynical so-and-so. It was not the first time I had found myself out of step with the prevailing mood. I had learned my lesson long ago. I knew something of mob reaction, I'd seen it. I knew how little it took to turn an overwrought, tense collection of individuals into a ravening mob, all acting in one accord of insane fury, possessed by a superentity created through interaction and feedback of emotions, given brief life of uncalculated power, taking possession of the individuals, turning them into body cells of the entity, playing out the tragic role before the individual mind could recoil in horror from its acts, shatter the group accord and destroy the entity—after the deed had been done.
I held my peace.
But I no longer believed. I no longer believed that anything we had seen was real. I didn't know what it was. I had no idea of any power which could produce an illusion of instantaneous world-wide scope; nor, as yet, the purpose of doing it. I was convinced only that it wasn't what it seemed, that it was, indeed, an illusion. That it was some kind of universal brain-wash.
I looked sharply at Sara. I looked at the handful of people who had also thought of food and strayed into this kitchen. All of them were following, straining to follow, the words of the television commentator. All of them completely hooked. How had I escaped? Why was I immune to the bait? Was it because a long and heavy career of working with great numbers of people, handling them, manipulating them, causing them to respond in the manner I chose—and discouraged and sickened with them because they did respond, because they had too little critical judgment of manipulative patterns to prevent them from responding—had this given me an insight? Was it that? Or was it some basic flaw in me, which moved me ever so slightly out of phase with my own kind; never again to be as one with them?
How well I understood the contempt of the politician for his constituents, the advertising man for those who bought his product, the entertainment producer for those who became enrapt with his creation. And yet, were not these shaped and debased as much by those to whom they pandered, as were their masses shaped and debased by them? By striving to pander to the widest appeal, the lowest common denominator, did they succeed in anything beyond lowering and debasing even that?
I knew some of the writers and producers around Hollywood. I was not particularly critical of them for giving the public what it demanded. Anything-for-a-buck had become the national way of life. But I had been horrified that, although they maintained a superior attitude and a condescension toward the low level of the public mind, their own taste and critical judgment became debased by their output until they, themselves, began to think it was good. They, themselves, became the victims of their own illusions.
Why was I immune? I could not even join with these!
We were breaking apart the flaky, flavorsome container, designed as the finishing touch to the meal, and chewing it slowly, when a cacophony of voices from the street penetrated the open door and overwhelmed the voice of the television commentator.
"They're coming back! Ah-h-h! They're coming back."
Outside, on the street again, we saw it for ourselves. Yes, they were coming back.
In spite of the thoughts I had had, sitting there in the kitchen and watching the others while they watched the television, in spit
e of this I felt my pulses quicken, my heart begin to pound, a choking gladness. There was something even while my intellect held back—and the emotional responses began to erode, to wash over, to drown the critical judgment.
Yes, they were coming back. And I lifted to them, eager to meet them. All around me the people were lifting. Everyone was on his feet now, with their eyes turned toward the west, straining toward the west.
But as the battle forces drew closer, the rising hope and excitement changed again to dread and despair. The globes were pitifully few now, so pitifully few. Still outnumbered. Still outpowered. Still having only one weapon superior—their sheer, incredible, valiant courage.
Now we could see the projectiles make their move, almost as if we could enter that evil, alien mind, we could see them make their decision that now it was time to move in and crush the radiant globes—utterly. So, like an angry den of snakes, squirming and writhing, they swarmed all over the globes, inundating them.
And still a few, a pitiful few, of the globes escaped somehow. Escaped, but not to flee. Escaped, but only to turn and re-engage their enemy.
They began to win.
The faces of the people in the street were slack with awe. Their glistening eyes were sick with hope denied, hope still struggling to hope. To despair again and again, all through the night, and now, with the first breath of silver in the eastern sky to see the tide turn. Dared they hope? This time, if despair swamped it once more, the very roots of hope would die.
Yet hope they must.
And now I knew.
What I had not known before. Why the constituents voted in the politician. Why they bought the advertiser's product. Why they even supported Hollywood's shabby little travesty.
Better to have hope and faith that sometimes ... maybe...
Than none.
Now I knew the meaning.
The deed proved the virtue. The virtue proved the deed.
If your heart is pure, your cause is just, your strength is great, and your purpose firm; you can overcome the obstacles in your path to reach your heart's desire.
