by Ira Tabankin
Everett noticed a dull green patch covering a large portion of Kalteck’s right arm. He pointed at the arm, “What happened to your arm?”
“Did you really believe my one ship against the enemy and their allies wouldn’t take some damage. The healing patch will complete mending my muscle and skin within a month.”
“Were you badly injured? Do you want me to call the base doctor? I can swear him to secrecy…”
“You want me to be treated by one of your witch doctors? I thought we were friends. Will he want to bleed me or place leeches on my arm? I will heal quick enough. My larger problem is repairing the damage to my ship. I can’t repair it in orbit. I also need some lab equipment to grow additional nanites. Most of mine were sucked into space when the hull of my ship was breached.”
“Let me show you our new secure hanger I had built in case you ever needed to land your ship or multiple pods.”
“That’s why the President placed you in charge. By the way, how is President Truman?”
“He is fine, he’s been very concerned about you. I told him you returned last night. I didn’t tell him you had been wounded because you were wearing a spacesuit when you exited the pod and I didn’t see your damaged arm.”
“Please set up a time for us to meet him. Maybe he can visit us here and he can bring your military leader. Forgive me, I forgot the title.”
“Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. We have a new one, General of the Army, General Omar Bradley…”
“Ah, excellent, I know his background, a warrior. I like this. I assume the general knows of me and your real assignment?”
“He does, I briefed him just a couple of weeks ago. He was, to put it mildly, shocked.” Laughed Everett.
“What’s so funny? I seem to remember you and President Truman also being shocked. Has Chairman Stalin been well behaved?”
“Yes, he’s been a very good commie.”
“Do not laugh at being a communist. There are a lot of planets who have political systems similar to your communism. All are very militarist. A few are even allies with my people.”
“I’m sorry. What can you tell me about what you saw and did?”
“I think it is better if I tell my story once. Let me know when the President and General will arrive. In the meantime, I will rest for a few more hours and then please show me the new hangar. If the hangar works, then tonight, I will bring my ship down so I can begin repairs. I think the ship will make a good background for our meeting. None of you have seen what one of our complete ships look like.”
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Kalteck stood in the middle of the large hanger. “What are the walls made of?”
“Steel reinforced concrete. The outside has been layered with sheet steel to look like any other hangar. There is an elevator large enough, or I hope large enough to take your ship to the labs under the hangar.”
“How did you determine how large my ship was?”
“I did some extrapolation based on the debris area back in New Mexico, and the debris that we recovered. I had all of it shipped here. Would you like to see it?”
“Yes. Please.”
“There are five basement levels. Your ship’s debris is on level five. The elevator will take us down. The elevators only work for people who insert their special ID cards into experimental readers. Anyone without a card will be locked in the elevator.”
Kalteck smiled, “You’ve done better than I had any hope of. You will make my repair efforts much easier. I think it’s time for a beer which I’ve missed since I’ve been away.”
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Three days later, President Truman and General Bradley paid an inspection visit to the expanded Air Force Base. They’d requested a private evening to consult with General Yahnig who’s offices were on the other side of the base. The base’s commanding general couldn’t understand why the President and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCOS) would want to speak with a one-star who commanded a useless project, but he didn’t open his mouth. Four Air Force Air Police officers drove the President and General to the new wall, which separated the base from Project Blue Book’s offices. Everett met them and drove them to his headquarters building, which was in the new secure hanger. They entered the massive hanger, which was empty, except General Bradly noticed recent deep scuff marks on the new hangar floor. “General, have you dragged something very large in here already?”
“Sir, something like that. If you would give me a few moments, everything will become clear. We have to take the elevator down to the fifth sub-level.”
Truman smiled when General Bradley stopped mid-step when he saw Kalteck standing in the hall outside of the elevator. Truman held out his hand, “Hello again, Kalteck, it has been too long since we last met.”
“Mr. President, it is good to see you again. This must be the famous General of the Army Omar Bradley. It is my distinct pleasure to meet such a warrior as you. Sir, from one warrior to another, welcome to our little lab.”
Bradley stared at Kalteck, “You’re an alien, a real alien from the stars.”
“Yes, and you’re an earthling from the third planet from the star you call your sun. So that makes me an alien from your point of view and you one from mine.”
General Bradley broke out laughing. “You’ve got me there. I guess you’re the reason our weapon development has taken a giant leap forward in the past few years. I also guess you have a reason for helping us and my gut is telling me I’m not going to like it.”
“Mr. President, I like this one.”
“Good, because I trust him with our security.”
Kalteck laughed, “Mr. President, Generals, why don’t we continue in the conference room, we’ll be much more comfortable there. After we chat, I assume you’d like to see what one of our ships looks like.”
Truman smiled, “All the comforts of home. I assume you have fresh coffee? You have one of your ships here? How? Where?”
Everett smiled, “Yes, sir. We designed the hanger above us to have a hinged roof. Kalteck simply lowers his ship into the hanger, we close the roof, vent the heat, and then the floor becomes a giant elevator that brings the ship down here. Currently, Kalteck has been repairing his ship, he got into a little dogfight up in space…”
“Not a little dogfight General. It was four against one and I took out three of them before the fourth hit my ship before running away.”
General Bradley kept looking around, “Where is the ship? I really can’t wait to see a real flying saucer. Is it fast?”
“Very, you can’t imagine how fast. I traveled through your solar system and fought five battles in the months I was gone. I was able to fly to Mars, fight a battle, and return to contact General Yahnig in a month.”
Bradley’s mouth hung open, “You flew to Mars and back in a month? How is that possible?”
Kalteck laughed, “That’s not all. I then flew back to Mars. I stopped at what you call the asteroid belt to pick up comet minerals for my nanites. I refueled in Jupiter’s orbit, fought a battle, then followed a trail to Pluto where I got jumped.”
Truman asked, “Your old enemy is here? I thought they weren’t due for years, many years. Why are they here already? Is that why you asked to see us?”
“No, Mr. President, not my old enemy. These were allies of my enemy. This is worse. These allies have large triangle ships. They are crewed by a race of beings that look like a cross between your octopus and a dragon. They are very dangerous. They live to kill. My enemy wants the earth for its resources and to make you their slaves. The aliens I fought are called, a name your tongues can’t pronounce, so just call them the Xs. They will want to eat you. Then they’ll suck every erg of energy from the Earth and will suck up every drop of water from the planet. When they are finished, there won’t be a living thing on the Earth. Your lovely blue planet will be a dead, blackened rock orbiting its star. When my enemy arrives and finds the Earth destroyed, they will track the destruction back, and then they will destroy the Xs. The battle will
spread across many systems, but it will have already been too late for you humans.”
Bradley asked, “How do we stop them?”
“That’s why I asked you to join us here so we could discuss the situation. Our time may be running out. My attack gave them pause, but they will return. I have a plan, one that is going to take enormous resources and planetary will. It’s also going to rely on a little, you call it, sleight of hand. We’re going to make the Xs think my enemy is already in control of Earth, and if they come here, my enemy will destroy their home planet.”
Bradley smiled, “I understand that plan. What is it you want us to do that will cost so much?”
Kalteck looked at Truman, Bradley, and Yahnig, he slowly shook his head. “I want you and the Soviets to take the German V2 rocket, improve it, and launch an artificial moon that will broadcast a warning to the Xs. I destroyed four of their ships, one was damaged, and I let it limp home because my ship was too damaged to chase it. It will take them years to reach their closest base and return. I estimate you have seven to eight years in order to place the artificial moons in orbit. I will program the message in a code they will understand.”
Bradley shook his head and frowned, “You are asking us to build a rocket that can escape Earth’s gravity, place a new moon in orbit so it will scare away these crazy aliens, and we have seven to eight years in order to accomplish this task. Thanks to your help, we’ve just barely managed to improve our jet engines. I don’t know how we’re going to accomplish the task in the time you’ve laid out and the cost? It will bankrupt us.”
Kalteck swallowed a can of beer, “Did I ever tell you I like your beer. We don’t have anything like it back home?”
Truman smiled, “Kalteck, please answer the General’s question. How are we going to get there from here? Even with your technical assistance, we have to design the rocket and tool up hundreds if not thousands of companies to manufacture the millions of parts required. Do you really believe we can accomplish this in seven years?”
“Mr. President, if you don’t accomplish it, you and the Earth will die, that I can promise you.”
Bradley asked, “Can’t you use your ship and fight them off before they reach the Earth? It seems you managed to do a pretty good job of it before?”
“General, thank you for your vote of confidence. I caught them by surprise at their base orbiting Pluto. The next time they won’t come in four ships. They’ll come with hundreds, a single ship, even one like mine won’t stand a chance against such a war fleet. Could one of your destroyers stand a chance against a battle fleet of hundreds of enemy ships?”
“No, you’re correct. We wouldn’t send a single destroyer against those odds, especially if it was our only destroyer. You know the state of our technology and manufacturing capability, do you believe we can launch your moon into outer space in time?”
“General, we don’t have any other option. Knowing the Xs, they have other bases in your solar system I haven’t discovered yet. I will attempt to locate and destroy them. I most likely won’t get them all. Then again, I won’t have to destroy each one. As long as I manage to destroy a few of them, they won’t attack until they’ve assembled one of their massive fleets. The Xs never strike unless they are sure of overwhelming odds. I believe we have two methods of stopping them. First, Earth has to launch the artificial moon. Yes, I could take it into orbit, but they will know from examining your orbitals I or someone like me placed it there versus the natives of the planet, under the protection of my enemy, have launched it. I know it sounds funny to you, but it is how these things are handled among my people.”
Bradley nodded, “Who are we to speak of why things happen the way they do with you when we must look like children in your eyes.”
“General, I will be very frank. Our children can build and launch missiles into orbit in their early years. It’s a game they play. A very small target, about the size of one of your baseballs, is placed in orbit and the teams of children race to be the first to build a rocket that hits the target.”
The humans in the room were silent. They’d just been told they were stupider than Kalteck’s young children. Truman smiled, “I guess that put us in our place. What else do you need from us?”
“I need around twenty pounds of your plutonium.”
Truman sat up in his seat with a shocked look on his face, “Twenty pounds? What in heaven’s name for? That’s more than we’ve made since 1945.”
“I plan to assemble fusion pumped X-ray mines which I’ll place along the route the Xs will take. The mines won’t catch all of their ships, but it will give them a nasty surprise. Normally I’d use antimatter, but I don’t have enough to spare. I’ll use some of mine to place them in the most logical locations they’d approach. I need your plutonium to build the trigger for my fusion weapons.”
Bradley asked, “I know I’m going to regret asking this, but what in the world is a fusion pumped X-ray mine. I thought X-rays looked into bodies to see if bones were broken or if certain organs were failing. I don’t understand how this is going to slow down an invasion.”
“I keep forgetting where you are in your technological development, excuse me for being forgetful. A fusion X-ray pumped weapon is when the fusion or antimatter explosion is channeled through some special rods, which creates a massive X-ray radiation burst that can penetrate their ship’s shields, thus killing the crew and disabling their AI.”
Everett nodded, “AI, I remember you saying it’s a machine that can think. I have issues with a machine that can think. Wouldn’t such machines decide they’re smarter than us and they’d take over the world for themselves? It’s bad enough we fight among ourselves, I don’t want to think about having to fight against thinking machines. What’re next robots?”
“Yes, in my society, we have many millions of robots and micro-miniature robots, which is what nanites are. I have millions of nanites in my body, they keep me healthy, they help me digest alien food and repair damage done to me. Thinking machines shouldn’t come as a surprise to you. You had already started this down this path with your ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), which went live on December 10, 1945, two years before I arrived. The ENIAC is baby step. It’s made up of 20,000 vacuum tubes, 7,200 crystal diodes, 1,500 relays, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors, and approximately 5,000,000 hand-soldered joints. It weighs more than 30 tons. Today my people place 25 million times that computing capacity in my wristwatch.” Kalteck held up a small gray square on the underside of his left wrist.”
Everett shook his head, looking strangely at his alien friend, “That little square is 25 million times more capable than the ENIAC? Did you also say you have machines inside your body? How did they get in there?”
“They were injected, and some were in special beverages we drank as children. Do not be concerned, our AI and robots are programmed to never harm one of us. We taught our robots rules which it turned out are very similar to what your Isaac Asimov wrote in 1942. He called them the “Three Laws of Robotics” which were:
“A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.”
I found his story very enlightening. In fact, I suggest we call together a couple of your science fiction writers and meet with them.”
Truman asked, “Why authors? What possible value could they bring to our problem?”
“They have the ability to think in the future, which is what you’re going to require. They not only have the ability to think in the future, they understand how to explain it to the average person. That is going to be required when we decide your population is ready to know they’re not alone in the universe.”
Truman shook his head, “I am not sure we will be close to such
a time for over a generation, maybe two or more generations…”
“Which is why I suggest meeting with the science fiction writers they may be able to help us develop a story your people can accept.”
“I’ll consider it. The more time I spend with you, the more I feel like I’m living inside a comic book. Kalteck, I trust you. Therefore, I will get you the resources I can. I will also depend on you to help us increase our production of plutonium and help us get a rocket into space in the time we have left. Now I’m sure General Bradley and I would like to see your ship.
Kalteck nodded to Everett who moved to the wall of the conference room and he pulled opened the curtains. The room looked over the main work area. Sitting in the middle of the spacious room was a matte gray/black circular ship. What shocked the President and General Bradly the most wasn’t seeing the ship. It was seeing the ship hovering over the floor.
Truman whispered, “Oh my God! I knew it was true, but seeing it with my own eyes is another thing else. How the hell does it just hover like that?”
