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by Ben Bova

  Aw, hell.

  I talked it over with Jazzbow. Then he talked in Martian with Snitch. Then all three of us talked together. We had evolved a Standard Operating Procedure for situations like this, when somebody stumbled onto our secret. I didn’t much like the idea of using it on Jean, but there wasn’t much else we could do.

  So, reluctantly, I agreed. “Just be damned careful with her,” I insisted. “She’s not some hick cop who’s been startled out of his snooze by one of your cockamamie malfunctioning saucers.”

  Their saucers were actually pretty reliable, but every once in a while, the atmospheric turbulence at low altitude would get them into trouble. Most of the sightings happened when the damned things wobbled too close to the ground.

  Jazzbow and Snitch promised they’d be extra special careful.

  Very gently, the Martians selectively erased Jean’s memory so that all she remembered the next morning, when she woke up a half a mile from a Mohave gas station, was that she had been abducted by aliens from another world and taken aboard a flying saucer.

  The authorities wanted to put her in a nuthouse, of course. But I sent a squad of lawyers to spring her, since she was under contract to my movie studio. The studio assumed responsibility for her, and my lawyers assured the authorities that she was about to star in a major motion picture. The yokels figured it had all been a publicity stunt and turned her loose. I actually did put her into a couple of starring roles, which ended her career with the IRS, although I figured that not even the feds would have had anything to do with Jean after the tabloids headlined her story about being abducted by flying-saucer aliens. I took good care of her, though. I even married her, eventually. That’s what comes from hanging around with Martians.

  See, the Martians have a very high ethical standard of conduct. They cannot willingly hurt anybody or anything. Wouldn’t step on an ant. It’s led to some pretty nasty scrapes for us, though. Every now and then, somebody stumbles onto them, and the whole secret’s in jeopardy. They could wipe the person’s brain clean, but that would turn the poor sucker into a zombie. So they selectively erase only the smallest possible part of the sucker’s memory.

  And they always leave the memory of being taken into a flying saucer. They tell me they have to. That’s part of their moral code too. They’re constantly testing us—the whole human race, that is—to see if we’re ready to receive alien visitors from another world. And to date, the human race as a whole has consistently flunked every test.

  Sure, a handful of very special people know about them. I’m pretty damned proud to be among that handful, let me tell you. But the rest of the human race, the man in the street, the news reporters and preachers and even the average university professor—they either ridicule the very idea that there could be any kind of life at all on another world or they get scared to death of the possibility. Take a look at the movies we make!

  “Your people are sadly xenophobic,” Jazzbow told me more than once, his big liquid eyes looking melancholy despite that dumbbell clown’s grin splitting his face.

  I remembered Orson Welles’ broadcast of The War of the Worlds back in ’38. People got hysterical when they thought Martians had landed in New Jersey, although why anybody would want to invade New Jersey is beyond me. Here I had real Martians zipping all over the place, and they were gentle as butterflies. But no one would believe that; the average guy would blast away with his twelve-gauge first and ask where they came from afterward.

  So I had to convince the president that if he sent astronauts to the moon, it would have catastrophic results.

  Well, my people and Kennedy’s people finally got the details ironed out, and we agreed to meet at Edwards Air Force Base, out in the Mohave. Totally secret meeting. JFK was giving a speech in LA that evening at the Beverly Wilshire. I sent a company helicopter to pick him up there and fly him over to Edwards. Just him and two of his aides. Not even his Secret Service bodyguards; he didn’t care much for having those guys lurking around him, anyway. Cut down on his love life too much.

  We agreed to meet in Hangar Nine, the place where the first Martian crew was stashed back in ’46, pretty battered from their crash landing. That’s when I first found out about them. I was asked by Professor Schmidt, who looked like a very agitated young Santa Claus back then, to truck in as many refrigeration units as my company could lay its hands on. Schmidt wanted to keep the Martians comfortable, and since their planet is so cold, he figured they needed mucho refrigeration. That was before he found out that the Martians spend about half their energy budget at home just trying to stay reasonably warm. They loved Southern California! Especially the swimming pools.

  Anyway, there I am waiting for the president in good old Hangar Nine, which had been so top secret since ’46 that not even the base commander’s been allowed inside. We’d partitioned it and decked it out with nice furniture and all the modern conveniences.

  I noticed that Jazzbow had recently had an interociter installed. Inside the main living area, we had put up a big water tank for Jazzbow and his fellow Martians, of course. The place kind of resembled a movie set: nice modern furnishings, but if you looked past the ten-foot-high partitions that served as walls you saw the bare metal support beams crisscrossing up in the shadows of the ceiling.

  Jazzbow came in from Culver City in the same limo that brought Professor Schmidt. As soon as he got into the hangar, he unhooked his exoskeleton and dived into the water tank. Schmidt started pacing nervously back and forth on the Persian carpeting I had put in. He was really wound up tight: letting the president in on this secret was an enormous risk. Not for us, so much as for the Martians.

  It was just about midnight when we heard the throbbing-motor sound of a helicopter in the distance. I walked out into the open and saw the stars glittering like diamonds all across the desert sky. How many of them are inhabited? I wondered. How many critters out there are looking at our sun and wondering if there’s any intelligent life there?

  Is there any intelligent life in the White House? That was the big question as far as I was concerned.

  Jack Kennedy looked tired. No, worse than that, he looked troubled. Beaten down. Like a man who had the weight of the world on his shoulders. Which he did. Elected by a paper-thin majority, he was having hell’s own time getting Congress to vote for his programs. Tax relief, increased defense spending, civil rights — they were all dead in the water, stymied by a Congress that wouldn’t do spit for him. And now I was going to pile another ton and a half on top of all that.

  “Mr. President,” I said as he walked through the chilly desert night from the helicopter toward the hangar door. I sort of stood at attention: for the office, not the man, you understand. Remember, I voted for Nixon.

  He nodded at me and made a weary smile and stuck out his hand the way every politician does. I let him shake my hand, making a mental note to excuse myself and go to the washroom as soon as decently possible.

  As we had agreed, he left his two aides at the hangar door and accompanied me inside all by himself. He kind of shuddered.

  “It’s cold out there, isn’t it?” he said.

  He was wearing a summer-weight suit. I had an old windbreaker over my shirt and slacks.

  “We’ve got the heat going inside,” I said, gesturing him through the door in the first partition. I led him into the living area and to the big carpeted central room where the water tank was. Schmidt followed behind us so close I could almost feel his breath on my neck. It gave me that crawly feeling I get when I realize how many millions of germs are floating through the air all the time.

  “Odd place for a swimming tank,” the president said as soon as we entered the central room.

  “It’s not as odd as you think,” I said. Jazzbow had ducked low, out of sight for the time being.

  My people had arranged two big sofas and a scattering of comfortable armchairs around a coffee table on w
hich they had set up a fair-sized bar. Bottles of every description, even champagne in its own ice bucket.

  “What’ll you have?” I asked. We had decided that, with just the three of us humans present, I would be the bartender.

  Both the president and Schmidt asked for scotch. I made the drinks big, knowing they would both need them.

  “Now, what’s this all about?” Kennedy asked after his first sip of the booze. “Why all this secrecy and urgency?”

  I turned to Schmidt, but he seemed to be petrified. So absolutely frozen that he couldn’t even open his mouth or pick up his drink. He just stared at the president, overwhelmed by the enormity of what we had to do.

  So I said, “Mr. President, you have to stop this moon program.”

  He blinked his baggy eyes. Then he grinned. “Do I?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it will hurt the Martians.”

  “The Martians, you said?”

  “That’s right. The Martians,” I repeated.

  Kennedy took another sip of scotch, then put his glass down on the coffee table. “Mr. Hughes, I had heard that you’d gone off the deep end, that you’ve become a recluse and something of a mental case—”

  Schmidt snapped out of his funk. “Mr. President, he’s telling you the truth. There are Martians.”

  Kennedy gave him a “who are you trying to kid” look. “Professor Schmidt, I know you’re a highly respected astronomer, but if you expect me to believe there are living creatures on Mars, you’re going to have to show me some evidence.”

  On that cue, Jazzbow came slithering out of the water tank. The president’s eyes goggled as old Jazzie made his painful way, dripping on the rug, to one of the armchairs and half collapsed into it.

  “Mr. President,” I said, “may I introduce Jazzbow of Mars. Jazzbow, President Kennedy.”

  The president just kept on staring. Jazzbow extended his right hand, that perpetual clown’s grin smeared across his face. With his jaw hanging open, Kennedy took it in his hand. And flinched.

  “I assure you,” Jazzbow said, not letting go of the president’s hand, “that I am truly from Mars.”

  Kennedy nodded. He believed it. He had to. Martians can make you see the truth of things. Goes with their telepathic abilities, I guess.

  Schmidt explained the situation. How the Martians had built their canals once they realized that their world was dying. How they tried to bring water from the polar ice caps to their cities and farmlands. It worked, for a few centuries, but eventually even that wasn’t enough to save the Martians from slow but certain extinction.

  They were great engineers, great thinkers. Their technology was roughly a century or so ahead of ours. They had invented the electric lightbulb, for example, during the time of our French and Indian War.

  By the time they realized that Mars was going to dry up and wither away despite all their efforts, they had developed a rudimentary form of spaceflight. Desperate, they thought that maybe they could bring natural resources from other worlds in the solar system to revive their dying planet. They knew that Venus was, beneath its clouds, a teeming Mesozoic jungle. Plenty of water there, if they could cart it back to Mars.

  They couldn’t. Their first attempts at spaceflight ended in disasters. Of the first five saucers they sent toward Venus, three of them blew up on takeoff, one veered off course and was never heard from again, and the fifth crash-landed in New Mexico—which is a helluva long way from Venus.

  Fortunately, their saucer crash-landed near a small astronomical station in the desert. A young graduate student—who eventually became Professor Schmidt—was the first to find them. The Martians inside the saucer were pretty banged up, but three of them were still alive. Even more fortunately, humans had something that the Martians desperately needed: the raw materials and manufacturing capabilities to mass-produce flying saucers for them. That’s where I had come in, as a tycoon of the aviation industry.

  President Kennedy found his voice. “Do you mean to tell me that the existence of Martians—living, breathing, intelligent Martians—has been kept a secret since 1946? More than fifteen years?”

  “It’s been touch-and-go on several occasions,” said Schmidt. “But, yes, we’ve managed to keep the secret pretty well.”

  “Pretty well?” Kennedy seemed disturbed, agitated. “The Central Intelligence Agency doesn’t know anything about this, for Christ’s sake!” Then he caught himself, and added, “Or, if they do, they haven’t told me about it.”

  “We have tried very hard to keep this a secret from all the politicians of every stripe,” Schmidt said.

  “I can see not telling Eisenhower,” said the president. “Probably would’ve given old Ike a fatal heart attack.” He grinned. “I wonder what Harry Truman would’ve done with the information.”

  “We were tempted to tell President Truman, but—”

  “That’s all water over the dam,” I said, trying to get them back onto the subject. “We’re here to get you to call off this Project Apollo business.”

  “But why?” asked the president. “We could use Martian spacecraft and plant the American flag on the moon tomorrow morning!”

  “No,” whispered Jazzbow. Schmidt and I knew that when a Martian whispers, it’s a sign that he’s scared shitless.

  “Why not?” Kennedy snapped.

  “Because you’ll destroy the Martians,” said Schmidt, with real iron in his voice.

  “I don’t understand.”

  Jazzbow turned those big luminous eyes on the president. “May I explain it to you . . . the Martian way?”

  I’ll say this for Jack Kennedy. The boy had guts. It was obvious that the basic human xenophobia was strong inside him. When Jazzbow had first touched his hand, Kennedy had almost jumped out of his skin. But he met the Martian’s gaze and, not knowing what would come next, solemnly nodded his acceptance.

  Jazzbow reached out his snaky arm toward Kennedy’s face. I saw beads of sweat break out on the president’s brow, but he sat still and let the Martian’s tentacle-like fingers touch his forehead and temple.

  It was like jumping a car battery. Thoughts flowed from Jazzbow’s brain into Kennedy’s. I knew what those thoughts were.

  It had to do with the Martians’ moral sense. The average Martian has an ethical quotient about equal to St. Francis of Assisi. That’s the average Martian. While they’re only a century or so ahead of us technologically, they’re light-years ahead of us morally, socially, ethically. There hasn’t been a war on Mars in more than a thousand years. There hasn’t even been a case of petty theft in centuries. You can walk the avenues of their beautiful, gleaming cities at any time of the day or night in complete safety. And since their planet is so desperately near absolute depletion, they just about worship the smallest blade of grass.

  If our brawling, battling human nations discovered the fragile, gentle Martian culture, there would be a catastrophe. The Martians would be swarmed under, shattered, dissolved by a tide of politicians, industrialists, real-estate developers, evangelists wanting to save their souls, drifters, grifters, conmen, thieves petty and grand. To say nothing of military officers driven by xenophobia. It would make the Spanish Conquest of the Americas look like a Boy Scout jamboree.

  I could see from the look in Kennedy’s eyes that he was getting the message. “We would destroy your culture?” he asked.

  Jazzbow had learned the human way of nodding. “You would not merely destroy our culture, Mr. President. You would kill us. We would die, all of us, very quickly.”

  “But you have the superior technology . . .”

  “We could never use it against you,” said Jazzbow. “We would lie down and die rather than deliberately take the life of a paramecium.”

  Schmidt spoke up. “So you see, Mr. President, why this moon project has got to be call
ed off. We can’t allow the human race en masse to learn of the Martians’ existence.”

  “I understand,” he murmured.

  Schmidt breathed out a heavy sigh of relief. Too soon.

  “But I can’t stop the Apollo project.”

  “Can’t?” Schmidt gasped.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  Looking utterly miserable, Kennedy told us, “It would mean the end of my administration. For all practical purposes, at least.”

  “I don’t see—”

  “I haven’t been able to get a thing through Congress except the moon project. They’re stiffing me on everything else: my economics package, my defense buildup, civil rights, everything except the moon program has been stopped dead in Congress. If I give up on the moon, I might as well resign the presidency.”

  “You are not happy in your work,” said Jazzbow.

  “No, I’m not,” Kennedy admitted, in a low voice. “I never wanted to go into politics. It was my father’s idea. Especially after my older brother got killed in the war.”

  A dismal, gloomy silence descended on us.

  “It’s all been a sham,” the president muttered. “My marriage is a mess, my presidency is a farce, I’m in love with a woman who’s married to another man—I wish I could just disappear from the face of the earth.”

  Which, of course, is exactly what we arranged for him.

  It was tricky, believe me. We had to get his blond inamorata to disappear, which wasn’t easy, since she was in the public eye just about as much as the president. Then we had to fake his own assassination, so we could get him safely out of the way. At first, he was pretty reluctant about it all, but then the Berlin Wall went up, and the media blamed him for it and he agreed that he wanted out—permanently. We were all set to pull it off when the Cuban Missile Crisis hit the fan and we had to put everything on hold for more than a month. By the time we had calmed that mess down, he was more than ready to leave this earth. So we arranged the thing for Dallas.

  We didn’t dare tell Lyndon Johnson about the Martians, of course. He would’ve wanted to go to Mars and annex the whole damned planet. To Texas, most likely. And we didn’t have to tell Nixon; he was happy to kill the Apollo program—after taking as much credit for the first lunar landing as the media would give him.