“CITIZENS of the People’s Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,” Stalin said into a microphone, “we called you to assembly today, here around the tomb of our illustrious father, Lenin, to reveal a great thing we have fostered.”
The crowd roared.
“We have called down from the sky a friend of the People’s Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to help us in our plight. The decadent Western imperialistic capitalists push in on our land from all sides—”
Molotov initiated a hissing and booing. The whole mob hissed and booed.
“We don’t desire war. We never have desired war. We desire, instead, peace, like the peace our fine friends in China are bringing to their little neighbor, Korea. Or like the peace we ourselves have carried to the now happy countries of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, to the Baltic States, to—but we need not go on. We are sure you know our intentions.
“We have found a way to bring that peace to all the world. It will entail destruction for some millions of decadent, ruthless capitalistic barbarians who dwell in the dictatorship of the United States. We have learned that recently in the United States a high military tribunal from the Pentagon conducted an investigation of the Senators, the so-called ‘people’s representatives’. We have learned that this tribunal found thirty-seven Senators guilty of crimes against the State, that is, they spoke out in their frightened voices that the military dictatorship of the United States was conducting itself poorly. We have learned that, as a result, these thirty-seven poor representatives of the people were lined up against a wall of the Lincoln Memorial and shot. And every one of the millions who voted for them in a so-called ‘secret ballot’ was deprived of his home, of his automobile, of his food allotment, taken away from his wife and children and sent off to a concentration camp in another decadent nation called Canada.”
The people in the Square roared their indignation, and Skinner started to sweat. They believed this, they believed every word of it!
“But we stray from the subject. Our friend from the sky has made a study of the world, and he agrees with us. We can have peace—but we must first destroy the Dictatorship of the United States. Our friend from the sky, an impartial observer, can do this for us. We could, of course, do it for ourselves, but with the idea of peace so strong within our hearts, we could not bring ourselves to that. And thus our friend—although he is lofty in his ideals—is not a pacifist. He hence will destroy the Dictatorship of the United States at twelve o’clock noon today, or, in a very few minutes.”
Wild, frenzied roaring from the crowd.
Skinner craned his neck to see what was happening on the jet platform. The bubble atop the saucer trembled, shook, slid back. Something popped out. Two feet tall, emerald-green in color, two legs, four arms, wearing a jaunty red uniform, fashioned for him by the tailors of the Kremlin, no doubt. His face looked just like a man’s, and just as large, out of all proportion to his spindly body. Like a man’s eyes—but behind the eyes, somehow peering out through them, was a million years of wisdom. What fantastic science might lurk at those twenty tiny fingertips? Skinner did not know, but suddenly Beria’s words came back to him, and he believed. Yes, the creature could destroy the United States. And naive of everything here on Earth, believing the lies the Kremlin had dreamed up for him, he’d do it, too. He had to be stopped, and fast. But how?
Vishinsky barked into the microphone now, his raw, angry voice cut ting through the crowd like a knife. “You will observe around the Square a series of giant screens,” he said.
Skinner looked, and even as the Russian spoke, the screens seemed to slide up out of the pavement, huge shining things. Russian super-science? No! From alien space…
“On each screen you will see an air view of a city. The cities of the Dictatorship of the United States! At noon, the small black dots of people in the streets on those screens will be seen to fall in great bunches, to be destroyed while not one stone of the cities is harmed. How will this come about? As a leader of your glorious People’s Government, I can understand, naturally. But you will not be able to understand at all.
“It is sufficient to say that deadly cosmic radiation waits in space at all times, emanations called cosmic rays. What protects. the Earth from their bombardment is our atmosphere, and over each of these cities, precisely at noon, our friend from the sky will strip a path, a channel, through that atmosphere, allowing the cosmic rays to penetrate.
“In one instant, the tiny dots of people in those streets will be broiled to death by the deadly radiation. The world will be free!”
FASCINATED, Skinner stared at the screens. Pictures swam into view—huge, tri-dimensional, three-color television. Again, not Russian, but alien science!
New York on one screen. Times Square, bustling, alive. Skinner could almost read the news tape on the Times Building. Chicago, Michigan Avenue. The gleaming white Wrigley building. Washington. Pennsylvania Avenue, the mall.
New Orleans like a giant pinwheel with its crescent streets. San Francisco and the graceful span of the Golden Gate bridge. Los Angeles, sprawling, white, clean. Richmond, with the yellow trollies struggling up the hill to Main Street. Detroit, Philadelphia, Houston, Minneapolis, Boston…
All our major cities, every one of them. And the people in the streets, in their homes, unsuspecting. Late evening in the United States, perhaps one a.m. in New York, midnight in the Midwest, eleven o’clock further West—all the giant cities ablaze with light, the streets alive with moviegoers, with people strolling. Others—asleep for the night, tucked in the, security of their beds, little dreaming that destruction hovered overhead.
Even as he watched, Skinner knew that cosmic radiation could kill more efficiently and more thoroughly than atom bombs. Strip the atmosphere away momentarily, leave nothing to absorb the rays, and the results would be sheer hell.
Wildly, Skinner tore his gaze away from the screens and sought instead a large clock on the other side of the Square. Ten minutes to twelve! He found himself wondering if the wheels already had been set in motion. Perhaps now there was no way to avert catastrophe. Like a vast, sprawling time-bomb, alien science waited to atomic bombs. Strip the atmosphere above the American cities. Possibly, just possibly, the creature from space still had to activate his mechanisms—
Suddenly, a disturbance on the platform of jet. Another figure had joined the group, snow still melting on his coat. And that meant he’d just come into the golden area from outside, from where the winds of Winter brought snow to Moscow’s streets.
Skinner squinted, almost yelled out loud, Beria!
The M.V.D. man stood talking earnestly with Vishinksy, addressing an occasional remark to Stalin, nodding vigorously every time Molotov spoke.
Finally, Vishinsky turned to the microphone, said: “All soldiers in Red Square, please alert! We have reason to believe an American agent stands in the crowd. He is armed and dangerous. He is tall, broad of shoulders, with close-cropped black hair, prison style. His identification papers will read ‘Nikolay Mironov, a transient worker out of Tula’. Until he is found, the proceedings will be delayed…”
A BREAK, a way out? At least temporarily, Skinner knew, but certainly no more than that. Somehow, Beria had escaped from Sonya and Tumanov. But that didn’t matter. Skinner had to delay his capture, had to lose himself so thoroughly in the milling mob. that he’d, escape detection. It wouldn’t be easy.
All around him the Moscovites gazed suspiciously into one another’s faces. A few scattered fights started. Women screamed. That much Skinner liked, but he saw the Red soldiers stalking through the crowd efficiently, pulling all the tall dark men out and lining them up directly under the brick wall of the Kremlin. Skinner slouched down slumped his shoulders, stared at his feet.