Washington. The President was in special conference with several members of the cabinet and the majority and minority leaders of the Senate. The Secretary of Defense was speaking, very quietly: «Gentlemen, I say again that our best, perhaps our only, chance of winning is to get there first. If we don’t, they will. Everything shows that. Those confidential reports of yours, Mr. President, are absolute proof that they intend to attack. We must—»
A discreet tap on the door caused him to stop in midsentence.
The President said, «That’s Walter—about the broadcast,» and then louder, «Come in.»
The President’s confidential secretary came in. «Everything is ready, Mr. President,» he said. «You said you wished to hear it yourself. These other gentlemen—?»
The President nodded, «We’ll all go,» he said. He stood, and then the others. «How many sets, Walter?»
«Six. We’ve turned them to six different stations; two in this time belt, Washington and New York; two in other parts of this country, Denver and San Francisco; two foreign stations, Paris and Tokyo.»
«Excellent,» said the President. «Shall we go and hear this mysterious broadcast that all Europe and Asia are excited about?»
The Secretary of Defense smiled. «If you wish. But I I doubt we’ll hear anything. Getting control of the stations here—» He shrugged.
«Walter,» said the President, «has there been anything further from Europe or Asia?»
«Nothing new, sir. Nothing has happened there since eight-thirty, their time. But confirmations of what did happen then are increasing. Everybody who was listening to any station at eight-thirty heard it. Whether the station was in their time zone or not. For instance, a radio set in London which happened to be turned to Athens, Greece, got the broadcast at eight-thirty, London—that is, Greenwich—time. Local sets in Athens tuned to the same station had heard it at eight-thirty Athens time—two hours earlier.»
The majority leader of the Senate frowned. «That is patently impossible. It would indicate—»
«Exactly,» said the President drily. «Gentlemen, shall we adjourn to the room where the receiving sets have been placed? It lacks five minutes of—eight-thirty.»
They went down the hall to a room hideous with the sound of six receiving sets tuned to six different programs. Three minutes, two minutes, one— Sudden silence for a fraction of a second. From six sets simultaneously the impersonal voice, «And now a word from our sponsor.» The commanding voice gave the one-word command.
Then, again, the six radio sets blared forth their six different programs. No one tried to speak over that sound. They filed back into the conference chamber.
The President looked at the Secretary of Defense. «Well, Rawlins?»
The Secretary’s face was white. «The only thing I can think of that would account for it—» He paused until the President prodded him with another «Well?»
«I’ll grant it sounds incredible, but—a space-ship? Cruising around the world at the even rate of its period of revolution—a little over a thousand miles an hour. Over each point which it passes—which would be at the same hour everywhere—it momentarily blanks out other stations and puts on its own broadcast.»
The Senate’s majority leader snorted. «Why a space ship? There are planes that can travel that fast.»
«Ever hear of radar? With our new installations along the coast anything going over up to a hundred miles high would show. And do you think Europe hasn’t radar too?»
«And would they tell us if they spotted something?»
«England would. France would. And how about all our ships at sea that the thing has already passed over?»
«But a space ship!»
The President held up his hand. «Gentlemen. Let’s not argue until we have the facts. Reports from many sources are even now coming in and being sifted and evaluated. We’ve been getting ready for this for over fifteen hours now and—I’ll see what’s known already, if you’ll pardon me.»
He picked up the telephone at his end of the long conference table, spoke into it briefly and then listened for about two minutes before he said, «Thank you,» and replaced the receiver.
Then he looked straight down the middle of the conference table as he spoke. «No radar station noticed anything out of the ordinary, not even a faint or blurred image.» He hesitated. «The broadcast, gentlemen, was heard uniformly in all areas of the Eastern Time Zone which have daylight saving. It was uniformly not heard in areas which do not have daylight saving, where it is now seven-thirty p.m.»
«Impossible,» said the Secretary of Defense.
The President nodded slowly. «Exactly. Yet certain reports from borders of time zones in Europe led us to anticipate it, and it was checked carefully. Radio receivers were placed, in pairs, along the borders of certain zones. For example, a pair of receivers were placed at the city limits of Baltimore, one twelve inches within the city limits, the other twelve inches outside. Two feet apart. They were identical sets, identically tuned to the same station, operated from the same power source. One set received ‘a word from our sponsor’; the other did not. The set-up is being maintained for another hour. But I do not doubt that—» He glanced at his wrist watch. «—forty-five minutes from now, when it will be eight-thirty o’clock in the non-daylight-saving zones, the situation will be reversed; the broadcast will be received by the set outside the daylight saving zone border and not by the similarly tuned set just inside.»
He glanced around the table and his face was set and white. «Gentlemen, what is happening tonight all over the world is beyond science—our science, at any rate.»
«It can’t be,» said the Secretary of Labor. «Damn it, Mr. President, there’s got to be an explanation.»
«Further experiments—much more delicate and decisive ones—are being arranged, especially for the non-daylight-saving areas of the Pacific Time Zone, where we still have four hours to arrange them. And the top scientists of California will be on the job.» The President took out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead. «Until we have their reports and analyses, early tomorrow morning, shall we adjourn, gentlemen?»
The Defense Secretary frowned. «But, Mr. President, the purpose of our conference tonight was not to discuss this mysterious broadcast. Can we not get back to the original issue?»
«Do you really think that any major step should even be contemplated before we know what happened tonight—is happening tonight, I should say?»
«If we don’t start the war, Mr. President, need I point out again who will? And the tremendous—practically decisive—advantage of taking the first step, gaining the offensive?»
«And obey the order in the broadcast?» growled the Secretary of Labor.
«Why not? Weren’t we going to do just that anyway, because we had to?»
«Mr. Secretary,» the President said slowly. «That order was not addressed to us specifically. That broadcast was heard—is being heard—all over the world, in all languages. But even if it was heard only here, and only in our own language, I would certainly hesitate to obey a command until I knew from whom that command came. Gentlemen, do you fully realize the implications of the fact that our top scientists, thus far at any rate, could not conceivably duplicate the conditions of that broadcast? That means either one of two things; that whoever produced the phenomenon is possessed of a science beyond ours, or that the phenomenon is of supernatural origin.»
The Secretary of Commerce said softly, «My God.»
The President looked at him. «Not unless your god is either Mars or Satan, Mr. Weatherby.»