He paused. “And there is bad news,” he added. “Their choice of… orbital insertion manoeuvres is… worrying.”
“Explain,” the President ordered. “In English, please.”
“Entering orbit isn’t easy,” Paul explained. “They have to match speed with Earth and slip into orbit. It would actually be easier simply to ram the planet, but if they intend to arrive intact, they have to make radical course changes to enter orbit. If NASA’s research is to be believed, the aliens have held back from making those changes until the last possible moment.”
He held up a hand before he could be interrupted. “It’s impossible to be sure, without knowing more about the alien craft and their technology and physiology, but it looks very much as if they intended to prevent us from noticing them for as long as possible,” he said. “Unless they have some way of compensating for the effects of the manoeuvres, they have got to be very uncomfortable… and they could have avoided it by starting their burn much earlier. One possible reason for such an action, the most likely one in my opinion, is to limit the amount of warning time we will have of their arrival.”
“And, based on incomplete data, you believe that they are hostile,” Spencer sneered. “Are there no other explanations?”
“None that fit the data,” Paul said, refusing to allow himself any anger. “They could be attempting to limit the time spent under boost, but there seems to be little reason to do that, not least because all of the effects will have been compressed into a few days. They’re putting themselves through agonies just to limit the time spent under boost and there’s no reason to do that, not when they could have started much earlier and had a far gentler ride in to Earth orbit.”
The President tapped the table. “Unless this really is some kind of hoax, I think we have to proceed on the assumption that the aliens might be hostile,” he said. “That leaves us with something of a problem.”
Spencer shrugged. “Why would the aliens come all this way to start a war?” He asked. “I’ve read hundreds of alien invasion novels and most of them were unsatisfactory in that regard. Why would they come after little old Earth when they have the entire solar system to play around in?”
“There are dozens of possibilities,” Paul admitted. “They could be anything from refugees themselves to merely stamping on a competitor before we could become a threat. Radio waves spread out in space, but anyone within twenty light years of us would know that we were here and might consider us possible competition.”
“But none of this suggests that the aliens are hostile,” Spencer insisted. “They could be friendly and if they are, greeting them with a hail of fire is probably… not a good idea.”
“We will, of course, hope for a happy encounter in space,” the President said. His manner became recognisably political. “We do, however, have a responsibility to ensure that all necessary precautions are taken to ensure the safety of America and, indeed, the world.”
And ensure that you have your chance at re-election, Paul thought, quietly.
The President peered around the table. “That leads to the simple question,” he said. “Do we mobilise our forces?”
“I believe that we have no choice,” Deborah Ivey said. Her strong contralto echoed in the room. “If the aliens are hostile, we have to prepare to meet them, but there is a second possibility. Someone else, maybe Iran or North Korea, may seek to take advantage of the alien arrival.”
Paul found himself giving Deborah a look of honest respect. She was, by almost any measure, the most powerful woman in Washington, and perhaps the world. A close friend and confident of the President, Deborah Ivey had climbed from being one of the world’s leading businesswomen to the post of National Security Advisor, leaving a trail of battered lives and bruised egos. Knowing, as she did, where far too many bodies were buried, she was regarded with a mixture of fear and awe by Washington insiders. There was even talk of her running as Vice President or even making her own run at the Presidency in the future.
“Perhaps,” the President agreed. “Could we handle it if they did so?”
General Hastings coughed. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was a bluff honest man, with a long and decent war record. “The forces currently stationed in South Korea have the capability to break a North Korean attack, assuming that it doesn’t include nuclear weapons,” he said. Paul nodded grimly. Even now, no one was sure just how many nuclear weapons North Korea had, or even if they would work when deployed. It was one of the reasons why the BMD missile screen had been extended — quietly — to cover large parts of the world. “Iran may pose a more dangerous problem, but the Iraqis and our own forces, stationed in Iraq, should be able to handle it. If we mobilised, however, we would have more reserves ready within the United States to handle any alien threat.”
Spencer scowled at him. “There is no reason to believe that an alien threat exists,” he said. “If we called up the reserves and federalised the National Guard, would we not look threatening to the aliens?”
“A threat exists when capabilities exist to make that threat a reality,” General Hastings said, coolly. There was little love lost between him and the Secretary of State. “The aliens may not be hostile, but we have to treat them, for the purposes of planning, as though they are… and they have the capability to do us serious harm. If they content themselves with knocking out all of our satellites, for example, we would be crippled almost instantly.”
“But you have no proof that they intend to do that,” Spencer snapped. “Mr President, we should be taking advantage of this magnificent opportunity by making contact, now, with the aliens, before the Russians or the French can get involved. They’re probably beaming signals at the aliens right now, offering peace and friendship, trying to get ahead of us!”
“Another reason to prepare for a possible war,” General Hastings said, dispassionately. “What happens if the aliens get involved in our human quarrels?”
“Why would they care?” Spencer asked. “Perhaps we should seek to hide the fact that we are a violent race…?”
“We can’t,” Paul said. “They will have been intercepting our signals for years. They may have problems with understanding our language, but it is much easier to understand images… and most of our entertainment is grossly violent. They may not even understand the difference between Rambo III and the daily news. They’ll know that we have a capability for extreme violence and they’ll certainly have a good idea of our technological capabilities, if only by using their own development as a yardstick.”
General Hastings smiled. “They’re also going to be intercepting Star Trek and Babylon 5,” he said. “That’s bound to confuse them about our capabilities.”
The President laughed. “We can’t keep this to ourselves,” he said, nodding towards the single phone that sat on his desk. He could call any world leader, any time, and be fairly sure of an answer. “I’ll have to discuss it with our allies and the other major powers, particularly those involved with the ISS, before we can decide on a joint response. If nothing else, we don’t want the aliens playing divide and conquer.”
He looked over at General Hastings. “General, I want you to start mobilising our forces as quietly as possible,” he continued. “For the moment, we’ll call it a drill and I’ll brief the Press and the Speaker of the House to that effect; later, once the news breaks, we can explain that it’s a simple precautionary measure. Colonel James…?”