“I’m not so sure of that,” said McLeod. He shrugged apologetically. “You see, that planet’s there, all right. But it happens to be the property of alien beings who live on the next world. And they’re not so happy about having Earth come crashing into their system to colonize!”
Somehow Walton managed to hang onto his self-control, even with this staggering news crashing about him. “You’ve been in contact with these beings?” he asked.
McLeod nodded. “They have a translating gadget. We met them, yes.”
Walton moistened his lips. “I think there’s going to be trouble,” he said. “I think I may be out of a job, too.”
“What’s that?”
“Just thinking out loud,” Walton said. “Finish your breakfast and meet me at my office at 0900. We’ll talk this thing out then.”
Walton was in full command of himself by the time he reached the Cullen Building.
He had read the morning telefax and heard the news-blares: they all screamed the sum and essence of Walton’s speech of the previous night, and a few of the braver telefax outfits went as far as printing a resume of the entire speech, boiled down to Basic, of course, for benefit of that substantial segment of the reading public that was most comfortable while moving its lips. The one telefax outfit most outspokenly opposed to Popeek, Citizen, took great delight in giving the speech full play, and editorializing on a subsequent sheet against the “veil of security” hazing Popeek operations.
Walton read the Citizen editorial twice, savoring its painstaking simplicities of expression. Then he clipped it out neatly and shot it down the chute to public relations, marked Attention: Lee Percy.
“There’s a Mr. McLeod waiting to see you,” his secretary informed him. “He says he has an appointment.”
“Send him in,” Walton said. “And have Mr. Percy come up here also.”
While he waited for McLeod to arrive, Walton riffled through the rest of the telefax sheets. Some of them praised Popeek for having uncovered a new world; others damned it for having hidden news of the faster-than-light drive so long. Walton stacked them neatly in a heap at the edge of his desk.
In the bleak, dark hours of the morning, he had expected to be compelled to resign. Now, he realized, he could immeasurably strengthen his own position if he could control the flow of events and channel them properly.
The square figure of McLeod appeared on the screen. Walton admitted him.
“Sir. I’m McLeod.”
“Of course. Won’t you sit down?”
McLeod was tense, stiffly formal, very British in his reserve and general bearing. Walton gestured uneasily, trying to cut through the crackle of nervousness.
“We seem to have a mess on our hands,” he said. “But there’s no mess so messy we can’t muddle through it, eh?”
“If we have to, sir. But I can’t help feeling this could all have been avoided.”
“No. You’re wrong, McLeod. If it could have been avoided, it would have been avoided. The fact that some idiot in my public relations department gained access to my wire and found out you were returning is incontrovertible; it happened, despite precautions.”
“Mr. Percy to see you,” the annunciator said.
The angular figure of Lee Percy appeared on the screen. Walton told him to come in.
Percy looked frightened—terrified, Walton thought. He held a folded slip of paper loosely in one hand.
“Good morning, sir.”
“Good morning, Lee.” Walton observed that the friendly Roy had changed to the formal salutation, sir. “Did you get the clipping I sent you?”
“Yes, sir.” Glumly.
“Lee, this is Leslie McLeod, chief of operations of our successful faster-than-light project. Colonel McLeod, I want you to meet Lee Percy. He’s the man who masterminded our little newsbreak last night.”
Percy flinched visibly. He stepped forward and laid his slip of paper on Walton’s desk. “I m-made a m-mistake last night,” he stammered. “I should never have released that break.”
“Damned right you shouldn’t have,” Walton agreed, carefully keeping any hint of severity from his voice. “You have us in considerable hot water, Lee. That planet isn’t ours for colonization, despite the enthusiasm with which I allegedly announced it last night. And you ought to be clever enough to realize it’s impossible to withdraw and deny good news once you’ve broken it.”
“The planet’s not ours? But—?”
“According to Colonel McLeod,” Walton said, “the planet is the property of intelligent alien beings who live on a neighboring world, and who no more care to have their system overrun by a pack of Earthmen than we would to have extrasolar aliens settle on Mars.”
“Sir, that sheet of paper…” Percy said in a choked voice. “It’s—it’s—”
Walton unfolded it. It was Percy’s resignation. He read the note carefully twice, smiled, and laid it down. Now was his time to be magnanimous.
“Denied,” he said. “We need you on our team, Lee. I’m authorizing a ten percent pay-cut for one week, effective yesterday, but there’ll be no other penalty.”
“Thank you, sir.”
He’s crawling to me, Walton thought in amazement. He said, “Only don’t pull that stunt again, or I’ll not only fire you but blacklist you so hard you won’t be able to find work between here and Procyon. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay. Go back to your office and get to work. And no more publicity on this faster-than-light thing until I authorize it. No—cancel that. Get out a quick release, a followup on last night. A smoke screen, I mean. Cook up so much cloudy verbiage about the conquest of space that no one bothers to remember anything of what I said. And play down the colonization angle!”
“I get it, sir.” Percy grinned feebly.
“I doubt that,” Walton snapped. “When you have the release prepared, shoot it up here for my okay. And heaven help you if you deviate from the text I see by as much as a single comma!”
Percy practically backed out of the office.
“Why did you do that?” McLeod asked, puzzled.
“You mean, why did I let him off so lightly?”
McLeod nodded. “In the military,” he said, “we’d have a man shot for doing a thing like that.”
“This isn’t the military,” Walton said. “And even though the man behaved like a congenital idiot yesterday, that’s not enough evidence to push him into Happysleep. Besides, he knows his stuff. I can’t afford to discharge him.”
“Are public relations men that hard to come by?”
“No. But he’s a good one—and the prospect of having him desert to the other side frightens me. He’ll be forever grateful to me now. If I had fired him, he would’ve had half a dozen anti-Popeek articles in the Citizen before the week was out. And they’d ruin us.”
McLeod smiled appreciatively. “You handle your job well, Mr. Walton.”
“I have to,” Walton said. “The director of Popeek is paid to produce two or three miracles per hour. One gets used to it, after a while. Tell me about these aliens, Colonel McLeod.”
McLeod swung a briefcase to Walton’s desk and flipped the magneseal. He handed Walton a thick sheaf of glossy color photos.
“The first dozen or so are scenes of the planet,” McLeod explained. “It’s Procyon VIII—number eight out of sixteen, unless we missed a couple. We checked sixteen worlds in the system, anyway. Ten of ‘em were methane giants; we didn’t even bother to land. Two were ammonia supergiants, even less pleasant. Three small ones had no atmosphere at all worth speaking about, and were no more livable-looking than Mercury. And the remaining one was the one we call New Earth. Take a look, sir.”