“… Urgent consultations between the Soviet and American governments via the Hot Line taking place for several days now. The joint communiqué says it has been thought advisable to reveal the presence of this alien spacecraft, now that it is definitely proven hostile—in view of the widespread panic that might result from any further nuclear sabotage of major engineering works—”
“What stupid lies! Don’t they think of the stars at all?”
“… Emphasized strongly in the communiqué, that any nuclear detonations should not be seen as indicators of any Soviet-American hostilities. Consultations are under way with other members of the Nuclear Club to avoid possible misinterpretations—”
“Surely the Sp’thra can’t still be in Nevada!”
“Oh but they can,” crowed Amory Hirsch. “The inhumans can!” He smiled a waspish smile.
“… From Stateside meanwhile, news that the president will address the nation in one half-hour’s time simultaneously with the Soviet Premier addressing the Russian people—”
“It’s madness!”
“No madder than the madness riding Latin America right now. We think it’s the proper antidote. The prescription for this revolution.”
“It’s criminal,” sputtered Zwingler. “It’s the biggest mistake. What does the whole of Latin America matter beside the million worlds out there! We buy a stinking little peace by sacrificing the stars, when we could have bought the stars with half a dozen brains. It’s so STUPID. Stupid!”
The jet passed high over Panama in the dark of the starry night, and on out over the Caribbean.
And so the sanity filters were selectively removed, one by one. Excited American—and Russian—voices told about the immensity of the interstellar globe orbiting the Earth. UFO sightings were reported from Los Angeles and Omsk, from Tashkent and Caracas. Mysterious charred holes in superhighways. Jets crashing unaccountably. Brought down by who knows what?
Their jet veered out over the Gulf of Mexico towards the American South.
“The Russians?” Amory Hirsch retorted to Zwingler’s persistent, peevish questions. “Well, for one thing they’re implicated with us right up to their necks in this brain trading business. And two, it was the Chi-Coms who scooped all the political kudos by detecting that nuclear blowout at the dam. And three; well, frankly the trading didn’t go too well after you left. Sure, we traded, they traded. But the return in technological data was shaping up as inadequate. The addresses of a few mangy stars. A few crutches to help us hobble round the solar system a bit faster. But not nearly fast enough to escape our own death sentence from any number of exponential causes. Crumbs from the rich man’s table! Hell, Tom, don’t you see, we’re the HUMAN RACE. Soviets and Americans alike. Screw this stupid revolution. How could we be bothered to jockey for influence over a few hundred million miserable gauchos or whatever you call ’em? Maybe the Chinks can be bothered to. Call themselves the ‘Middle Kingdom’? They’re bloody earth-bound peasants, is all! But Soviets and Americans, we’re both of us frontiersmen at heart. We’re not donkeys to be lured a few idiot steps by hanging a carrot before our noses. We turn right round and KICK the carrot out of the hand that mocks us with it.”
“I still don’t see it,” Zwingler moaned.
Amory Hirsch leaned forward patronizingly.
“Tom, you and Leapfrog—that’s the short term view. A new spacious view is in order.”
“Short term!” Zwingler clutched for his lost ruby moons as though for prayer beads, but didn’t find them. There were no adequate prayers.
Flying towards the gulf ports, they picked up more of the progress of the crusade of hysteria from KCTA in Corpus Christi. Amory Hirsch laughingly revealed the codename of the operation—a farrago inspired by memories of the Orson Welles terror broadcast of 30 October 1938—and Sole winced as he remembered his own instinct about the alien TV broadcasts. This was destined to be a much more sophisticated and professional performance than the Welles broadcast back in the Stone Age of media awareness—for this tragic farce they had some actual aliens as actors.
It seemed, though Sole couldn’t swear to it, that the jet was flying more leisurely the closer it got to the USA—maybe they flew slower so as not to trigger any missile sequences set to the superspeed of flying saucers. But there were no flying saucers—they were a myth, a lie. Only one scout ship existed, and that still on the Nevada airstrip, if Amory Hirsch’s word was to be trusted. With one great globe in space with its crew of sad haunted travelling salesmen.
So the Globe had shot down Russian and American satellites with laser beams?
“Has it shot down any?” clamoured Zwingler.
“Course not,” smiled Hirsch, though even as he said it a cloud of doubt passed over his face, as if Welles Farrago was too realistically scripted for him to doubt. Then he winked superciliously. “This is all cereal packet stuff strictly for the kids. The real difficulty is synchronizing our retaliatory blows—not using the hammer to stun the fly—on the other hand not using the fly swat to zap the elephant with—”
“It’s disgusting,” Zwingler shouted at him, losing control. “All I know about flies and elephants is this, Mister Hirsch, I might have swallowed a fly or two in my time, but I do most strenuously strain at this elephant of dishonesty and deceit!”
“Sorry you feel that way, Tom,” smirked the other man, “but it’s policy.”
The President talked about:
The coming together of Earth’s people—in the face of the inhuman adversary. Impossibility of comprehending the intentions or the powers of the truly alien. Their proven hostility attested to publicly by the United States and Soviet Union standing shoulder to shoulder as brothers. By the wanton destruction of the Amazon Development Project with atrocious loss of life and property damage—immediate aid to be rushed to the survivors through the agency of the United Nations, since the Brazilian people had been taken in by irresponsible Chinese lies and propaganda. The assassination in space of two Americans and one Soviet cosmonaut, to whose bravery all homage—write them down in the roll of honour of Planet Earth, Colonel Marcos Haigh, Major Joe Rohrer, Major Vadim Zaitsev. The lasering out of orbit of Earth Resources Satellites—the sabotaging of Earth’s efforts for betterment by a superior and haughty technology—like vicious children pulling the wings off flies…
“Those names,” cried Zwingler. “I remember them. From Nevada.”
“Nonsense, Tom,” Hirsch laughed. “You’re hallucinating. Take any of those Indian drugs?”
On the final approach, as they watched the sprawl of Houston coming up below them, KTRH announced the detonation of a one-kiloton tactical homing missile upon a ‘flying saucer’ temporarily grounded in the Nevada desert…
While the wheels jolted down upon the runway, Amory Hirsch laughed triumphantly and polished his hands.
A moment later, word came of the Soviet orbital bomb that wrecked the Unhumans’ transpolar globe, cracking it open like an egg and spilling its yolk across the sky above the Solomon Islands…
“Bastards—dumb fucking bastards—vicious stupid shits…” cursed Tom Zwingler monotonously while the jet slowed to a halt, till the NO SMOKING sign blanked out.
TWENTY-THREE
“We’ll walk from here on.”
“Sure?”
Sole nodded.
They got out of the lowslung blue Ford car with the legend USAF stencilled on its front doors. The toothy Negro sergeant who’d been driving them backed into a gateway then sped off back the way he’d come, negotiating the country lanes with a faint squeal of tyres.