John D. MacDonald
Vanguard of the Lost
A few hundred thousand people in New York saw the early video-news and thus immediately set themselves up as experts, having seen the New Delhi shots of the vast, hoary, slab-sided ships that floated like so many ridiculous balloons over the brown circus-ground landscape of India.
The early editions carried the telephotos and the newspapers were not at all reticent in their surmises. NEW RUSSIAN WEAPON said one. INVADERS FROM SPACE said another. MARTIANS ARRIVE, screamed the News.
It was a situation so altogether trite to the vast international clique of science fiction fandom, remembered from the opening paragraphs of half a thousand stories, that it gave most of them the feeling that they were reliving a dream.
And it gave fandom a chance to check reality against the surmises of the unhappy writers who had been forced to proceed entirely on assumptions.
But this was reality. Even as the atomic bomb had outlawed cataclysm in science fiction, this invasion from space threatened the demise of the space opera, since the more accurately fantasy anticipates actuality, the more carefully it signs its eventual death warrant.
Larry Graim, disconsolate statistician by day, avid author of science fiction by night, read the headlines, hit himself smartly in the forehead several times with the heel of his hand to make certain he was awake, and phoned news of a headache to his office. This was too great a day to be wasted in computing mean and median relationships.
Estimates of the number of ships varied wildly. With shoes not yet laced, Graim trotted down to the corner, took back editions of all the papers to his furnished room on Eighty-ninth Street.
The lowest estimate he read said seven hundred ships. He swallowed hard. In his epics there had only been three or at the most five ships from space. He felt better when he turned on the radio and heard that emergency meetings were being called involving the heads of governments. That, at least, followed his story lines.
Late bulletins reported small groups of the ships over the West Coast, over Europe, over South Africa, even over Australia. They traveled at an average height of three thousand feet. They were expected over New York in a matter of hours, or maybe minutes.
Graim lifted the pot off the electric coil, poured himself another cup of coffee. Then he thought of the roof. Forgetting the coffee he left his room, ran up the stairs and came out onto the flat roof of the five story building. The morning haze was lifting, was drifting east out to sea.
After searching every inch of the sky, taut with anticipation, seeing nothing, he looked around him. A dozen feet away a girl stood, looking at him with amusement. He had seen her many times on the stairs, had wondered and wondered how he could skillfully open a conversation with her. The heroes of his stories were always adequate for such situations. They were suave and worldly. Their conversations were sparkling and urbane.
“Uh... hello,” said Larry Graim.
“Hello yourself. Looking for Martians?” Her voice was low, warm, full of that secret amusement. The morning wind blew a strand of dark hair across her forehead. He wondered why he hadn’t made the heroines of his stories look like her. Or maybe he had. He grew conscious of his unlaced shoes, uncombed hair, unshaven jaw and shirt with button missing.
“They won’t be Martians,” he said firmly.
She raised one eyebrow. “Oh? Secret sources of information?”
“Martians are old hat. Canals are optical illusions.”
She laughed. “You’d better tell all these others. They’re looking for Martians.” She waved a hand lightly at the other roofs. Hundreds of people watched the sky.
He was suddenly annoyed with her attitude. “Don’t you know, young woman, that this may be the most important event in recorded history?”
“Of course! That’s why I want to see it. That’s why I’m taking the day off. And don’t call me young woman. My name is Alice Fiddler.”
“Larry Graim,” he said weakly. The faint flick of her anger had stung.
She frowned. “Graim. Graim. Oh, of course I Sideways in Space. Loom of Lural, Jenyeb, the Elder.”
And light dawned for him. “Alice Fiddler! You write... those letters! Those ghastly letters!”
“Of course. And I pan you, Graim, every chance I get. I’m the one who called you the poor man’s Kuttner and the cretin’s Van Vogt.”
He forgot the very attractive package the letter writer came in. He moved to within three feet of her, fists clenched and said, “I promised myself that if I ever met up with you I’d...”
She smiled warmly up at him. “You’d what, little man? Lay one of those lean brown paws on me and I’ll toss you off the roof. I couldn’t render a better service to my fellow readers.”
“Even Bradbury couldn’t make a heroine out of you!”
“And they pay you two cents a word! Imagine. I’ve seen better words written on fences.”
He heard distant shouts from the other roofs and a flick of movement half seen made him turn his head and look toward the west.
He saw them. His lean jaw sagged and his eyes bulged glassily. He made a wet sound, deep in the throat.
“See!” Alice Fiddler said. “See! Shiny and symmetric space ships! Indeed, Mr. Graim. Roaring jets! Indeed!”
He continued to gawp. There were nine of them and they were not in formation. They came blundering up from the horizon with same splendid disregard for order as brown cows drifting across a pasture. They were not shiny. They were made of a rough mottled dirty-looking substance. Jets did not roar. They wavered stubbornly and silently along, like escapees from Macy’s Christmas parade. And they were not symmetric. They were shaped as though a not-quite-bright child had labored to form vast fat cigars out of mud. Lumpy protuberances, like mammoth warts, protruded from their sides.
Yet certain things about them did impress him. Their speed was considerable, in spite of the yawing movements they made. And they gave the impression of enormous weight and incalculable age. There was a loose discipline about their movement.
They came abreast, about a mile between each one, went on out to sea, wheeled back and, once again over land, went blundering on up the coast.
“What next, genius?” Alice Fiddler asked.
Graim straightened. At least he was certain of his ground there. He knew how the plot would unfold. “Attempts will be made to communicate with them. Those attempts- will be continued until they make some overt move, cause some damage. And then the air-force will attack. And, of course, all of our weapons will be powerless. But some young inventor will be working on something which, in the nick of time will drive them away.”
She clapped her hands. “Bravo! What’ll we name this yarn from the immortal pen of Lawrence Graim? Sideways in Space? You wrote that one already. Remember?”
“Oh, hush!” he said wearily. “Come on down and have some coffee and we’ll listen to the radio.”
She rested her hand on his arm for a moment. “Cheer up, Graim. After this you’ll have to find a new plot. I’m not as rough as I sound. Where’s your coffee?”
In his room they sat and listened to the excited tenor yelpings of the news analyst “At this moment it has been decided that the space ships did not originate anywhere on this planet. No one knows where they came from or what they want. Folks, they seem to be looking us over. All continents at once. A complete census is difficult because they all look alike and they stay in motion. But it is estimated that there are somewhere between two and three thousand of them, each one a good quarter mile long. Imagine that, folks! An airship or space ship or whatever about thirteen hundred feet long! There doesn’t seem to be any pattern in their movements. They stay at about three thousand feet and keep moving around in groups. We are awaiting a statement from the president. Ah, here it is. And I quote. ‘There is no cause for panic or alarm. Some intelligence is behind all this, and if they were unfriendly, we’d have known it by now. We are trying to communicate with them. The American public will be kept advised of our progress.’ ”