Invaders From Earth

2

Dinoli looked marvelously proud of himself. His beady eyes darted here and there through the room, fixing on each man at least once, as he prepared to deliver himself of the details of his latest coup.

Kennedy had to feel a sharp twinge of admiration for the savage old battler. Dinoli had clawed himself to first rank in public relations by sheer vigorous exertion, coupled with some judicious backstabbing; to be affiliated at all with him, whether on third-level or sixth, was a measure of distinction in the field.

“Executive Second-Level Hubbel of Public Liaison. Executive Second-Level Partridge of Public Liaison. Executive Second-Level Brewster of the Corporation’s Space Expeditionary Command.” Dinoli indicated each of the men with a quick birdlike hand gesture.

Kennedy studied them. Hubbel and Partridge were obviously desk men, fiftyish, well built and on the stout side, both of them deeply, and probably artificially, tanned. They looked formidably competent.

Brewster was a different item, though. Short and compact, he was a dark-faced little man who stood ramrod straight, hard, cold eyes peering at the group out of a lean, angular face. He looked tough, and the heavy tan on his cheeks was convincing.

Of course! Kennedy thought, with a sudden shock of wonder. The space explorer!

“As members of my staff,” Dinoli said, “you all know well that anything you may be told in the confines of this room is absolutely confidential. I trust that’s understood, gentlemen. Otherwise get out.”

Thirteen heads went up-down affirmatively.

“Good. May I say by way of preface that this is perhaps the biggest and most important job Steward and Dinoli has ever handled—perhaps the biggest S and D will ever handle. Every PR firm in the nation was canvassed for this job before we landed the contract. I needn’t add that successful handling of this new account will result in substantial upward alterations in the individual status increments of those men working on it.”

Dinoli paused a long moment. The old man was a master of the dramatic approach. He said at length, “To fill you in on the background, first: Executive Brewster has recently returned from a space journey sponsored by his Corporation. The Major was connected with the Mars expedition, of course, and with the less successful Venus mission that preceded it—and I might add that his heroism was a major factor in minimizing losses on the unfortunate Venus encounter. Executive Brewster’s third and most recent Corporation-sponsored mission was to Ganymede—which is, of course, the largest of the moons of our great planetary neighbor Jupiter.”

Kennedy wrinkled his brows in surprise; Dinoli seemed to catch the expression, and shot a terrifying glance at him. The old man said smoothly, “The existence of this third interplanetary mission is still secret. The poor publicity aroused by the Venus mission was a factor influencing the Corporation to suppress information to the Ganymede trip until its successful conclusion.”

Dinoli made an almost imperceptible gesture and a motion-picture screen unreeled itself in the back of the great room. “Executive Brewster has brought us a film of his activities on Ganymede. I’d like all of us to see this film before we go any further in this meeting.”

Two of Dinoli’s young undersecretaries appeared, pushing a sliding table on which was mounted a movie projector. One girl deftly set up the projector while another pressed the control that would opaque the picture window. The room grew dim; Dinoli signaled and the remaining lights were extinguished: Kennedy turned in his seat to see the screen.

The projector hummed.

said the opening title, against a pulsing background of red, white, and blue. Credit-lines followed. And then, quite suddenly, Kennedy found himself staring at an alien landscape, oddly quiet, oddly disturbing.

Bleak whiteness confronted him: the whiteness of an almost endless snowfield, beneath a pale blue sky. Jagged mountain ranges, rock-bare and snow-topped, loomed in the distance. Clouds of gray-green gas swirled past the eye of the camera.

“This is the surface of Ganymede,” came the attractively resonant voice of Brewster. “As you can see, frozen ammonia-methane snow covers the ground in most areas. Ganymede, of course, is virtually planetary in size—its diameter is thirty-two hundred miles, which is slightly more than that of Mercury. We found the gravitation to be fairly close to that of Earth, incidentally. Ganymede’s a heavy-core planet, probably torn out of Jupiter’s heart at the time the system was formed.”

As he spoke, the camera’s eye moved on, and Kennedy’s with it: on to examine the fine striations in an outcropping of rock, on to peer down at a tiny, determined lichen clinging to the side of an upthrust tongue of basalt.

Suddenly the camera whirled dizzyingly upward for a look at the sky. Kennedy was jolted. Jupiter filled a vast segment of the sky, a great heavy ball hanging like a brooding giant just above.

“Ganymede was about six hundred and fifty thousand miles distant from Jupiter at the time of this film’s making,” Brewster said dryly. “At this distance Jupiter takes up quite a chunk of the heavens.”

Kennedy stared uneasily at the monstrous cloud-wrapped planet, whose velvety pearl-gray surface gave hint of unimaginable turbulence deep beneath the outer band of atmosphere. To his relief, the camera finally left the huge world and returned to the Ganymedean landscape.

For perhaps five minutes more the film drifted on over the lonely, bleak land. Then eight spacesuit-clad figures appeared, faces nearly hidden behind their breathing masks, bodies shrouded by the metal-impregnated suits.

“The members of the expedition,” Brewster commented.

The camera panned to a spaceship, standing slim and tall on a bare patch of rock. The ship bore dark green numerals painted on its shining silver flank.

“The expeditionary ship,” Brewster said.

After a survey of the outer skin of the ship from various angles, and a few more glimpses of the spacesuit-clad crewmen, the camera shifted to pick up a strangely cold-looking pool of greasy liquid.

“One of the occasional Ganymedean paraffin lakes,” said Brewster.

The camera skirted the pool’s edge, doubled back through a snowfield, and centered suddenly on four weird figures—four creatures vaguely man-shaped, their faces noseless, their eyes hooded by folds of flesh. They were pale white in color, hairless, virtually naked except for some sort of woven cloth girdle round their middles. They were staring sadly at the camera, faces devoid of any understandable expressions.

“These are the natives of Ganymede,” Brewster remarked blandly.

Brewster had certainly underplayed it. It took three or four seconds for the effect of his quiet words to make itself known, and then Kennedy felt as if he’d been bashed in the stomach by a battering ram. He had been watching the film intently enough, but superficially—observing it in a detached manner, since the mere sight of alien landscapes was not enough to involve him deeply. But now, suddenly, to have alien life sprung on him. . . .

The Venus expedition had been a dismal failure, mechanical difficulties making it nearly impossible for the explorers to cope with the formaldehyde soup that was Venus’ atmosphere. But in their short stay they had definitely verified the fact that there was no animal life on the second planet.

Mars, too, had proved barren, despite the hopes of many. A few lichens, a few podded weeds that survived in the near vacuum, but nothing else. Humanity, and Ted Kennedy, had begun to decide that man was alone in the Solar System, and possibly in the universe.

And now, suddenly—

“The Ganymedeans are a primitive people living in sprawling villages of a few thousand inhabitants each,” Brewster said, in a standard travelogue manner. “They seem to cover the entire land mass of Ganymede, which is distributed over three continents. We estimated their numbers at about twenty-five million.”

Moistening his lips, Kennedy stared at the four alien beings against the alien backdrop of methane snow. He still had no idea what possible tie-in Dinoli had with all this, but he was waiting.

“During our stay,” Brewster went on, “we learned the rudiments of their language. It’s a fairly simple agglutinating tongue, and our linguists are at work on it now. We discovered that the Ganymedeans have a working clan system, with sharp tribal rivalries, and also that they show neither any particular fear or any liking for us. The expeditionary geologist’s report shows that Ganymede is exceptionally rich in radioactive minerals. Thank you.”

The film came abruptly to its end with the last word of Brewster’s sentence. The light went on, dazzling Kennedy’s eyes; the secretaries appeared from somewhere, deopaqued the big window, and wheeled the projector out. The screen vanished into its recess in the ceiling.

In less than a minute the room was as it had been before. But none of its occupants were quite the same.

Dinoli leaned forward, his eyes glittering brightly. “I think you begin to see the magnitude of what’s unfolding before us, men.”

Kennedy squirmed uneasily in his contour chair. He saw some of the implications—particularly in that punchline Brewster had tacked on to his little travelogue. The expeditionary geologist’s report shows that Ganymede is exceptionally rich in radioactive minerals.

The way he had said it as a non sequitur made the fact seem almost irrelevant. Kennedy had a good ear for seeming irrelevancies; ultimately, they often turned out to be of critical importance in the case.

Dinoli glanced at the taller and fatter of the two liaison men and said, “Now, Executive Hubbel, will you fill my men in on some of the implications to be drawn from this situation on Ganymede?”

Hubbel coughed ostentatiously. “You’ve seen the existence of alien life on this planet-sized moon. You’ve seen also that Ganymede holds exceptional mineral wealth, which our Corporation proposes to mine in the name of the public good by virtue of our U.N. charter agreement. We’ve gone to considerable expense developing and outfitting ships to explore space, and naturally we’re counting on recouping our expenditures on Ganymede. Partridge?”

The other blinked like a sleepy cougar and said smoothly, “We feel there may be certain difficulties in obtaining mining rights from the Ganymedeans.”

Suddenly Kennedy began to understand. He felt a muscle in his right calf start to quiver.

Dinoli grinned triumphantly. “Here’s where we come in, boys. There might be conflict—conflict with the obstinate Ganymedeans. Some people might call that a war of aggression. Actually, of course, it’s sheer necessity. We need what Ganymede has; the Corporation has sunk billions into opening up space for humanity. You understand this. You’re all clever men. That’s why you work here instead of for a second-rate outfit.”

Partridge said, “Naturally, the people might not sympathize with our plea of necessity. They might think we were imperialistic.”

“This impression would of course have to be counteracted by careful public relations management,” Hubbel said thoughtfully, putting a cap on the whole thing.

“And we’ve been chosen to handle it,” finished Dinoli.

That was it. That was all there was to it.

Kennedy kept his face blank of emotional reaction. The “agency mask,” Marge called it privately. What Marge didn’t know was that frequently the agency mask hid an equal blankness of inner feeling. Kennedy suspended judgment, waiting to hear more.

“We plan an intensive world-wide blanketing,” Dinoli said. “These gentlemen will be working closely with us at all times. Specific target dates have already been set up. There’s a date on which first knowledge of the existence of life on Ganymede will be given to the public—almost immediately, I can tell you—and there’s a terminal date on which the occupation force will have to be put down to assist the Corporation. Between those dates, it’ll be our responsibility to handle the campaign.” Dinoli leaned back, grinning expansively. “Our constitution provides that no more than four men may be second-level at any one time in our organization. However, we’re a flexible group. For the duration of this campaign, those of you who are third-level will draw second-level salaries, without formal advancement in rank. You second-level boys will get salary boosts as well. As for you, Dave Spalding—you’ll draw third-level pay, while officially remaining a fourth-level man. Whether these boosts become permanent or not depends largely on the success of the campaign.” The old man’s eyes traveled down the rows. “Is everything perfectly clear?”

Thirteen affirmative nods.

“Well, then. You four”—he indicated the second-level men—“will serve as general coordinators for the project. The actual intensive work will be carried out by the third-level people, plus you, Spalding.”

Kennedy timidly lifted one hand.

“Yes, Theodore?”

“Sir, what about the projects we’re currently working on? Are they to be carried on as well?”

Dinoli smiled glacially. “This contract takes precedence over any others we may have signed. Your second-level supervisor will discuss with you the advisability of turning your current project over to a fourth-level man.”

“I see,” Kennedy said. That was the end of Federated Bauxite, then.

“If everything’s understood, men, we can call it a day.” Dinoli rose. “We’ll work as a tight little unit on this. And we’ll prove to the Corporation that they haven’t made a mistake in choosing S and D. Won’t we, men?”

Thirteen nods.

“Well.” The single word was a clearcut dismissal.

They filed out slowly. Kennedy left quietly, deep in what to an observer would have seemed to be thought, but which was actually the opposite—mere mindless intense concentration that allowed him to avoid considering a serious problem of ethics. There was time for that later;

What will Marge say? he wondered. He thought of the simple blank-faced creatures from the film, and of Marge’s boundless sympathy for the downtrodden unfortunates of the world. What will Marge say? he asked himself worriedly.