Part 2

"Okay." I showed the cable to Stew. "They asked for it."

I gave Nancy the second take of Riddie Playfair's story to send to London and handed the third back to Stew. "Jazz it up," I said. "If that's the way they want it, that's the way they'll get it. You don't suppose they were shooting at Eurydice, do you? I'll see if Ian can get anything from the Maryland state police. Find out what number she was calling from, will you?"

Stew picked up the phone and I tapped out a note to Washington. Ian acknowledged:

II SHD HV SMTHNG FM WHU IN MIN

Half a minute later Washington gave us this:

SNAP

INTERPLANETARY

WASHINGTON, JULY 22 (WW)--PRESIDENT ALLISON SAID TODAY HE IS "REASONABLY CERTAIN" MEN FROM ANOTHER PLANET HAVE LANDED ON EARTH.

MORE

Good old Nancy had the first part of it in London before Washington finished its sentence.

2 (JULY 23, WED.)

An informed White Horse source predicts....

--CBS Washington commentator

Actually there wasn't much more hard news that first day. I hung around for a while after the night man came on, the way you do when a big story is going, wanting to see what will happen next, but finally I left. I listened to the radio as I drove home from the bus stop, and watched the 15-minute night television news programs, then went to bed.

"Any coffee?" I said to the copy boy as I came in, grinning it in lieu of a good morning.

"You must be the sole support of Brazil," he said.

"Africa," I said. "This powdered stuff comes from Africa."

"It's an education being around you, Sam," he said.

I said good morning to Charlie Price and read in.

There had been, as I suspected, little hard news after President Allison's statement. Much of the night file had consisted of rehashing the known facts and padding these out with interpretation and speculation.

"Washington officials" said the contents of the Monolithian note were being studied and a reply might be expected soon. These would be State Department and White House spokesmen who didn't want to be identified.

"Diplomatic sources" said it was reasonable to assume that Britain, France, Russia and perhaps India and the United Arab Republic had received similar notes. These would be embassy personnel asserting their belief that any sensible aliens would not have snubbed their countries by communicating only with the United States.

"Experienced observers" said receipt of the note had taken officials by surprise and that lights were burning late in government buildings as policy-makers tried to cope overnight with the advent of interplanetary relations. These would be newsmen interviewing each other.

"Unconfirmed reports" said any race of people capable of hurtling billions of miles across space would be sure to have an equally advanced military machine whose weapons would be to our nuclear stuff what our stuff was to the M-1 rifle. This would be a roundup of informed guessing and common sense.

I had a look at the late morning papers before relieving Charlie.

The _New York Times_ gave it an eight-column headline, three lines deep:

ENVOYS OF SPACE NATION ARRIVE; NOTE CITES FRIENDSHIP AS GOAL; ALIENS SEEK U.N. MEMBERSHIP

The _Daily News_ said it in four words:

SPACEMEN LAND, DEMAND PARLEY

"Okay, Charlie," I said, meaning I had read in. "Anything going on now?"

"Washington's not in yet. Jones called from UN a little while ago and said he was working on something. Good night."

"Good night," I said to Charlie. "'Morning, Nan," I said to the operator. "Any spacemen out your way?"

"Not yet. But believe me, I made sure the door was locked last night. What happened to Riddie Playfair, anyhow?"

"According to our file last night, she sent a message saying she was all right. Stew Macon followed it up. He'll be in soon. We'll get the inside story."

The UN machine started up:

NILS

UNITED NATIONS, JULY 23 (WW)--THE UNITED NATIONS, FACED WITH THE PROSPECT OF EXPANDING ITSELF FROM AN INTERNATIONAL TO A INTERPLANETARY ORGANIZATION, TODAY CONSIDERED THE POSSIBILITY OF ASKING THE SPACEMEN FROM MONOLITHIA TO MAKE THEIR FIRST OFFICIAL APPEARANCE AT A SPECIAL GENERAL ASSEMBLY MEETING.

NILS NILSEN, THE SECRETARY-GENERAL, WAS REPORTED DRAFTING AN INVITATION TO THE LEADERS OF THE ALIEN GROUP SUGGESTING A MEETING IN HIS 38TH FLOOR OFFICE OF THE SKYSCRAPER HEADQUARTERS. INFORMED SOURCES SAID THAT IF NILSEN THEN WAS CONVINCED OF THE SINCERITY OF THE SPACEMEN, WHO HAVE ASKED TO JOIN THE UNITED NATIONS, HE WOULD CONVENE A SPECIAL ASSEMBLY AT WHICH THE ALIEN LEADER WOULD PUBLICLY STATE HIS CASE....

Stew Macon came in, saying: "Well, how are all you inhabitants of the second greatest planet in creation this historic morning?"

"Keeping the old chin up, Stew," I said. "Say, while you were grappling with that dictionary piece yesterday, did you ever find out what the opposite of monolithic is?"

"Come to think of it, no." He grinned. "Paleolithic, maybe?"

"That'll be enough of that subversive talk. I see by the file that Riddie Playfair wasn't a casualty. Did you get to talk to her again?"

"Not exactly. The Maryland cops tried to bust into the clubhouse at Burning Tree. That's what the shooting was about. They retired in confusion without anybody getting hurt. Something about a mysterious defensive shield the aliens have. The cops got a phone call later. The spacemen said they would not use force except in self-defense. Then they put Riddie on for a minute and she said everything was hunky-dory and we'd be hearing from her again."

"When?" I asked.

"She didn't say. Want me to try to reach her?"

"It's worth a try. Sure."

Stew picked up the phone and I looked over the rest of Collie's UN piece and gave it to Nancy.

Washington clicked in. Ian McEachern told me on the printer that Reb Sylvester had gone directly to Burning Tree in case the spacemen made a personal appearance and that Josh Holcomb had said he might have something later in the morning. He'd had nothing to add to President Allison's "reasonably certain" statement of yesterday. He declined to go beyond that, resisting all attempts to get him to say officially that the aliens had landed.

What he'd actually said, Ian told me off the record, was, "We'll jump off that bridge when we come to it." Asked whether he meant that the United States had doubts about the spacemen's professed peaceful intentions, or that in view of their presumed superior technology the Pentagon was obsolete, Josh had said he'd said all he was going to say.

So much for the White House. The State Department was "studying the situation." The Pentagon sat behind a wall of No Comments.

"No soap on the Alien Friend," Stew said, hanging up the phone. "They don't answer at the clubhouse and the cops say they don't know nothin'."

"We've got to get this story off the ground," I said. "All we've got so far is Collie's UN piece. It's all right, but there's no action. How about calling up the Mayor's office and seeing if they plan a ticker-tape parade?"

"This is action?"

I shrugged. "You got a better idea?"

"I'll call the Mayor's office," Stew said. "Maybe something will occur to me."

I went over to the incoming teletypes to see if WW had developed anything overseas. London's piece was chiefly newspaper comment and unofficial speculation about what the Foreign Office would do. Cooperate with the aliens if they were friendly and resist them if they were not seemed to be about the size of it.

Paris reacted in the spirit of Jules Verne. There was an unofficial report that the travelers of space would be invited to moor their vehicle interplanetary to the Tour Eiffel.

Moscow was keeping mum. No mention of the story had appeared in _Pravda_ or _Izvestia_, and Radio Moscow was also ignoring it. The foreign diplomatic corps was agog, but no one seemed to have any idea of what the Kremlin's official attitude would be to a true monolithic state.

The evening papers came up. The _Post_ had interviewed a representative collection of cab drivers, waitresses, etc. Israel Kraft, a Bronx hackie, said the seven-foot aliens could ride in his cab any time if they fit, but they better not try to palm off any funny money on him. The manager of the Mayfair Theater, which was showing "I Was a Teen-Age Necromancer," said all bona fide space aliens would be admitted free. The manager of the Gaiety Delicatessen said he assumed the spacemen had to eat and invited them to his place for the best hot pastrami sandwich in New York. Patrolman Patrick O'Hanlon said he'd leave it to the Commissioner to say how they should be treated, but if they tried jaywalking they'd get a ticket just like anybody else.

The _World-Telegram_ had a front-page editorial asking how the aliens had managed to get through our radar without detection. It was not the first time the Defense Department and the Central Intelligence Agency had been caught napping, the _World-Telegram_ said. It demanded a Congressional investigation.

The third evening paper, the _Journal-American_, said it was reserving judgment on whether the aliens were as friendly as they professed to be and urged Americans to keep their guard up.

SNAP

WASHINGTON, JULY 23 (WW)--PRESIDENT ALLISON ARRANGED A MEETING FOR THIS MORNING WITH THE ALLEGED ALIENS WHO ARE SEEKING TO CONCLUDE A PEACE TREATY WITH THE UNITED STATES.

MORE

I sent that to London after crossing out the "alleged." I figured if things had gone this far they must be for real.

ALIENS 2 WASHINGTON ADD SNAP

A MOTORCADE OF LIMOUSINES WAS SENT TO BURNING TREE CLUB TO BRING TO THE WHITE HOUSE THE VISITORS WHO SAY THEY REPRESENT THE SPACE NATION OF MONOLITHIA.

JOSHUA HOLCOMB, THE PRESIDENT'S PRESS SECRETARY, SAID REPORTERS WOULD BE BARRED FROM THE MEETING BUT THAT THERE PROBABLY WOULD BE A STATEMENT LATER.

SECRETARY OF STATE RUPERT MARRINER CANCELED HIS PLANNED TRIP TO SOUTH AMERICA TO BE PRESENT AT THE MEETING.

MORE

I asked Ian:

WHAT TIME IS MEETING? ALSO WHOSE BYLINE?

He replied: 11:45. MINE. REB IS WITH MOTORCADE.

I sent that information off as an FYI to London. Ian had little more that was new, but he paged on several paragraphs of background.

John Hyatt, the general news manager, came in from his office. He read the latest and said, "Good stuff. Have you got enough bodies?"

"We're not overstaffed, John, but we're all right for now."

"Okay. We can haul a few people in from Chicago if necessary. And let me know if you need another hand here today. I think I can still bang the old mill."

"Thanks, John."

World Wide has found that if you saturate the field with first-rank outside men you need only two or three men on the desk. Too many bodies have a tendency to get in each other's way.

Reb Sylvester had wangled a limousine with a radio-telephone and was dictating a running story on the short drive from Burning Tree to the White House.

The aliens, about a dozen of them, were wearing the heavy, rough-looking cloaks which Eurydice Playfair had described yesterday. They were accompanied by more than twice that number of Secret Service men, Maryland state police, State Department security guards and Washington police.

The cavalcade sped along River Road, then into Wisconsin Avenue and through Georgetown. There hadn't been time for many people to hear about it on the radio and few crowds gathered.

But then the cars went past the White House gates without entering. Reb said he couldn't find out what was going on. The cavalcade was headed in the general direction of the National Press Building at 14th and F Streets. That's where we have our Washington bureau, as does almost every other news organization. I could imagine Ian rushing to his window for a glimpse of them.

The cars came to a stop on F Street, strung out in front of the Press Building and the Capitol Theater, where they immediately snarled auto and street-car traffic. The cloaked aliens got out, as did the security men in their neat suits.

It looked as if the aliens were deliberately snubbing the President; as if they intended to keep him waiting while they held a press conference. They couldn't have picked a better place, if that was their intention. There are more reporters per square foot at 14th and F Streets than anywhere else in the world.

But the aliens didn't enter the Press Building. Instead they crossed F Street, which by now was clogged with crowds of curious people ignoring the _Don't Walk_ signs and clustering around the aliens, who politely pushed through them and went into the Young Men's Shop.

They came out twenty minutes later, dressed in neat, conservative suits which made them indistinguishable from the security men.

They got back into the limousines and circled back the few blocks to the White House, where they arrived on the dot of 11:45 A.M.

* * * * *

"And then what happened?" my wife asked me at supper.

"My God, Mae, you must have heard it on the radio. And they televised the press conference."

"I saw that, Sam. But what's the good of having a husband in the news game if he won't give you an eyewitness account?"

"It's not a game," I told her for the hundredth time. "And you don't get an eyewitness view from the desk."

"You know what I mean," Mae said. "Robert E. Lee Sylvester was there." That's Reb's full name and my wife likes the sound of it. "What did he say? You know, off the record?"

"Not much. The meeting with Gov and Marriner lasted about two hours. Then they all came out and all they said was that they were going over to State. They talked there for another hour or so. Then they came out and posed for pictures and Ells said they'd had a useful exchange of views."

"Who's Ells?"

"George Ellsworth, the State Department spokesman. Josh said just about the same thing in a statement later. That's Joshua Holcomb, the White House man."

"I know him. He gets more publicity than Gov himself. Doesn't it confuse people to call the President 'Gov'? What do they call the Governor?"

"Washington doesn't have a governor. It's a city, not a state. Honestly, Mae...."

"All right, Sam. I suppose I should know these things. What happened after everybody exchanged views? Did they sign that treaty?"

"Things don't happen that fast. The aliens went to Blair House for the night. They'll have more talks tomorrow morning and in the afternoon they may come up and see Nils."

"Nils Nilsen, the Secretary-General of the UN. I know him."

"Good for you," I said.

"They look like nice boys," Mae said. "They're all so young and handsome. I hope we can get along with them."

"So do we all."

3 (JULY 24, THURS.)

I told them once, I told them twice; They would not listen to advice....

--Through the Looking-Glass

The overnight file consisted of about 10 percent fact and 90 percent speculation. Sources close to the White House thought that President Allison had been favorably impressed with the Monolithians and that they would issue a joint communiqué today announcing their intention of signing a treaty of friendship in the very near future. Congressional sources said it was likely that the Senate would want to take a long, hard look at such a treaty before it ratified it. There was some talk of a full-scale investigation of the aliens by the Senate Internal Security Committee.

The factual part of the file included a description of the spaceship, which remained under guard at the Burning Tree Club, and interviews with the manager and salesmen of the Young Men's Shop. The size of the ship indicated that it had not made an interstellar voyage by itself; that it was a sort of scout ship or lifeboat from a much bigger craft which presumably was moored somewhere out in space.

The ship at Burning Tree was about as big as our biggest nuclear submarine. It was wingless and cylindrical and its means of propulsion was a mystery.

The people at the Young Men's Shop, honored at having been chosen to outfit the visitors, described them as pleasant, athletically built men whose height ranged from five-feet ten to six-feet three. The aliens spoke excellent, almost unaccented English, but had discussed nothing except the clothing they purchased. They had not paid cash but said the bill should go to the Monolithian Embassy, Burning Tree Club, Maryland. The cloaks they changed from were made of wool much softer in texture than it looked. They had taken the cloaks with them after being fitted from the skin out in Earth-style clothing. It was delicately indicated in one of the stories that the aliens had worn nothing under the cloaks and that they seemed to be human in every respect.

The dozen young Monolithians had barely arrived at the White House for the scheduled morning meeting when it was simultaneously announced by Josh Holcomb and at the United Nations that the aliens were flying to New York immediately. President Allison was going with them in his personal plane.

My second cup of coffee got cold while I handled a series of fast-breaking developments. Gov asked for a meeting of the Security Council at which he would propose that Monolithia be admitted to UN membership. If the Council made such a recommendation, Nils Nilsen would convene an extraordinary meeting of the General Assembly for the purpose of voting on Monolithia's application.

A think-piece by Ian McEachern speculated that this was a tidy way of bypassing possible Senate objections to a U.S.-Monolithian treaty. By going directly to the world organization the Monolithians would in effect be signing a treaty of friendship with Earth, avoiding the time-consuming process of negotiating unilaterally with each of the eighty-odd nations in the UN.

Collishaw Jones contributed a few takes of interpretation from his end. While no one was so undiplomatic as to say it aloud, the thought persisted in many a mind at UN Headquarters that the Monolithians might not be as friendly as they seemed. Thus it would be well to vote them into the UN as quickly as possible, legally and morally binding them to the preservation of the peace. If they failed then to uphold the principles of the Charter, no one nation would be in the perhaps hopeless position of trying to repel their aggression. The combined might of the world's armies would be pledged to deter them: to take, in the words of the Charter, "effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace."

Ian departed Gov and the aliens from the White House and Reb arrived them at Washington National Airport. Gov had a brief statement for the newsreel and television cameras; it was a marathon sentence to the effect that he would personally sponsor the Monolithians' application, which he hoped would be acted on with alacrity, reflecting in a concrete way the friendly feeling he was sure the world already had for the interplanetary visitors, who had shown themselves to be genuinely desirous of establishing bonds of comity and of exchanging cultural and scientific information which undoubtedly would be mutually beneficial.

The President declined to answer questions and the aliens courteously but firmly followed suit. The plane then took off for New York.

WW's airport stringer arrived it at LaGuardia, where Gov made much the same statement and the Monolithians maintained their silence. The party then roared off in a siren-screaming motorcade to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel by way of lower Broadway and City Hall so that the aliens could have a ticker-tape parade and be officially welcomed by the Mayor.

Stew Macon finished taking the stringer's dictation, then wandered around the desk to watch Nancy Corelli send it off to London. He shook his head.

"What's the matter?" I asked him.

"I don't know, exactly," Stew said, "but this sure isn't the way I thought the interplanetary age would dawn."

"From the other direction, you mean?"

"No, I don't mean that, though of course it would have been more soothing to the ego to see Earth people pioneer space travel."

"Well, we did get to the Moon," I pointed out.

"Moon-shmoon," Stew said. "Big deal. What I mean is that it's all too pat. Here we have the biggest story since creation and it has about as much kick to it as a punch bowl at the Temperance Society's convention. It's all surrounded with protocol and rigmarole."

"Would you have been happier if they came down shooting?"

"Maybe I would."

"Maybe we'd all be dead."

"Yeah, there's that. But this way there's no drama, no color. First chance they got they even swapped their native costumes for Brooks Brothers suits. Now they look like everybody else. They might as well have come over from France on the Liberté."

"The French have wider lapels," I said.

"Ha ha," he said. "Look, ma, I'm laughing. No, really, I have a hunch there's more to these characters than interplanetary amity or comity, or whatever that old fool Gov called it. I have a feeling they're up to something we're not going to like at all. They're too smooth. Everything's just too smooth."

"Shall I mark your words?"

He shrugged. "File them in the circular file."

"Did you read Collie's piece? He hints at rumblings in the corridors. You're not the only one with a suspicious mind."

"Good for Collie. I didn't see it. Where is it?"

I handed him the clipboard and he went back around the desk.

The phone rang. I answered it: "Desk, Kent."

"Sam, this is Riddie. Want a story that'll stun 'em in the Strand?"

"Where are you?" I asked her.

"I'm at the Waldorf. I've got a suite with three telephones. This is class, man."

"I thought you were a captive of the invader. How did you escape?"

"Escape hell. They hired me. I'm their information officer."

"Their press agent, you mean? I thought you were working for us?"

"I quit. Tell Hyatt my resignation's in the mail."

"Fair enough," I said. "Now we know where we stand. What's your story?"

"I just told you. Earth gal joins aliens."

"Is that all? It might just make a paragraph. How about some real news? Like where they came from and how long they're going to stay?"

"No comment, pal. It's a pleasure to say that for a change instead of hearing it."

"What are they really up to? What are they--explorers? Traders?"

"No comment; no comment. They'll say what they have to say in the Security Council tomorrow."

"Tomorrow? I thought it was going to be today."

"No, tomorrow. This is the pukka gen, laddie. They won't have their speech ready till then. I'm collaborating on it. I'll see that Collie gets an advance text. Maybe even tonight, embargoed for about noon tomorrow."

"Thanks," I said.

"Don't thank me. AP and Reuters and UPI'll all be getting them at the same time. Can't play favorites, you know."

"How much are they paying you?"

"Plenty," Riddie said. "They're loaded, son. If you want to get on the bandwagon I might be able to fix it up for you."

"Thanks, but I'll string along with the poor old Earth types for a while. When are your boys going to hold a press conference?"

"I'll let you know."

I tried to get her to say something storyworthy but she seemed prepared to no-comment me to death.

"I gather that was Eurydice Playfair, girl reporter," Stew said when I hung up.

"Girl press agent," I told him. "She's on their payroll."

"She always was an enterprising old witch. She give you anything?"