Alan E. Nourse & J. A. Meyer (7 page)
Read Alan E. Nourse & J. A. Meyer Online
Authors: The invaders are Coming
And now, Wildwood.
For the first time, a chink in the armor, a possible
break
. . .
And John McEwen was afraid
to go on.
"Listen
to me, Mac," Bahr said. "This is the time to move in, not the time to
sit on the fence and worry. We've got something here at last that we can get
our hands on. This major . . ."
Weakly,
McEwen shook his head. "The DIA has its limits, Julian. An atomic theft .
. . this is out of our hands."
Bahr's
face hardened for just a moment. Then he swung a chair over toward the
director, smiling and calm, and looked into the older man's tired face.
"Mac, let's get this thing straightened out right now. I don't think
you've thought this Wildwood incident out yet." He sensed the reaction
from Carmine and the others, felt their eyes on his back. "The thing that
happened last night at Wildwood changes the whole nature of Project Frisco. We
can't back out now even if we wanted to. We've got to hang on if it kills
us."
McEwen shook his head
again. "I
...
I don't see . .
."
"Mac,
whoever stole that U-metal made a mistake last night.
A very
bad mistake."
"Mistake?" said
McEwen.
"There
was nothing wrong with those exit monitors. They were working fine. You
couldn't get a radium-painted watch dial past them without tripping the alarm,
and they were permanently sealed so they couldn't have been disconnected."
McEwen
looked up. "Then you think Alexander was telling the truth?"
"Not
necessarily," Bahr insisted. "But some things have checked out, and
there is one simple fact that we just can't ignore. Whoever took that U-metal
out of the plant had it so effectively shielded that it didn't trigger the exit
monitors."
McEwen
blinked. "Julian, that doesn't make sense. The very minimum shielding for
that stuff would be a foot-thick slab of lead.
Nobody
could have carried that out past the guards. They won't even let you
carry out a mechanical pencil."
"But a man could get a
property pass," Bahr said
sofdy
.
"For
a truck-load of U-metal and shielding?"
"Oh,
no.
But maybe for a briefcase."
"You're not making
sense," McEwen said. "Those slugs . . ."
Bahr
slammed his fist down on the desk. "Mac,
it happened!
Can't you begin to see this now?
It happened!
Of course it doesn't make sense; there's no
earthly way anyone could cram
diose
slugs and
shielding into a small package and waltz out the gate with them, but that is exactly
the thing that happened; it
must
have
happened." His eyes were bright on the director's face. "All right,
we have to work with it, find out
how
it
could have happened. Nothing yet in Project Frisco has made any sense, but now
a pattern is beginning to take shape. Suppose a special shield was used . . .
a very special shield, say, maybe just a monomolecular layer of neutrons packed
in tight like the tiles in a mosaic . . . an invisible skin built into the wall
of a briefcase, completely impermeable to any radiation . . ."
"There
isn't any such shield," McEwen said flatly. "If the Eastern Bloc were
within five years of something like that BRINT would have told us long ago. And
nobody in this country is working in nuclear physics. They don't even dare talk
about things like that
any more
for fear DEPCO will
be down their throats."
"What
you are saying," Bahr said quietly, "is that there is nothing known
to Earth science that could be used as a shield like that."
"Of course not.
Nobody—" McEwen broke off, staring at him. Across the room the
teletype had stopped, leaving a sudden void of silence in the room. Early
morning traffic sounds came up from the street, muffled, a world away.
"What do you mean?" McEwen said hoarsely after a long moment.
"What are you saying?"
"I'm
saying that we've been trying so hard to pin all these occurrences down to the
Eastern Bloc that we've ignored what was staring us in the face," Bahr
said. "Nothing has fit together in any way we could see, but these things
have been purposeful, just the same. Those
thermite
fires: all six burned in front of searchlight reflectors and beamed
straight up.
The high-frequency signals we've been trying
to pin down—not messages, not traffic or Morse characters, just
signals."
Bahr
stood up, his huge body filling the room. "What have we been looking for,
Mac?
A Chinese guerilla unit?
A
Russki
intelligence team?
Maybe even a BRINT unit
checking our reaction speed? We've been looking for something we could
recognize and
classify,
something we
know.
And we haven't found it. But nothing that we know could have gotten
those slugs out of the Wildwood Plant."
For
a long moment there was silence. McEwen's face was grey. "Julian, if there
were a remote possibility . . ."
"I
saw that explosion last night, Mac. I saw the thing before it exploded. And I
know the panic it would start off if even a hint of it ever got out. That's why
we have to sit on this so tight that nobody even hears about the Wildwood raid
until we know for sure what we're dealing with. That U-metal would be worthless
to any human agent, but to an Alien intelligence team, it might be a different
story. We can't guess what they might have wanted it for. Their idea of
intelligence might be as different from ours as
...
as DIA from BRINT."
Slowly,
almost feebly, McEwen fumbled in his pocket, pulled out a white box and took
out a capsule. Bahr filled a paper cup at the cooler as McEwen, with hands
visibly shaking, stuck the capsule in his mouth. He swallowed it after a couple
of tries, and coughed weakly. "What do you think we should do,
Julian?"
"First, sew up last night's incident
tieht
. That means
blackout
of
all news stories, and indoctrination of the cities and towns where the power
failed. Make up a cover story to give them, and make it good. BURINF can take
care of that . . ."
With
an obvious effort of will John McEwen straightened up. "If there's a leak
...
if even a hint gets into circulation
...
it could be worse than the crash."
"There
won't be a leak," Bahr said confidently. He turned to Carmine. "
Well
keep everything to do with this incident and any new
ones under top security. . . . But most important of all, don't use the word
aliens
in any communications. Don't hint at it, don't joke about it, don't say
it, or write it, or think it. Because if there
are
aliens . . ."
Carmine
nodded and left the room, pad and pencil in hand. McEwen watched him go, and
then looked at Julian Bahr, shaking his head with the slow, baffled uncertainty
of an ineffectual parent.
With all the speed, force and precision of a
guillotine blade, the blackout fell on the incident of the Wildwood Power Plant
raid.
The
coverup
was fast, and skillful. Frank Carmine talked to
BURINF, at Bahr's orders and over McEwen's signature and political support, and
the greatest communications network in the world jerked as if it had been hit
by a whip.
From
somewhere in BURINF emerged a newscast story of a power-line failure between
Wildwood and St. Louis, causing a power blackout the previous night. It was a
clear, simple, convincing story, broadcast over a tightly controlled net to
reach only St. Louis and its suburban centers, and it reassured everyone and
explained everything, even though it was a complete and deliberate lie.
North
of Wildwood,
Road
Washed Out
signs
went up on all wheel-strips leading within twenty miles of the crater, with DIA
field units spread out in a wide perimeter around the site of the blast.
'Copter units maintained air coverage to keep unwanted small craft out of the
area. Major Harvey Alexander's absence was covered, and the cordon of young,
serious-faced DIA men circulating in the plant area proper was convincingly
explained as a team of auditors evaluating the plant operations to prevent
another breakdown.
i
In the great
Vanner-Elling
calculators in
Verdon
Caverns, the key words "Wildwood,"
"atomic," "explosion," "demolition,"
"DIA," "alien," "mystery," and scores of other
journalistic leak-words were unobtrusively loaded into the electronic
censors
that tested every story, column, ad and byline for
any contextual association with the Wildwood raid, with results screening
continuously into the huge BURINF clearing house.
Likewise,
an integrated check-system monitored the TV-casts, and thousands of concealed
microphones in playgrounds, washrooms, cafeterias, bars and other strategic
places—long the standard emotion-samplers and information-gatherers of the
government Stability program—went on active to test the rate of occurrence of
any of the key words.
And
all this was done so swiftly, so silently, that even the TV stations, press
rooms, and standard information services did not suspect that a continental
alert was on.
Which was why, when the leak came, it was so unexpected.
Station
WDQM-TV in Jefferson City, Illinois, reported on a newsbreak flash that a local
hunter in the bush had been wakened during the night by an explosion in the
region of the Wildwood Power Plant. A forest ranger had also seen the blast,
and noticed the concentration of helicopters in the area.
Bahr only caught the last few lines before
the commercial, after a frantic signal came through from the local telecast
monitor, but that was enough. Cursing, he ordered the story squelched, and the
phone line to WDQM began buzzing. In New York an ace copywriter had a recording
of the broadcast and Bahr's personal instructions ringing in his ears began to
create, out of nothing, a cover-lie.
DlA
ground cars
intercepted the station's TV field unit en route to the scene, and took the
driver and technicians into custody for interrogation and indoctrination.
But
the move was not fast enough. Even while the cover-story was being written,
Station BCQN in Canada, on a network that was not under DIA censorship, called
WDQM for details. Someone at the station blundered and said the story had been
killed. Fifteen minutes later, in a scheduled newscast, the Canadian station
opened the dike.
"A
mysterious explosion last night in the vicinity of the Wildwood, Illinois,
Atomic Power Project, has become the subject of a furious DIA censorship
move," the announcer said. "Earlier this evening Station WDQM-TV
reported two eye-witness accounts of the strange blast, which occurred shortly
after midnight, but further details have been totally suppressed. In spite of the
censorship move, however, an amateur radio group TBX-57HC3 picked up some
police-frequency radio chatter last night, tentatively identified as
originating in the blast area. TBX has been able to provide us with a tape
recording of this chatter, which we have edited somewhat in preparation for
this rebroadcast."
Bahr
was on the phone personally before the first sentence of the newscast was
finished. He listened as the call went through to make sure it was going to be
as bad as it sounded. Finally he was connected with the manager of the BCQN
station.
"This
is Julian Bahr, Assistant Director DIA, speaking for the director," he
said. "We've just caught the beginning of your broadcast, and you seem to
have some misinformation about the situation here at Wildwood."
"Really?" the
manager's voice said languidly.
"We'll
be glad to give you a complete picture of the situation in another half hour,
but we'd like to request that you . . .
er
. . . hold
off on that broadcast," Bahr said. "It might cause some . . .
er
. . . confusion to have different interpretations of the
event in circulation."
"Yes, I should think it would," the
manager said.
"Then you'll cancel the broadcast?"
"Oh,
I'm really afraid that would be out of the question, Mr. Bahr." The voice
was infinitely regretful, but quite firm. Bahr caught the remark from the radio
about the tape
recording
,
and realized instantly that TBX was a cover code for one of the Canadian
intercepts for BRINT. He covered the mouthpiece with his hand.
"BRINT
picked up our 'copter chatter last night,"
hp
said, looking at McEwen's white face.
"They've got to kill
it," McEwen said hoarsely.
Bahr
uncovered the mouthpiece. "We would appreciate it very much if you could
hold that broadcast, somehow," he said, throwing up the lure. There was no
time to lose.
"
Er
...
do you
think we could get a reporting team into the area?" That meant, of course,
a BRINT intelligence team.
"I
doubt it," Bahr countered, curious to see just how eager BRINT was.
"We'll give you a complete report."
"I'm not sure that
would be completely satisfactory."
They
were
eager.
Very eager.
"Well,
but the Wildwood plant is a highly classified government project," Bahr
said, "and our security people are naturally leery about commercial news
agencies which aren't subject to our security regulations nosing around . . .
not that
I
doubt your discretion. . . ."
"Of
course, I understand the problem you have with security," the manager
said, warming to the bargain. In the background Bahr could hear the first
fragments of 'copter-chatter coming through—his own voice, directing the Unit
Seven 'copters toward the strike area. "Still, we
do
have an obligation to our public to verify newscasts as thoroughly as we
can." Meaning that BRINT knew something was in the wind but hadn't pinned
it down yet. Bahr cupped his hand over the mouthpiece and turned to McEwen and
Carmine.
"BRINT wants in.
Badly.
They must have flushed Project Frisco and—"
He
never finished the sentence. Quite suddenly McEwen clutched at his chest and
moaned, his eyes bulging. His breath went ragged, his face turning blue.
"The chief!"
McEwen
coughed,
a
strangled sound. Then his arms dropped and his body slumped back, his eyes
staring blankly at the ceiling.
"Get
a doctor!"
Bahr
roared, slamming the phone down, the Canadian broadcast forgotten. "For
Christ sake get a
doctorl
" He lifted McEwen onto
the desk, stripped off his own jacket and put it over the director's chest,
felt quickly for a pulse.
A
doctor arrived in a few minutes, but it was
too late. McEwen was dead, diagnosis coronary occlusion precipitated by
overwork and sudden shock.
As
the white-coated ambulance attendant carried the stretcher out, Frank Carmine
put a hand on Bahr's shoulder. "Well, Julian," he said, "it
looks like it's up to you, now."