30-day wonder

Richard Wilson and Richard M. [Illustrator] Powers

Ballantine Books New York

Printed In The United States Of America

Ballantine Books, Inc.

101 Fifth Avenue, New York 3, N. Y.

[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

It's a _lovely_ world....

He was a reporter. A good one. An average guy with a sense of humor and reasonable views about the rights of man.

Maybe that's why the Monolithians picked on him to head up their public-relations program. After all, they had to reach a lot of average people and even though they were invulnerable, they couldn't afford to take chances. _Because they had a message_, and EVERYBODY had to be convinced. So he didn't have any choice in the matter.

That's where the system went wrong. No choice.

Act peaceful. Love thy neighbor. Obey the law. Why, people could go mad living that way.

And many will.

1 (July 22, Tues.)

Yes, an' no, an' mebbe, an' mebbe not.

--Edward Noyes Westcott, _David Harum_

It was an ordinary July morning. July 22d, to be exact. A Tuesday. Already hot at 8:20 A.M., which is when I got off the long-distance bus at the Port Authority terminal and walked the few blocks to my office in the Times Building on 43d Street.

I work for a wire service called World Wide, and my job is to edit American news and send it to London for relay to clients around the world. Actually, wire service is a misnomer, because we use radioteletype, called RTT. My name is Sam Kent.

I hung up my coat, which I had been carrying, rolled up my sleeves and sat down at the big news desk opposite the overnight editor, Charlie Price. WW operates 24 hours a day.

"'Morning, Charlie," I said. "Anything happening?"

"Not a thing."

"Good." I started to read the copies of the news stories which had been filed to London since I'd left late the previous afternoon. This is called reading in.

A copy boy automatically brought me a cup of coffee, heavy on the milk, and I lit a cigarette and read the stories on the torn-off yellow teletype paper attached to the clipboard.

At a quarter to nine I was up to date. I got up and took Charlie's place in the slot. "Good night," he said, and went home.

"'Morning Nan," I said to Nancy Corelli, the teletype operator. "Ready for a big day?"

"Hi, Sam." She put down the _Daily News_ and gestured at the teletype to London. "It's dead as a tomb."

The belt was on. A belt is a length of perforated tape, glued into a circle, which goes through the transmitter and sends on the RTT, over and over, a series of lines that look like this:

Qra Qra De Wfk40 Via Prewi/Ny Ryryryryryryryryry

They're call letters for the radio frequency assigned to WW by the FCC.

The belt had been on for a long time. Ergo, no news.

"Here comes Washington," I said. "They'll change all that."

At my elbow, the direct teletype from our Washington bureau clicked and hummed. It said:

Gm Ny IM

That would be Ian McEachern, the bureau chief. I said good morning back:

Gm Wa Sk. Deadest Here

LOOKS QUIET HERE TOO. MARRINER CANCELED P C BUT ELLS MIGHT HAVE SOMETHING AT THE BRIEFING.

Secretary of State Rupert Marriner usually has a press conference on Tuesday, but today he was getting ready for one of his trips. Ells is George Ellsworth, the State Department spokesman.

II, I told Ian, which is teletype shorthand for aye-aye, or OK.

Having read everything on our file, I pulled over the clipboard with the overseas news. This comes in from WW's London bureau on teletypes at the other side of the room. Our desk doesn't have anything to do with that operation except to react to any major story affecting the United States or the United Nations. The UN machine at my other elbow was still quiet. Normally nothing happens there till after 10.

There wasn't much overseas news, either, despite the fact that London is five hours ahead of New York time.

I went through the papers to see if there was anything Charlie Price had passed up which was worth stealing or following up. _Times_, _Trib_, _News_, _Mirror_. Nothing. _Wall Street Journal._ Damn good reading, as usual, but nothing in it for us. _Journal of Commerce._ Nope. _Morning Telegraph_, the voice of the turf. No overseas angles to the day's quota of horsey news. _Variety_ wouldn't be out till tomorrow and the advance copies of _Time_ and _Newsweek_ would come in later in the morning, about the same time as the first afternoon papers. It looked like one of those days.

The domestic wire service we subscribe to was also in the doldrums. Its ticker had been silent for an hour except for the occasional CLR it sent to show it wasn't dead.

The Canadian Press machine was similarly moribund. I made a tour of the Western Union and cable-company machines at the sides of the news room to see if our national stringers or South American correspondents had produced anything the copy boy might have overlooked. Nothing.

"Any coffee?" I said to the boy.

"Heavy on the milk," he acknowledged.

"Thanks."

WW keeps a hot plate in one corner. There's also a kettle, a giant economy size jar of instant coffee, containers of milk from the Times Cafeteria upstairs, a five-pound sack of sugar and a dozen or so heavy army-surplus cups. We take our coffee breaks at the desk.

John Hyatt came in about 9:30. He's WW's general news manager.

"Nothing doing at all, John," I said.

"Well," he said, "the situation can't always be fraught." He went into his office off the news room.

Nancy Corelli put down the _News_ and picked up the _Mirror_. The belt went round and round.

"I'm glad they don't pay us by the word," she said.

"Calm before the storm," I said. "You wait."

"I'm waiting." She turned to Walter Winchell.

I brought the portable radio out of the corner and plugged it in at the desk. Sometimes on a dull day NBC or CBS will dredge up an exclusive of its own which evokes comment--and a few hundred words of copy--from the White House or the Pentagon.

I heard the tail-end of _Stardust_ on the independent station the radio had been tuned to; then, at 10 A.M., switched to NBC, turning down the volume till it had got the horrible electronic gongs with which it heralds its on-the-hour news out of its system.

"... aftermath of a freak tornado in Kansas, and then a special report from Washington on a possible harbinger of the interplanetary age. But first--this message for Anacin...."

I downed the volume again. The interplanetary item might be something, but I wasn't too hopeful. An NBC man could have got the editor of _Missiles and Rockets Magazine_ to lift the tarp a bit on a development that was common knowledge in the trade but which Defense was keeping under a secret wrap.

"... and now the news ... twister ... no casualties reported.... We switch now to Washington ... early this morning ... Burning Tree Country Club's 16th green ... halo of blue flame ... alien creatures ... completely unsubstantiated but no one has offered an alternate explanation...."

Well! I scribbled a few notes, then got on to our own Washington people on the printer:

IM. NBC RADIO SAYS SPACESHIP MAYBE LANDED BURNING TREE. PEOPLE FROM OTHER PLANET GOT OUT DISAPPEARED AND SECURITY CORDON THROWN AROUND SHIP. SOUNDS FANTASTIC BUT WHO KNOWS. UNTOUCHING PENDING YOUR CHECK. SK

Ian teletyped back:

Sk. Have A Rough Night? IM

Wouldn'T Kid U. Ask Nbc Wa If U Doubt.

Ok, Wil Try Pentagon But Doubt Get Anything But Horselaugh.

He was back in a few minutes.

SK. MAY BE SOMETHING TO IT. PENTAGON UNDENIES BUT UNTALKING EITHER. SUGGEST U PUT OUT WHAT U HAVE AND WILL TRY BURNING TREE. IM.

Ok

I sent a brief item, thoroughly sourced to NBC and quoting a Defense Department spokesman as refusing to confirm or deny. Our domestic wire service had nothing.

* * * * *

Burning Tree hadn't been in the news since the Eisenhower administration. They might be eager to talk.

I thought about possible sources in New York. There were the usual crackpot organizations who would comment on anything. They'd be volunteering their remarks soon enough. There were a handful of reputable scientists, personal or business friends, who would be willing to discuss an authentic report on a nonattribution basis. I decided to wait a bit before calling one of them.

I didn't have to wait long. The bell of the TWX machine rang and the copy boy turned it on. He typed WW GA PLS as I looked over his shoulder. A message began to come in. It was a queer one. I read it as it came in and then, when the boy had acknowledged it and torn it off, I took it to the desk and studied it. It said:

THE MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF MONOLITHIA TODAY TRANSMITTED THE FOLLOWING NOTE TO THE DEPARTMENT OF STATE OF THE UNITED STATES: IN THE INTERESTS OF INTERPLANETARY AMITY THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF MONOLITHIA WHO HAVE THIS DAY EFFECTED A LAND-FALL ON THE PLANET KNOWN AS EARTH (SOL III) DESIRE TO CONCLUDE A TREATY OF PEACEFUL INTERCOURSE WITH THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES AND OTHER TERRESTRIAL SUZERAINTIES AND TO THAT USEFUL END SUGGEST A MEETING OF SUCH REPRESENTATIVES AT A TIME AND PLACE MUTUALLY CONVENIENT.

There were several things I could have done. I could have put out a flash saying aliens had landed on Earth. It tended to confirm the NBC report. But my natural skepticism made me pick up the telephone instead. I got the supervisor who handles TWX messages and asked where the message purporting to come from the Monolithian Foreign Ministry had actually been sent from. All the supervisor knew was that it had been sent by BT-107 in Bethesda, Maryland.

"Would that be the number of the Burning Tree Country Club?" I asked her, to nail down a coincidence.

"Yes," she said.

Again I was tempted to send a flash, or at least a snap, but decided to make one more check first. I started to punch out a message to Ian on the teletype to Washington, but that was too slow. I got him on the phone instead.

"I just hung up on Burning Tree," Ian said. "I don't know whether somebody's pulling my leg, but whoever it was claimed to be a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry of something called Monolithia."

"It all fits, Ian," I said, and I told him about the TWX message. "Has there been any indication that State has received such a note?"

"I'll check right now. Hold on."

I bit a pencil while I held on and had a look at the domestic wire service. Nothing there. I wondered what AP and UPI and Reuters were doing. I was sure they had received similar TWX messages. Still holding one phone to my ear, I pulled over another and dialed PLaza 7-1111, AP's number. I put that receiver to my other ear and asked for the general desk.

"This is Kent of World Wide," I said. "Did you get a message on the TWX from something calling itself Monolithia?"

"Yes. Did you? I was just going to check with you about it. UPI and Reuters got it, too. About interplanetary intercourse."

"That's the one. What do you think? Is it a hoax?"

"We don't know. We're checking. Have you put out anything on it yet?"

"No," I told him. "We're trying to get State on it now."

"So're we--"

Ian came in on my other ear: "Sam? State got the note. I'll send a snap."

"Okay," I said and Ian hung up.

"What?" the AP man asked.

"Nothing," I told him. "Thanks." I hung up both phones and turned to watch the snap Ian was sending from Washington. AP and UPI have bulletins. We have snaps. Same thing.

I could tell from the halting way it was being punched out that the regular Washington operator hadn't come in yet and that Ian was sending himself.

Snap

Note

WASHINGTON, JULY 22 (WW)--THE STATE DEPARTMENT TODAY RECEIVED A NOTE FROM MONOLITXXXX A NOTE PURPORTING TO COME FROM A SPACE NATION CALLING ITSELF MONOLITHIA. THE NOTE SAID "REPRESENTATIVES OF ... MONOLITHIA" LANDED TODAY ON EARTH AND DESIRED TO SIGN A PEACE TREATY.

I ripped it off the machine, fixed Ian's correction with pencil, changed "desired" to "wanted," and slapped it on Nan's clip. She had already rung the six bells a snap takes and was up to the dateline by the time she got it.

Ian carried on:

Note 2 Washington Add Snap

A STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESMAN ACKNOWLEDGED RECEIPT OF THE NOTE BUT DECLINED TO GIVE ANY DETAILS. ASKED IF HE THOUGHT THE NOTE WAS GENUINE, HE DECLINED TO COMMENT BUT SAID A STATEMENT MIGHT BE ISSUED LATER.

RECEIPT OF THE NOTE FOLLOWED REPORTS THAT A SPACE SHIP HAD LANDED AT BURNING TREE COUNTRY CLUB IN SUBURBAN MARYLAND.

A REPORTER WHO TELEPHONED BURNING TREE TO CHECK THE REPORTS WAS UNABLE TO REACH OFFICIALS OF THE CLUB, A FAVORITE GOLFING SITE OF FORMER PRESIDENT EISENHOWER. THE VOICE ANSWERING THE PHONE SAID: "FOREIGN MINISTRY OF MONOLITHIA."

I sent that straight off to London, then turned to my typewriter to prepare a take to fit into Ian's story.

I typed:

note to washington

first knowledge of the monolithian note came in a message sent by teletype to the major news services. it quoted the note which it said had been transmitted to the state department. a check with the telephone company, which operates the private line teletype (twx) service disclosed that the message had originated from a teletype machine at burning tree country club.

the message, as received by world wide and other news services, said (full text):

the ministry....

Ian was sending a message on the machine:

SAM SUGGEST U INSERT COPY OF NOTE WHILE I LOOK OVER MY SHORTHAND ON TALK WITH THIS BURNING TREE CHAP IM

I replied:

ALREADY DOING, and sent my take as NOTE 3.

The direct-line phone from our United Nations bureau rang and I picked it up.

"Hello, Sam?" Collishaw Jones's voice asked. "What's all this about Monolithia?"

"What about it, Collie?" I asked him. "Have you got something, too?"

"It's a handout saying Monolithia is applying for UN membership and requesting the Secretary-General to circulate its petition among all delegates. What the hell is Monolithia?"

I gave Collie a quick fill-in and said, "Put a copy of the handout on the machine, will you? I'll work it into Washington's series. Is there anything in the Charter that says a nation has to be from this planet to be eligible for UN membership?"

"Of course there is--I think. I mean it's never come up before. I'll send the text and then check."

But Collishaw Jones's check showed there was nothing in the Charter prohibiting an alien nation from joining the UN, provided it was peace-loving and accepted its obligations.

"There's lots of stuff about international peace and cooperation and international relations," he said. "As far as I can see, the word 'interplanetary' isn't used once. But on the other hand it isn't specifically ruled out."

"Thanks," I said. "That sounds like a good story all by itself."

"I'll do it," he said.

Meanwhile Ian McEachern had sent a few more takes about his conversation with the voice at Burning Tree, which spoke good English in a clicking sort of way, as if it had denture trouble, with an indefinable accent. The conversation had produced few facts, the speaker sticking pretty close to the text of the note, but Ian milked it for as much color as he could extract.

I looked over his copy and handed it to Nancy. I could hear her just busting to ask questions but I didn't give her a chance. I had a thousand of my own and nobody to ask them.

Stew Macon, one of the rewrite men, came on duty and said, "What's new, Sam?"

I handed him the clipboard. "Read this," I said. "Then get Webster and the Oxford and call the library and do a piece on the literal and figurative meanings of 'monolith.' Work in how Dulles and that crowd used to call Russia a monolithic state, and why."

Stew looked surprised. "Okay," he said. "I don't get it, but okay."

"You will."

Ian was ringing the bell on the Washington machine.

Fyi. Reb, At Whu, Says Josh Just Called In Boys. Keep U Informed.

I acknowledged: II

WHU is old telegraphic code for White House, just as SCOTUS stands for Supreme Court of the United States. Reb Sylvester is our White House correspondent and Josh is Joshua Holcomb, press secretary to President Gouverneur Allison, informally known as Gov.

The phone rang and the operator said, "I have a collect call for anyone at this number from a Miss Eurydice Playfair at Bethesda, Maryland. Will you accept the charges?"

"Oh, God," I said. "Yes, I'll accept them. Riddie? I thought you were on vacation?"

"That you, Sam? I am on vacation but you know how the old fire horse is when it hears the gong. Have I got a story for you, kid!" Riddie Playfair is not exactly an old horse. She's the shapeliest and best-preserved 43-year-old newspaperwoman I know. She combines the enthusiasm of a copy girl just out of college, which is good, with the slangy, wise-cracking hyperbole that went out with Lee Tracy's early talkies, which may be why she's still a Miss.

"Well," I asked her, "_have_ you got a story for me?"

"Have I? I've got the biggest story since the hogs ate little Willie. Get a load of this, Sammy: I have interviewed a man from a flying saucer!"

"That's fine," I said. "Let me take a snap and you can give the rest to rewrite."

"You mean you believe me?" She sounded disappointed.

"If you're referring to the men from Monolithia," I told her, "they're talking to everybody from State to the UN. But if you saw one, that's news. Go ahead, give me a paragraph."

"All right," she said, crestfallen. "But I more than just saw one. Here goes: 'Bethesda, Maryland, July whatever-the-hell-it-is, double-you double-you. A reporter for World Wide News Service was kidnaped today by a man who claimed he had come to Earth from a distant planet. Period, paragraph. The seven-foot stranger a few minutes earlier had been seen by the reporter getting out of a huge, circular, wingless craft which landed on the 16th green at Burning Tree Country Club.' You getting it okay, Sam?"

"Yeah," I said. "That's fine. What were you doing at Burning Tree?"

"I've got friends in high places, and I don't mean the seven-foot stranger. You want this story or don't you? I don't have to work on my vacation, you know."

"Go ahead, Riddie. I'm taking it. You're not hurt, are you?" I tried to sound anxious. "He let you go again?"

"No, I'm not hurt. Will you just take the story?

"'Paragraph. The tall stranger, seeing himself observed, approached the reporter and forced her to go with him'--better make that woman reporter in the lead, Sam, to keep the sexes straight--'to the clubhouse, where he spoke for the first time.'"

"How about some description here, Riddie?"

"I was just getting to it. 'The alien, who said he came from a country called Monolithia on a nameless planet outside our solar system, had a tanned complexion, a prominent nose and long black hair. But except for his single garment, a heavy roughly-woven cloak which covered him from neck to ankles, he could have been taken for an earth man. In some parts of the world even the clothing would not seem odd.' You know what I mean, Sam; fix that up, will you?"

"It's fine," I told her. "I'll get this away and turn you over to Stew for the rest. Give him all the quotes you can and don't worry about the length. You sure you're all right?"

She assured me that she was and I heard her saying "Don't forget my byline" as I passed the phone over to Stew Macon, who pushed his monolithic research aside.

Stew cradled the receiver between ear and shoulder and said, "Okay, shoot, Riddie; give me the gory details. He didn't rape you, did he, honey?" Stew wasn't crazy about Eurydice Playfair either.

I typed out Riddie's story, with byline, and fed it to Nancy a sentence at a time.

Collie Jones had got something meanwhile:

UNITED NATIONS, JULY 22 (WW)--THE UNITED NATIONS SECRETARY GENERAL IN A CAUTIOUSLY WORDED STATEMENT TODAY ACKNOWLEDGED RECEIPT OF THE FIRST MESSAGE TO THE WORLD ORGANIZATION PURPORTING TO COME FROM BEINGS BEYOND THE CONFINES OF EARTH AND ITS IMMEDIATE VICINITY.

THE SECRETARY-GENERAL SAID THE MESSAGE, REQUESTING MEMBERSHIP FOR A NATION CALLING ITSELF MONOLITHIA, WOULD BE CIRCULATED TO ALL DELEGATIONS.

A SPOKESMAN SAID THERE IS NOTHING IN THE UN CHARTER WHICH SPECIFICALLY RULES OUT ADMISSION OF A NATION NOT OF EARTH AND THAT CONCEIVABLY MEMBERSHIP WOULD BE POSSIBLE. HE POINTED OUT A RECOMMENDATION OF THE SECURITY COUNCIL AND APPROVAL BY THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY ARE NECESSARY TO BRING NEW MEMBERS INTO THE ORGANIZATION....

I sent that, then looked to see if Stew had another take of Riddie's piece ready. He sailed a sheet of copypaper across the desk, grimaced at me and rolled another into his typewriter.

It was all in lower case, wire-service style. Everything comes out in caps on the teletype anyway. It looked like this:

stranger 2 bethesda

in the club house, once the favorite playground of former president eisenhower, the tall stranger said, in good bookish english: "forgive this untypical show of force. i really came in peace, as do my brothers, but i must speak to you lest you misunderstand and falsely alarm the populace."

the reporter got the impression that the man was speaking the truth. "i believe you," she said. the alien smiled, his teeth a striking white against his tan, handsome face.

"ah," he said, "if only we could solve all problems so easily. fervently i hope that our meeting may be a harbinger of interplanetary amity."

This was pretty gloppy stuff, I thought, and decided to hold it a while. I caught Stew's eye and he gave a shrug as if to imply that this was none of his doing. Then he said, "What was that? Hello! Hello!" He tapped the little pips in the phone cradle. "Operator, I was cut off.... All right, call me back as soon as you can, will you?" He hung up.

"What was all that?" I asked him.

"It sounded like shooting," he said. "She stopped dictating and then I heard her yelling. She hollered, 'Don't shoot!' and then there were two shots and the line went dead."

"Somehow I have a feeling it's phony," I said. "How do you feel?"

"I don't know, Sam. I don't think she was acting. Here, have a look."

It was a straightforward description of how the reporter's dictation was broken off and what Stew had heard on the phone. There wasn't much more than he'd told me.

"I don't know," I said. "We'd look pretty sick if it were a hoax. I wonder what AP's doing."

Just then the AC&R machine rang for an acknowledgment and the copy boy brought over a cable from our London office. It said:

21755 THANKS YOUR NOTE SERIES WHICH BIGGEST HERE RUSH ALL POSSIBLE AMPLIFICATION AUTHORITATIVE SPECULATION MANINSTREET REACTION ETC.

"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.

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.

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.

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?"

"Only that the Security Council meeting's been postponed to tomorrow, she says. Will you ask Collie about that? I want to tell John Hyatt he's just lost a staffer."

Collie checked and confirmed that the meeting had been put off and gave us a story to that effect.

Soon afterward the Gov-alien cavalcade reached the Waldorf and holed up for the night. Reb Sylvester, who had been assigned to the Presidential party, gave us the word that the lid was on, meaning that Josh had told the press there'd be no more news today. Gov was putting the finishing touches to his speech and the Monolithians were preparing theirs.

It was turning out to be the dullest big story of the century.

"Mark my words," Stew reminded me.

"Which ones?" I asked him. "That it's a complete bust, or that it's going to erupt?"

Stew merely grinned.

Fortunately for the file, a good torso murder turned up in a coin locker at Grand Central and that occupied us until it was time for me to go catch my bus.

4 (July 25, Fri.)

We come from a world where we have known incredible standards of excellence....

--Thornton Wilder

President Allison, the dozen aliens, and their entourage rolled smoothly down to United Nations headquarters in their limousines and were whizzed up to the 38th-floor skyscraper office of Nils Nilsen.

They ignored a ramshackle group of writers who were picketing in UN Plaza. Two of the writers wore beards and all of them looked self-conscious. One of the placards they carried said: SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS' GUILD--ALIENS UNFAIR TO SCIENCE FICTION. Another said: SPACEMEN GO HOME; YOU'RE RUINING OUR RACKET. A handful of subteenagers, clutching copies of _Galaxy_ and _Fantasy & Science Fiction_, gave them an occasional cheer and occasionally a new arrival sought an autograph. The UN police looked on tolerantly. One of them said: "Poor guys. First sputniks. Then Moon rockets. Now this."

The President, the Secretary-General and the aliens, each of whom had picked up a dispatch case to go with his Earth-style suit, came down the elevator and went to the Security Council chamber.

The Council was called to order. Allison read his speech proposing membership for Monolithia. The chief delegate of the space nation was invited to address the Council. He read his speech, five hundred words of platitudes which didn't deviate by a comma from the advance copy Eurydice Playfair had delivered to the wire service overnight.

The Council voted unanimously, 11 to 0, to recommend that Monolithia be admitted. The Council adjourned and Nils Nilsen called the General Assembly into extraordinary session for that afternoon. The Assembly met at 3 P.M., unanimously voted Monolithia in, then adjourned until its regular September session.

The UN thus became an interplanetary organization, with Monolithia pledged to uphold its peaceful humanitarian aims.

It had been an easy story for the desk to handle and we had it all wrapped up before my relief came in.

Then Riddie called and said the aliens had scheduled their first press conference for 6 P.M. in her suite at the Waldorf. I asked John Hyatt if he wanted me to cover it.

"I don't think you need bother, Sam," he said. "The reinforcements from Chicago arrived this morning. We'll send Red Melville and a couple of his juniors to help Reb. They haven't had a big story since the Chicago fire."

"Okay, John. I'd as soon watch it on television."

As I was driving home from the end of the bus line I heard on the car radio that Congress had voted to give the Monolithians the freedom of the United States. The Senate, reassured by the aliens' acceptance of the principles of the UN, had originated the bill and the House immediately shouted it through. The President signed it on his return from New York, saying it gave him great pleasure inasmuch as it granted the visitors from space all the rights and privileges of U.S. citizenship.

Mae fixed us an armchair buffet and we ate while we watched the press conference on TV.

There was the usual milling around at the start. I saw Reb Sylvester, putting in overtime, and Red Melville and a few other reporters I recognized from the wire services and papers. Eurydice Playfair and two of the aliens sat at a table on which was a cluster of microphones. An announcer for the television network was describing what we were seeing and giving us background information we already knew.

"I see your friend Eurydice is doing all right for herself," Mae said, full of those overtones a wife has for any female in the office who is under sixty.

"Mn," I said. "She quit us. Shh."

The television announcer made some introductory remarks, then Riddie made some and introduced one of the aliens (who were wearing their Young Men's suits) as Mr. Reev. She spelled the name.

"Are there any questions?" she asked, and there was a roar of laughter as dozens of hands shot up.

Reev, smiling, indicated the AP man, who asked where exactly Monolithia was.

Reev began an involved answer which Riddie interrupted, saying a fact sheet containing technical data would be distributed after the press conference.

The UPI man asked what Reev's exact title was.

"Permanent representative to the United Nations from Monolithia," he replied.

WW's Reb Sylvester, apparently referring to Stew Macon's piece on the definition of monolithic, noted that this referred to any massive homogeneous whole, such as a state or an organization. "Is there any significance to this term," he asked, "which as you know has been applied in the past to the government of the Soviet Union?"

"We have no connection with the Soviet Union," Reev said, "except those we have established with it and more than eighty other countries through the United Nations." He added with a smile: "As your definitions note, we are homogenized, like your milk."

Amid laughter, Reb asked: "Would you describe your government as a democratic one?"

"Utterly," Reev said. There was no trace of accent in his speech. The clicking Ian McEachern had noticed in the voice of the Monolithian he had spoken to on the phone at Burning Tree was entirely absent, as if they had perfected their study of English.

A Canadian Press man noted that "reeve" is a term his country uses for the president of a village or town council, and asked if there was any significance in the fact that Reev's name was almost identical. Reev looked baffled, but Riddie said it was merely coincidence. The CP man then asked the name of the other Monolithian.

"Jain," he said, spelling it. He added with a smile: "No significance; it's just a name."

A man from Reuters asked if the Monolithians were aware that President Allison had signed a bill making them honorary citizens of the United States.

"We are grateful for that," Reev said. "But I think you will find that the new law bestows full, not honorary, citizenship."

"Are you prepared to live up to the laws of the United States?" an unidentified reporter asked.

"Fully," Reev replied. "And to those of the United Nations. Not only to the letter but to the spirit of the law."

"Do you believe those laws to be fair?"

"The Constitution of the United States and the Charter of the United Nations appear to be the most perfect examples of humanitarian principles we have encountered anywhere in our travels," Reev said. Jain nodded agreement.

"How many of you are there?" an NBC man asked.

"Twelve of us here in New York," Reev said. "An equal number at Burning Tree. Then, of course, there are hundreds of us in each of the mother ships."

"The mother ships? What are they?"

"The craft which actually made the interstellar journey. They are moored, as some of your press accounts have indicated, outside your atmosphere."

"How far out?"

"As far out as the Moon, but exactly opposite it, on the other side of the Earth."

"Is that why we had no warning of your approach from the observatory on the Moon?"

"Probably. That's the way we planned it."

"Are those ships armed?"

"All our craft are armed, but only with defensive weapons. We travel only in peace and molest only those who would molest us."

There was a stir among the reporters, and a man from _Missiles and Rockets Magazine_ asked for a description of the weapons.

"I am afraid that is what you would term classified information. Our representatives and those of your Defense Department and the United Nations Secretariat have scheduled a meeting to discuss possible exchange of information touching on these weapons--which I emphasize are strictly defensive in nature."

"Are you armed personally?" the AP man asked.

"We do not carry concealed weapons, if that's what you mean," Reev said. "But we are capable of defending ourselves against any attack on ourselves or our friends. I don't wish to sound ungrateful, but the elaborate security guard provided for us and your President when he traveled with us was quite superfluous."

"I don't suppose," one of the television men said, "you'd be willing to give us a demonstration of your defense weapon? It'd make quite a graphic picture for the television audience."

"We'd be glad to," Reev said, "if you could suggest a way."

"Well," the TV man said, looking around the room, "I could throw one of these big, glass Waldorf ashtrays at you...."

"Now wait a minute," one of the other reporters said. "We don't want glass shrapnel flying around the room."

"No one will be hurt," Reev said. "You will see. I suggest you focus one of your cameras here." He indicated a spot about two feet in front of his face.

"Okay," the TV man said. He picked up the ashtray, which was a good eight inches in diameter, and hefted it.

"Empty the cigarette butts first, at least," someone said.

The TV man asked Reev: "Ready?"

"Ready."

The TV man let fly. The heavy ashtray sailed directly at Reev's face. About a foot from it, the ashtray appeared to hit, or sink into, an invisible shield. It did not shatter, but seemed to fuse, increasing its diameter but decreasing its thickness. It became the size of a pizza platter, but exceedingly thin. It continued to grow in diameter, becoming fainter and fainter. Then it disappeared completely.

When the hubbub of amazed comment had subsided Reev smiled and said: "Nobody hurt, I trust?"

One of the reporters in the first row said, "No, but I'd swear it's quite a bit hotter up here."

"True. That usually happens when matter is changed into energy."

"Can you be more explicit?"

"Sorry, no."

"Would you have the same protection against a bullet?"

"Entirely the same."

"How much warning do you need to put it into effect?"

"None. It takes effect at the first sight of danger."

"Would it work against a bomb?"

"Yes."

"A _hydrogen_ bomb?"

"Yes."

"Then you're invulnerable."

"Completely."

"Well," a reporter said, "I'm awfully glad you're on our side."

A ripple of nervous laughter went through the crowded room.

5 (July 26, Sat.)

It's too hot in New York, or else it's too cold. But hot or cold--somebody's always pushing you.

--Joe Frisco

Saturday was my day off and Mae and I drove into New York. We had tickets to a matinee. I switched on the car radio.

"Get some music," Mae said.

"I want to see what's on the news."

"Can't you ever relax?"

"I'm relaxed. I don't have to do anything except listen."

"Promise me you won't go into the office," Mae said. "I want to see that play."

"I have no intention of going to the office," I said. "Not unless there's an earthshaker."

"That's what I mean. Let somebody else handle it for a change. You're not the only man who can do the job."

"Listen," I said. "Here's something."

A commentator on one of the independent stations was saying the Monolithians apparently had made a number of secret agreements with the United States and the United Nations. The American public was being kept in the dark about many things they had a right to know. It was obvious from the alien's press conference yesterday that they were being more frank with the public than the people's own government officials. The defense-weapon demonstration to the nation on television was only one example.

I recognized the voice, which continued on a note of agitation:

"Here is a bulletin just handed to me. A Monolithian spokesman disclosed today that the first two-dozen aliens who landed on Earth have been joined by at least two hundred--I repeat, at least two hundred--more.

"This disclosure was made in answer to a question, reinforcing this commentator's belief that our own government is keeping us in the dark about matters of which we have every right to know the true facts."

"As opposed to the false facts?" I muttered, my copy-reader's instincts affronted.

"Shh," Mae said. "Listen!"

"The Monolithians, on the other hand, appear to be willing to answer almost any nonscientific question put to them, giving at least the appearance of candor which our own officials so sadly lack," the commentator went on.

"The question then arises whether it would be truer to say that our government is _allied_ with the aliens, as our officials claim, or whether it is _collaborating_ with them, having capitulated to their unknown military strength in a sort of interplanetary Munich."

Mae gasped.

"Clearly it is the aliens who are acting with confidence, publicizing their movements, while the U.S. government shows a curious unwillingness to keep its own people--you and me--informed. Can it be that the government itself is in the dark about these vitally important matters? Can it be that our own government is acting as the tool of the aliens, having secretly surrendered to a power the like of which this Earth has never known?"

Mae had been listening in mounting alarm. "Do you think he's right?" she asked me. "Is it possible?"

"That's old Clyde Fitchburn, the noted viewer with alarm," I told her. "Don't take him too seriously."

"He can't be making it all up," she said. "Can he?"

"Only about 99 percent of it," I said. "He still hasn't got back to his one little true fact--that two hundred more aliens have landed."

I switched to another station.

"... playing host today to nearly ten times as many aliens as originally landed on Earth," an announcer on one of the network stations was saying.

"Now listen," I said to Mae. "This is news, not an editorial."

"A Monolithian spokesman said the new arrivals--two hundred of them, all male--had landed in a second scout ship, at about midnight, in Central Park, at the northern end of the reservoir.

"The spokesman said in a statement, quote, 'The second contingent arrived in response to the invitation implicit in the law signed yesterday giving the Monolithians U.S. citizenship.' Unquote.

"At nine o'clock this morning, when the stores opened, the Monolithians arrived in a fleet of taxicabs in the midtown area, where they went in separate groups to the different men's clothing stores--Bond, Howard, Ripley, Rogers Peet and Brooks Brothers--and to the men's departments of such department stores as Stern's, Gimbels and Macy's. Here they outfitted themselves in Earth-style clothing, which they charged to the Monolithian Embassy, and left by foot, mingling with the crowds on the sidewalk.

"Dressed like typical New Yorkers, most of them virtually disappeared--that is, they lost their identity as aliens and became indistinguishable from the average male New Yorker.

"The Monolithian spokesman said in answer to a question that their purpose was that of any visitor to New York--to see the sights of the city and become acquainted with its customs."

"There," I said to Mae. "That doesn't sound quite as bad as Fire-Eater Fitchburn's account, does it?"

My wife seemed relieved, but she wouldn't admit it. "They're probably playing it down," she said.

The newscaster said, "Reporters were late on the scene, but if eye witness accounts of passersby are to be believed, the aliens split up into groups of two or three and visited such places as Woolworth's, book stores, movie houses, the Empire State Building, the Planetarium, and took rides on buses and subways."

Mae said, "I'm not sure I'd like it if one of them sat next to us at the play."

"How would you tell?" I asked her.

"I'd know," she said. "Somehow. I'm sure I would."

"Well," I said, "you let me know and we'll interview him at intermission."

We crossed the George Washington Bridge, went down the West Side Highway and found a place to park on Sixth Avenue in the upper thirties. We had half an hour before curtain time and I asked Mae if she would like a drink.

"I think I would," she said. "I seem to have a slight case of the jitters."

We found a quiet place about a block from the theater and sat at the bar in the air-conditioned dimness. I had a Scotch and soda and Mae had a gin and tonic.

"Had any aliens for customers?" I asked the bartender as I paid for the drinks.

"Not so's I noticed," he said. "At least nobody tried to charge it to the Monolithian Embassy. We got a strictly cash trade here."

He went to serve another customer and a well-dressed young man came in and sat down on the vacant stool next to Mae.

"Sam," she whispered, nudging me.

"What?"

"Here's one."

"Where?"

"Right next to me," she whispered. "Look at his clothes. They're brand new."

The bartender went to the new arrival and said, "What'll it be?"

"What do you have?" Mae's neighbor asked.

"Anything you want," the bartender said. "Whiskey, bourbon, Scotch, gin, vodka. Soda, ginger ale, Seven-up. The combinations are limitless."

"I'll have a Scotch and Seven-Up," the stranger said.

The bartender didn't blink an eye. "Yes, sir," he said, and proceeded to blend the two strange ingredients.

"Scotch and Seven-Up!" Mae said to me. "He must be one of them. Who ever heard of such a thing?"

"That's pretty circumstantial evidence," I said.

"Change seats with me, Sam," she said. "I'm getting nervous again."

"Okay," I said. "Want another drink?"

"Definitely." She swallowed the rest of her first one as she slid onto my stool.

"Two more of the same," I told the bartender.

"Coming up," he said. "Right after this Scotch and Seven-Up." He gave me a shrug.

"Say something to him," Mae whispered, meaning my new neighbor at the bar.

"Like what? Shall I ask him what he thinks of American women?"

"You're the newsman," she said. "You ought to know what to ask him."

"This is my day off," I reminded her.

"Go on. Ask him."

"Okay."

I waited till his concoction had been served to him, then said:

"Pretty good drink, Scotch and Seven-Up."

He looked at me in what seemed to be embarrassment. "I don't know, really," he said. "First time I ever had it."

"Stranger in town?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact. Got in only last night."

"Where from?"

"You wouldn't have heard of the place," he said.

("See! I told you!" Mae whispered.)

"I don't know," I said. "I've heard of lots of places: Medicine Hat, Ephrata, Chestnut Bend, Gallipolis, Moses Lake, Lackawack...."

"None of those," he said, as if he were playing a quiz game. "It's a little place in Missouri called Joplin."

"That's easy. I got my Signal Corps training near there during the war."

"You don't say!"

("Ask him where he got the new suit," Mae persisted.)

"Where'd you get the new suit?" I asked him.

"Bond's," he said. "You know, under the waterfall in Times Square? It looked so cool. They have an artificial waterfall on top of the building. It used to be Pepsi-Cola's."

("Ask him what time," Mae said.)

"What time?"

"About nine o'clock," he said. "When it opened. Why?"

("Why?" I asked Mae.)

("Ask him if he saw the aliens in there then.")

"Did you see the aliens in there then?"

"I saw a bunch of men come in in bearskins or something like," he said. "I thought it was an advertising stunt."

("He thought it was an advertising stunt," I told Mae.)

("Doesn't he listen to the radio?" she asked.)

"Don't you listen to the radio?" I asked him.

"The radio?"

"The aliens from Monolithia were getting outfitted in Bond's at nine A.M., according to the radio," I told him without benefit of Mae.

"Is that who they were? Well, well."

He drank his Scotch and Seven-Up at one gulp, making a face over it, and said, "I've got to get going. I have a ticket for a show at 2:30."

("What show?" Mae asked.)

"What show?" I asked him.

He mentioned the new Rodgers & Hammerstein musical. "I'm meeting my wife there. Would you like to see a picture of her and the kids?" He took out his wallet to show me. In addition to the snapshot I saw his Missouri driver's license and an old draft card.

"Nice-looking family," I said.

"Thanks. Got to run now. My wife has the other ticket and I'm meeting her at the seats. Can't get lost that way, I figure. Pleasure talking to you. You, too, ma'am."

He left and I said to Mae: "Well?"

"Well what?"

"Are you satisfied he's not an alien?"

"I don't know. How come he's wearing his new suit the same day he bought it? You always have to wait a week or ten days for alterations."

"Maybe he didn't need any alterations and they cuffed the pants while he waited. At least he won't be sitting next to you in the theater."

"How did he get tickets to that? Are you sure you couldn't do any better than the revival of _Where's Charley_?"

"Not on short notice. He probably paid scalper's prices on the expense account. We'd better start."

We left the bar.

"I guess he won't be," Mae said, backing up the conversation in the way she has. "But for my nerves' sake there'd better not be another man in a new suit sitting next to me, even if he has got a good explanation."

"The odds are against it," I said as we stood at the corner of 44th Street and Broadway and waited at the _Don't Walk_ sign. "Just divide two hundred into several million."

The _Walk_ sign flashed on. We were in a group of about fifteen law-abiding pedestrians who started across the street. We had almost reached the other side when somebody yelled, "Look out!"

A big long convertible with a grinning idiot behind the wheel was not only failing to yield the right of way to pedestrians but was making an illegal right turn onto Broadway from the cross street.

I grabbed Mae and hauled her ahead to the curb.

"Damn fool!" I hollered at the driver, who kept on going, blowing his horn.

Everybody scrambled to safety except one young man who hadn't seen or heard, or else had supreme faith in his rights as a pedestrian. The convertible was heading straight at him.

"He'll get hit!" somebody yelled. A traffic cop blew his whistle. A woman screamed. Mae, unable to look, buried her face in my shoulder. The pedestrian never broke his casual stride.

The massive chromed bumper was only inches from him when it began to disintegrate.

First the bumper, then the grille and the oversized fender, then the right front tire dissolved in a shimmering film.

As the tire disappeared, the momentum of the car sent it ahead into what was obviously the protective shield surrounding one of the aliens.

More of the car vanished and it came to a grinding stop, its underside providing the brake as it plowed into the asphalt.

The front of the car, almost clear back to the windshield, simply wasn't there any more. The driver's idiot grin had changed to a look of unbelieving dismay as he stared at the nothingness where his hood used to be.

The young man, who I now saw was wearing a new suit, stepped onto the curb near Mae and me. He paused, looked back for just a moment at the remains of the convertible, and said, as if quoting, "A driver must yield the right of way to a pedestrian crossing with a _Walk_ signal," then lost himself in the crowd.

6 (July 27, Sun.)

ALIEN, _n._ An American sovereign in his probationary state.

--Ambrose Bierce

It's pretty complicated to explain why a person who lives in New York State, as I do, has to go through New Jersey to get home from his office in New York City. It has to do with (1) the way New York's border slopes northwest from the city and (2) a straight line being the shortest distance between two points. People who half-grasp these phenomena remain convinced that my village, High Tor, N.Y., is a short drive from any old place in New Jersey.

John Hyatt, demon respecter of facts though he ordinarily is, was one of those so deluded when he called me on the telephone on Sunday morning and asked me if I'd mind taking a run over to Middle Valley, N.J.

"I'm aware it's your day off, Sam," John said, "but this is practically on your doorstep and I know you'd feel hurt if we didn't ask you to cover it personally."

This, of course, was the well-known malarky, but I told him, "I'm the original busman, John, but maybe you'd better fill me in. Just what is going on in Middle Valley, of all places?"

"It's these damn aliens, Sam. Incidentally, I want to thank you for phoning in that eyewitnesser yesterday on the jaywalker. I hear you missed the first act of the play on account of it, but it was a damn fine story and we appreciate it."

It had been a jaydriver, not a jaywalker, but I didn't correct him. "Think nothing of it, John. It'll all show up on my overtime slip."

He laughed. Not without pain, it seemed to me. World Wide is in a perennial economy drive and the word _overtime_ is not one you use lightly in the business office. "We never boggle where a good story is concerned," John said. "You know that. And this Middle Valley thing--well, you're aware, I'm sure, that they've got this local blue law banning Sunday employment...."

Middle Valley, N.J., is a good hour's drive from High Tor, N.Y. It's less than twenty minutes via the Lincoln Tunnel from New York City, but I knew John would think I was being uncooperative if I mentioned it. I didn't argue with him. I told Mae I was on overtime, got in the Volkswagen and went.

* * * * *

New Jersey passed a law some years ago aimed at forcing Sunday closing on a group of merchants who sold used cars and major appliances in a string of roadside stores along well-traveled Route 17, which runs between New York City and the Catskill Mountain resorts. The idea was to protect the community merchant from this competition so he could have a day off. But the legislation was too broad and bogged down in courts. Its opponents charged, among other things, that it was discriminatory. What about the Jewish merchant, they asked, who religiously closed his place of business on Saturday, his Sabbath? Was he to be penalized by having to close on two days a week, while the Christian merchant closed only on one?

While the state law was being appealed, its opponents obtained an injunction and Sunday business continued. Some communities who had liked the state law during the brief time it was being enforced then passed local ordinances. Middle Valley was one such community with its own Sunday closing law.

Middle Valley is a residential, fairly well-to-do, predominantly Christian village of about 3,000 people. It has few stores, most of its residents doing their shopping in nearby towns. It does, however, have a drug store, a delicatessen, a gas station, a newsstand and a local milkman. The village fathers decreed that the strict law meant all these must close on Sunday.

No one objected except the druggist, the delicatessen owner (who had closed on Saturday for years), the newsdealer and the milkman. The citizens of Middle Valley found it not too inconvenient to order extra milk on Saturday to tide them over the week end, and they rather enjoyed driving a couple of miles to pick up the Sunday papers. It was a mark of distinction to live in the village that permitted no paid Sunday employment.

"Middle Valley's shut up tighter'n a drum today," the well-to-do, car-owning, Christian citizen could remark with pride as he paid for his paper across the village line.

The few who didn't own cars had to walk as far as two miles to catch the buses whose drivers were not allowed to stop in Middle Valley. No one asked them if they enjoyed their walks, especially on rainy Sundays.

Some of this I knew and some John Hyatt filled me in on. I learned a lot more after I got there, first having checked my gas to be sure I wouldn't be marooned there till Monday.

I parked near the center of town, in front of the delicatessen. Down the block were the newsdealer's, the drug store and a couple of real estate-and-insurance offices. All were closed.

I introduced myself to the man standing in front of the delicatessen. He told me his name:

"Simon Dorfman. This is my store. I closed it Friday at sundown. Religious reasons. I can't open today. Monkey business reasons. I'm thinking of opening today regardless. I'm considering it this minute. But I'm also considering ninety days in jail and $200 fine."

"Who would arrest you if you opened?" I asked him.

"Who? The cops. Who else?"

"Middle Valley police?"

"Joe Lyman and Fred Moffat. I've known them since they were boys. But they'd arrest me. They said so. It's not their fault."

"Then who would arrest them?" I asked Dorfman.

"What do you mean arrest them?"

"Aren't they paid employees? If you can't work on Sunday, how can they?"

He thought that over. "What's sauce for the goose, eh?"

"Why not?"

"But you're a reporter. You don't care if I get arrested as long as you get a story. Maybe I'll talk it over with my friend Hirsch the druggist."

"Let me know what you decide, Mr. Dorfman," I said. "I'll be around."

"Good. But listen. You want a real story? Go down two blocks that way and one to your left."

"What's there?"

"The Middle Valley Congregational Church. I don't want you to think I'm laughing at somebody else's religion, because I don't do that, but go down and see for yourself. Those men are there--from the spaceship. An interesting situation."

So that's where they were. I left him saying to himself, "Sauce for the gander. Why not?"

John Hyatt had said some Monolithians were in Middle Valley but he didn't know why. He imagined they were sight-seeing and he obviously hoped for something better. I was beginning to have the same hunch he must have had.

There was a crowd of about a hundred outside the Congregational Church. Most of the people appeared to be parishioners--well-dressed, upper-middle-class men and women. Their late-model cars were parked along the tree-shaded street. I squeezed my Volkswagen in among them.

A separate group of well-dressed people--all young men--stood outside the main entrance of the ivy-covered stone church. The minister was with them, talking heatedly. I made my way through gaps in the crowd of parishioners, who seemed anxious for some settlement to be reached but unwilling to become involved.

"... blasphemy," the minister was saying. His name, according to the outside bulletin board, was the Rev. James Lonsway Marchell.

"Not at all, Mr. Marchell," one of the young men said. "It's merely a question of law."

"God's law has called my flock to worship. Man's law shall not keep them from their devotions."

"Certainly not," the young man said. He was speaking fluent, unaccented English. "We have no quarrel with their wish to honor their deity in whatever way they choose. But you, Mr. Marchell, as a paid employee of this church, may not, under law, work on Sunday."

"Work!" the minister exclaimed. "It is the Lord's work I do!"

"But for a salary paid by men. You have admitted that to be a fact."

"By what right--" the minister said--"by what abrogation of authority do you come from millions of miles away to interfere in the affairs of this quiet, respectable, law-abiding village?"

"The very fact, sir, that you have chosen not to abide by the law has brought us here," the leader of the Monolithian group said. "We have solemnly sworn to uphold the laws of this country, and therefore the laws of each of its parts. We should be shirking our obligations to our adopted nation if we did less."

"You pervert the law--you mock it. You are heretics. Worse, you are the devil's henchmen. I have tried long enough to reason with you. Now stand aside. Again I tell you--I mean to enter my church!"

The minister started for the door but one of the Monolithians was there ahead of him. I was half afraid I was going to see Marchell start to disappear, but obviously the aliens had a variation on their protective weapon. The minister wanted to enter his church, not to harm anyone, and the shield took the form of a pliant, invisible wall that prevented Marchell from even hurting himself as he walked into it, apparently for the second time at least.

He was bounced back, staggering. Regaining his balance, he turned to address his parishioners:

"My friends, I have done all I can. I shall go now to my study and in solitude pray for guidance. These--creatures--I cannot call them men--have said you may worship as you choose. I invite those of you who wish to do so to enter this house of God and pray...."

The Monolithian at the door stood aside but fewer than a dozen of the congregation went in.

I considered talking to the Monolithians, but decided I'd better file a story first on what I had. I figured there'd be time to talk to them later. It looked like a long and memorable Sunday for Middle Valley.

I drove off to look for a telephone, hoping the village used the dial system and didn't depend on an illegal paid operator.

* * * * *

I found an outdoor telephone booth at the closed gas station. A young man was lounging next to it. He stepped in front of me as I reached to push open the door.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"You must be one of the aliens," I said, though from his appearance he could have been anyone.

"A U.S. Monolithian citizen, at your service," he said, smiling but continuing to bar my way. "Tate is my name."

"Kent's mine," I said. "I'm with World Wide. Just let me phone in my story, then I'd like to talk to you."

"I know who you are," he said. "But you may not telephone. It's the law."

"Look," I said, "it's ten to one Middle Valley doesn't have a telephone office. The call will go through Newark or someplace. Nobody in Middle Valley would be doing anything illegal."

"No," he said, "but you would."

"Oh, come on!" I was shocked. "_I_ don't live here. I'm just a New York reporter. I work for an international news organization. You must have heard of freedom of the press!"

Tate smiled and shook his head. "Mr. Kent, the law may be stupid but it is explicit. No paid employment of any kind is permitted in Middle Valley."

"Sure, sure," I said. "But what's it to you? This will be publicity for you. That's what you want, isn't it?"

"You misunderstand our motives, Mr. Kent. We are your good interplanetary neighbors, repaying your hospitality by observing all your laws, as we are sure you would if you were to visit our country."

"What you're really trying to do," I told him, "is to reduce us to absurdity."

"Don't put words in my mouth, Mr. Kent. Remember when you do dictate your story--and I believe the village border is a mere half-mile away--remember that you said that, not I."

"Half a mile? Come with me, will you? How did you know who I was?"

"I'll join you gladly. Mr. Dorfman told me about you."

He climbed into the car and I phoned the desk from a drug store in the neighboring community of Valley Center, N.J. The store was doing a thriving business in Sunday papers, ice-cream sodas, hot coffee, cigarettes and other typical druggist's goods.

I gave John Hyatt his story heavy on the quotes, the way he likes them, adding a bit about my own encounter with the Monolithian. He made me spin it out at length for a sidebar. I didn't tell him Tate was standing just outside the booth, listening to every word. I was afraid John would have interviewed the hell out of him, keeping me hanging around all day.

I came out of the booth, perspiring from its closeness. "How about a coke?" I asked Tate. "We won't get one back in Middle Valley."

"Good idea," he said. We sat at a table and a waitress took our order.

"That a Bond suit?" I asked the alien. "Two pair of pants?"

"Simon Ackerman," he said, smiling. "One pair."

"Then you're not one of the original dozen from Burning Tree."

"No. I'm one of the Central Park unit."

"How do you like it here? What do you think of Earth-women?" I figured I might as well get it asked and over with.

"Very tempting," Tate said. "Remember, we've been a long time enroute."

"How long?"

"Three years."

The cokes came, in tall glasses, heavily iced, with straws.

"What would you do to a vending machine that sold an illegal coke?" I asked Tate.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Never mind. I'm glad you didn't put the whammy on me back there at the gas station. I saw what your pal did to that convertible in Times Square."

"Did you?" He beamed. "Quite an example, wasn't it? It was a pleasure to uphold that law."

"Rough on the car, but the idiot had it coming. Do you mean you're not enjoying what you're doing in Middle Valley?"

"There are degrees," he said, taking a sip of his coke. "It was a pity Mr. Marchell was prevented from holding his service. We are not antireligious, as he asserted in the heat of his anger."

"He was prevented by your people," I reminded him.

"By our people upholding local law," he insisted.

I decided he wasn't quibbling, and said, "Let's get back to where you came from. You said you were three years on the way. Did you know where you were going when you started?"

"Oh, yes. Earth. Sol's third planet. You invited us in 1945."

"Invited you?"

"So to speak. That was Earth's Atomic Year One, you will recall."

"You mean you detected the first explosion?"

"We detect them all. You were the fourth known planet to achieve that level of development. We believe we were the second, in Monolithia."

"The second?" I asked. "Did the people from the first one visit you?"

"The first planet failed to see the potentialities for evil. It destroyed itself. When we had achieved space travel we visited its remains. It was a graphic example to us. We determined then that human life was too rare a commodity to be squandered."

"You think we're too infantile to prevent our own destruction?"

"We think you need guidance. We got it second-hand from Planet I. We were too late to help Planet III. You're IV."

"You mean Planet III destroyed itself, too?"

"So to speak. It's a dead world. Planets II and IV--Monolithia and Earth--are the only advanced worlds left. It's our duty to preserve them."

"What do you mean 'so to speak'?" I asked him. "What do you mean 'advanced'?" I was making full notes and Tate had been watching me fill page after page of copy paper.

He finished his coke. "I've said enough for now." He sounded adamant, and to keep him from drying up entirely I switched the subject slightly:

"How come you speak such good English?"

"English, Japanese, Monolithian, Tildonian (that was one of Planet III's languages)--they're all human tongues. It's merely a matter of adaptation. We don't click any more, you notice. That's a Monolithian trait, but easily de-emphasized."

I scribbled away and he watched me tolerantly, sucking on a piece of ice.

"You know I'm going to quote you. How shall I describe you? As a Monolithian spokesman?"

"If you like. We're all spokesmen. We have--to use a diplomatic phrase, but an accurate one--an identity of views on this urgent matter. Shall we go?"

I sensed that he had dried up.

"I'd pay for the cokes," he said, "but it seems too small an amount to charge to the Monolithian Embassy."

I dropped two dimes at the cashier's counter.

We heard sirens as I drove back into Middle Valley. Smoke was climbing into the sky. I traced it to a burning house and parked a block away. Tate and I ran to the edge of the crowd watching the fire.

"It's the Waddell house," somebody said. It was a big house probably worth about fifty thousand. The smoke was billowing out of a room at the back.

"Who's Waddell?" I asked.

Tate knew. "He's president of the village council. As a matter of fact, he's chiefly responsible for the Sunday closing law."

"That's great," I said, making notes again. "What a story! And now his house is going to burn down because it's against the law to put the fire out. What's his first name?"

"Everett."

A fire engine screamed around a corner and men jumped from it, trailing a hose behind them. Other equipment followed. Within a minute the hose was attached to a hydrant and water was pouring on the fire.

"Hey!" I said to Tate. "What's the idea? Why aren't you stopping them? They're working in Middle Valley on Sunday, aren't they? Aren't they paid employees just like the minister and me?"

"No," the alien said. "Unfortunately for your story and your fine sense of irony, these are not paid employees. They're volunteer firemen."

7 (July 28, Mon.)

Never speak loudly to one another unless the house is on fire.

--Harold William Thompson

I'd got home pretty late, but the alarm clock went off at six, as usual, on Monday morning. It's at this time of day that I envy my city-dwelling brothers who can get up an hour later and reach their offices at the same time I do. Mae and I had bought a house in High Tor in preparation for the baby, who was scheduled to be born in late November. ("Beautiful timing," our tax accountant once said, thinking of the exemption which would be good for the entire year.)

I rescued the dew-soaked _New York Times_ from the lawn. Its main headline, across four columns, said:

Aliens Keep Preacher From Pulpit, Citing Village'S Sunday Work Ban

The radio newscasts were hitting it hard, too. I listened to them as I brewed a pot of coffee.

Mae shuffled into the kitchen, sleepy-eyed, in her housecoat. "Why didn't you wake me up?" she asked.

"You have to sleep for two now," I told her.

"Nonsense," she said, giving me a kiss and looking at the front page. "What do you want for breakfast?"

"Eggs, sunny-side up, covered with Pep." You break the yolk and the Pep absorbs it.

"We don't have any Pep. How about corn flakes?"

"They're too big," I said. "You know that."

"I'm sure I'll never learn the fine points of these little mealtime foibles of yours. You want bread under the eggs then?"

"Obviously," I said. It's not obvious at all, of course, but Mae is very teasable.

"Honestly, Sam," she said as she buttered the frying pan, "you could let a little yolk run on the plate. I don't mind washing it off. You're not a bachelor any more, you know."

"I know that very well," I said. It isn't the washing so much as the waste that bothers me. I think occasionally of the tons of dried egg yolks being scraped into the garbage every morning and it gives my frugal soul the willies. "How's Junior today?"

"He's very happy. Not a peep out of her." Mae changes its sex with every reference to keep an open mind on the subject. She even occasionally refers to it in the plural just in case. "You don't think our children are going to suffer from these aliens, do you? I mean they're not going to have to live in oppression under the heel of the invader, are they?"

"Where did you get _that_, for God's sake?"

"On the radio last night before you came home. It was that Clyde Witchburn. You know."

"Clyde Fitchburn. Don't listen to him. Listen to Ed Murrow or Eric Sevareid. Listen to me. But don't let that doom-shouter Fitchburn give you nightmares. It's not good for Junior."

"All right, Sam. You like the aliens, don't you?"

"I like the few I've met personally, but that doesn't mean I approve of everything they do or are capable of doing. I don't think they plan to grind us under the heel, though."

"Well, they're up to something. They didn't come all this way just to obey a lot of funny laws and get people's danders up. We must have something they want."

"Maybe we've got something they don't want," I said.

"Why would they land here, then?"

"To keep us from exporting it, now that we're on our way to the stars."

"Like what? Germs?"

"Sort of. Uncontrolled radiation, maybe."

Mae slid the eggs from the pan onto the two pieces of bread on my plate. She poured coffee for each of us and said, "Eat, now. It's six-thirty."

So it was. I was out of the house in ten minutes. I bought a _Herald Tribune_ before I got on the bus, leaving the _Times_ for Mae. The Trib had a righteous editorial headed "Abuse of Hospitality." I skimmed through it. It said about what you might expect. Lippmann wasn't in the paper that day and Alsop was discussing something else.

I folded the paper and wriggled around in the seat. Buses are like candy bars, I thought. The price goes up and the size goes down. Each new bus seemed to have less leg room and a lower headrest than its predecessor, so that you had to be a contortionist to take a nap.

I had found a reasonably comfortable position when two men got on, took the seats behind me and continued a discussion they'd been having about the aliens.

"I told Alice they'd better not fool around with the church in our town."

"Damn right."

"I said you can go so far, but some things you just don't fool around with."

"You said it."

"I told her, 'Alice,' I said, 'you mark my words, just let them try in Old Corners what they did in Middle Valley and there'll be trouble'."

"What did she say?"

"She agreed a hundred per cent, of course. Now I'm not a fellow who goes every week--you know; but Easter, maybe Palm Sunday, and Christmas--but by God some things are sacred.

"I tell you I got so mad when I saw that on the television. If that's the way things can happen, I told Alice, I said, 'Listen, if this is what they expect us to put up with, believe me, they've got another think coming.' You don't just take something like that sitting down."

"I should say not. Why, I said the same thing to----"

"I mean there's a limit. I don't pay much attention to what goes on at the UN--I don't suppose anybody does--but when it gets as close as this, I tell you, things have come to a pretty pass, my friend, a pretty pass indeed."

"They sure have, I told Virginia--"

"I'll bet you did. It's a crying shame when a bunch of fancy Dans from Lord knows where can walk in on us and try to upset the things we hold sacred...."

This stimulating conversation must have put me to sleep because the next thing I knew somebody was tapping me on the shoulder and saying, "Last stop, Mac."

I said thanks and got out.

A bar on Eighth Avenue had a new banner up over its door. "Welcome Monolithans," it said. My copy-reader's eye noted the misspelling. Nobody inside looked fancy enough to be one of the alien Dans.

The teletypes were clattering away at World Wide. The summer doldrums were sure over.

"'Morning, Sam," the copy boy said. "How about some coffee?"

"'Morning, Herb," I said. "That's the first intelligent remark I've heard in some time."

"Heavy on the milk?"

"That's right--Earth-style."

Charlie Price was pecking away at the typewriter.

"'Morning, Charlie. What's doing?"

"Somebody called up from an outfit called the Society for the Prevention of Alien Domination of Earth. Ever hear of it?"

"No, but the initials spell 'spade.' Are you sure it wasn't some bright P.R.O. for a playing-card company?"

"Never thought of that, but it could be. There's something in it about digging in and holding the line. I'll finish it and leave it for you."

"Good." Herb brought my coffee and I sat down to read the file.

"John Hyatt's in already," Charlie said.

"Already? He was on the desk yesterday, too. He must be alien-happy."

"How'd you make out in Middle Valley? I saw you got a byline."

"Well, I didn't get a chance to put any expense money in the collection plate," I said.

Charlie didn't answer that and I wondered if I'd offended him. I went back to reading the file.

I had barely taken over from Charlie when John Hyatt came into the news room. "Hi, Sam," he said. "I've been on the phone with Riddie. She was about as informative as an AEC handout, but I gather something's up. I'll take the desk again today. The Chicago crowd'll be in soon to help here. I'd like you and Stew to shoot up to the Waldorf. I don't know what's cooking but I suspect the aliens may be in a flap over their shenanigans yesterday. Nice story, incidentally. It got splashed all over Europe, according to the play report."

"Good. And thanks for the byline."

"You deserved it. Sometimes I wonder why we're wasting you on the desk."

"I like the regular hours," I said.

"Well, it looks as if regular hours are going to be out the window for the duration."

"Where is Stew?"

"He'll be in at nine. You make a good team, you and Stew. I've noticed that. I'd like you to keep as much of an eye on Riddie as on the Monolithians, if you can. I suspect that little gal knows a lot more about what's going on than she pretends. Get her off in a corner and pump her, if you can."

"Shall I bring flowers?"

I meant it sarcastically, but John said, "She's not the bouquet type, but Head Office has authorized extraordinary expenses for this story. The sky's the limit. Make love to her, if you can stand it, but find out what the hell is cooking."

Nancy Corelli had been all ears. "You never authorized him to make love to me on the expense account," she told John. "We could have had some high old times."

"I'm shocked, Nan," said John, who hadn't been shocked since he climbed a high tension pole as a kid in ought-eight. "You're a married woman."

"Sam's married, too, don't forget," Nancy said. "And here you are egging him on to go to bed with that old broad."

"Just a figure of speech, Mrs. Corelli. Suppose you let us old trenchcoat boys cover the story and you concentrate on sending it to London."

Nancy accepted the rebuke in her own fashion. "I'm glad I have an honest job, at least," she said.

Stew Macon came in. "I see by the daily press there have been a number of developments since I left the shop last Friday," he said to John and me. "Good morning, Nancy."

"Don't talk to them, Stew," Nancy said. "They'll corrupt you, the old lechers."

"Now what's this all about?" Stew asked.

"Tell you in the taxi," I said. "Don't take your coat off. We're on detached service."

"Good enough. But I hope you have a big cash reserve, Sam. I happen to have spent--and I use the term advisedly--a very expensive week end."

"Keep in touch," John said. "There are two of you, so let's have a phone call every so often even if nothing's doing."

I filled Stew in as the cab driver wended us uptown.

"I wasn't kidding about being broke, Sam. This little babe I met had very expensive tastes."

"I'm good for about thirty bucks," I said. "Then I'll have to get a refill from petty cash."

"There's nothing petty about cash," Stew said.

* * * * *

Eurydice Playfair's suite was crowded to its expensive walls with reporters, State Department people, Pentagon people--including some high brass in uniform--and waiters. A bar was set up along one wall.

"At this hour of the morning?" I asked her.

"It's there for them as wants it," Riddie said. She was drinking coffee herself.

There didn't seem to be any Monolithians present yet, but then no one could tell for sure. I asked Riddie.

"No," she said. "We're saving them for the floor show."

"Something big?"

"I didn't lay on this spread just to say hello."

"Do they know what's going to happen?" I said, meaning the U.S.A. contingent from Washington.

"No, they're just liaison. But, believe me, they're fairly perishing to know."

"Whatever it is, will it make them gasp in the Ginza?" I asked.

"Sam," she said, "this'll pierce them in the Place Pigalle."

"Ah," I said, "but will it crush them in the Kremlin?"

"I have no more to say right now. Why don't you have some coffee?"

"I think I'll have a weak little Scotch and soda, if it's all the same to you."

"It's not the same as coffee, that's for sure."

A man from the _Journal-American_ took her away and I went to the bar. Stew was already there with a glass of something that was neither small nor weak.

"Did you pump her, Sam?" he asked.

"She's a dry well."

"I have circumnavigated the room and there is nothing. Sealed are the lips. Or blank are the minds, I don't know which."

"You sound as if you've been talking to the man from _Time_. Give John a call, will you, Stew? He might want a little color story."

"He always wants a little color story." He went off to one of the two-dozen telephones Riddie had provided.

I asked the barman to weaken up my drink with more soda. Caterers are always very generous with the customer's whiskey.

Riddie got up on a chair at the end of the room and clapped her hands.

"I guess everybody's here," she said. "I've asked you to come here this morning, ladies and gentlemen, to meet two other members of the ambassadorial staff from Monolithia. They will enter through this door on my right in a moment. Before they do, you may wish to make a note of their names. They are Mr. Quy--spelled Q-u-y but pronounced 'Key'--and Mr. Brown."

Stew, back from the telephone, whispered, "Have you noticed how all of them have one-syllable names?"

I nodded as I wrote them down.

Somebody asked Riddie, "Would it be correct to assume that these gentlemen hold a higher position in the Monolithian government than the ones we've previously met?"

"Not at all," Riddie said. "Everyone in Monolithia is equal. Each has the rank of Ambassador."

"But," the questioner persisted, "maybe these new ones intend to apologize for the incidents of yesterday in Middle Valley."

"Certainly not," Riddie said. "The Ambassadors who visited Middle Valley acted in complete accordance with the law. There is not the slightest doubt in any Monolithian mind on that score."

"So much for John Hyatt's hunch," I muttered.

Stew spoke up. "Would you say, Riddie, that there was complete and unanimous support for the Middle Valley delegation among the Monolithians?"

"Yes, I would. To them, laws were made to be obeyed."

"How about the groundswell of protest ..." somebody else started to ask, but Riddie raised her hands.

"Please," she said. "What happened yesterday has no connection with this meeting. In fact, I think you'll have a bigger story today if you'll just let me get on with it. I'll now ask the Ambassadors I've named to step into the room."

The door opened. The two men came in. They were dressed in the same conservative style as their predecessors. But their faces were different. Mr. Quy was an Oriental. Mr. Brown was a Negro.

* * * * *

I'd dictated my story and turned the phone over to Stew to elaborate on it. Riddie came over carrying two drinks. She handed one to me. "It's not weak this time," she said. "I figured you could use it."

"Thanks," I said, taking a good swallow.

"Well, Sam," she said. "Is this a story or isn't it? Do you think it'll fracture them in France?"

"Baby," I told her, "you're too far out. This will lay them low in Little Rock!"

8 (July 29, Tues.)

Scientists have reached general agreement in recognizing that mankind is one: that all men belong to the same species, _Homo sapiens_.

--UNESCO Statement on Race, 1950

We'd already had the highlights of the Mount Pelley story from the local wire service but it had left a number of questions unanswered. I looked in the stringer book to see who we had in Mississippi. To my surprise I found that we had a Mr. Elbert Patterson right in Mount Pelley. I sent him a wire asking for at least a thousand words, with good color and quotes. His story was on my desk in less than two hours. Here it is:

Mount Pelley, Miss., July 29.--The bus driver said, "Move to the back of the bus." When the Negro passenger failed to obey, the driver shouted at him: "That's a white man's seat you're in, nigger. Get back where you belong or I'll throw you off."

The Negro, a neatly dressed man of about thirty, carrying a briefcase, replied quietly, "This is an interstate bus. Under Federal law I have a right to sit where I please."

Eleven other passengers were on the bus, which was due to pass through this town on its way to Biloxi. Six were whites. The other five Negroes sat without objection in the rear section, traditionally reserved in this state for "colored."

The Negro man who refused to move was sitting alone in a double seat three rows back from the door. He turned and looked out the window.

His attitude infuriated the driver, Merle Cagle, who pulled the bus to the side of the road, slammed on the brakes and strode down the aisle.

"I'll give you one last chance, black boy," Cagle said. "Move back or get off."

There is confusion among the other passengers who reported this conversation today as to whether the Negro replied, "Don't touch me" or "You'll be sorry."

A great deal of confusion surrounds the ensuing incidents. The bus driver claimed the Negro passenger hit him with both fists and kicked him. The white passengers said the Negro man hit the bus driver with his briefcase, which they presumed contained something heavy, using it like a club. The Negro passengers said the lone Negro man sat still, making no effort to defend himself.

Whatever happened, Cagle was severely cut and bruised on his hands. In addition, the big toe of his right foot was broken, a hospital report said late today.

Cagle went back to the driver's seat and brought the bus here. He parked it in front of the office of Sheriff Ellis Grout, whose name became nationally known several years ago in connection with the fatal beating of a 13-year-old Negro boy who was said to have "sassed" a white woman. Grout had refused to arrest or question the two white men who boasted that they had administered the fatal beating, saying they were just big-mouths "trying to take credit" for the crime.

Grout, an admitted Kleagle in the Ku Klux Klan and a leader in the local White Citizens movement, was sitting in front of his office in a chair tipped back against the wall when the bus stopped.

Cagle jumped out and pointed to the Negro man sitting at the front of the bus. "I got somebody for your jail, Sheriff," Cagle said.

Grout asked a few questions, then said through the bus window: "You must be one of them northern niggers. Well, this ain't the north, so suppose you just come out of that bus."

When the Negro passenger gave no sign that he had heard, Grout went into the bus, drawing his pistol.

"I gave you an order, nigger," he said. "Get your black ass up off that seat."

When again there was no reply, Grout, using his pistol as a club, brought it down toward the man's head.

Here again eyewitness accounts differ. Some say the Negro raised his briefcase and the gun hit it, going off. Others say the Negro did not move at all and that the gun went off as the Sheriff was bringing it down to club him.

What is known is that the bullet ricocheted off something and struck Grout in the left shoulder.

Grout staggered out of the bus, bleeding profusely and shouting that he'd been shot. A crowd gathered quickly.

It became a mob. Somebody shouted, "That nigger shot the Sheriff!"

The mob of whites surrounded the bus. The white passengers got off. The Negro passengers, frightened, huddled in the rear, with the exception of the one Negro man who remained in his seat. He seemed utterly calm and some said he smiled slightly.

The mob started to throw rocks at the bus. Soon all the safety plate windows were spiderwebbed and it became difficult to see inside.

Then someone shouted, "Let's get him!" And there was a surge toward the door of the bus.

But no one went in. Some said no one was _able_ to get in--that some sort of invisible shield hurled back anyone who mounted past the first step.

The frustrated, howling mob, seemingly in a lynching mood, raged around the bus for half an hour until they were dispersed by the arrival of the state police.

Cagle, the driver, was located and, with the state police escorting him, he drove the bus to Biloxi.

There the Negro man was questioned and finally released. He gave his name as Brown. He went to the home of the Rev. James Evander, a prominent Negro clergyman, to spend the night.

Cagle was reprimanded by the bus company, which said the Negro man had been entirely within his rights. A company spokesman said he did not know at the moment what it planned to do about the damage to its bus.

Sheriff Grout was reported to be in fair condition in the hospital.

I made only minor changes in the story before I sent it on to London, under a byline. I don't know what color Mr. Patterson, our Mount Pelley stringer, is. It isn't one of the questions we ask at World Wide. I suppose he'd have to be white in a place like that. But I'm sure Mr. Brown would have been glad to know he existed, to help balance Sheriff Grout.

9 (July 30, Wed.)

All the people like us are We, And every one else is They.

--Rudyard Kipling

High Tor, N.Y., is a pretty enlightened place. It's the hometown of artists, writers and theater people, budding and blooming. It has a syndicated political cartoonist whose satire is just a shade less biting than Herblock's. It has a playwright who has won a Pulitzer prize. It has a socially conscious novelist whose books are best-sellers in spite of their Messages. Then there's the Chinese-American artist who not only prospers but (or perhaps I should say "and therefore") is a respected and socially accepted member of the community.

High Tor is progressive, forward-looking. It's quaint and countrified--though it's only 35 minutes from Times Square--because of its strict zoning laws. It has been written up in _The Exurbanites_ as a place neither as intellectual nor as stuffy as Fairfield County, Connecticut, possibly because it doesn't have as many advertising men. It's not as rich, either, which is why Mae and I can afford to live there on the minimum plot allowed--one acre.

As I say, High Tor is no slouch of a town. If you're a New Yorker, but can't stand the city for the hundred-odd reasons I'm sure I don't have to list, High Tor is the place for you.

Therefore Mae and I were pretty shocked when we went out pub-crawling and did some unintentional eavesdropping.

I'd come home worn out from the eight-hour grind at WW, which had seemed like twelve, and suggested to Mae that we eat out and relax. She had the lamb chops back in the freezer and her second-best dress on in the same time it took me to luxuriate in an armchair over one dry martini.

All unwound, I put Mae in the Volkswagen and headed for Armando's, one of those quaint, but not too quaint, restaurants where the owner himself comes over and suggests. He suggested the veal cacciatore and we were agreeable.

As we were chewing the last mouthful, Armando came over to ask how it was.

"Great," I told him.

"Out of this world," Mae said.

"Delighted," Armando said. "But please don't mention those out-of-this-worlders to me."

"You mean the Monolithians?" I said. "What could they have possibly done to you?"

"Two of them came in for lunch today, disguised as Negro people."

"Oh?" Mae said.

"They weren't disguised," I told Armando. "There are Negroes on Monolithia, just as there are here."

"Well, anyway, I put them near the kitchen door and tell the girls to bump the chairs every time they come out. You know."

I hadn't known. I looked at Mae, who looked down at the remains of her veal cacciatore.

Armando went on: "So after a few bumps the one nearest the door makes with a finger to me. I ignore him, of course. Then he hollers, 'Armando!' The place is full of the luncheon trade. I frown, but what can I do? I hurry over to keep him quiet.

"'You are unhappy here?' I say to him. 'You would prefer to leave?' But he says 'No, we prefer a better table.' I tell him there are no other tables--the empty ones he sees are reserved. He says--he tells me this to my face--that this is a lie. I ask him to leave, so as not to create a disturbance."

"Sam," Mae said.

"Shh," I said. "Go on, Armando."

"Then he asks for the telephone, as if this is the Stork Club and I can plug it in at the table. I tell him the pay phone is near the cashier's desk, he can use it on his way out. Subtle, you see?"

"Then what?" I asked.

"He goes to the phone and calls SCAD in Albany!" SCAD is the state commission against discrimination. "He tells them the whole story at the top of his voice. It is mortifying. And now I am likely to lose my license and have to close up--or else cater to the colored trade. Mr. Kent, you are with a powerful news service. You know about these things. Tell me--what can I do?"

"You can give us our check, Armando," I said.

Armando became upset. "You are late. I am sorry. I should not tell you my troubles and take up your time. No--there is no check. You have been my guests. My pleasure."

"But not mine, Armando." I said. I dropped a ten-dollar bill on the table. "If you don't want it, leave it for the waitress. Good-by, Armando. Come on, Mae."

In the car Mae said, "Ten dollars was too much. I saw the menu. Seven-fifty, maybe."

"All right," I said. "Consider it a two-fifty contribution to the NAACP. We'll make it up by not eating there again."

"Okay," she settled back in the seat. The financial end of it settled, Mae said, "Good for you, Sam. The nerve of him, taking it for granted we thought the same way he does. Why it wasn't so long ago that he was a minority himself."

"The hell with him," I said. "Let's go get a drink."

Reno's Roost has a bar and a band and serves fried chicken or shrimp in a basket. It's run by an old army buddy of mine, Paul Reno. He gambled on the county opening up when they began building the Tappan Zee Bridge across the Hudson and his gamble paid off. The place was jumping.

We went in and looked around for a place to sit. The bar was filled. So were the booths and tables.

Paul came over from nowhere and said, "Sam! Where the hell you been? Hello, Mae. How's the gestation?"

"He's fine," Mae said. "Big crowd tonight."

"The biggest, now you're here. Here you are. Reserved for the Kents."

"This looks like your table, Paul," I said. "We don't want to send you back to work."

"Sit down," he said. "I'll come sit with you when my feet get tired. What'll you have? First round's on the house."

"I'll have a very weak Tom Collins, Paul," Mae said, "and I mean weak."

"Right you are, Mrs. K. Sam?"

"Scotch and soda, thanks."

"Strong, to even it out. Okay, Max!" He called a waiter and gave the order. He had Seven-Up himself. Paul never drinks on the job till 1 A.M.

"I see Oliver's still with you," I said. Oliver is one of the bartenders. He's a Negro. "We should have come here for dinner, Mae."

"Oliver's my right-hand man." Paul said. "Where did you eat, chumps?"

"Armando's," Mae said. "But I'd just as soon not talk about it."

"Armando's!" Paul said. "That ptomaine domain! What's the matter--you don't like chicken? If you don't like chicken we got shrimp. For you we even got tablecloths, if you insist. Armando's! Has he got a band?"

"He's got nothing," Mae said. "Who's playing tonight, Paul?"

"Tonight as always we have the Trans-Hudson Five, the finest aggregation west of Ossining, augmented by that rising young cornet star, Pete Kato."

"Japanese?" I asked.

"The rising son himself."

"Never heard of him."

"Just off the plane. He's here for kicks. I don't pay him, but maybe I will. He's not bad."

"Jazzman?" I asked.

"I don't know," Paul said. "Sometimes he sounds like Harry James. Sometimes he's Max Kaminsky. He's obviously listened to a lot of records. He's pretty derivative."

That's one of the things I appreciate about Paul Reno. Most of the time he sounds like Mr. Night Club himself, but then he comes out with a word like "derivative."

Paul went off to see how things were in the kitchen. As I mentioned, the place was crowded, with little space between tables. The band was between sets and I could over-hear the people at the table behind me.

"... deliberately soften us up with all that mumbo-jumbo in the UN," a man's voice was saying. "Then they smuggle in a boat-load of colored behind our backs, as if we didn't have enough of our own already."

"And Chinks," another man's voice said.

"And Chinks," the first man agreed. "And Japs. I'll bet that was their plan all along. They're dumping their unwanted surplus population on us. It's a sneaking subversive thing to do and I wonder when Old Fathead Allison will wake up to the fact that they're playing him for a sucker."

"You used to think Gov was pretty good," a woman's voice said. "You voted for him."

"Never again. The country's going to the dogs. It has been for years, ever since Roosevelt. My God, Earl, do you know a Spic family is trying to move in down the road from us? Bunch of jabbering foreigners--must be a dozen of them. Can't even speak English."

"Now, Harvey," the same woman's voice said. "How can you talk that way? You've always been very pleasant to our maid and you like Oliver over there behind the bar."

"Exactly," he said. "'Over there behind the bar.' In his place."

This might very well be Oliver's place one day, I thought to myself. Paul Reno was hoping to open another place, given the right breaks, and he'd spoken to me about the possibility of putting Oliver in charge of this one.

Feeling one up on the people behind me, I quit eavesdropping and gave Mae a big smile.

"Well," she said. "Welcome back. What pleases you so all of a sudden?"

"Nothing," I said. "Just the happy thought that that bunch of WASPS behind me are going to be stung themselves sooner or later."

"Wasps?"

"Capital letters. White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. It's a term applied in certain quarters to a certain type."

"_You're_ a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant," Mae said.

Paul Reno came back. "You will shortly be entertained by the greatest little combo this side of Suffern," he said. "I'll join you for the concert, if you're not engaged in pitching woo."

Mae laughed. "Sit down, Paul. The woo was pitched a long time ago. We've been discussing the state of the world."

"On your night out? Sam, can't you ever forget that deadline stuff?"

"I'm willing to now, if your Augmented Five ever get their horns out."

There were piano, drums, guitar, trombone and clarinet, plus Kato's cornet. The guitar man usually played trumpet. They did a good loud job, but I noticed that Kato appeared really comfortable only when he was taking a solo, such as the Berigan chorus of _I Can't Get Started_ or the James version of _You Made Me Love You_, where he was not only derivative but imitative. In ensemble work he was terrible.

We decided we'd better go home after the band closed with _The Saints_. I had my 6 A.M. alarm clock in mind.

10 (July 31, Thurs.)

You came to me from out of nowhere so why don't you go back where you came from?

--Abe Burrows song title

I managed to shut off the alarm and get up without disturbing Mae. I was having breakfast when the back door slammed open. We don't lock our doors in countrified, law-abiding High Tor.

"Uncle Sam, Uncle Sam!" It was six-year-old Harry Tyler, the son of our neighbors. "There's a spaceship in the woods!"

"What were you doing in the woods at this uncivilized hour?" I said, the neighborly avuncular instinct grabbing the wrong end of his remark. Then I said, "What? A spaceship? In the woods?"

"I went out to pick some strawberries for my breakfast," Harry said. "That's why I was in the woods. It's big and black and nobody saw me, I don't think."

"How do you know it's a spaceship?"

"Everybody knows what a spaceship looks like. It's big and black, just the way it's supposed to be. Come on and see it."

"Is your daddy up yet?" I asked Harry. Len Tyler usually gets up a few minutes after I do. "Did you tell him?"

"He's on vacation," Harry said. I'd forgotten. "He's still asleep. So's Mommy. Come on and see the spaceship, Uncle Sam."

I always feel very martial when Harry and the other kids in the neighborhood call me Uncle Sam. I feel that I have to uphold the honor of the Republic and Set an Example.

"Son," I said, "you're on. Let us go investigate this phenomenon."

A telescope hung in the back hall where it had been gathering dust since I gave up being a satellite watcher. It was a pretty good Japanese telescope, not expensive, but not cheap either. I took it down and wondered whether to look for my old souvenir machete for protection. But I decided that would be overdoing it.

We have about an acre of clear ground behind our house, then the woods begin. It's really an abandoned apple orchard, with the apple trees grown tall and neglected and other trees grown to a respectable height between them. A lot of sticker-bushes live there, too--tough, nasty things with needle-sharp spines. I wished I'd brought the machete after all.

Harry and I had threaded our way a few hundred feet when I stopped. My left shirt sleeve was torn, my pants were wet up to the knees from the dew, and I was sweating.

"That's far enough, Harry," I said. "There's no spaceship here."

He was a few yards ahead, ducking under a spiny branch I'd have to lift out of the way at my peril.

"It's right over there, Uncle Sam," he said. "I think I see it now."

"Yeah? I'll go as far as you are, and if it's not there, young Marco Polo, we're turning back."

"Shh," he said. "Come on."

I joined him and looked. "Where?"

"Right there. Near that red apple there." He pointed.

There were thousands of red apples, fit only for making pies if the peeler had the patience to cut away the bad spots.

I followed his point and he was right. Nestled in among the trees was a big bulk of a thing, brownish gray. It certainly wasn't anything that had been in the woods before.

"Do you see any people?" I asked Harry.

"No. Let's go knock on their door."

"No!" I said. "Let's circle around and see what it looks like from the other side."

We circled. I managed to tear my other shirt sleeve on a sticker that also drew blood. Then for a while we made better progress along the bed of a sunken, abandoned road. We had kept the spaceship on our left and now I could see a huge clearing on the far side of it, strung over with some kind of camouflage netting.

"There they are!" Harry said.

"Quiet!" I said, pulling him down behind the lip of the old road. I was past caring about clothes now.

There were at least a dozen of them in the clearing. More were coming out of the open hatch of the spaceship. Apparently they hadn't heard us. I uncapped the telescope and looked.

They were wearing their native woolen cloaks and were setting up furniture in the clearing, which had been divided into room-size rectangles outlined on the bare ground with paint or strips of white cloth.

In addition to the chairs, tables, desks and bookcases they had a number of pieces of equipment which vaguely resembled movie or television cameras.

"What are they doing, Uncle Sam?" Harry asked. "Let me look through the telescope."

"I don't know. It looks as if they're building movie sets. Maybe the walls will come later." I handed him the telescope.

"Look, they're coming out different now," Harry said, and I grabbed the telescope back.

Those stepping out of the hatch now were wearing Earth-style clothes, and not carrying anything. But not all of the clothes looked American. There were men in wide-lapeled European suits, men in the white linen suits of tropical countries, men in the jodhpurs or dhotis of the Asian Indian, men in glittering military uniforms and men in drab, unadorned military jackets worn by the leaders of some totalitarian countries. They went to the various room-sized rectangles and sat or stood. No one was talking.

Then I looked closely at their faces. I almost dropped the telescope.

I saw the Prime Ministers of England and India, the leader of the United Arab Republic, the President of France and half a dozen other premiers or presidents, ex-, present or potential.

Gouverneur Allison was there for the United States, as was Rupert Marriner, the Secretary of State, and several other high administrative officials.

I was watching the Soviet Union's top men come out when I heard a noise behind us.

"Run!" I told Harry, getting up myself. "Run home and tell your daddy."

He hesitated. "Aren't you coming, Uncle Sam?"

"I'll go another way, to confuse them. Go on, now!"

Harry ran back along the sunken road. I started in the other direction. I hadn't taken twenty steps when a Monolithian in a woolen cloak rose up in front of me. I darted off sideways and ran into another one. There were five in all.

Escape would have been impossible even with the machete. Without speaking they escorted me toward the clearing.

11 (Aug. 1, Fri.)

Be good and you will be lonesome.

--Mark Twain

I woke up. It was completely dark. For a few seconds I stared up into the blackness, then turned on my side and tried to go back to sleep. But in a moment I realized I wasn't in my own bed and remembered that I was a prisoner.

Fully awake, I sat up. The room, becoming light in a gradual effulgence, revealed itself as a cube about nine feet on each side, furnished with two things--a seven-foot couch, covered with a coarse wool material, and me. There was nothing else. I couldn't trace the source of the light. I lay down and the light faded; I sat up and it came on again.

My wristwatch was gone and I had no idea how long it had been since my capture. I had been marched in silence to the clearing, passing through four or five of the wall-less rooms. No one had spoken as I was led to one of the hatches of the spaceship.

I had made various remarks as I was being taken in--such as "What's going on?" "You can't do this to me," "I've got to get to work, for pete's sake," and "Listen, will you?"--but my captors weren't conversation-minded.

I was led up a ramp and into the relatively dim interior of the spaceship. I had a recollection of narrow corridors and an occasional notice painted on the wall in some alien script. Then I was pushed into a cabin and the door closed behind me. My captors stayed outside, but there was a man in the room, sitting behind a long table in one of the two big chairs. He was wearing a woolen cloak. He was older than any of the bright young men I'd seen before, white haired and grave in expression. He was tossing a ball from hand to hand. It wasn't a baseball, but I had said, for no reason that I could remember now, "I'm a Braves fan myself."

He smiled and said, "Sit down," indicating the other chair. "Yankees."

"That's no team," I said, sitting down, "that's a machine."

"Be that as it may," he said, "you must wonder why we are here."

"Not at all," I said. "You're not on my property." I was saying whatever came into my mind. I think my idea was to discomfit him and provoke him into saying something he didn't plan to--something revealing.

He kept tossing the ball from hand to hand. It was about the size of a handball, hard and black but apparently not rubber.

He revealed nothing. "The dew is heavy in the morning," he said, looking at my soaked clothing. "And you've got a nasty scratch. Would you like something for it?"

"What have you got?" I asked. "Mendicants?" I was freely associating, having nothing better in mind.

"Oh, yes. Medicants _and_ mendicants. Menders and vendors and buttons and bows. Pills and potions and ankle-length hose."

I decided this was part of an attempt to hypnotize me and looked away from his tossing ball.

"And Mendes-France," I said, "and Hugh Gaitskell and Krishna Menon."

"Not to mention Sam Kent," he said. "Here, catch."

He tossed the ball to me and in reflex I caught it.

I woke up in the nine-foot cube.

* * * * *

Somewhere between then and now I'd been stripped of my sopping clothes and garbed in one of their woolen cloaks. It didn't itch as I'd imagined it would. In fact, I was quite comfortable. I wasn't hungry or thirsty either. I judged by this that it had been only a few hours since I'd caught the ball, which apparently was some kind of knockout drop, and been transferred to this cubic prison and its automatic lighting.

I got off the couch and explored. The walls, floor and ceiling were made of a gray metallic substance, neither cold nor warm to the touch. The couch was nothing more than an extension of the floor--two feet high and seven feet long--with half a dozen thick brown woolen blankets over it. There was no crack or seam in any wall to indicate a door and no vent to bring in the clean air I was breathing. I sat down, baffled.

After a while I said, "Hey!"

There was no answer.

I lay down and the light went out. I sat up again. The light came on.

My cloak had no pockets. I took it off and, naked, turned it inside out. It taught me nothing. I put it back on and thought idly of smoking a cigarette. There are times when I sit at the news desk and words simply will not come unless I light a cigarette. It may be that I don't take a single puff after the first one, but the mere action of lighting the cigarette sets the old train of thought to operating. But now I couldn't have cared less if I never had a cigarette. Or a drink. Or food.

But my curiosity was still perking. I got to my feet and made another circuit of the little room. I found something I'd overlooked before. On one of the walls near a corner were two knobs, one above the other. They were set out a scant quarter inch from the wall and were of the same color and material.

"This opens the door," I told myself, turning the top one clockwise.

No door opened.

"Then this does," I said, turning the other one.

Instead I got music. I'd found a radio.

It was Perez Prado, that musical humorist, ripping out an unabashed Latinate romp through an old standard, giving it new excitement with his dramatic pauses and irreverent burps.

The Prado record ended and a recorded commercial came on:

"Ladies, stop tearing the end off the wrapper on a loaf of bread," was the message I got. From this exhortation to the ladies, I judged that this was daytime radio.

The next station was more informative: "Temperature now 75 degrees--bright and enjoyable. And we hope it's nice where you are this fine Friday morning...."

Friday! It had been Thursday when my neighbor's boy had led me through the apple orchard. I wondered if young Harry had reported my capture, and if he had, whether anybody believed him.

My next thought was of Mae. She must be worried sick about me. She wouldn't have worried till suppertime yesterday, when I didn't get home on time--unless the office had called her to find out why I hadn't come to work, as it probably had. That meant she'd already had 24 hours of anxiety. I banged on the walls with my palms, then kicked with the flat of my bare foot, but no one came.

"Can't stay in bed?" the radio asked me. "Get up and still get five stay-in-bed benefits."

I turned the volume up as high as it would go, hoping that would attract the attention of my captors. But the rest of the booming commercial and the ensuing rendition of _Stardust_--a song I can do without--did nothing but hurt my ears.

I reduced the volume for a panegyric to "the most delightfully different cigarette ever made" and reflected that in spite of the fact that my own pack was gone with my clothes I didn't want to smoke.

Nor was I thirsty, I realized during subsequent commercials praising the joys of Coke and Seven Up. And I wasn't hungry, not reacting to the one about there being "more crackling good taste in every slice"--meaning bacon. And fortunately, considering the john-less aspect of my cell, I didn't have to go to the bathroom. My appetites seemed to have vanished with the 24 hours that had gone out of my life since I caught that handball in the alien's office.

What were they doing to me? I wondered. What had they done to me? I paced the limited confines of my prison, occasionally banging on the hard wall, then threw myself on the couch. As I lay down the lights went out and the radio faded. I sat up. The lights came on again and the radio woke up to say:

"Time for news from American--live at 55! The news in just a moment."

"From Hackensack, New Jersey, an interesting sidelight on the aliens," the voice was saying in the verbless way of radio newsmen. "Commuters, faced with a new fare increase totaling 81 per cent in ten months, revolted against the Susquehanna Railroad today and rode to work in a bus provided by the Monolithians. They pay $24 a month instead of the $35 the new railroad fare would have cost. There was no immediate comment from the Susquehanna, but a spokesman from the commuters' association said the idea is so successful that a second group is joining...."

That being the first news item, it was obvious that nothing startling had been going on. Whatever all those duplicate men were planning to do, they hadn't done it yet.

"In Boston, a group of alien volunteers pitched in with a will to help tow away illegally parked cars. In the first two hours they towed away 28 unmarked police cars...."

WABC's newscast came five minutes before the hour. I switched to the NBC station, "where news comes first"--meaning on the hour--and endured the opening gongs which were NBC's substitute for big black headlines. It started off with a couple of non-Monolithian items from overseas.

"More news in a moment. But first--"

"Isn't there someone, somewhere, whose voice you'd like to hear? Well then, why not pick up your telephone...."

I yelled at it, "Yes, God damn it! Why don't I just?" and switched it off.

I must have fallen asleep. I came to in darkness and when I sat up the lights glowed on. I tried the radio again. Music.

I still wasn't hungry or thirsty and I still didn't have to go to the bathroom. I wondered if I were being watched. I looked again for a possible tiny television eye but couldn't see any. I considered thumbing my nose in all directions, as a morale factor, but decided it would be undignified.

I wondered what time it was, how long I'd slept. Somehow it sounded like early evening music, suitable for housewives preparing dinner and men driving home from a hard day at the office.

Then station identification told me it was seven o'clock (P.M.) and asked whether right about here I would like a beer. The answer was no. All I wanted was to get out.

"And now we bring you that popular round-table discussion of events of the day, _News and Newsmen_," the radio said, "featuring the men who edit the news for leading papers and wire services. Tonight our subject is 'Monolithians--Friend or Foe?' and our panel consists of Russell Sidenam, city editor of the _World-Telegram_; Barton Pascal, reporter on the _Daily News_; Herb Small, from the world desk of the Associated Press; and Sam Kent, assistant editor of the New York bureau of World Wide News...."

A few minutes later, after the inevitable commercial, I heard my own voice passionately defending the Monolithians as men of principle and high conscience whose only purpose was to uplift their brethren on Earth to a realization of their manifest destiny as worthy members of the community of the Interstellar Realm.

12 (Aug. 2, Sat.)

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.

--Thoreau

I had put myself to sleep by playing the name game. You start with two A's, as in Alfred Adler, then go to AB, Anthony Boucher, and so on--Arthur Clarke, Antal Dorati, Albert Einstein, Alexander Fleming. I dropped off somewhere in the middle of the C's--Mickey Cohen or Norman Corwin--and woke up knowing exactly where I was and wondering what time it was.

It turned out to be 8 A.M., August 2d, according to Station WTRU, which was playing wake-up music for the poor souls who had to work on Saturday, and a fine warm day it looked like it would be. For me it looked like it would be the same kind of cooped-in day, with nothing to do but chomp at the bit and wax wroth at the aloof jailers who had stolen my identity and sent it out to make me look ridiculous. He who steals my purse steals trash, I thought, but he who steals my good name.... They'd stolen both, these alien do-gooders with their sweet mad reasonableness.

"They said it couldn't be done--couldn't be done!" the radio boomed.

Well, they done did it. I didn't know how, but they duplicated me and sent me out to champion their cause while the original model languished helpless in their cell, beset by commercials and growing a fine beard.

"Our traffic-conditions helicopter reports unusual tie-ups in various suburban areas," WTRU was saying. "Traffic is bumper-to-bumper and backed up for miles in some sections.... For a direct report we go to our beeper-phone and we'll see if we can talk to the police department in Haverstraw, New York, close to the scene of one of the major tie-ups on Route 9W."

I perked up at that. Haverstraw is near High Tor on the west bank of the Hudson River.

"My engineer tells me we've got Sergeant Kiefer of the Haverstraw police on the beeper-phone. Go ahead, Sergeant Kiefer! Tell us, what's the cause of the big traffic jam on Route 9W?"

Sergeant Kiefer came in, loud, clear and profane. "Some God damn jerks are obeying the 20-mile speed limit," he said.

"Heh, heh, Sergeant Kiefer," the announcer said. "Remember, you're on the beeper-phone. This is radio, you know! What's that you say about the speed limit?"

"The speed limit's 20 miles an hour and there's two cars abreast on the highway not going any faster. Traffic's backed up clear to Piermont to the south."

"Piermont to the south," the announcer repeated, just as if it meant something to him. "How about in the other direction, Sergeant?"

"Same God damn thing. Two other wise guys ambling along----"

"You're on the _air_, Sergeant!"

"Same thing, I mean. They're backed up north to Bear Mountain. It's murder."

"Why don't you arrest them, Sergeant?"

"For what? For obeying the speed limit? It'd make more sense to arrest the stupid jerks that posted the 20-mile limit on a state highway."

"Just a minute, Sergeant! We're getting a message from our WTRU traffic-conditions helicopter that the lead cars, both northbound and southbound, have banners reading 'Monolithians Obey the Law.' Can you confirm that, Sergeant? Is it true that the Monolithian space people are the instigators of this fantastic traffic tie-up up there in--in--what county is that up there where you are anyway, Sergeant?"

"Rockland County. Yeah. That's what their signs say. One of the cars is a Volkswagen and there's some guy in it says he's a reporter. Sam Kent of World Wide. Legal Sam, the law-abiding man, he told us he was. You know him?"

"I've heard of World Wide, Sergeant. It's one of the three wire services we have here at WTRU to give you and all our listeners the most complete, up-to-the-minute news of any station in the metropolitan area. You say a reporter is personally instigating this mass traffic tie-up?"

"He's legal. We can't touch him. You want to know anything else? I got to get back to work here."

The announcer let him go back to work because he had to go back to work himself--to wit, to put on a commercial about something that was more lastingly odor-free than any other something.

So my alter ego had stolen not only my good name but my little red Volkswagen as well. I hoped he was keeping it in second for his 20-mile-an-hour jaunt and not ruining the gear-box by trying to do 20 in third.

Then a more urgent thought occurred to me. Had Spurious Sam, the Duplicated Man, gone home last night and posed as the lawful wedded husband of Mae Kent? If that was the case I wasn't even missing, and no one would ever have investigated young Harry's story of my capture.

"Let me out of this God damned trap!" I yelled, getting as profane as Sergeant Kiefer. Nobody paid any attention.

My attention wandered during the next news item, which was about a cabinet crisis in one of the Arab states, and I began to think about my stomach. I still wasn't hungry, but a peculiar sensation was setting in. I can only describe it as a hunger to be hungry.

I was also experiencing a thirst to be thirsty. For a while I kept saying to myself, "You get more beer in your beer in New Jersey"--parroting the words of one of the few clever commercials I had heard. I stopped doing that when it began to sound idiotic--but then I started asking myself: "Right about here wouldn't you like a beer?" and the answer was almost beginning to be yes.

This led to my becoming cigarette-conscious. My mind flitted from one slogan to another. Twenty thousand filter traps (or was it 40,000?). You can light either end. Protects the T-Zone. Independent laboratory tests prove.... Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet. (I wasn't even old enough to smoke when that one was current.) I'd walk a mile for a Camel. Travels the smoke further. Wherever particular people congregate....

Stop it, I told myself. You don't want a cigarette (wanting one). You don't want a drink, Sam; they teetotalled you (but it was wearing off). Why not go out to dinner tonight? (Medium rare, waiter; and lots of mushrooms.) And then Mae--Mae, Mae! I wanted my cute little pregnant wife, walking around flat-footed in her maternity blouse and smiling secretly to herself over our burgeoning child.

It was right about here that the radio man dug out and started to play an extremely associative song of Mae's and mine--_Who's Your Little Whoozis_. And then I blacked out.

13 (Aug. 3, Sun.)

I have been in such a pickle since I saw you last.

--Shakespeare

I wasn't in my cell any more. I was lying back in an armchair in a large comfortable-looking room. There was one other person in it, a kindly looking middle-aged man in another armchair next to a wall under a painting of a country scene, with trees and cows and a sky studded with tiny clouds.

"Hello," the man said. "I am Mox." He was wearing one of those Monolithian cloaks. "How are you?"

I felt too weak to answer. I tapped my finger on the arms of the chair and the effort made me terribly tired. I closed my eyes again.

"Lunch is about to be served," Mox said. "Perhaps you would care to freshen up first? To shave?"

I opened my eyes and rubbed a hand over my cheeks. They were pretty whiskery.

"How are you fixed for blades?" I said. Don't ask me why. One gets conditioned.

"Amply," Mox said. He made a gesture with his left hand and somebody in another woolen cloak came in with shaving equipment, put it on a table at my elbow and went out, bowing.

I looked at the steaming bowl of hot water, the tube of shaving cream (brush versus jar, I thought, remembering the old ad), the razor and mirror. I looked in the mirror, expecting the worst. The beard was pretty heavy and the cheeks under it looked more sunken than I'd remembered. But my eyes were clear and my tongue looked normal.

"There will be no deleterious effects," Mox said. "You'll be good as new after your lunch."

"Lunch? What time is it?"

He seemed to do a mental conversion before he replied: "Twelve-seventeen P.M. Eastern Daylight Saving Time; 1617 Greenwich."

"And an hour later on the Rue de la Paix," I said. "I'll have the snails and some Beaujolais." I was feeling light-headed.

"Interesting," he said, watching me with an encouraging smile.

"But irrelevant. I couldn't eat snails on an empty stomach. I just said that because it rhymes. What have you got for American times?"

"Lamb chops," Mox said, looking at me closely now, "baked potato, broccoli, tossed salad, strawberry shortcake and coffee. Or----"

"That's for me. Stop right there. Can I have it now and shave later? I'm starved."

"Certainly. Without further ado." Mox raised his right hand again and the same man came in, though he couldn't have seen the signal, wheeling a tray. An almost overpoweringly delicious smell reached my nostrils and I shivered a little in my chair.

Mox got up. "I'll leave you while you fall in," he said. I didn't answer him, being busy taking the covers off the serving dishes. I suppose he meant "fall to," which I did, with a will.

My curiosity returned as I appeased my appetite. Having wolfed down the meat and vegetables with hardly a conscious thought, I went through the salad in more leisurely fashion, rehearsing questions to ask Mox. I positively dawdled over the cake and coffee, it having just occurred to me that this could be the equivalent of the doomed man's last meal.

"Look, Mox," I said when he came back. "Thanks all the same, but I don't think I'll shave. Just give me my clothes and I'll go now. No; don't bother. I'll go as I am. I don't live very far. Oh--and thanks for the lunch."

Mox smiled and sat down. "You're a very amusing man, Mr. Kent. We couldn't possibly let you go. We have great plans for you."

"Plans?" The well-being induced by the lunch began to seep away. "Like what?"

"Details later. First we should discuss the terms of your employment. The salary will be substantial, so there'll be no problem there, but you might be interested in the fringe benefits, such as the size of your paid-up life insurance policy, the beneficiaries...."

"Now, look. I haven't said I'd join your organization...."

"Ah, but you've already joined. We had planned to come to you, but you saved us that trouble. You came to us voluntarily and have already taken part in one of our minor missions--that of working for the repeal of antiquated traffic laws."

"I did not. That wasn't me."

"Who would believe you? You previously espoused our cause on a nationwide radio-and-television program."

"That wasn't me either, and you know it. I don't know how you did it, but that double you rigged up isn't going to be able to get away with it much longer."

"I think he can. You see, Sam, for all practical purposes that double, as you call him, is you. There's nothing about you that he doesn't know and everything he does or says is perfectly in character with what you would do or say--presupposing one slight shift in motivation. And you may be sure that adjustment has been made."

"You mean you've been picking my brains all the time you had me cooped up in that cell?"

"You could put it that way. Not _all_ the time, of course. Only while you slept. We know as much about you as you do about yourself. More, probably, because we've probed your subconscious as well as your surface self-awareness."

"Oh yeah? What was my mother's maiden name?"

"Clemens," Mox said instantly. "Hence your full name, with its literary if not strictly genealogical connection--Samuel Langhorne Clemens Kent. You know you are not directly related to Mark Twain, of course?"

"I was told I was," I said defensively. "Way back."

"Way, _way_ back, perhaps," Mox said. "Not in any modern sense."

"That's no proof that you read my mind. There must be genealogical tables...."

"Certainly. But there are no written records of the time you stole money from the newsstand outside the candy store in Ozone Park."

"I never ..." I started to say before I remembered. I'd been about ten. The way to do it was to scoop up the coins boldly on your way into the store and hand them to the owner while buying a candy bar or a roll of caps. Of course you palmed a dime or so on the way. I'd never told anybody about it and I felt suffocated in shame.

"Or the seventy-five wingless flies in the mayonnaise jar," Mox said relentlessly. "You were trying for a hundred, weren't you? But you got sick to your stomach. Or the time you sold your brother's bicycle and claimed it had been stolen. Or the college exams with the dates written in your palm. Or...."

"Stop it! That's enough!"

"I don't condemn you, Sam. No one is wholly free of blame. I have not mentioned these things to bring you pain but to prove to you that the Monolithian Sam Kent is as aware of your potentialities as you are yourself. He has done nothing you would not do, given the proper conviction or opportunity."

I couldn't look at him. "Swiping a dime off a newsstand isn't the same thing as betraying your country," I said miserably.

"It would depend, wouldn't it, on which was the greater good? If the dime you stole bought a quart of milk for your family during the depression when your father was out of work--if the candy store man was obviously better off--if your country were Nazi Germany----"

"The United States isn't Nazi Germany," I said. I could reject that one, at least.

"True," Mox said. "But I said 'if.' You're a man of perception. You don't need an overt act, such as six million deaths, to persuade you that something is wrong. You see it every day in the news reports that are your business--in the United Nations debates on nuclear testing, in the reports on the strontium-90 in food, in the disfigured Hiroshima women getting plastic surgery, in the perennial radiation scares."

"Is that what you're up to?" I asked him. "You think we're going to wipe ourselves out and you're altruistically going to preserve us? You're going to step in and run our world for us because you think we're not capable of handling our own affairs?"

"If necessary," he said.

"The end justifies the means, you think. You have no faith in our ability not to commit suicide."

"Not as much as you seem to have. Look, Sam, we've got a job for you to do and we'd like you to take it because you want to. It would be better for all of us that way. But if you are reconsidering your decision to volunteer, we have ways of conscripting you."

"Torture?" I tried to speak calmly. "Brainwashing?"

"Neither you nor anyone else will ever be tortured. As for the other, we'd prefer that you washed your own brain of its misconceptions about us. Try to realize that what we are trying to do--and what we will do--is for your own good and for the good of all of us."

He was the soul of sincerity, this Mox. I was relieved about the torture. I was even half tempted to believe the other things. But I w

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