Fade Out (11 page)

Back at Forsyth, Volkert had also found himself similarly afflicted but to a lesser degree. The Sheriff sent him to the doctor. The doctor gave him a shot of pain-killer, put on a soothing lotion, told him he had sunburn, and sent him home.

There was just one problem – the sun hadn't been out all day.

It's an ill wind, as they say, that blows nobody no good. While the storm of static brought the networks to their
knees, the newspapers boomed back into business nationwide. Special lunchtime editions enlarged upon the solar-flare/magnetic-storm theory, and confidently underlined its temporary nature. Some confidence was needed. The uniformly bad weather had combined with the fade-out to cause a grim total of seventy-four airline crashes including several midair collisions. Nine aircraft had gone down in the Chicago area, seven around New York, five midairs over Boston, Washington, and Philadelphia. Most of the rest had been in Europe and Japan. Death toll, 4,128 and rising. Damage to property in millions of dollars. A shattering, global catastrophe, all within the first sixty minutes of the fade-out.

Soothing radio music and sugarcoated newscasts faded in and out through a rustling noise like a mouse inside a bag of potato chips, while on TV, the best that channel switchers could get was a woozy picture laced with an incoherent pattern of white lines.

During the morning, General Clayson urged the President to brief the other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and his Cabinet on the presence of the spacecraft, its extraterrestrial origin, and the current belief that it was the cause of the present fade-out. At that point in time, Washington didn't know about the crater on Crow Ridge, and Volkert, who had found it, didn't know about the spacecraft.

On the advice of Connors and Wedderkind, the President decided not to follow up Clayson's suggestion. Wedderkind had argued that the presence of the spacecraft did not, in itself, constitute any immediate threat to the security of the United States. Fraser didn't agree, but his main concern centred on the more tangible dangers that might come from possible moves by Russia or China under cover of the fade-out. He felt that it was on this aspect of the situation that the Joint Chiefs of Staff
and, if necessary, the Cabinet, should concentrate their attention.

The President decided to bring in the other Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Wills and Admiral Garrison, but not the members of his Cabinet. In spite of their differences, they all agreed that any unnecessary widening of the involvement at this highly speculative stage of the operation would increase the risk of a serious news leak. The country was already in an uneasy mood, jittery about layoffs, rising prices, the ripple effect of the new downturn in oil prices, and the rising tide of Far Eastern imports that had already caused several chinks of the American industrial landscape to sink without trace. Coming hard on the heels of the morning's air disasters, it didn't need much imagination to see that uncontrolled, uninformed, sensational publicity about the spacecraft's arrival could rip the country apart.

Called in by the President, Connors had laid it on with a trowel – the damage such news might cause to the stock market, banks and other financial institutions, how it would be a field day for every doom-laden end-of-the-world fanatic, rapist, arsonist, and mugger.

As the President sat listening he thought, Perhaps it is only us, who are in power, who fear this thing…

Clayson dropped his request and backed into line.

Connors knew that Clayson's concern for open government was not solely out of respect for the Constitution. It stemmed from his belief that the weakened post-Watergate powers of the Executive made it impossible to cover up this kind of collusion indefinitely. All he really wanted to do was keep the Air Force out of trouble until Congress had agreed to buy him another two hundred B-1s.

Connors dictated two telegraphic-style memos to JoAnne, told her to shut the door, then tuned back in to Wedderkind. ‘You know, if we could get to this thing before the Russians and find out how it works, it could give us a real edge…'

‘Bob – just for two milliseconds try and forget politics. What worries me is the potential power source this thing represents. To create this amount of static all around the world, well it's… I mean, the amount of energy you'd need is unbelievable.'

‘But surely we already know something about the type of propulsion unit the craft might have. What are the alternatives – nuclear fission, plasma, ion, photon drive? We're already working on them ourselves.'

‘On three of them. We've test-fired nuclear rocket reactors but we still haven't got 'em off the ground. The ion motor was tried out in 1964 – to adjust the spin of a satellite. Total thrust .006 pounds. Big deal. Even the giant ones we're planning now will only generate a few pounds' thrust. The photon drive is still on paper. Bob – have you any idea of the difficulties involved? Take the plasma propulsion unit. You fuse deuterium atoms together and you get a fantastic release of energy – plasma – which will push you along. But to generate that energy, those deuterium atoms have to be fused together at over two hundred and fifty million degrees centigrade. And the only way you can do that is to contain the molten mass inside a magnetic field – inside a total vacuum. The problems–' Arnold waved them away. ‘I can't tell you. Just the size of the Large Torus plant out at Princeton, New Jersey… and we are still having problems keeping a continuous reaction going for more than one or two
seconds.
But while we are still trying to get it together, it looks as if these
boychiks
have got one
working. And not only working – they've built a spacecraft around it and
schlepped
two hundred tons or more right across our galaxy. Maybe even further.'

‘Is that really so fantastic?' asked Connors.

‘Nearest star?'

‘Alpha Centauri?'

‘4.3 light years away. Procyon is 10.4, 61 Cygni, 10.7, Ophiuchi, 12.
Light
years. Have you any idea how
far
that is?'

‘Yeah, okay – so they travel at the speed of light. Or ninety-nine per cent of it.'

‘What about their life support systems?'

‘It's unmanned. Nobody's going to send a manned probe first.'

‘Who says it's the first?'

Connors didn't answer.

‘Even if we discount every flying saucer story, how far would we have to go back to get beyond recorded history? Ten thousand years? On the cosmic time scale that's infinitesimal. It's not even one tick of the clock!'

‘Arnold, all our lives we've been conditioned to expect that any contact from outer space is going to be with a civilization far in advance of our own. The chances are it will be. But it doesn't
have
to be so. That could be an unmanned probe up there. Like one of our Surveyor Craft. Now suppose instead of sending out probes to Mars and Venus, we sent one straight up – just aimed in the general direction of the Milky Way.'

‘We did,' said Wedderkind. ‘Pioneer 10. Launched in March 1972 to fly past Jupiter, then on out of our system.'

‘Oh, yes, I forgot.'

‘Never mind, go on.'

‘Okay, but let's stick with the Surveyor, because it can land. It doesn't get hit by a meteor, it goes on functioning perfectly – '

‘Powered by what?'

‘Solar batteries.'

‘But you just left our solar system.'

‘Okay, it just coasts along till it reaches another star like our sun.'

‘Ah…'

‘The solar batteries charge up again, the instruments are reactivated. The star has a planetary system. The Surveyor gets pulled into orbit round a planet. It follows a preprogrammed flight pattern, softlands, then starts transmitting data. You know what Surveyor looked like. To an advanced civilization ten thousand years from now, it might seem as sophisticated as an iron bedstead is to us.'

‘Bob, even reduced to its simplest form, the problems of controlling an unmanned interstellar flight are still pretty colossal. Even from the nearest star. Say you're four light years out from Alpha Centauri and heading for our sun. At this point you've still got another nine hundred and ninety-six thousand eight hundred
million
miles before you hit Pluto. We're another thirty-one hundred million miles further on. Your instruments confirm the presence of a planetary system. It will take eight years to transmit this news and receive a command signal back from Alpha Centauri.'

‘If they're still in business.'

‘All right, let's take your preprogrammed package on a random flight path – that just happens to be angled clear of the gravitational pull of Uranus, Jupiter, and Saturn – not to mention the Sun, and aimed right at Earth where we just
happen
to be. I suppose it is just conceivable.'

‘Maybe it's programmed to home in on a specific gravitational mass which is emitting x amount of radio waves – in an intelligible pattern. Think of the number of
radio signals that have been heading out into space over the last thirty years.'

It was Wedderkind's turn to look at Connors. Connors looked at his watch, then smiled. ‘It's no more outrageous than any other theory.'

‘True,' Wedderkind said. ‘But – and God forgive me that as a scientist I should talk like this –' Wedderkind tapped his navel. ‘Something in here tells me we're in line for more than just an iron bedstead.'

Puzzled by the radiation burns and the inexplicable power failure in the helicopter, the Air Force decided to send a Crash and Rescue Unit and an Aircraft Recovery Team to Crow Ridge by road to pick up the body of the crewman and the downed helicopter.

When they drove up the winding track to the Ridge, they found a pickup truck sent by the Rosebud County sheriffs office stalled alongside Volkert's patrol car. As the Crash and Rescue truck drew alongside, their motor cut out too. The big recovery truck stopped a safe fifty yards behind and the crew hurried forward to help. They found that fuses had blown in all three vehicles.

After checking the area for ultraviolet radiation, the Air Force team walked up through the trees on to the plateau. They found the body of the crewman carefully wrapped in an old, patched canvas truck top. His feet were sticking out at one end. At the other end, someone had planted a rough cross made of branches and tied
together with wire. On top of it was the crewman's bloodstained crash helmet.

The Recovery Team went over to the crashed helicopter, circled around it carefully, then exchanged surprised glances. When it had left Glasgow AFB, it had been a drab, regulation olive green. It was now a light pinkish-brown, and the blue around the white star insignia had turned a bright purple.

In the conference room, they all took the seats they had occupied the previous Saturday.

Army General Wills and Admiral Garrison had had the news about the spacecraft laid on them by the President over supper on Friday. They still looked a little punchy, but Fraser didn't waste any time coming out of his corner.

‘All we've got out of this encounter so far is death, damage, and destruction. I say to hell with the possible advances to scientific knowledge. This fade-out constitutes a clear case of aggression. What we have to decide now is when and how to hit back.'

‘With what?' asked Connors. ‘A ground-to-air missile? With all our electronic guidance systems out of action we've got nothing more sophisticated than an artillery shell. The point I think Arnold is trying to make is that if it is not intentional, then it can't really be classified as aggression.'

‘I don't buy that line of logic,' said Fraser. ‘A dog doesn't
intend
to catch rabies, but when he does you kill him before he bites somebody.'

True enough, thought Connors. Your ball, Arnold.

Wedderkind tapped his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. ‘If the basic assumptions we've made so far are
correct, this interference
could
be accidental. On the other hand, it could be part of a planned program.'

‘To paralyse our defences.' Fraser looked pleased.

‘Exactly,' said Garrison. ‘The – '

Wedderkind upped the volume and drowned him out. ‘The point I'm trying to make is that such a move need not necessarily be interpreted as aggressive. It could be defensive. It depends.'

‘On what, Arnold?'

Wedderkind turned to the President. ‘On what happens next.'

‘That brings us right back to the mad dog.' said Wills.

Fraser smiled. ‘I think Arnold wants us to wait until it bites somebody.'

‘I don't think there's any need for us to get paranoid about this.' Wedderkind's blink rate had begun to edge up. ‘We didn't land on the moon with the intention of blasting everything in sight. There's no reason to treat a similar landing on this planet as a hostile invasion.'