“That’s why, Mr. President.” Joe Ransom finished his presentation. The room, filled with writers and engineers and soldiers stood in silence, so that the only sound was the heavy breathing of the alien captive.
“Impressive,” President Coffey said. He looked bewilderedly around the room until his eyes met those of the alien. Harpanet stood thirty feet away, as far as Clybourne could put him, with four armed combat veterans between the alien and the President.
And still too close, Jenny thought.
“What do you call him? Has he a title?” the President asked.
“Just Harpanet, Mr. President,” Robert Anson said. “Any title he might have had from his own people was lost when he surrendered, and we have not yet given him one.”
“Harpanet,” the President said quietly.
“Lead me.”
“Have you understood what was said here?”
“Yes.”
“Is it true? They will drop a large asteroid on the Earth?” The alien spread his digits.
“He says he can’t know,” Sherry interpreted.
“But your ship was to be — mated with a foot?”
“Yes.” The s sound fluttered.
“Is there anyone here who disagrees?” the President demanded. There was only silence.
President Coffey began to pace. “We’ll have to warn as many people as possible. Worldwide. God, I wish they hadn’t made such hash of our communications. Yes, Admiral?”
“I think we don’t dare.”
“Dare what? Warn the world? We’d be condemning millions! Tidal waves, storms, earthquakes, volcanoes, it’ll be like a weeklong disaster movie festival!”
“And if we do issue a warning, we will certainly condemn thousands. Tens of thousands,” Admiral Carrell said. “They will flee from the coasts. All the coasts.”
“But it’s better than doing nothing!”
“Mr. President.” Robert Anson seemed to have aged ten years in months, but his voice was firm and insistent.
“Yes, Mr. Anson?”
“If you issue a warning, people will flee the coastal towns. Bellingham is a coastal town.”
“But …?”
“You dare not have people flee from every town except Bellingham,” Anson said.
“He is certainly correct,” Admiral Carrell said. “If you issue a warning, you will disrupt Project Archangel. Perhaps permanently.”
“And Archangel is the only goddam chance we have,” Curtis said.
The President sat heavily. His fingers drummed against the desk. After a few moments he looked up. “Thor, would you send Mrs. Coffey in, please? I’ll speak with the rest of you later. Thank you for your advice.”
Mrs. Carmichael had told Alice a story once. Later Alice had asked around, and everyone had heard it. The psychiatrists probably thought it did their patients good. Maybe it did.
A motorist finds himself with a flat tire on a back road, late at night. There’s a fence. Someone is peering through it, not doing anything, just watching. The motorist sees a sign in the headlights. He’s parked next to a mental institution.
He takes the flat tire off, putting the five nuts in the hubcap. The stranger watches. He pulls the spare tire out of the trunk. The stranger watches. Motorist is getting nervous. What’s a maniac doing out so late at night? Why is he staring like that? Motorist rolls the tire around from the back and steps on the rim of the hubcap, which flips all of the nuts into tall weeds. Motorist goes after them. He finds one nut.
The mental patient speaks. “Take a nut off each of the other tires. Put them on the fourth wheel. Four nuts each. It’ll get you to a gas station.”
Motorist says, “That’ll work.” Then, “Hey, that’s brilliant! What the hell are you doing here?”
Patient says, “I’m here for being crazy. Not stupid.”
The air pipes were a little more than a yard across. There we no handholds. At first Alice had floundered, lost and nauseated and fighting the fear of falling. It was better now. Jeri and Melissa actually enjoyed the low gravity, and they’d shown Alice how.
Alice had always been thin. Pale face, fiery hair, slender body, vividly pretty, for whatever that was worth. Now she was gaunt. She tried to eat, but there was no appetite, and the horrors tried to foist nauseating alien plants and meat on her. The others accepted such treatment. They ate canned food and alien food, they ate the vitamins and protein powder and brewer’s yeast she had supplied and they thrived.
Living wasn’t worth the effort under these circumstances. Alice had slashed her wrists once, long ago, for reasons that seemed trivial now. Something sharp would presently come her way. Yet she was half sure she wouldn’t use it.
After all, who would care?
The little girl, Melissa, treated her with something between fear and contempt. Jeri was nice, but she spent a lot of time with the Russians. I think she likes the big one. He does things for her. Brings her things. Got the blanket to put around the toilet pool; that was nice.
