“But look at the big picture,” he murmured to himself, not caring whether anybody else heard. “This is history.”

“This is history!” Minelli yelled from his cell. “We’re history! Isn’t everybody thrilled?”

Edward heard Reslaw clapping slowly, resolutely. “I want to see my agent,” Minelli said.

10

Harry looked over the President’s itinerary — and their own, neatly appended with a plastic clip — and sighed. “The big time,” he said. “You’re used to it. I’m not. Stifling security and appointments timed by the minute.”

“I’ve grown accustomed to being away from it,” Arthur said. They shared a room in the Vandenberg Hilton, as the blocky, elongated, three-story concrete officer’s quarters had been dubbed by the shuttle pilots who generally occupied the austere rooms. Harry handed him the paper and shrugged.

“Mostly, I’m just tired,” he said, lying back and clasping his hands behind his neck. Arthur regarded him with some worry. “No, not because I’m ill,” Harry said testily. “It’s all this thinking. Coming to grips.”

“Tomorrow’s going to be very busy. Are you sure you’re up to it?” Arthur asked.

“I’m sure,”

“All right. Tonight we brief the President and whichever members of his staff and Cabinet he’s brought along, and then sit in on the President’s interviews with the Guest and the citizens.”

Harry grinned and shook his head, still dubious.

Arthur put the papers down on the table between their beds. “What will he do when he hears the story?”

“Christ, Art, you know the man better than I.”

“I never even met him before I was canned. When he was Veep, he stayed in the background. To me, he’s a riddle wrapped in an enigma. You read the papers; what do you think?”

“I think he’s a reasonably intelligent man who doesn’t belong in the White House. But then, I’m a radical from way back. I was a communist when I was three years old, remember. My father put me in red sweaters—”

“I’m serious. We have to soften the blow for him. And it will be a blow, however much he’s prepared by his staff. Seeing our Guest. Hearing from its own lips, or whatever…”

“That Earth is doomed. Lambs to the slaughter.”

It was Arthur’s turn to grin. The grin almost hurt. “No,” he said.

“You don’t believe it?”

Arthur stared up at the ceiling. “Don’t you feel something’s not right here?”

“Doom is never right,” Harry said.

“Questions. Lots and lots of questions. Why does this spacecraft allow ‘fleas’ to ride on its back and warn the populace before it can destroy their home?”

“Smugness. Absolute assurance of power. Assurance of our weakness.”

“When we have nuclear weapons, for Christ’s sake?” Arthur asked sharply. “A fighter pilot down in some jungle should show respect for the natives’ arrows.”

“It probably — it should have weapons and defenses we know nothing about.”

“Why hasn’t it used them?”

“Obviously, it used something to land huge rocks without being detected by radar or satellites.”

Arthur nodded agreement. “If what landed wasn’t something small, to start with…But that would contradict our Guest’s story.”

“All right,” Harry said, propping himself up against the wall with a pillow as a cushion. “It doesn’t make sense to me either. This Australian statement that their aliens have come in peace for all mankind. Same group of invaders? Apparently; same tactics. Bury themselves in a duck blind. One ship has ‘fleas,’ the other doesn’t. One ship has robot publicity agents. The other keeps silent.”

“We haven’t seen the complete text from the Australians.”

“No,” Harry admitted. “But they seem to have been candid so far. What’s the obvious answer?”

Arthur shrugged.

“Maybe the powers behind these ships are incredibly unorganized or inconsistent or just plain callous. Or there’s some sort of dispute within their organization.”

“Whether to eat the Earth or not.”

“Right,” Harry said.

“Do you think Crockerman will make this public?”

“No,” Harry said, fingers wrapped on his ample stomach. “He’d be crazy if he did. Think of the disruption. If he’s smart, he’s going to sit back and wait until the very last minute — he’s going to see how people react to the Good News spaceship.”

“Perhaps we should be bombing Death Valley right now.” Arthur stared at a painting over the nightstand between the two single beds. It showed four F-104 fighters climbing straight up over China Lake. “Cauterize the whole area. Act without thinking.”

“Make them madder than hell, right?” Harry said. “If they are being incredibly arrogant, then it means they have some assurance we can’t hurt them. Not even with nuclear weapons.”

Arthur sat in a straight-backed chair, facing away from the windows and the painting. High-tech fighters and bombers. Cruise missiles. Mobile laser defenses. Thermonuclear weapons. No better than stone axes.

“Captain Cook,” he said, and then gently bit his lower lip.

“Yes?” Harry encouraged.

“The Hawaiians managed to kill Captain Cook. His technology was at least a couple of hundred years more advanced than theirs. Still, they killed him.”

“What good did it do them?” Harry asked.

Arthur shook his head. “None, I guess. Some personal satisfaction, perhaps.”

President William D. Crockerman, sixty-three, was certainly one of the most distinguished-looking men in America. With his graying black hair, penetrating green eyes, sharply defined, almost aquiline nose, and lines of goodwill around his eyes and mouth, he might be equally the revered head of a corporation or some teenager’s favorite grandparent. On television or in person, he projected self-confidence and a trenchant wit. There could be no doubt that he took his job seriously, but not himself — this was the image portrayed, and it had won him election after election along his twenty-six-year career in public office. Crockerman had only lost one election: his first, as a mayoral candidate in Kansas City, Missouri.

He entered the Vandenberg isolation laboratory accompanied by two Secret Service agents, his national security advisor — a thin, middle-aged Boston gentleman named Carl McClennan — and his science advisor, David Rotterjack, soporifically calm and thirty-eight years of age. Arthur knew the tall, plump blond-haired Rotterjack well enough to respect his credentials without necessarily liking the man. Rotterjack had tended toward science administration, rather than doing science, in his days as director of several private biological research laboratories.

This entourage was ushered into the combination laboratory and viewing room by General Paul Fulton, Commander in Chief of Shuttle Launch Center 6, West Coast Shuttle Launch Operations. Fulton, fifty-three, had been a football player in his academy days, and still carried substantial muscle on his six-foot frame.

Arthur and Harry awaited them in the central laboratory, standing by the Guest’s covered window. Rotterjack introduced the President and McClennan to Harry and Arthur, and then introductions were made in a circle around the chairs. Crockerman and Rotterjack sat in the front row, with Harry and Arthur standing to one side.

“I hope you understand why I’m nervous,” Crockerman said, concentrating on Arthur. “I haven’t been hearing good things about this place.”

“Yes, sir,” Arthur said.

“These stories…these statements about what the Guest has been saying…Do you believe them?”

“We see no reason not to believe them, sir,” Arthur said. Harry nodded.

“You, Mr. Feinman, what do you think of the Australian bogey?”

“From what I’ve seen, Mr. President, it appears to be an almost exact analog of our own. Perhaps larger, because it’s contained within a larger rock.”

“But we haven’t the foggiest notion what’s in either of the rocks, do we?”