“Thank you.” Hicks was too surprised to say much more.

“I believe you know who I am, and the people I represent. I’ve been discussing some things with the President, as a friend and advisor…sometimes, as a religious counselor. I think we should meet and talk sometime soon. Could you make a space in your schedule? I can have a car pick you up, bring you back, no difficulties there, I hope.”

“Certainly,” Hicks said. “Today?”

“Why not. I’ll have a car pick you up at one.”

Precisely at one, a white Chrysler limousine with a white landau roof drove up in the hotel loading zone and Hicks climbed in through the automatically opened door. The door closed with a quiet hiss and the driver, a pale, black-haired young man in a conservative dark blue business suit, smiled pleasantly through the glass partition.

Snow lay in white and brown ridges, rucked up at the street edges by plows. This was one of the coldest and wettest falls in memory. The air smelled unusually sharp and clean, intoxicating, pouring against his face through the window, opened a small crack by the driver at Hicks’s request.

The car took him out of the concentric circles and confusing traffic loops of the Capital and into the suburbs, along expressways lined with young skeletal maples and out to country. An hour had passed when the Chrysler turned into the parking lot of a modest motel. The driver guided him through the lobby to the second floor and knocked on a room at the rear comer of the building. The door opened.

Ormandy, in his middle forties and balding, wore black pants and a gray dress shirt. His face was bland, almost childlike, but alert. His greeting was perfunctory. The driver closed the door and they were alone in the small, spare room.

Ormandy suggested he take an armchair by a circular table near the window. Hicks sat, watching the man closely. Ormandy seemed reluctant to get down to business, but since he could obviously manufacture no small talk, he turned abruptly and said, “Mr. Hicks, I have become very confused in the past few weeks. Do you know what is happening? Can you explain it to me?”

“Surely the President—”

“I’d like you to explain it to me. In clear language. The President is surrounded by experts, if you know what I mean.”

Hicks drew his lips together and leaned his head to one side, organizing his words. “I assume you mean the spacecraft.”

“Yes, yes, the invasion,” Ormandy said.

“If it is an invasion.” Now he was being overly cautious, reluctant to be pushed into conclusions.

“What is it?” Ormandy’s eyes were childlike in their openness, willing to be taught.

“To put it bluntly, it seems that we’ve fallen in the path of automatons, robots, seeking to destroy our planet.”

“Could mere machines do such a thing?” Ormandy asked.

“I do not know. Not human-made machines.”

“These are Godlike powers you’re discussing.”

“Yes.” Hicks started to rise. “I’ve been over all this with the President. I do not see the point in bringing me here, when you’ve advised the President to act contrary to—”

“Please sit. Be patient with me. I’m hardly the ogre you all think I am. I am way out of my depth, and just two nights ago, that really came home to me. I’ve talked with the President, and made my conclusions known to him…But I have not been at all sure of myself.”

Hicks sat back slowly. “Then I presume you have specific questions.”

“I do. What would it take to destroy the Earth? Would it be significantly harder than, say, destroying this place called Europa?”

“Yes,” Hicks said. “It would take much more energy to destroy the Earth.”

“Would it be done all at once, a cataclysm? Or could it begin in one place, spread out, like a war?”

“I don’t really know.”

“Could it begin first in the Holy Land?”

“There don’t seem to be any bogeys in the Holy Land,” Hicks said dryly.

Ormandy acknowledged that with a nod, his frown deepening. “Could there be a way of saying, scientifically, whether aliens can be considered angels?”

“No,” Hicks said, smiling at the absurdity. But Ormandy did not see the absurdity.

“Could they be acting on behalf of a higher authority?”

“If they are indeed robots, as they seem to be, then I presume they are acting on the authority of biological beings somewhere. But we can’t even be sure of that. Civilizations based on mechanical—”

“What about creatures that have gone beyond biology — creatures of light, eternal beings?”

Hicks shrugged. “Speculation,” he said.

Ormandy’s childlike face exhibited intense agitation. “I am way out of my depth here, Mr. Hicks. This is not clear-cut. We’re certainly not dealing with angels with flaming swords. We’re not dealing with anything predicted in apocalyptic literature.”

“Not in religious literature,” Hicks corrected.

“I don’t read science fiction much,” Ormandy said pointedly.

“More’s the pity.”

Ormandy smirked. “And I’m not in the mood to cross knives with you or anybody else. What I’m saying is, I’m not sure I can present this to my people in a way they’ll understand. If I tell them it’s God’s will…How can I be sure of that?”

“As you said, there seem to be Godlike forces at work,” Hicks offered. Perverse, perverse!

“My people still think in terms of angels and demons, Mr. Hicks. They dearly love halos of light and brilliancies, thrones and powers and dominations. They eat it up. They’re like children. And no one can deny there is beauty and power in that kind of theology. But this…This is cold and political, deceptive, and I don’t feel comfortable attributing such deception to God. If this is a work of Satan, or of Satan’s forces, then…The President, with my help, I admit, is about to make a tremendous mistake.”

“Can you get him to change his mind?” Hicks asked, less eagerly than he might have.

“I doubt it. Remember, he called me, not the other way around. That’s why I say I’m out of my depth. I’m not so proud I can’t admit that.”

“Have you told him your misgivings?”

“No. We haven’t met since I…became unsure.”

“Are you fixed in a theological interpretation?”

“Emotionally, by all that my parents and teachers handed down to me, I must believe that God intervenes in all our affairs.”

“What you’re saying, Mr. Ormandy, is that when push comes to shove, and the end of the world comes on apace, you no longer yearn for apocalypse?”

Ormandy said nothing, but his frown intensified. He held out his beseeching hands, ambiguous, opinion fixed neither one way nor the other.

“Can you talk to the President again, at least try to get him to change his mind?” Hicks asked.

“I wish he’d never involved me,” Ormandy said. He hung his head back and massaged his neck muscles with both hands. “But I’ll try.”

27

Arthur was in a late night conference with astronomers in Washington, discussing the appearance of the ice objects and their possible connection with Europa, when word came that William D. Crockerman was projected to win election as President of the United States. Nobody was surprised. Beryl Cooper conceded the next morning, at one a.m., while the conference was still proceeding.

No conclusion was reached by the astronomers at the meeting. If the ice chunks had come from Europa, which seemed undeniable given their paths and composition, then their present almost straight-line orbits had to be artificial, and some connection with the extraterrestrials could be assumed. The facts were clear enough: both were fresh, almost pure water-ice; the smaller of the two, barely 180 kilometers in diameter, was traveling at a velocity of some 20 kilometers per second and would strike Mars on December 21, 1996; the larger, some 250 kilometers in diameter, was traveling at about 37 kilometers per second and would strike Venus on February 4, 1997. Whatever had caused Europa’s destruction had not warmed the objects substantially, perhaps because ablation had carried away the heat. Both were quite cold and would lose little of their mass to vaporization by the sun’s energy. Consequently, neither would show much of a cometary coma, and both would be visible only to sharp-eyed observers with telescopes or high-powered binoculars.