Chapter I: Part 1

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30-DAY WONDER

By Richard Wilson

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.

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?"

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30-day wonderChapter I: Part 1

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