A Simple Truth (14 page)

"I know what you mean
,"
agreed Geoff, "everyone is on
tenterhooks
, all normal business has completely stopped.  Ha
ve you been following the civil
defence preparations and war contingency plans?"

"No, it frightens me.  Besides what they tell us is just the tip of the iceberg.  The aliens can pick up our radio signals so they daren't give too much away."

***************

"Four days without a response is totally unacceptable
,"
declared Stanislaw Raminski, Leader of the East European States
,
"
w
e have to assume hostile intent." 

"Hold on for God's sake
,"
pleaded Lincoln, feeling all he had previously achieved slipping away from him.  "No response means the aliens haven't received the message.  After all, if they had any evil intentions they would send a plausible reply, one that would set our minds at rest.  In any case you agreed to the criterion by which we judge hostility.  We suffer actual and deliberate harm before action.  You can't take it upon yourself to rescind that." 

Raminski's office radiated authority.  The room was dominated by a great oak desk, and behind the desk sat Raminski, lord of all he surveyed.  Behind him was a large window overlooking the palace
courtyard
.
  Here was a place to wield power.  The aura of the entire building was one of overlordship, and this office was its heart.

There had been mounting tension all round as the awaited response failed to materialise.  The radio telescopes had repeated the message over and over but it was apparently falling on deaf ears.  Raminski had been the one to crack.  He was a jumpy individual and waiting patiently was not one of his strong points.  He had called Lincoln the previous evening to discuss his fears, and Lincoln, sensing his desire for reassurance
,
had volunteered to go to Moscow to see him personally.  At first Lincoln was confident.  Raminski had met him personally and chatted amicably in the car on the way to the Grand Kremlin Palace.

Once inside his suite though his mood had changed.  He kept rising from his seat and pacing back and forth like a caged animal.  His brow was furrowed, his whole manner proclaimed insecurity.  He desperately wanted reassurance but could not bring himself to accept it.  Lincoln grew more and more worried as time passed.  He had gone through all the logical arguments more than once but to no avail.  He was becoming less and less receptive to logic.  Now he was trying a different tack.  Trying to make the other aware of the government heads that must be consulted before hostile action was taken, but he soon realised his mistake.

"I tell you it is up to me," Raminski shouted, enraged
,
"
e
veryone else will wait and wait forever, and all the time we are under threat, a threat that grows more terrible every passing hour.  It is I who must act."

Sweat was running down his temples and he was beating his fists into the desk top with a ferocity that startled Lincoln.  The man was impervious to pain and completely irrational, he was so tortured by indecision that he was losing control of himself.

"Only I can see the dangers, I dare not wait any longer."

Lincoln tried in vain to calm the man.  He wished Dent were here, he would know how to handle this situation.  Lincoln could counter logical arguments but in the face of such an emotional outburst he was completely at a loss.  Even so, no matter how the man ranted and raved there was little he could do.  Whatever weaponry he had at his disposal could easily be destroyed after launch.  The real danger was the effect his influence would have on the world in general.

Raminski had moved over to a cabinet situated behind the desk near the window.  He fumbled in his pocket for a key, dropped it, picked it up again, then managed to open a drawer with shaking hands.  Lincoln rose from his seat, unsure and afraid of what was to come next.  Out of the drawer he lifted a small metal box with a prominent red button on the top.  He carefully extended a telescopic aerial and looked at the box, trembling, his lips drawn back in a state of extreme anxiety.

"What is it
?"
breathed Lincoln.

"This is the only hope the human race has.  God has chosen me to save mankind."

"Please wait
,"
begged Lincoln, not knowing what was planned but determined to explore every avenue. 

"There's no hurry, we know exactly where the aliens are
and
we have established that they are definitely slowing down, so it will probably be several weeks yet before they reach the earth.  Why act now?"

Raminski was beyond reach.  He was sitting down again at his desk, the mysterious device lying in front of him, his eyes wide and staring.  Lincoln could sense that he was trying to gather the courage to press the button.

"What is it
?  W
hat will it do
?"
asked
Lincoln.

"It will signal to a military space platform."  Raminski seemed calmer now, his voice more rational.  "Out there, since the news first broke about the approaching aliens an orbiting high resolution glaser has been trained on their position."

Now it was Lincoln's turn to know panic.  His throat tightened.  'Oh God no
,'
he thought half aloud.  A gamma laser, he had completely overlooked that possibility.  Such devices could emit coherent pulses of very high energy radiation in colossal qualities.  The focusing ability was so precise that beam divergence was infinitesimal.  He rapidly performed some mental arithmetic.  Given the range, the accuracy to which the vessel position was known, the beam divergence and the energy output he realised with mounting despair that the destruction of the visitors was entirely possible.

"Don't you see Doctor Lincoln?  I have to destroy these beings before they destroy the world."  His voice was completely rational now.  He was stating no more than a simple fact.

"No.  No please.  Don't do this
,"
Lincoln watched as Raminski's hand moved forward to the button.  His face was calm now, his duty no longer burdensome.  He was resolved to destroy the aliens and nothing would stop him.

Suddenly Lincoln launched himself frantically towards the desk.  Perhaps, just perhaps he could surprise him sufficiently to get to the device first.  It was a slim chance and Lincoln was not weighing odds or even thinking at all.  It was the only possible action left open to stop this madman bent on destruction.  Time seemed to slow almost to a standstill.  Lincoln found he could follow events clearly instant by instant.  Raminski was startled.  His hand had stopped moving towards the menacing gadget and he looked into Lincoln's face.  In a brief instant of desperate hope Lincoln realised he really could succeed, he just might reach the device first.  His hand stretched out across the desk propelled by his flying body, never before had he moved with such a
gility.  Raminski had not moved;
his body seemed frozen.  Closer and closer Lincoln's hand came.  He would succeed, he was closer now to the device than was Raminski himself, and Raminski had still not started to move again.

Suddenly a sharp stabbing pain shot through Lincoln's hand and jarred his whole body.  He had not determined its cause when his head too hit the thick non-reflective glass screen set across Raminski's desk and designed to protect him from an assassin's bullet.  Lincoln crumpled against the edge of the desk, half senseless but struggling to retain a last shred of consciousness.  He watched, impotent now, as Raminski's hand began to move again.

"Please understand Doctor Lincoln, it really is necessary
,"
he said
,
h
is hand closing over the deadly instrument.  Gently but firmly he pressed the button and held it down.

Lincoln stared in horror as consciousness drained from his mind.  He would sleep in welcome oblivion for a short while, but the scene that he had just witnessed was burned into his memory in its most minute detail, and was destined to haunt him mercilessly.

He recovered after only about a minute, his head throbbing and threatening to burst.  His daze lasted only a second before the memory of what had happened reasserted itself.  He was engulfed by a wild rage.  He wanted to kill Raminski and made for him with only that intent in mind.  But with one glance at Raminski his anger evaporated.  There he sat, in a corner of the room, knees gathered to his chest and his arms around them.  He was sobbing and moaning like a lost child.  Lincoln felt a stab of acute pity.  The man had acted as he thought best but that action had cost him dearly.  He had made a decision that no-one should ever have to make, and the enormity of it had robbed his sanity.

Lincoln crossed to where Raminski sat and gently laid a hand on his shoulder.  The stricken mad showed no sign of response so he quietly left the room and made his way back to the airport.

His reception there was totally unexpected.  As he entered the concourse he became aware of a crowd of press people.  It took a while for the situation to sink in fully.  He was the only person who might know what had happened.  Several rapid bursts of energy from one of the East European space platforms had been monitored by a score of satellites but the platform crew would of course say nothing.  Lincoln's visit to Raminski had been no secret so it did not take the astute reporters long to realise that he must know something.  He wondered vaguely if perhaps he too should remain silent but felt too sick at heart to care, so he gave what information he had.

A message informed him of an emergency meeting of the Procyon Group, which was to be convened as soon as he could get to a telebooth.

He looked at each of his friends, and the faces that greeted him were grave.  He related the story as fully as possible while the others listened in silence.

"In about twelve minutes the alien craft will be destroyed unless by some miracle all the pulses miss
,"
he concluded despondently.

"And we won't know the outcome for over another hour
,"
added Freda Withers.  "The deadly rays are on their way, travelling at the speed of light
.
There's
nothing at all that can stop or intercept them,
there's
no way to send any warning,
there's
nothing at all that we can do but wait."  She voiced the obvious
;
the dismay felt by all was complete.

"Let's pray for a miracle
,"
s
uggested Dent.  He requested the music be relayed live.  There was little point in worrying about the subliminal pulses now.  This was the quickest way to find out whether the attack had succeeded or not.

The group stayed together, listening to that haunting music, still as soothing and as beautiful as ever.  Now and then someone would say something and then lapse back into silence again.  The dreaded moment approached re
morselessly
.  Around the world people were listening, hoping, praying.  A hush had settled over the planet.  The full cruelty of the situation was now public knowledge.  The aliens in all probability would be destroyed.  For what reason they would never know.  They would be given no warning, no chance to turn back, no chance to defend themselves at all.

Lincoln was not a religious man.  But now he prayed more desperately than he ever thought he could, to whatever deity or power or justice there was with any influence over the laws of nature and chance.

Time moved ever onwards and the music continued unchecked.

'Two more minutes and
we'll know
they are safe
,'
Lincoln told himself in a torment of anxiety.

Just one minute and forty-
seven seconds later the music stopped dead.

10
   
N
ew Hopes and
N
ew
D
angers

For a long time the group sat in silence.  The signal was still being relayed but it was no longer meaningful, only the background hiss from Procyon.
There was nothing to say, so at length Lincoln rose and with a heavy heart left to await the next flight home.

In his room at the WSA a note was waiting for him.  It was written in Dent's own hand and said simply 'Drop in when you can - G'.

Dent sat unmoving behind his huge presidential desk
,
looking
as
though
he had been there for hours.  His eyes were vacant and his hands rested aimlessly on the empty desk.  This was a different man to the George Dent that the world used to know.  As Lincoln looked sadly at his friend he seemed smaller.  Perhaps it was a trick of the light but he definitely appeared to be a smaller man.  Every dimension of his frame seemed less.  His hair seemed whiter, his eyes more drawn, his back curved, his face grey.  In the space of just a few hours Lincoln realised that George Dent had grown old.

On seeing Lincoln he rose and walked slowly over to him.  He put a paternalistic hand on Lincoln's shoulder and said
,
"It's up to you now Arthur, I can't advise you any more.  I don't know what will happen now.  You must do as you think best."  He then ambled out of the room and closed the door behind him, leaving Lincoln alone and bewildered.  For a few moments he stood trying to digest Dent's words, but soon gave up the attempt and dashed out.