Harry Truman vs the Aliens

HARRY TRUMAN
VS.
THE ALIENS

by

Emerson LaSalle

Copyright
2011 by “Emerson LaSalle”

Cover
art: “Emerson at the Typewriter” by Tony Lewis

Cover
layout/design by No One Inparticular

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All the
characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Emerson LaSalle,
th
e Atom Bomb and the Red Menace:
An Introduction by Adam Openheimer.

The sad fact of Emerson
LaSalle’s dubious legacy is that he is mentioned almost exclusively
in passing when discussing more successful or critically acclaimed
works. Film historians occasionally cite “Harry Truman vs. The
Aliens” as the inspiration for the scene in
Independence Day
when the President
of the United States visits Area 51. Few scholars ever stop to
ponder the merits of the short story itself.

Likely, this situation exists for the
simple reason that the story would not appear, at first blush, to
have any particular merits. Such a hasty appraisal would be a
mistake, but not the sort of mistake anyone really takes notice of.
Indeed, LaSalle’s entire career has been subject to this sort of
half-assed scrutiny for decades, and few seem eager to correct the
wide-held assumption that LaSalle was simply a colorful
hack.

LaSalle himself was often
his own worst enemy in this respect, often coating serious themes
with a thick layer of the lurid until said themes were all but
unrecognizable. For example, early drafts of “Harry Truman vs. The
Aliens” featured a character called Nurse Vulvana who asks the
president to “make her feel like a woman one last time” before the
aliens come to exterminate them all. In a titanic and
uncharacteristic act of self-restraint, this character was edited
from the final version which appeared in
Zoom Magazine
in 1955, but for most
of his career, LaSalle let his juvenile side run roughshod over his
better sense.

So readers might not necessarily on
first reading catch the deft commentary on cold war politics and
the rise of the Soviet Union. One might also not know that LaSalle
was one of the first science fiction writers to use the Project
Orion propulsion system in fiction, a fact which fed LaSalle’s
penchant for generally eschewing legitimate science in his science
fiction. “If nobody cares anyway, I might as well make it up,” he
was often heard to say.

So here, in its original
form, we present to you “Harry Truman vs. The Aliens” the story
LaSalle would later expand into the novel
There are Aliens behind Uranus, Mr.
President
. Enjoy.

-- Adam Openheimer, Professor
Emeritus, Gothic State University

HARRY TRUMAN vs. THE
ALIENS

February,
1950

“Mr. President, we have a
problem.”

Harry Truman looked up from
his copy of the
Washington
Post
, a half-empty plate of scrambled eggs
and toast at his elbow. The President had taken to eating breakfast
at his desk in the Oval Office so he could get to work sooner. So
much to do. Korea was giving him an ulcer, and fucking MacArthur
was giving him hemorrhoids.

And now here was his pencil neck, pain
in the ass deputy chief of staff Pete Musgrave to drop another
problem like a steaming turd right onto his breakfast plate. Ten
nice quiet minutes in a row to read the paper and eat breakfast,
that’s all he asked. Being President was for the birds.

“What it, Musgrave?”

“It’s that Roswell business again,
sir.”

Truman bit off a corner of toast,
chewed thoughtfully. Roswell. That rang a bell. That was some
incident a few years ago out west, wasn’t it? Arizona? No, New
Mexico. Yes, it was coming back to him now, something about
…

The President’s eyes grew
wide.

“I’ve already selected your secret
service escort, sir,” Musgrave said. “I’m prepared to brief you en
route. It’s your decision, of course, sir, but the scientists think
it’s important for you to see all this in person.”

“To New Mexico?”

“Nevada,” Musgrave said. “Area
51.”

* * *

There were twenty armed men
in black suits in the Secret Service escort. These highly trained
and competent men were always wound a little tighter than most, but
there was something in the air, a peculiar tension. These men were
afraid, and they were
never
afraid.

Rocky Hardmann, Truman’s personal
Secret Service agent, hadn’t been more than five feet from the
President since the trip began. Imagine a wrestler who had
swallowed a linebacker and you’d get a clear picture of Hardmann. A
bright blond crew cut. Square jaw carved from granite, and alert
blue eyes that saw everything. Hardmann had seen action at
Guadalcanal where it was rumored he’d taken out a Japanese tank
with a bottle opener. He’d gone to Iowa State on the G.I. Bill
after the war and had earned his way onto the secret service for
his ability to take it as well as dish it out.

The other secret service men were of
the same cut.

Truman’s plane touched down at
Edward’s Air Force Base, and a company of Rangers was there to meet
him in jeeps and halftracks. Truman, Musgrave, and Hardmann piled
into an armored Cadillac, and the column proceeded to the outer
reaches of the base, and approached a lonely hanger with the number
51 in faded lettering on the wide door. A squad of men with
Thompsons guarded the entrance. The Cadillac parked in front, and
the Rangers set up a perimeter as Truman and Musgrave entered the
hanger followed by the Secret Service agents.

The President scanned the nearly empty
hanger, their footfalls echoing as they followed Musgrave to the
center of the hanger where a shrunken bald man in coke bottle
glasses and a lab coat waited for them. He stood next to a narrow
podium with a lever and a few bottoms. The President looked down
and discovered he was on a thirty by thirty foot square
platform.

“I’m Albert Kitner,” said the man in
the lab coat. “They sent me up for you.”

“I’m Musgrave. May I present the
President of the United States Harry Truman.”

Kitner bowed slightly. “An honor, Mr.
President.”

Truman waved him away. “Forget all
that, Professor. Where do we go from here?”

“If I can have everyone scoot in a
little closer onto the platform please,” Kitner told them. “Thank
you. Now hold still if you please.”

Kitner pressed a button on the podium,
and Truman felt the floor vibrate under his feet. Kitner pulled the
lever slowly, and the platform with everyone on it sank into the
floor. They passed several levels, some with offices, others in
workshops where men with tools worked on odd exotic machinery. In
every case, heads turned to get a glimpse of the U.S. President
before they vanished below to the next level.

Truman counted nine levels in all
before Kitner brought the lift to a halt. He stepped off, gestured
for everyone to follow.

The underground corridor was gleaming
steel, lights built into the ceiling overhead.

“This is all a bit Flash Gordon for my
tastes,” Truman said.

“This facility represents the highest
concentration of technology since the Manhattan Project,” Musgrave
said.

Next to the President, Hardmann’s eyes
darted constantly from side to side, always evaluating, assessing,
on the lookout for anything that might be a threat.

“Will you knock it off,” Truman said.
“You’re giving me the willies.”

“Sorry, Mr. President.” But he didn’t
stop.

The hall ended at a large metal door.
Kitner pushed through to the enormous workshop beyond. It was twice
as big as the hanger above, dozens of technicians scurrying back
and forth, various machines doing God-knows-what. A prototype
mainframe computer took up all the space along the far
wall.

But the real showpiece, the item which
drew the President’s attention, sat in the middle of the huge room,
a humped up silver saucer twice as big as a Sherman tank, the
surface of the spaceship smooth and gleaming. A hatch with narrow,
tinted windows was open at a ninety degree angle, revealing a
cockpit underneath with a configuration of thee seats. Pilot,
co-pilot and navigator? The President shook his head. Best to leave
the guessing games to the scientists.

It would be a mistake to think aliens
thought the same way humans.

A disheveled scientist in a greasy
stained lab coat broke from the pack upon seeing the newcomers and
bee-lined for the President. Truman felt Hardmann
bristle.

“Sir. Mr. President.” The scientist
had a three-day beard and bags under his eyes big enough to pack
for a world cruise. “I’m Dr. Starke, lead researcher for Project
Cosmos.”

“Let’s just go ahead and shitcan any
and all pleasantries and formalities, Doctor,” Truman said. “Show
me what you’ve got, make it fast, and keep it in layman’s
terms.”

“Right.” Starke gestured for Truman to
follow as he walked toward the spacecraft. “In the last twenty-four
hours there’s been a change in the captured spacecraft. We also
have some alarming sightings from the Cal Tech observatory. Taken
together we’ve been able to extrapolate a scenario that paints a
rather alarming picture.”

Truman followed Starke toward the
Spaceship. He could feel the crowd behind him, the Secret Service
and the other scientists. He was the center attraction of this
three-ring circus now. Well, he was used to it. He was the
President.

They arrived at the ship were Starke
showed him a blinking red light in the alien cockpit. A high
pitched beep corresponded with each blink. “This light started
blinking at thirty-two blinks per minute. It’s now blinking at a
hundred and fifty-eight blinks per minute and is still
increasing.”

Starke held out a hand and snapped his
fingers. A young tech immediately stepped forward and handed him a
large manila envelope.

Starke took a series of enlarged,
black and white photos and shuffled through them as he spoke.
“These shots were taken through the big telescope at Cal Tech. If
you compare the hourly shots, you can clearly see an object moving
from deep space toward the earth. As it moves closer, the blinking
light in the spacecraft’s increases in rate. We’ve compared the two
phenomena and—”

“Boil it down for me,” Truman
said.

“The aliens are coming here, Mr.
President,” Starke said. “And they’re on their way right
now.”

An absolute silence fell over the
place – except for the beeping red light which even as Truman stood
trying to absorb the news increased in the rate of beeps and
blinks.

The President sighed, looked up,
something catching his eye. He fixed his gaze on a steel girder
which hung on chains from a thick cable stretched across the
room.

“What’s that for?”

“What?” Starke looked up at the
girder. “Oh, yes. We’ve been trying to crack open the housing and
get at the components around the blinking light. We tried a blow
touch and a jackhammer. Nothing works. It was actually kind of
humorous. The girder is on a pulley, you see. A couple of fellows
would start at the other side of the room, and then run like a bat
out of hell, pushing the girder along the cable until it smacked
into the—”

“I don’t really have time for this,
Doctor.”

“Of course, Mr. President. My
apologies.”

“So what the hell do the
bug-eyed bastards
want
?” Truman asked.