Hugo Awards: The Short Stories (Volume 1) Read online

  B. R. Ogilvie

  Editor-in-Chief

  "Preposterous," he said again.

  Casey Blair, his best reporter, blew a smoke ring and poked his index finger through it. "Why?" he asked.

  "Because--why, it's utterly preposterous."

  Casey Blair said, "It is now three o'clock in the morning. The interference has gone on for five hours and not a single program is getting through on either TV or radio. Every major broadcasting and telecasting station in the world has gone off the air.

  "For two reasons. One, they were just wasting current. Two, the communications bureaus of their respective governments requested them to get off to aid their campaigns with the direction finders. For five hours now, since the start of the interference, they've been working with everything they've got. And what have they found out?"

  "It's preposterous!" said the editor.

  "Perfectly, but it's true. Greenwich at 11 P.M. New York time; Pm translating all these times into New York time--got a bearing in about the direction of Miami. It shifted northward until at two o'clock the direction was approximately that of Richmond, Virginia. San Francisco at eleven got a bearing in about the direction of Denver; three hours later it shifted southward toward Tucson. Southern hemisphere: bearings from Capetown, South Africa, shifted from direction of Buenos Aires to that of Montevideo, a thousand miles north.

  "New York at eleven had weak indications toward Madrid; but by two o'clock they could get no bearings at all." He blew another smoke ring. "Maybe because the loop antennae they use turn only on a horizontal plane?"

  "Absurd."

  Casey said, "I like `presposterous' better. Mr. Ogilvie. Preposterous it is, but it's not absurd. I'm scared stiff. Those lines-and all other bearings I've heard about run in the same direction if you take them as straight lines running as tangents off the Earth instead of curving them around the surface. I did it with a little globe and a star map. They converge on the constellation Leo."

  He leaned forward and tapped a forefinger on the top page of the story he'd just turned in. "Stations that are directly under Leo in the sky get no bearings at all. Stations on what would be the perimeter of Earth relative to that point get the strongest bearings. Listen, have an astronomer check those figures if you want before you run the story, but get it done damn quick-unless you want to read about it in the other newspapers first."

  "But the heaviside layer, Casey-isn't that supposed to stop all radio waves and bounce them back."

  "Sure, it does. But maybe it leaks. Or maybe signals can get through it from the outside even though they can't get out from the inside. It isn't a solid wall."

  "But-"

  "I know, it's preposterous. But there it is. And there's only an hour before press time. You'd better send this story through fast and, have it set up while you're having somebody check my facts and directions. Besides, there's something else you'll want to check."

  "What?"

  "I didn't have the data for checking the positions of the planets. Leo's on the ecliptic; a planet could be in line between here and there. Mars, maybe."

  Mr. Ogilvie's eyes brightened, then clouded again. He said, "We'll be the laughingstock of the world, Blair, if you're wrong."

  "And if I'm right?"

  The editor picked up the phone and snapped an order.

  April 6th headline of the New York Morning Messenger, final (6 A.M.) edition:

  RADIO INTERFERENCE COMES FROM SPACE, ORIGINATES IN LEO

  May Be Attempt at Communication by Beings Outside Solar System

  All television and radio broadcasting was suspended.

  Radio and television stocks opened several points off the previous day and then dropped sharply until noon when a moderate buying rally brought them a few points back.

  Public reaction was mixed; people who had no radios rushed out to buy them and there was a boom, especially in portable and tabletop receivers. On the other hand, no TV sets were sold at all. With telecasting suspended there were no pictures on their screens, even blurred ones. Their audio circuits, when turned on, brought in the same jumble as radio receivers. Which, as Pete Mulvaney had pointed out to George Bailey, was impossible; radio waves cannot activate the audio circuits of TV sets. But these did, if they were radio waves.

  In radio sets they seemed to be radio waves, but horribly hashed. No one could listen to them very long. Oh, there were flashes-times when, for several consecutive seconds, one could recognize the voice of Will Rogers or Geraldine Farrar or catch flashes of the Dempsey-Carpentier fight or the Pearl Harbor excitement. (Remember Pearl Harbor?) But things even remotely worth hearing were rare. Mostly it was a meaningless mixture of soap opera, advertising and off-key snatches of what had once been music. It was utterly indiscriminate, and utterly unbearable for any length of time.

  But curiosity is a powerful motive. There was a brief boom in radio sets for a few days.

  There were other booms, less explicable, less capable of analysis. Reminiscent of the Welles Martian scare of 1938 was a sudden upswing in the sale of shotguns and sidearms. Bibles sold as fast as books on astronomy-and books on astronomy sold like hotcakes. One section of the country showed a sudden interest in lightning rods; builders were flooded with orders for immediate installation.

  For some reason which has never been clearly ascertained there was a run on fishhooks in Mobile, Alabama; every hardware and sporting goods store sold out of them within hours.

  The public libraries and bookstores had a run on books on astrology and books on Mars. Yes, on Mars--despite the fact that Mars was at that moment on the other side of the sun and that every newspaper article on the subject stressed the fact that no planet was between Earth and the constellation Leo.

  Something strange was happening-and no news of developments available except through the newspapers. People waited in mobs outside newspaper buildings for each new edition to appear. Circulation managers went quietly mad.

  People also gathered in curious little knots around the silent broadcasting studios and stations, talking in hushed voices as though at a wake. MID network doors were locked, although there was a doorman on duty to admit technicians who were trying to find an answer to the problem. Some of the technicians who had been on duty the previous day had now spent over twenty-four hours without sleep.

  George Bailey woke at noon, with only a slight headache. He shaved and showered, went out and drank a light breakfast and was himself again. He bought early editions of the afternoon papers, read them, grinned. His hunch had been right; whatever was wrong, it was nothing trivial.

  But what was wrong?

  The later editions of the afternoon papers had it.

  EARTH INVADED, SAYS SCIENTIST

  Thirty-six line type was the biggest they had; they used it. Not a home-edition copy of a newspaper was delivered that evening. Newsboys starting on their routes were practically mobbed. They sold papers instead of delivering them; the smart ones got a dollar apiece for them. The foolish and honest ones who didn't want to sell because they thought the papers should go to the regular customers on their routes lost them anyway. People grabbed them.

  The final editions changed the heading only slightly-only slightly, that is, from a typographical view-point. Nevertheless, it was a tremendous change in meaning. It read:

  EARTH INVADED, SAY SCIENTISTS

  Funny what moving an S from the ending of a verb to the ending of a noun can do.

  Carnegie Hall shattered precedent that evening with a lecture given at midnight. An unscheduled and unadvertised lecture. Professor Helmetz had stepped off the train at eleven-thirty and a mob of reporters had been waiting for him. Helmetz, of Harvard, had been the scientist, singular, who had made that first headline.

  Harvey Ambers, director of the board of Carnegie Hall, had pushed his way through the mob. He arrived minus glasses, hat and breath, but got hold of Helmetz's army and hung on until he could talk again. "We want you to talk at Carnegie, Professor," he shouted int
o Helmetz's ear. "Five thousand dollars for a lecture on the `vaders.' "

  "Certainly. Tomorrow afternoon?"

  "Now! I've a cab waiting. Come on."

  "But-"

  "We'll get you an audience. Hurry!" He turned to the mob. "Let us through. All of you can't hear the professor here. Come to Carnegie Hall and he'll talk to you. And spread the word on your way there."

  The word spread so well that Carnegie Hall was jammed by the time the professor began to speak. Shortly after, they'd rigged a loud-speaker system so the people outside could hear. By one o'clock in the morning the streets were jammed for blocks around.

  There wasn't a sponsor on Earth with a million dollars to his name who wouldn't have given a million dollars gladly for the privilege of sponsoring that lecture on TV or radio, but it was not telecast or broadcast. Both lines were busy.

  "Questions?" asked Professor Helmetz.

  A reporter in the front row made it first. "Professor," he asked, "Have all direction finding stations on Earth confirmed what you told us about the change this afternoon?"

  "Yes, absolutely. At about noon all directional indications began to grow weaker. At 2:45 o'clock, Eastern Standard Time, they ceased completely. Until then the radio waves emanated from the sky, constantly changing direction with reference to the Earth's surface, but constant with reference to a point in the constellation Leo."

  "What star in Leo?"

  "No star visible on our charts. Either they came from a point in space or from a star too faint for our telescopes.

  "But at 2:45 P.M. today-yesterday rather, since it is now past midnight-all direction finders went dead. But the signals persisted, now coming from all sides equally. The invaders had all arrived.

  "There is no other conclusion to be drawn. Earth is now surrounded, completely blanketed, by radio-type waves which have no point of origin, which travel ceaselessly around the Earth in all directions, changing shape at their will-which currently is still in imitation of the Earth origin radio signals which attracted their attention and brought them here."

  "Do you think it was from a star we can't see, or could it have really been just a point in space?"

  "Probably from a point in space. And why not? They are not creatures of matter. If they came from a star, it must be a very dark star for it to be invisible to us, since it would be relatively near to us-only twenty-eight light-years away, which is quite close as stellar distances go."

  "How can you know the distance?"

  `By assuming-and it is a quite reasonable assumption-that they started our way when they first discovered our radio signals-Marconi's S-S-S code broadcast of fifty-six years ago. Since that was the form taken by the first arrivals, we assume they started toward us when they encountered those signals. Marconi's signals, traveling at the speed of light, would have reached a point twenty-eight light-years away twenty-eight years ago; the invaders, also traveling at light speed would require an equal of time to reach us.

  "As might be expected only the first arrivals took Morse code form. Later arrivals were in the form of other waves that they met and passed on-or perhaps absorbed-on their way to Earth. There are now wandering around the Earth, as it were, fragments of programs broadcast as recently as a few days ago. Undoubtedly there are fragments of the very last programs to be broadcast, but they have not yet been identified."

  "Professor, can you describe one of these invaders?"

  "As well as and no better than I can describe a radio wave. In effect, they are radio waves, although they emanate from no broadcasting station. They are a form of life dependent on wave motion, as our form of life is dependent on the vibration of matter."

  "They are different sizes?"

  "Yes, in two senses of the word size. Radio waves are measured from crest to crest, which measurement is known as wave length. Since the invaders cover the entire dials of our radio sets and television sets it is obvious that either one of two things is true: Either they come in all crest-to-crest sizes or each one can change his crest-to-crest measurement to adapt himself to the tuning of any receiver.

  `But that is only the crest-to-crest length. In a sense it may be said that a radio wave has an over-all length determined by its duration. If a broadcasting station sends out a program that has a second's duration, a wave carrying that program is one light-second long, roughly 187,000 miles. A continuous half-hour program is, as it were, on a continuous wave one-half light-hour long, and so on.

  "Taking that form of length, the individual invaders vary in length from a few thousand miles-a duration of only a small fraction of a second-to well over half a million miles long-a duration of several seconds. The longest continuous excerpt from any one program that has been observed has been about seven seconds."

  "But, Professor Helmetz, why do you assume that these waves are living things, a life form. Why not just waves?"

  "Because `just waves' as you call them would follow certain laws, just as inanimate matter follows certain laws. An animal can climb uphill, for instance; a stone cannot unless impelled by some outside force. These invaders are life-forms because they show volition, because they can change their direction of travel, and most especially because they retain their identity; two signals never conflict on the same radio receiver. They follow one another but do not come simultaneously. They do not mix as signals on the same wave length would ordinarily do. They are not `just waves.' "

  "Would you say they are intelligent?"

  Professor Helmetz took off his glasses and polished them thoughtfully. He said, "I doubt if we shall ever know. The intelligence of such beings, if any, would be on such a completely different plane from ours that there would be no common point from which we could start intercourse. We are material; they are immaterial. There is no common mound between us."

  "But if they are intelligent at all-"

  "Ants are intelligent, after a fashion. Call it instinct if you will, but instinct is a form of intelligence; at least it enables them to accomplish some of the same things intelligence would enable them to accomplish. Yet we cannot establish communication with ants and it is far less likely that we shall be able to establish communication with these invaders. The difference in type between ant-intelligence and our own would be nothing to the difference in type between the intelligence, if any, of the invaders and our own. No, I doubt if we shall ever communicate."

  The professor had something there. Communication with the vaders-a clipped form, of course, of invaders-was never established.

  Radio stocks stabilized on the exchange the next day. But the day following that someone asked Dr. Helmets a sixty-four dollar question and the newspapers published his answer:

  "Resume broadcasting? I don't know if we ever shall. Certainly we cannot until the invaders go away, and why should they? Unless radio communication is perfected on some other planet far away and they're attracted there.

  "But at least some of them would be right back the moment we started to broadcast again."

  Radio and TV stocks dropped to practically zero in an hour. There weren't, however, any frenzied scenes on the stock exchanges; there was no frenzied selling because there was no buying, frenzied or otherwise. No radio stocks changed hands.

  Radio and television employees and entertainers began to look for other jobs. The entertainers had no trouble finding them. Every other form of entertainment suddenly boomed like mad.

  "Two down," said George Bailey. The bartender asked what he meant.

  "I dunno, Hank. It's just a hunch I've got."

  "What kind of hunch?"

  "I don't even know that. Shake me up one more of those and then I'll go home."

  The electric shaker wouldn't work and Hank had to shake the drink by hand.

  "Good exercise; that's just what you need," George said. "It'll take some of that fat off you."

  Hank grunted, and the ice tinkled merrily as he tilted the shaker to pour out the drink.

  George Bailey took his time drinking it and t
hen strolled out into an April thundershower. He stood under the awning and watched for a taxi. An old man was standing there too.

  "Some weather," George said.

  The old man grinned at him. "You noticed it, eh?"

  "Huh? Noticed what?"

  "Just watch a while, mister. Just watch a while."

  The old man moved on. No empty cab came by and Geroge stood there quite a while before he got it. His jaw dropped a little and then he closed his mouth and went back into the tavern. He went into a phone booth and called Pete Mulvaney.

  He got three wrong numbers before he got Pete. Pete's voice said, "Yeah?"

  "George Bailey, Pete. Listen, have you noticed the weather?"

  "Damn right. No lightning, and there should be with a thunderstorm like this."

  "What's it mean, Pete? The vaders?"

  "Sure. And that's just going to be the start if-" A crackling sound on the wire blurred his voice out. "Hey, Pete, you still there?"

  The sound of a violin. Pete Mulvaney didn't play violin. "Hey, Pete, what the hell-?"

  Pete's voice again. "Come on over, George. Phone won't last long. Bring-" There was a buzzing noise and then a voice said, "-come to Carnegie Hall. The best tunes of all come-"

  George slammed down the receiver.

  He walked through the rain to Pete's place. On the way he bought a bottle of Scotch. Pete had started to tell him to bring something and maybe that's what he'd started to say.

  It was.

  They made a drink apiece and lifted them. The lights flickered briefly, went out, and then came on again but dimly.

  "No lightning," said George. "No lightning and pretty soon no lighting. They're taking over the telephone. What do they do with the lightning?"

  "Eat it, I guess. They must eat electricity."

  "No lightning," said George. "Damn. I can get by without a telephone, and candles and oil lamps aren't bad for lights-but I'm going to miss lightning. I like lightning. Damn."