Footfall

She misses science fiction. If the best troops in the Army can’t drive the aliens out, the whole damn planet is doomed, and she misses science fiction. It came to him, suddenly and frighteningly, that the war might already be lost.

“That first night Nat had a three-pound Lobster Savannah, and he started talking to it. ‘Hospital Station thinks they can cure you.’ ‘The Federation doesn’t think your people can defend themselves alone.’ ‘Now will you speak of your troop movements, wretched crustacean?’ By dessert we were calling him Speaker to Seafood—” Her voice changed. “Oh my God!”

The corner of Roger’s eye had caught light brighter than sunlight. He braked without looking. “What is it?”

“They `it hitting us again!”

He eased the Rabbit over to the dirt rim of the highway before he dared look. One glance was enough. “Don’t look.” He opened the door and slid out, low. “Follow me. Rosalee, wake up and get out on my side! Stay low!”

The blast came, not as bad as he had expected, followed by a wind, followed by another blast and more wind. The Rabbit’s windows rattled. By then all three were crouched on the highway side of the car. There were more bright lights high overhead, and another to the north. When the light died a little, Roger peeked over the hood.

Fiery mushrooms bloomed amidst the Kansas wheat fields.

“Mushrooms. I think this is the real thing,” he said. “Not meteors. Atomic bombs, and that’s occupied territory. Those are ours.”

“Bombing Kansas?”

Roger laughed, and meant it. “If you’ve got a better idea, you should have been in the helicopter. At least we’re fighting back!” He peeked again. There were four fire-mushrooms in view, all a good distance north

A thread of actinic green light rose from hundreds of miles away… something was blocking it at the skyward end, something rising… another fireball winked near the base of the beam. Roger ducked fast, waited, looked again. Fireball rising. No laser beam. An orange point high up, drifting down. What was that all about?

Whatever. Lasers were aliens, atomic bombs were men, and the bomb had interrupted something. “Come on, guys,” Roger gloated. “Ruin their whole morning!”

Part 3 FOOTFALL

23. CLEANUP

The destiny of mankind is not decided by material computation. When great causes am on the move, we learn that we ate spirits, not animals, and that something is going on in space and time, and beyond space and time, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty.

—WINSTON CHURCHIlL, Rochester, New York, 1941

COUNTDOWN: H PLUS FOUR WEEKS

Western Kansas was a black, dimpled land.

The army pilot gave the craters a wide berth, flying carefully upwind. A stutter tried to surface when he spoke, and he spoke seldom. His motions were jerky. He couldn’t have seen films of death-beams spiraling in on other helicopters, but rumors must have spread. Jenny guessed that he was waiting to be speared by green light.

Sifting beside her, Jack Clybourne was as calm as an oyster.

Jenny saw reports from the observatories as they came in, and she kept no secrets from Jack. Earth’s most recent moons still included more than a score of destroyer-sized spacecraft; but the mother ship had disappeared into interplanetary space with half its retinue, and the remaining ships seemed to be doing nothing. Waiting? If the pilot had known what Jenny knew, he might be calmer. But the vivid green death was still possible. Jenny wasn’t as calm as she looked. Jack Clybourne was Jenny’s own true love, but he was not about to out-macho her.

From time to time, at Jenny’s orders, the pilot skimmed low over burned cornfields and along broken roads. The roads were strewn with hundreds of what might have been gigantic tablecloths in neon-bright colors, and thousands of dinner-plate-sized pieces of flattened foam plastic. The hang-glider fabric would become clothing, come winter, for refugees who would be glad to have it. But the alien landing shoes would be indestructible litter. A hundred years from now farmers would still be digging them up in the cornfields. Would those farmers have hands, or bifurcated trunks?

There were black skeletons of automobiles, and corpses: enough half-burned human and alien corpses to satisfy anybody.

The helicopter circled a village, and Jenny couldn’t find a single unburned structure. The inhabitants had fled ahead of the aliens, and the aliens had fled from fission bombs, and nobody remained to fight the fires.

Rarely, bands of refugees looked up to watch the helicopter pass. Few tried to wave it down.

Jenny’s eyes kept straying to the alien ship.