Footfall

“I do not always understand what you say. Speak slowly and carefully.”

It felt like a blow to the face. Wes stopped, then started over, fully in control, shaping each word separately. “We wanted to welcome you. We wanted to greet visitors from another star. We wanted to be friends.”

The alien stared at Wes. “You will learn to speak with us.”

“Yes. Certainly.” It will be all right now! it is a misunderstanding, it must be. When I learn to talk with them — “Our families will be concerned about us. Have you told Earth that we are alive?”

“I do not comprehend.”

“Do you talk to Earth? To our planet?”

“Ah. Our word for Earth is—” a peculiar sound, short and hissing. “We do not know how to tell your people that you live.”

“Why do you lock us up?” He didn’t get that. Maybe why is too abstract. “The door to our room. Leave it open.”

The alien stared at Wes, then looked toward a lens on the wall. Then it stared at Wes again. Finally it said, “We have cloth for you. Can you want that?”

Cloth? Wes became aware that he was naked. “Yes. We need clothing. Covering.”

“You will have that. You will have water.”

“Food,” Dawson said.

“Yes. Eat.” The alien gestured. One of the others brought in boxes from another compartment.

Clothes. Canned goods. Oxygen bottles. A spray can of deodorant. Whose? Soap. Twelve cans of Spam with a London label. A canned Smithfield ham. The Russians must have brought that.

Wes pointed to what he thought was edible. Then he took a Spam can and pantomimed opening it with his forefinger, tying to indicate that he needed a can opener.

One of the aliens drew a bayonet and opened the Smithfield ham by cutting the top off, four digits for the can, four for the bayonet, He passed the can to Wes.

Stronger than hell! Advanced metals, too … but you wouldn’t make a starship out of cast iron. Okay, now what?

“Do you eat that?” the alien behind the draftsman’s table asked. The interrogative was obvious.

“Yes.”

It was hard to interpret the alien’s response. It lifted the ears. The other, the one that brought the packages, responded the same way. Vegetarians? Are they disgusted?

The alien spoke gibberish, and another alien came in with a large sheet of what might have been waxed paper. It took the ham from the can, wrapped it (the stuff was flexible, more like thick Saran wrap), and gave it to Wes. It left carrying the can.

“You attack — you fight us. There is no need.”

“There is need. Your people is strong,” the alien said.

A flat screen on one wall lighted, to show another alien. A voice came into the room. It babbled, in the liquid sibilants Wes had heard them use before.

“You must go back now. We turn now,”

It didn’t make sense. “If we were weak, would you fight us?”

“Go.”

“But what do you want? Where do you come from? Why are you here? Why is it important that we are strung?”

The alien stared again. “Go.”

“I have to know! Why are you here?”

The alien spoke in sibilants.

Tentacles wrapped around his waist and encircled his throat. He was dragged from the room. As they went down the corridor, the ram’s-horn sound came again, and the aliens held him against the wall.

“You don’t have to hold me,” Wes said.

There was no response. The alien soldier carried a warm smell, something like being in a zoo. It wouldn’t have been unpleasant, but there was too much of it, this close.

How many of them speak English? He — it — said I should learn their language. They’ll try to teach me. He looked down at himself, naked, wrapped in tentacles. Think like them. They’re not crazy — assume they’re not crazy! — just different. Differences in shape, and evolution, and senses. What do I smell like to this … soldier, pulled right up against its nostrils like this? It held him like a nest of snakes, and its black-and-gray eyes were unreadable.

You knew the job was dangerous …

13. THE MORNING AFTER

Now a’ is done that men can do,
And a’ is done in vain.

—ROBERT BURNS, “It was A’ for Our Rightfu’ King”

COUNTDOWN: H PLUS SEVEN HOURS

Son of a bitch! Sergeant Ben Mailey shepherded his charges off the helicopter and watched them climb into the staff car. The President! Son of a bitch! He grinned widely, then sobered. It took a war to get the President Inside. And I’m not going in with him.

Jenny ushered the President into the Command Center . She had enjoyed her previous trip Inside. Maps and screens showed what was going on across the nation. You could see everything at a glance. A dozen Army and Air Force officers sat at consoles. Large screens flashed with maps of the United States . Aircraft in flight, major trains, and larger ships showed up as blobs of light on the maps.

But there weren’t many lights, and many of the harbors showed dark splotches. Rail centers like Omaha had pinpoint dark spots as well.