Read Alan E. Nourse & J. A. Meyer Online
Authors: The invaders are Coming
"Then you think
there's something rotten in the DIA?"
"Well,
what does it sound like to you?" Alexander said. "Bahr has some of
the men so loyal to him that they take orders from him regardless of McEwen or
the law." He chewed his lip, thinking. "I've got to contact McEwen,
some way, and let him know. Maybe he won't listen to me, but Julian Bahr is
dangerous. McEwen ought to know it."
"You're
a little late for that," BJ said flatly. "McEwen died early this
morning.
Of a heart attack."
Alexander
swallowed hard. "Then Bahr is running the DIA?"
"Pending
appointment of a new director, yes."
He
swore. "Then my only chance to avoid
recoop
, or
being shot for implication in the Wildwood theft, is to find out what actually
happened to the U-metal that was taken out of the piles."
BJ frowned. "But they know what happened.
DIA denies it, of course, but the European and African news nets have been
jabbering about it all day. Radio Budapest has been beaming it over here in
English. . . ."
"Beaming
what
over in English?"
BJ
reached out and switched on the radio. She flicked the dial through squalling
and static and picked up the nasal voice of the intercontinental Radio Budapest
announcer.
".
. . still have not retracted the belligerent and idiotic denial of the theft of
a large quantity of atomic materials from the atomic power plant at Wildwood,
Illinois, by alleged interplanetary aliens," the voice was saying,
"in spite of the now familiar Canadian interception of the messages sent
between the different DIA units that were attacking the saucer at the time the
aliens allegedly blew themselves up in a semi-atomic explosion. Radio
International has been trying to reach Julian Bahr, new head of the DIA secret
police, to find out why the facts about the aliens are not being brought into
the open, but Director Bahr cannot be reached.
"Reliable
sources in New York now believe that another alien landing has occurred in
northern British Columbia near the Yukon border. BRINT and DIA investigating
units are now en route to the site of the landing. We will continue
lo
broadcast the true facts on this latest incident, in
spite of (
he
militaristic security procedures resorted
to by the DIA secret police . . ."
BJ
turned it off, and looked at Alexander. He shook his head, staring dazedly at
the radio. "I saw that thing in the woods before it blew up," he said
finally. "I thought I was sick, seeing things . . . but aliens . . ."
He shook his head again. "BJ, I've just been through eighteen hours of
interrogation on how the U-metal got out of the plant, and I tell you it
couldn't have.
Even aliens couldn't have gotten U-metal out
of that plant unless they used the fourth dimension to do it, and then they
certainly wouldn't have set off a Geiger on (
he
road."
"They
think they know how it was done," BJ said, and told him what Radio
Budapest had reported about a
neuronic
shield.
"But why?
And how is Radio Budapest getting all this information if the security
lid is on? There must be a hell of a leak somewhere in the DIA."
"I
don't know, but BURINF is nearly going wild. Even John
John
got flustered on his TV-cast tonight. And an awful lot of people are listening
to the Radio Budapest reports. . . ."
The
car whizzed through the thinning residential areas. Alexander sat silent for a
long time. "I still say that U-metal couldn't have gotten out," he
said at last. "There were people at the plant that hated my guts for
changing the security system around and making them
do
some honest work for a change. I wouldn't put it past one of them to do
something deliberately just to get my neck under the axe. I can't tell about
this alien thing, but I know there were plenty of non-aliens at Wildwood who
would gladly have seen me thrown out of there."
BJ gave
him a long look. "I hate to say it in these terms," she said,
"but that argument has a very paranoid slant to it. Everybody against
you,
and everybody wrong but you."
"You think I'm lying?"
"I think . . . well, I think you're
excited, and desperate."
Alexander
didn't answer. He realized now that he had been blocking from his mind what he
had seen in the woods north of Wildwood, because he had seen it and yet could
not understand what he had seen. Now he was forced to face it. He needed a
plan, some simple stratagem he could act on and carry out to clear himself, but
there seemed no place to turn, nothing he could do but wait helplessly until
the police or a DIA field unit found him and picked him up. . . .
He
saw BJ watching him, her eyes wide with concern,
her
dark hair framing her thin, sensitive face. She looked as young and vital now
as she had twenty years ago, and it came to him in a rush of warmth that just
being with her now made him feel quieter, safer and farther from danger. Here
was a haven in the storm, one person he could trust without a qualm. It was
incredibly good to be with BJ again.
He
laughed suddenly, as though some tough, unbreakable fiber in him had come to
life again. "A hell of a thing," he said. "I've been in the Army
for so long I've almost forgotten how to fight. They're going to have to find
me before they can drag me in, and I think that's going to take some
doing."
"What are you going to do?" BJ
asked. I m going to find out what happened to that Uranium," he said.
"It's the only hope I've got, with Bahr
runiung
the
DIA.
If
I get any information, III get in touch with BRINT, I can trust them. Can you
drive me down to Wildwood?"
"Harvey,
if these reports are true, it'll be crawling with DIA men."
"I'll have to chance
that."
"All right.
We can stop at my place and get you some clothes."
"Good. I could stand a drink, too."
On the surface he felt a lot easier, but deep in his mind the questions were
still nagging him.
DIA was corrupt, and Bahr, in the face of the
rigid DEPCO control system, was making a power grab. That much he could
understand.
But an alien invasion—what
did
that
mean?
The flight
into Canada took over eight hours, and to
Julian Bahr every moment of it was torment.
BRINT
had the whip hand, which was intolerable in itself, and they were using it
with every evidence
of relish. Aside from the bare fact that
an unidentified craft had made an unauthorized landing somewhere in the
wilderness of northern British Columbia, Bahr had been able to extract no information
whatever from BRINT's New York offices.
They
were regretful, but firm. London had been explicit in its instructions. If Mr.
Bahr wished, he could contact I heir BRINT agent in Montreal and accompany him
to the site of the landing. Every precaution had been taken to seal off the
area and preserve it for the DIA investigating team-accompanied by BRINT, of
course.
In
Montreal he had waited, fuming, for four hours in the rain until the BRINT man,
unaccountably delayed, made his appearance. Bahr had had enough experience with
BRINT in the past to expect the unexpected; Paul
MacKenzie
exceeded even his worst expectations. The BRINT man was small and wiry, with
sandy hair and a soft Scottish burr, and an air of vacuous
naivete
about everything he said or did. There was no BRINT team . . . only
MacKenzie
, extremely apologetic about his
"delay," and obviously not impressed by the presence of the new DIA
chief.
Only
now, hours later, as the streets and buildings of Dawson Creek slid past below
their 'copter, Bahr was realizing uncomfortably that the facade of
naivete
was only a facade, and that Paul
MacKenzie
was very sharp, exceedingly sharp, and in
perfect command of what he was doing.
After
leaving Montreal they had chatted about practically everything except DIA,
BRINT, and Project Frisco, and still, somehow, Bahr had been made aware that
BRINT had been following Frisco for almost two months, had tracked his 'copter
units to Wildwood the night before and set up an intercept team inside US
borders within fifteen minutes of the alarm.
This
was not news to Bahr; he had suspected something of the sort because he knew
that 'copter radios were too weak to reach Canada without phenomenal weather
conditions. But the skill with which
MacKenzie
put
the matter on the line was professionally fascinating, as well as professionally
disturbing.
And
throughout it all Bahr could not shake off the uneasy feeling that the BRINT
man was very quietly, very discreetly laughing at him.
"Amazing,"
MacKenzie
said, looking down at the small armada of
'copters fanning out in their wake, "simply amazing how you Americans
manage to get so many machines to work with. You must have two dozen rotors
down there."
"Two field
units," Bahr
said,
a
litde
defensively.
"I
doubt if there are a dozen of those available to BRINT in the whole Western
Hemisphere,"
MacKenzie
said. "
We're always having
to borrow them from the Air Force."
"We
used to have the same problem," Bahr said, "when I first took over
the field units. But I changed that."
"Yes,
we've noticed quite a few changes in DIA field units since you took over,"
MacKenzie
said. Then, after a pause, "What are
you planning to do with them all up here?"
"I work on the principle that it's
better to have them and not need them than to need them and not have
them," Bahr said. He stared down at the wilderness of alder thicket passing
below, a succession of rolling forest land, swamp, underbrush, and lakes.
"Look, let's get down to business. You must know something about what
happened up here."
"Not
very much,"
MacKenzie
said. "Radar unit
1237, that's some fifty miles north of here, picked up an echo at 15:30 this
afternoon
. Radar unit 1240 confirmed it and together they
tracked the trajectory of the target. It was moving fast, and its descending
pattern was decidedly curious." He handed the report
to Bahr
.
Bahr
blinked. "How much
verticle
coverage does your
radar sweep give?"
"At that range about 70,000 feet.
And a 15-second sweep cycle."
"Then why didn't your unit pick it up
before?"
"We
were extremely fortunate they picked it up at all,"
MacKenzie
said. "These are Early Warning units, specialized to pick up missile
trajectories. This target didn't follow any missile trajectory. In fact, no
missile, not even a
Robling
missile, could make a
trajectory like this. This target didn't come over the Pole, it came straight
down."
"But
from this, the strike area could be anywhere within a fifty-mile radius!"
Bahr burst out.
"One
hundred mile, to be accurate,"
MacKenzie
said
mildly.
"How
do you expect to search a hundred mile radius of this sort of wilderness?"
"Well,
there's really not much way anything can get out of the area,"
MacKenzie
said.
"Only a single road,
the Alaska Highway, which we have blocked and sectored."
"But
all this delay in getting to the target area."
"Well,
we've been a step behind you in this thing, so far,"
MacKenzie
said pointedly. "And what with all this rabid talk of the European nets,
we felt obligated to follow through the investigation on a joint basis.
Different techniques, and all that . . ." His talk was light enough, but
there was no mistaking the steel-sharp intention to check DIA's methods.
BRINT
plainly did not like this alien thing one bit. "And then, we may have an
ace in the hole,"
MacKenzie
went on.
"There's an American photography team camping in this area; at least, they
obtained a permit to camp here.
Two men and a Hydro
two-wheeler.
Professional cinematographers making
nature-study documentaries.
They've worked this area several times in
the past three years. One of them is the
cameraman,
the other chap does the editing, commentary and sound track. If we're lucky,
they may have picked up a disturbance. If they're actually around, that
is."