Alan E. Nourse & J. A. Meyer (16 page)

The
brilliant sampling and determinants theory for constructing a total
sociological-economic-psychological picture of a nation at any given moment in
time had been the work of the obscure British economist Peter
Elling
, but the mathematical extension of the theory into
a workable, reliable technique for predicting and controlling the future was
the creation of sociologist-
mathemetician
Mark
Vanner
. He had tried in vain to convince the shaky,
frightened Hartman administration that the wild, exhaustive race with the Eastern
bloc to mount permanent, maimed and armed satellite ships in space and manned
garrisons on the moon was leading the country to the brink of economic
disaster; that unless it were stopped in time, it would inevitably lead to a
total collapse of the economy. It had been clear since the early 1960's that a
dangerous proportion of the national reserve of money and man-hours was being
poured into defense tactics, but the continuing drain of the XAR spaceship
project was staggering, multiplying with each succeeding year.

Carl
Englehardt
had
read
Vanner's
works, had talked with
Vanner
, and had seen the fissures in the clay. He was fifty
then,
chairman
of the board of
Robling
Titanium, and in a small way a strikingly successful man.
Robling
had been supplying structural titanium to the spaceship project in New Mexico,
the project
Vanner
had denounced so clearly as the
economic blight of die century, and he realized that when the abreaction came,
the spaceships and everything connected with them would be trampled under.

He
also realized that the Eastern bloc would wait, poised and ready, until the
American economy had broken at the wheel, and then launch the all-out H-missile
attack that would finally and decisively destroy the North American continent
as a political or military threat.

What
Englehardt
did then was still considered by some to
be the most colossal act of high treason in the history of Man; by others, a
stroke of military and diplomatic genius. It was during the first barely
evident economic dehydration of the early weeks of the crash that he made his
proposal to the President. By having parts made in European factories, and by
having the parts assembled and tested by Ferranti and launched from British
installations in Australia,
Englehardt
was in a
position to supply intercontinental ballistic missiles accurate within one mile
of ground zero with a maximum range of eight thousand miles. Such missiles had
already been built and tested by
Robling
subsidiaries, and could be delivered to specified launching sites at the rate
of ten per day. If prepared and stationed quickly enough, they could forestall
the H-missile attack from the East which was almost a day-to-day certainty.

The
missiles would be delivered to the American government in exchange for food;
there was no money available, with the strangling cost of the still uncompleted
satellite ships and, anyway,
Englehardt
was clearly
aware that within a few short months money would no longer buy work.

But
there was a single condition. The
Robling
missiles
were not for sale. They were for rent.

There
would be no blueprints. The missiles would be manufactured, sealed, and aimed
for launching by
Robling
employees. The design of
the guiding mechanism and the propellant would remain the exclusive private
domain of
Robling
Titanium.

The
proposal was staggering in its audacity. The Hartman administration was still
not convinced that
Vanner
was right, and chose to
bicker. Already the economy was splitting at the seams, the stock market
lurching, strikes spreading, food supplies in urban areas becoming scarce, but
they would not agree to
Englehardt's
terms. There
were threats, accusations, appeals to patriotism, but
Englehardt
had remained adamant. He did not want his designs and his technicians
commandeered, his contracts and legal protection invalidated and himself
impoverished and cast out by any sudden governmental confiscation of private
properties during the impending crisis. He had deep-rooted, almost archaic
convictions against socialization and government ownership after the still
memorable experiences of the Sixties.

He
would not yield. Quite abruptly, he vanished. Before the Hartman administration
could reconsider, the horror of a great national economy in its death agonies
was sweeping the western hemisphere. In three short days the stock market
collapsed and ceased to exist as an instrument of business exchange when the
New York Stock Exchange was raided and burned by panic-stricken mobs. The
military struggled helplessly to contain the spreading violence in the face of
its own mounting toll of insubordination and desertions. Within weeks the value
of the dollar had dwindled to nothing; in the overcrowded cities, thieving,
blackmarketing
and prostitution ran rampant. The embattled
government withdrew to the armored sub-basements of the Pentagon to await the
inevitable attack of H-missiles from the East.

But the attack from the
East never came.

Gradually,
the reason why became clear. Ten missiles a day were emerging from the
Robling
foreign interlock, paid for by the British, and
guarded by the British, who had fewer scruples about dealing with private
munitions makers than the Hartman administration had had. A series of highly
publicized demonstrations had been conducted, proving conclusively that the
Robling
missiles would do all that
Englehardt
had promised they would do, and the British published an ultimatum that pulled
the teeth of the Eastern bloc: Any H-missile launched, from either the East or
the West, would be intercepted and answered by
Robling
missiles. The British, for the first time in eighty years of tightrope walking
between the Cold War powers, now held the whip hand.

There would be no H-war.

But
the rising terror of the crash continued unabated. True to the pattern
predicted by
Vanner
, control measures snapped one by
one in the face of the savage tide. Food rotted in
midwestem
railroad yards, while mobs roamed the streets of the huge urban centers of the
East, starving and vicious. Through betrayal and desertion in the FBI and
Secret Service, besieging rioters broke through Pentagon defenses; the
President and Joint Chiefs were shot without trial or ceremony. In
mid-August
of 1997 the mobs sacked and burned the XAR atomic
spaceship project in New Mexico, smashing into the compound in trucks and
killing, injuring and torturing the scientists and technicians there.

As
the wave of anti-space violence rose, physicists fled for their lives. Atomic
motor plants, titanium factories,
astronautic
research centers, even universities and libraries were crushed and
bumed
by hungry mobs, finding only technology and the drive
to space to blame for the chaos that had descended in the country. Four
prominent engineers were beaten to death on the University of Iowa campus. John
Hannibal, editor of
Outstanding
Science-Fiction
magazine,
and a major driving force in the "space in our time" philosophy of
the past decade, was burned alive in his Manhattan office, where he had
barricaded himself behind crates of out-of-date science-fiction magazines. . .
.

In
northern Europe, where
Englehardt
had been sequestered
and guarded by British Intelligence, a kidnapping attempt was forestalled
within hours of its completion.
Englehardt
was well
aware that he owed his fife to the BRINT team which had uprooted the
conspiracy; characteristically, no mention was ever made of it, although it was
rumored in later years that
Englehardt
had personally
paid for the famous BRINT building in New York

But
when Mark
Vanner
organized his provisional government
in New York and began to weld together a pattern of order around a nationwide
application of the VE equations,
Englehardt
came out
of hiding. For two decades he had continued to pour his immense wealth and
resources back into the Americas, by means of a vast system of interlocking
holding companies, reopening factories during the reconstruction period and
building up the network of small industries that made him the phenomenon and
power that he was.

No one seemed to know what Carl
Englehardt
was really after: not power, because he had
turned down all offers and opportunities for political succession; not money,
of which he had a surfeit; not glory, which he avoided like the plague. Because
he was not directly or formally in any government function, the DEPCO analysts
could not get at him to poke through his mind and background to find out what
made him tick. There were rumors that he had watched his only son tortured and
murdered by the mob during the sacking of the XAR project, but even though they
spent plenty of time and effort trying to pick up the threads of his past,
DEPCO had been unable to confirm such rumors. The crash had destroyed so many
records, and killed and scattered so many people that the job seemed hopeless.

And
still, in critical times, they needed him. Now the DIA Volta let him off at the
official entrance to the DEPEX building.
Englehardt
walked quickly down the hall, cleared his identification with the guards, and
went on toward the conference room in the administrative wing. They had called
him now because they needed him, in spite of themselves.

But
they were not going to like the proposal he had to make.

"Our problem," said Timmins,
Director of the Department of Population, "is one of defense measures.
That's why we asked you to come here today, Mr.
Englehardt
...
to bring you up-to-date on what
information we have on the alien threat, and to get your views on certain
problems that Mr. Bahr has . . .
er
. . . brought to
a head."

Englehardt
nodded, looking at the men in the room.
Adams of DEPCO was there, cold-faced and angry. Bahr drummed his fingers
impatiently on the table top. There was a General of the Army that
Englehardt
had met casually. Half a dozen other bureaus
were represented.
Englehardt
looked back at Timmins'
blond, boyish face. "I would think," he said, "
diat
your defense measures would depend heavily on the
nature of the enemy you were fighting."

"That's what I've been trying to tell
them," Bahr exploded. "We simply don't have enough information. We
have no hint . . . not even a suggestion
...
of their plans. There is a very strong suspicion, however, that they can
control the actions of certain humans, at least to a limited degree."

Englehardt
frowned. "Do you have proof of
that?"

"Not
yet," Bahr said. "Unfortunately the man who might have given us the
answer has escaped our custody. I'm referring to Major Harvey Alexander, the
security officer at Wildwood."

"That
is neither here nor there, right now," Adams broke in. The DEPCO chief
spoke rapidly and nervously, keeping his long narrow fingers very precisely
before him on the table. "An even more acute problem is the public
reaction to Mr. Bahr's television fiasco. Unless we can convince the public
that everything is under control . . . that the aliens cannot harm them . . .
we may be dealing with a major panic."

"In
other words,"
Englehardt
said, "you are
proposing to fight malaria by distributing citronella to the natives."

Adams frowned. "I don't
think I understand you."

"You're
facing an unknown enemy with short-range planning and countermeasures,"
Englehardt
said. "
Which inevitably
puts you a step behind him.
To destroy malaria, Mr. Adams, we spray the
swamps,
kill the disease at its source. It seems to me that
our only defense here is a powerful attack, or the ability to make one."

"But
what are we going to attack? Our biggest enemy right now is not an alien
invader; it's
fear.
We have to deal with that
before we can even think of defense or attack."

"Then
harness it,"
Englehardt
said. "Forget about
trying to control or sublimate it—use it! That's what
Vanner
did. He put fear and panic to work for him. He made the people rebuild and
start a new society."

Adams
sighed. "I don't think you understand the basis of this fear reaction.
Unfortunately, this is not an attack from the Eastern bloc. This is an attack
from space."