2 (JULY 23, WED.)
An informed White Horse source predicts....
—CBS Washington commentator
Actually there wasn't much more hard news that first day. I hung around for a while after the night man came on, the way you do when a big story is going, wanting to see what will happen next, but finally I left. I listened to the radio as I drove home from the bus stop, and watched the 15-minute night television news programs, then went to bed.
"Any coffee?" I said to the copy boy as I came in, grinning it in lieu of a good morning.
"You must be the sole support of Brazil," he said.
"Africa," I said. "This powdered stuff comes from Africa."
"It's an education being around you, Sam," he said.
I said good morning to Charlie Price and read in.
There had been, as I suspected, little hard news after President Allison's statement. Much of the night file had consisted of rehashing the known facts and padding these out with interpretation and speculation.
"Washington officials" said the contents of the Monolithian note were being studied and a reply might be expected soon. These would be State Department and White House spokesmen who didn't want to be identified.
"Diplomatic sources" said it was reasonable to assume that Britain, France, Russia and perhaps India and the United Arab Republic had received similar notes. These would be embassy personnel asserting their belief that any sensible aliens would not have snubbed their countries by communicating only with the United States.
"Experienced observers" said receipt of the note had taken officials by surprise and that lights were burning late in government buildings as policy-makers tried to cope overnight with the advent of interplanetary relations. These would be newsmen interviewing each other.
"Unconfirmed reports" said any race of people capable of hurtling billions of miles across space would be sure to have an equally advanced military machine whose weapons would be to our nuclear stuff what our stuff was to the M-1 rifle. This would be a roundup of informed guessing and common sense.
I had a look at the late morning papers before relieving Charlie.
TheNew York Timesgave it an eight-column headline, three lines deep:
ENVOYS OF SPACE NATION ARRIVE;NOTE CITES FRIENDSHIP AS GOAL;ALIENS SEEK U.N. MEMBERSHIP
TheDaily Newssaid it in four words:
SPACEMEN LAND,DEMAND PARLEY
"Okay, Charlie," I said, meaning I had read in. "Anything going on now?"
"Washington's not in yet. Jones called from UN a little while ago and said he was working on something. Good night."
"Good night," I said to Charlie. "'Morning, Nan," I said to the operator. "Any spacemen out your way?"
"Not yet. But believe me, I made sure the door was locked last night. What happened to Riddie Playfair, anyhow?"
"According to our file last night, she sent a message saying she was all right. Stew Macon followed it up. He'll be in soon. We'll get the inside story."
The UN machine started up:
NILS
UNITED NATIONS, JULY 23 (WW)—THE UNITED NATIONS, FACED WITH THE PROSPECT OF EXPANDING ITSELF FROM AN INTERNATIONAL TO A INTERPLANETARY ORGANIZATION, TODAY CONSIDERED THE POSSIBILITY OF ASKING THE SPACEMEN FROM MONOLITHIA TO MAKE THEIR FIRST OFFICIAL APPEARANCE AT A SPECIAL GENERAL ASSEMBLY MEETING.
NILS NILSEN, THE SECRETARY-GENERAL, WAS REPORTED DRAFTING AN INVITATION TO THE LEADERS OF THE ALIEN GROUP SUGGESTING A MEETING IN HIS 38TH FLOOR OFFICE OF THE SKYSCRAPER HEADQUARTERS. INFORMED SOURCES SAID THAT IF NILSEN THEN WAS CONVINCED OF THE SINCERITY OF THE SPACEMEN, WHO HAVE ASKED TO JOIN THE UNITED NATIONS, HE WOULD CONVENE A SPECIAL ASSEMBLY AT WHICH THE ALIEN LEADER WOULD PUBLICLY STATE HIS CASE....
Stew Macon came in, saying: "Well, how are all you inhabitants of the second greatest planet in creation this historic morning?"
"Keeping the old chin up, Stew," I said. "Say, while you were grappling with that dictionary piece yesterday, did you ever find out what the opposite of monolithic is?"
"Come to think of it, no." He grinned. "Paleolithic, maybe?"
"That'll be enough of that subversive talk. I see by the file that Riddie Playfair wasn't a casualty. Did you get to talk to her again?"
"Not exactly. The Maryland cops tried to bust into the clubhouse at Burning Tree. That's what the shooting was about. They retired in confusion without anybody getting hurt. Something about a mysterious defensive shield the aliens have. The cops got a phone call later. The spacemen said they would not use force except in self-defense. Then they put Riddie on for a minute and she said everything was hunky-dory and we'd be hearing from her again."
"When?" I asked.
"She didn't say. Want me to try to reach her?"
"It's worth a try. Sure."
Stew picked up the phone and I looked over the rest of Collie's UN piece and gave it to Nancy.
Washington clicked in. Ian McEachern told me on the printer that Reb Sylvester had gone directly to Burning Tree in case the spacemen made a personal appearance and that Josh Holcomb had said he might have something later in the morning. He'd had nothing to add to President Allison's "reasonably certain" statement of yesterday. He declined to go beyond that, resisting all attempts to get him to say officially that the aliens had landed.
What he'd actually said, Ian told me off the record, was, "We'll jump off that bridge when we come to it." Asked whether he meant that the United States had doubts about the spacemen's professed peaceful intentions, or that in view of their presumed superior technology the Pentagon was obsolete, Josh had said he'd said all he was going to say.
So much for the White House. The State Department was "studying the situation." The Pentagon sat behind a wall of No Comments.
"No soap on the Alien Friend," Stew said, hanging up the phone. "They don't answer at the clubhouse and the cops say they don't know nothin'."
"We've got to get this story off the ground," I said. "All we've got so far is Collie's UN piece. It's all right, but there's no action. How about calling up the Mayor's office and seeing if they plan a ticker-tape parade?"
"This is action?"
I shrugged. "You got a better idea?"
"I'll call the Mayor's office," Stew said. "Maybe something will occur to me."
I went over to the incoming teletypes to see if WW had developed anything overseas. London's piece was chiefly newspaper comment and unofficial speculation about what the Foreign Office would do. Cooperate with the aliens if they were friendly and resist them if they were not seemed to be about the size of it.
Paris reacted in the spirit of Jules Verne. There was an unofficial report that the travelers of space would be invited to moor their vehicle interplanetary to the Tour Eiffel.
Moscow was keeping mum. No mention of the story had appeared inPravdaorIzvestia, and Radio Moscow was also ignoring it. The foreign diplomatic corps was agog, but no one seemed to have any idea of what the Kremlin's official attitude would be to a true monolithic state.
The evening papers came up. ThePosthad interviewed a representative collection of cab drivers, waitresses, etc. Israel Kraft, a Bronx hackie, said the seven-foot aliens could ride in his cab any time if they fit, but they better not try to palm off any funny money on him. The manager of the Mayfair Theater, which was showing "I Was a Teen-Age Necromancer," said all bona fide space aliens would be admitted free. The manager of the Gaiety Delicatessen said he assumed the spacemen had to eat and invited them to his place for the best hot pastrami sandwich in New York. Patrolman Patrick O'Hanlon said he'd leave it to the Commissioner to say how they should be treated, but if they tried jaywalking they'd get a ticket just like anybody else.
TheWorld-Telegramhad a front-page editorial asking how the aliens had managed to get through our radar without detection. It was not the first time the Defense Department and the Central Intelligence Agency had been caught napping, theWorld-Telegramsaid. It demanded a Congressional investigation.
The third evening paper, theJournal-American, said it was reserving judgment on whether the aliens were as friendly as they professed to be and urged Americans to keep their guard up.
SNAP
WASHINGTON, JULY 23 (WW)—PRESIDENT ALLISON ARRANGED A MEETING FOR THIS MORNING WITH THE ALLEGED ALIENS WHO ARE SEEKING TO CONCLUDE A PEACE TREATY WITH THE UNITED STATES.
MORE
I sent that to London after crossing out the "alleged." I figured if things had gone this far they must be for real.
ALIENS 2 WASHINGTON ADD SNAP
A MOTORCADE OF LIMOUSINES WAS SENT TO BURNING TREE CLUB TO BRING TO THE WHITE HOUSE THE VISITORS WHO SAY THEY REPRESENT THE SPACE NATION OF MONOLITHIA.
JOSHUA HOLCOMB, THE PRESIDENT'S PRESS SECRETARY, SAID REPORTERS WOULD BE BARRED FROM THE MEETING BUT THAT THERE PROBABLY WOULD BE A STATEMENT LATER.
SECRETARY OF STATE RUPERT MARRINER CANCELED HIS PLANNED TRIP TO SOUTH AMERICA TO BE PRESENT AT THE MEETING.
MORE
I asked Ian:
WHAT TIME IS MEETING? ALSO WHOSE BYLINE?
He replied: 11:45. MINE. REB IS WITH MOTORCADE.
I sent that information off as an FYI to London. Ian had little more that was new, but he paged on several paragraphs of background.
John Hyatt, the general news manager, came in from his office. He read the latest and said, "Good stuff. Have you got enough bodies?"
"We're not overstaffed, John, but we're all right for now."
"Okay. We can haul a few people in from Chicago if necessary. And let me know if you need another hand here today. I think I can still bang the old mill."
"Thanks, John."
World Wide has found that if you saturate the field with first-rank outside men you need only two or three men on the desk. Too many bodies have a tendency to get in each other's way.
Reb Sylvester had wangled a limousine with a radio-telephone and was dictating a running story on the short drive from Burning Tree to the White House.
The aliens, about a dozen of them, were wearing the heavy, rough-looking cloaks which Eurydice Playfair had described yesterday. They were accompanied by more than twice that number of Secret Service men, Maryland state police, State Department security guards and Washington police.
The cavalcade sped along River Road, then into Wisconsin Avenue and through Georgetown. There hadn't been time for many people to hear about it on the radio and few crowds gathered.
But then the cars went past the White House gates without entering. Reb said he couldn't find out what was going on. The cavalcade was headed in the general direction of the National Press Building at 14th and F Streets. That's where we have our Washington bureau, as does almost every other news organization. I could imagine Ian rushing to his window for a glimpse of them.
The cars came to a stop on F Street, strung out in front of the Press Building and the Capitol Theater, where they immediately snarled auto and street-car traffic. The cloaked aliens got out, as did the security men in their neat suits.
It looked as if the aliens were deliberately snubbing the President; as if they intended to keep him waiting while they held a press conference. They couldn't have picked a better place, if that was their intention. There are more reporters per square foot at 14th and F Streets than anywhere else in the world.
But the aliens didn't enter the Press Building. Instead they crossed F Street, which by now was clogged with crowds of curious people ignoring theDon't Walksigns and clustering around the aliens, who politely pushed through them and went into the Young Men's Shop.
They came out twenty minutes later, dressed in neat, conservative suits which made them indistinguishable from the security men.
They got back into the limousines and circled back the few blocks to the White House, where they arrived on the dot of 11:45 A.M.
"And then what happened?" my wife asked me at supper.
"My God, Mae, you must have heard it on the radio. And they televised the press conference."
"I saw that, Sam. But what's the good of having a husband in the news game if he won't give you an eyewitness account?"
"It's not a game," I told her for the hundredth time. "And you don't get an eyewitness view from the desk."
"You know what I mean," Mae said. "Robert E. Lee Sylvester was there." That's Reb's full name and my wife likes the sound of it. "What did he say? You know, off the record?"
"Not much. The meeting with Gov and Marriner lasted about two hours. Then they all came out and all they said was that they were going over to State. They talked there for another hour or so. Then they came out and posed for pictures and Ells said they'd had a useful exchange of views."
"Who's Ells?"
"George Ellsworth, the State Department spokesman. Josh said just about the same thing in a statement later. That's Joshua Holcomb, the White House man."
"I know him. He gets more publicity than Gov himself. Doesn't it confuse people to call the President 'Gov'? What do they call the Governor?"
"Washington doesn't have a governor. It's a city, not a state. Honestly, Mae...."
"All right, Sam. I suppose I should know these things. What happened after everybody exchanged views? Did they sign that treaty?"
"Things don't happen that fast. The aliens went to Blair House for the night. They'll have more talks tomorrow morning and in the afternoon they may come up and see Nils."
"Nils Nilsen, the Secretary-General of the UN. I know him."
"Good for you," I said.
"They look like nice boys," Mae said. "They're all so young and handsome. I hope we can get along with them."
"So do we all."