The Second Science Fiction MEGAPACK®. Robert Silverberg
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in hushed voices as though at a wake. MID network doors were locked, although there was a doorman on duty to admit technicians who were trying to find an answer to the problem. Some of the technicians who had been on duty the previous day had now spent over twenty-four hours without sleep.
George Bailey woke at noon, with only a slight headache. He shaved and showered, went out and drank a light breakfast, and was himself again. He bought early editions of the afternoon papers, read them, grinned. His hunch had been right; whatever was wrong, it was nothing trivial.
But what was wrong?
* * * *
The later editions of the afternoon papers had it:
EARTH INVADED, SAYS SCIENTIST
Thirty-six line type was the biggest they had; they used it. Not a home-edition copy of a newspaper was delivered that evening. Newsboys starting on their routes were practically mobbed. They sold papers instead of delivering them; the smart ones got a dollar apiece for them. The foolish and honest ones who didn’t want to sell because they thought the papers should go to the regular customers on their routes lost them anyway. People grabbed them.
The final editions changed the heading only slightly—only slightly, that is, from a typographical view-point. Nevertheless, it was a tremendous change in meaning. It read:
EARTH INVADED, SAY SCIENTISTS
Funny what moving an S from the ending of a verb to the ending of a noun can do.
* * * *
Carnegie Hall shattered precedent that evening with a lecture given at midnight. An unscheduled and unadvertised lecture. Professor Helmetz had stepped off the train at eleven-thirty and a mob of reporters had been waiting for him. Helmetz, of Harvard, had been the scientist, singular, who had made that first headline.
Harvey Ambers, director of the board of Carnegie Hall, had pushed his way through the mob. He arrived minus glasses, hat and breath, but got hold of Helmetz’s arm and hung on until he could talk again.
“We want you to talk at Carnegie, Professor,” he shouted into Helmetz’s ear. “Five thousand dollars for a lecture on the ’vaders.’”
“Certainly. Tomorrow afternoon?”
“Now! I’ve a cab waiting. Come on.”
“But—”
“We’ll get you an audience. Hurry!” He turned to the mob. “Let us through! All of you can’t hear the professor here. Come to Carnegie Hall and he’ll talk to you. And spread the word on your way there!”
* * * *
The word spread so well that Carnegie Hall was jammed by the time the professor began to speak. Shortly after, they’d rigged a loudspeaker system so the people outside could hear. By one o’clock in the morning, the streets were jammed for blocks around.
There wasn’t a sponsor on Earth with a million dollars to his name who wouldn’t have given a million dollars gladly for the privilege of sponsoring that lecture on TV or radio, but it was not telecast or broadcast. Both lines were busy.
“Questions?” asked Professor Helmetz.
A reporter in the front row made it first.
“Professor,” he asked, “Have all direction finding stations on Earth confirmed what you told us about the change this afternoon?”
“Yes, absolutely. At about noon all directional indications began to grow weaker. At 2:45 o’clock, Eastern Standard Time, they ceased completely. Until then the radio waves emanated from the sky, constantly changing direction with reference to the Earth’s surface, but constant with reference to a point in the constellation Leo.”
“What star in Leo?”
“No star visible on our charts. Either they came from a point in space or from a star too faint for our telescopes.
“But at 2:45 P.M. today—yesterday rather, since it is now past midnight—all direction finders went dead. But the signals persisted, now coming from all sides equally. The invaders had all arrived.
“There is no other conclusion to be drawn. Earth is now surrounded, completely blanketed, by radio-type waves which have no point of origin, which travel ceaselessly around the Earth in all directions, changing shape at their will—which currently is still in imitation of the Earth origin radio signals which attracted their attention and brought them here.”
“Do you think it was from a star we can’t see, or could it have really been just a point in space?”
“Probably from a point in space. And why not? They are not creatures of matter. If they came from a star, it must be a very dark star for it to be invisible to us, since it would be relatively near to us—only twenty-eight light-years away, which is quite close as stellar distances go.”
“How can you know the distance?”
“By assuming—and it is a quite reasonable assumption—that they started our way when they first discovered our radio signals—Marconi’s S-S-S code broadcast of fifty-six years ago. Since that was the form taken by the first arrivals, we assume they started toward us when they encountered those signals. Marconi’s signals, traveling at the speed of light, would have reached a point twenty-eight light-years away twenty-eight years ago; the invaders, also traveling at light speed would require an equal of time to reach us.
“As might be expected only the first arrivals took Morse code form. Later arrivals were in the form of other waves that they met and passed on—or perhaps absorbed—on their way to Earth. There are now wandering around the Earth, as it were, fragments of programs broadcast as recently as a few days ago. Undoubtedly there are fragments of the very last programs to be broadcast, but they have not yet been identified.”
“Professor, can you describe one of these invaders?”
“As well as and no better than I can describe a radio wave. In effect, they are radio waves, although they emanate from no broadcasting station. They are a form of life dependent on wave motion, as our form of life is dependent on the vibration of matter.”
“They are different sizes?”
“Yes, in two senses of the word size. Radio waves are measured from crest to crest, which measurement is known as wave length. Since the invaders cover the entire dials of our radio sets and television sets it is obvious that either one of two things is true: Either they come in all crest-to-crest sizes or each one can change his crest-to-crest measurement to adapt himself to the tuning of any receiver.
“But that is only the crest-to-crest length. In a sense it may be said that a radio wave has an overall length determined by its duration. If a broadcasting station sends out a program that has a second’s duration, a wave carrying that program is one light-second long, roughly 187,000 miles. A continuous half-hour program is, as it were, on a continuous wave one-half light-hour long, and so on.
“Taking that form of length, the individual invaders vary in length from a few thousand miles—a duration of only a small fraction of a second—to well over half a million miles long—a duration of several seconds. The longest continuous excerpt from any one program that has been observed has been about seven seconds.”
“But, Professor Helmetz, why do you assume that these waves are living things, a life form. Why not just waves?”
“Because ‘just waves,’ as you call them, would follow certain laws, just as inanimate matter follows certain laws. An animal can climb uphill, for instance; a stone cannot unless impelled by some outside force. These invaders are life-forms because they show volition, because they can change their direction of travel, and most especially because they retain their identity; two signals never conflict on the same radio receiver. They follow one another but do not come simultaneously. They do not mix as signals on the same wave length would ordinarily do. They are not ‘just waves.’”
“Would you say they are intelligent?”