The Invaders Plan

"Are you all right?" said Heller.

"Of course, Lombar is all right. Whatever Snelz says, goes. Goes up to the bear girls, of course, unless the bands don't launch." (Bleep) it, I was talking too fast.

"You better sit down," said Heller. "On the rail, there. No, no, don't fall over! Here, I'll open one of these review chairs. Now you just sit there and take it easy. This will all be over and we'll be gone soon." I didn't know why he was concerned. The world looked just great to me.

Chapter 9

I was about to see what Heller called "keeping it in the family." Ten o'clock arrived. And so had scores and scores of lorries and thousands and thousands of people. The hangar guards seemed to be making no attempt to regulate traffic or numbers – the gates were simply wide open.

Gay bunting and flags were all over the place. Tup hadn't arrived by the canister: it had arrived in tankers; and everywhere you looked, people were drinking from mugs. Some of the bands had begun to play and the music, in conflict from band to band, rose above the chatter of the multitude. One would have thought the party had started.

Not so. A daylight fireworks crew had arrived a bit earlier and I had been eyeing them benignly, not realizing what they were up to. Theysignalled the start of the party!

Up from their platform went a "flaming planet"!

It soared half a mile into the air, hung there spi

The crowd burst into a cheer.

Oh, well, I thought, such displays are common enough: it wouldn't be thought to be anything special by the countryside. New store opening, a public bullet ball game. No harm. Besides, it had been quite pretty.

Sitting in my chair on the review platform, I was mostly hidden by the bunting on its rails but I could see quite well what was going on. I felt quite powerful, really, capable of controlling everything with ease from where I sat.

My eye lighted upon a crane platform lifted up from a big truck, higher even than I was. Suddenly I saw it was a Homeview crew! A bigHomeview crew! With bigcameras!

Oh, well, I thought. Probably the tup companies had called them in hopes of getting some free advertising into every home. Maybe the manager of the dancing girls or the mountain dancing bears. Homeview crews went everywhere and they often didn't use what they shot. Just routine.

Reporters! The vans of about ten newssheets were parked around the Homeview crane truck. There was a swarm of newshawks and their cameramen. Oh, well, they say where you find free drinks, you always find reporters.

They seemed to be heading over this way. Ah, of course! There was Heller standing there and they probably didn't have many pictures of him in fancy Fleet full dress, blazing with citations. He looked kind of cute. Naturally they would want some shots of him – for their files, of course, in case anything exciting happened in the future. And sure enough, I was right. Here they came storming up the eighty-foot rise of steps, jostling each other. And their cameramen immediately began shouting orders to Heller to smile, to look up, to look down, to turn this way or that and even to shake hands with one of the leading reporters who probably wanted one to show to his kids. No harm in all that. Just routine.

Then I caught sight of the Fleet Intelligence officer, Bis. He seemed to be talking to three reporters and pointing up at the platform and here they came with their cameramen.

Aha! They recognized power when they saw it! They were not heading for Heller! They were coming straight to me! About time.

They asked me to stand up and look this way and that. I'm sure they got some very good portraits: probably sell them for use in history books of the future. Contemplating the feats I felt capable of at that moment, they would probably be writing whole sets of volumes about me.

Then they wanted me to stand just behind Heller so they could shoot Heller in the foreground to the left and me behind him slightly to the right. Bis was there, too, helping them pose me, whispering so as to not disturb Heller.

So, they got some shots of me looking at Heller's back. They weren't satisfied. But when they told me I was a natural actor and could glare and grit my teeth and all that I entered into the fun of it. I did all that and even added a few of my own such as tapping my lead-filled sack against my palm and clenching my metal-guarded fists. Heller was unaware of it and just went on chatting.

I thought they were through with me, but no, I had to sit back down in my chair. A cameraman assistant got a backscreen erected behind me – a sort of pattern of stones like a cave, quite realistic. And I posed and looked powerful for them.

But Bis, who was being very helpful, still wasn't satisfied. He was pointing down and whispering and I got up to see what he was pointing at. There was a whole display of figure-cakes along one bar: these are made of sweetbun dough, are lifesize and pretty realistic, nymphs and so on, all in natural color. And an assistant went racing down and chopped off a cake nymph's hand and smeared some red jam on it and came racing back up and handed it to me.

I told them I wasn't hungry. But they said they wanted to see how well I really could act and would I please look ravenous and voracious and look as if I was eating it. Well, nothing was easier: I am a natural actor and today I was capable of anything. Then they got some shots of me chewing the bite as though delicious. Finally, Bis and they agreed I'd done beautifully and left.

One hundred girls were doing a parade dance along the bars, floating big ba

The crowd was already pretty noisy and suddenly there was a surge of sound so I looked to see what had attracted their attention.

It was just a Palace City limousine. It glided to the landing target. And out stepped Captain Tars Roke, the King's Own Astrographer. He was accompanied by several aides and they were all in dress uniform and made a splendid sparkle of color to the crowd. They came sedately over to the platform and up the steps. The Homeview crane swung way over and got close.

Roke came up and shook Heller's hand and they chatted like old friends. And a Homeview interrogator was there. I caught some scraps of it.

"I'm sorry," Roke was saying, "I can't reveal where this mission is headed. I just came over to tell my friend Jet that I wished him well."

"From the type of engines that this mission ship has, Captain, couldn't we conclude that the mission is back to the old home galaxy? Perhaps to pick up and tow here some ancestral monument from the ruins of our racial planet?"

"I didn't say that," said Roke. "You did."

"But, Captain, this is Tug Oneand we have it on reliable authority that it can't be run within a galaxy without peril. Its sister ship blew up." At the moment I thought, well, I'll just have to carry it there with my bare hands. I felt perfectly able to do so. Really capable of tremendous feats! Methedrine, I thought, what have I ever done without you? What glorious stuff! My mouth felt kind of dry but I didn't want to get down into that crowd just to get some tup.

The Fleet male chorus was singing some Fleet song and the crowd took it up. I didn't realize it was a prelude to something else. Then I noticed that everyone was looking up. So I looked up.

Maybe three miles above us, two hundred and fifty Fleet spacefighters were flying in formation. They do it in a very orderly fashion. I think the command ship has a computer which spits out coordinate orders to individual crews and they immediately take those positions. They wheeled and formed various figures, all very precise. And then suddenly they all strung out across about five miles of sky.