Footfall

“Yes, sir. Mr. President, I suggest you come here as quickly as you can. Major Crichton, assist the President, and stay with him as long as you’re needed. I’ll put Colonel Hartley on now.”

Something rang in his head.

Harry Reddington woke, and thrashed, and slapped the top of his alarm clock: the pause, to give him another ten minutes sleep. The ringing went on. The room was pitch dark, and it wasn’t the clock ringing, it was the telephone. Harry picked up the receiver. His voice was musical, sarcastically so. “Hellooo …”

A breathy voice said, “Harry? Go outside and look.”

“Ruby? It’s late, Ruby. I’ve got to get up early tomorrow.”

There was party music in the background, and a woman’s voice raised in laughing protest. Ruby’s voice was bathetically mournful, She must be ripped; at a late party she was bound to be. “Harry, I went outside for a hit. You know Julia and Gwen, they don’t like anyone smoking anything in there. They don’t like tobacco any better than pot—”

“Ruby!”

“I went out and it’s, it’s … It looks so real, Harry! Go out and look at the sky. It’s the end of the world.”

Harry hung up.

He rolled off the Dawsons’ water bed and searched for his clothes.

He’d stayed up too late anyway. It would have been a good night to get drunk with friends, but word of honor on record. He’d come home and had a few drinks as consolation for being alone while interstellar ambassadors made first contact with humanity. The clock said 2:10, and he’d been up past midnight watching the news. There hadn’t been any; whatever the Soviets were learning, they hadn’t been telling. Eventually he went to bed. Now—

His eyes felt gritty. The cane was leaning against the bedstead. He gave up on finding a jacket; he wouldn’t be out long. He unlocked the back door and stumbled out onto the Dawsons’ lawn.

Ruby had been using marijuana, and spreading the word of it like any missionary, since the mid-sixties. She worked as a clerk in the head shop next to the Honda salesroom. What had Harry outside in a coolish California May night was this reflection: a doper might see things that aren’t there, but she might see things that are.

The sky glowed. Harry was an Angeleno; he judged the mistiness of the night by that glow, the glow of the Los Angeles lights reflected from the undersides of clouds. The glow wasn’t bright tonight, and stars showed through.

Something brighter than a star showed through, a dazzling pinpoint that developed a tail and vanished, all in a moment.

A long blue-white flame formed, and held for several seconds, while narrow lines of light speared down from one end. Other lights pulsed slowly, like beating hearts.

The sky was alive with strange lights.

Harry got back inside, fished the tiny Minolta binoculars out of a drawer, found his windbreaker on a chair, and stumbled out, all without turning on a light. He wanted his night vision. The sky seemed brighter now. He could see streaks of light rising from the west, flaring, disappearing. Narrow threads of green lanced west: down. There were phosphorescent puffs of cloud, lazily expanding.

On another night Harry might have taken it for a meteor shower. Tonight … He’d read a hundred versions of the aliens conquering Earth, and they all sounded more spectacular than this flaring and dying of stars and smudges of lights. Any movie would have had sound effects too. But it looked so real.

Still without turning on the lights he fumbled his way back into the house to find a transistor radio. He carried it outside with him and tuned to the all-news station.

“… have fired on the Soviet Kosmograd space station,” the newsman’s voice said. “The President has alerted all military forces. People are asked to stay in their homes. We ca

“Look at the sky, you silly buzzard,” a gravelly voice said. “What the hell do you think all the lights are?”

Harry watched and thought as a flame curved around the western horizon, flared and died. Then two more. No question what that was. And now what do I do?

Stay and watch the house. Only — Jesus. Congressman Wes was in Kosmograd! And Carlotta Dawson would be in western Kansas by now, present situation unknown. If she’d taken the gun … if she’d been the type to take the .45. But she wasn’t.

The radio began the peculiar beep beep of an incoming news bulletin.

“We have an unconfirmed report that San Diego harbor has suffered a large explosion,” the a

Maybe I should go help Carlotta. Wes would want me to. Jesus, how?

The Kawasaki was in pieces. There hadn’t been nearly enough money for everything that should have been done to it, and Harry hadn’t wanted to push. He’d done most of the work himself, as much as he could. But only the Honda shop could rebuild the engine: He’d finished taking the bike apart and carried the engine in, and as far as he knew it was ready. It had better be.

There must be others watching tonight. They’d sure as hell know by morning.

Harry watched and thought and made his plans. (That long blue flame had formed again, and this time it didn’t seem to be dying. Stars rising from the west seemed to be reaching for it until threads of green light touched them; then they flared and vanished. The blue flame crept east, accelerating. The binoculars showed something at the tip. Harry’s eyes watered trying to make out details.)

Then he went inside and washed his face.

Carlotta didn’t like him. And so what? Harry opened Dawson’s liquor cabinet and opened a bottle of Carlos Primera brandy. Sixty bucks a bottle; but it was all that was left. He poured a good splash, looked at it, thought of pouring some back, and drank half.

Carlotta doesn’t like me. The country’s at war with aliens. Wes asked me to look after things. Nothing I can do here, and if I stay here long I’ll be here, and for good.

He went to the telephone and dialed the Kansas number Carlotta had left. It rang a long time. Then a voice, not sleepy. Male. “Mrs. Carlotta Dawson. Please,” Harry said. He could sound official when he wanted to.

It took a moment. “Yes?”

“Harry Reddington, Mrs. Dawson. Is there anything you want me to do?”

“Harry — Harry, they don’t know what happened up there.”

“Yes, ma’am. Can I help you?”

“I don’t know.”

Carlotta Dawson’s voice dissolved in hisses. Another voice came on the line. “Is this an official telephone call?” it asked through the static. Then the line went dead.

Harry emptied his glass. Now what? She didn’t say. And if I stay in Los Angeles tomorrow, I’ll be in Los Angeles forever …

He drank half an inch more brandy and closed the bottle. Firmly.

When he left he was in clean shirt and a sports jacket that was years old but had almost never been worn. He carried ID and a sleeping bag and Congressman Dawson’s letter. At 3:30 A.M. he was on the front steps of the Security Pacific National Bank, spreading his sleeping bag.

Pavel Bondarev stared at the blank screen. All around him officers and aides at the command and communications consoles began to speak at once, and the babble brought him to life. “Colonel, I wish this chatter to cease.”

“Da, Comrade Director.” Colonel Suvorov was efficient if unimaginative. He shouted, and the cacophony of voices died away.

The aliens had fired on Kosmograd. He had seen that much before all communications were lost. The aliens had fired without warning, without provocation.

An amber light blinked insistently. Pavel lifted the scrambler telephone. “Da, Comrade Chairman.”