Invaders From Earth

16

He drove down into New York City; cutting left on the Thruway and taking the artery that led out. along the south shore of Long Island Sound to the big new airport. Roosevelt Airport was a city in itself, practically; its rambling acres covered a great chunk of Long Island. It served as the airline capital of the world.

Kennedy reached the parking area at 1747 and turned his car over to the attendant.

“Want her shined up, sir? Refueled, overhauled?”

Kennedy shook his head. “Sorry, thanks.”

“Those deflectors look like they could use—”

“No,” Kennedy said. He took the parking ticket, which had the time stamped on it, and folded it away in his wallet. The attendant was going to be surprised when no one ever showed up to claim the dented ’42 Frontenac.

He made his way toward the shining plastic building that housed the central ticket offices and got on a line that moved slowly toward a window labelled Reservations For Today’s Flights.

When he reached the window he gave his name: “Victor Engel. I’m going to Milwaukee.”

“Of course, Mr. Engel.” The girl performed three quick motions with her hands and slid a crisp white folder under the grill toward him.

“One hundred thirteen fifty,” she said.

Kennedy took two bills from his wallet, passed them over and received his change. Normally he would have paid by check—but the reservation was in Engel’s name, and he would have had to sign the check that way. There would have been immediate catastrophe. It was impossible to pass a bad check when the lightning-fast receptors of the Central Clearing House in Chicago could check his signature against their files and report back within fifteen seconds.

It was too bad he had to buy round-trip tickets, too. The return half would expire in thirty days, and he had no intention of returning East so soon. But a one-way trip might arouse suspicion, and he wanted to keep Victor Engel as free of suspicion as possible.

Victor Engel. The first name had been a sudden guess. It had been a curious moment when he realized he had never known the dead linguist’s first name.

He moved out of the ticket deck onto the promenade. In the distance, outlined against the setting sun, a huge plane was coming in—one of the FB-11 stratoliners, the five-hunded-passenger jet jobs that crossed the country from New York to California in just under two hours. He watched it taxi in, like a great bird returning to its nest.

He ate alone in an automatic restaurant—a light meal, protoid sandwich and milk, for he was far from hungry just now—and bought an evening ’fax-sheet at a vending stand. Quickly, he made his way past the West Coast baseball scores, past the usual item on the weather, past the latest on the Yugoslavian ministerial shake-up. He found a squib on the return of the Ganymede ship. There was no mention of the public relations man who had fled the spacefield hotly pursued by Corporation mobsters.

He crumpled the ’fax-sheet and dumped it in a dispos-all. Finding himself outside a bookstore, he went in, browsed for half an hour, and emerged with a couple of paperbacks.

He strolled the promenade as the heat of the day died away, waiting for departure time. At 1925 the announcement came, “Universal Airlines plane for Milwaukee, Flight 165, now loading passengers at Gate 17.”

The ship was not the newest model—an FB-9, seating ninety, a fairly low-ceiling liner that never went higher than 20,000 feet on passenger flights. As he boarded it, the stewardess, a shy-looking, rosy-cheeked blonde, smiled and said, “Good evening, Mr. Engel. I hope you have a pleasant flight.”

“Thank you,” he said, and found a seat in the front, to the fore of the wings.

After spaceflight, airplane flying seemed odd to Kennedy—oddly clumsy and oddly unsafe. The plane took off on schedule, roaring down the runway and veering sharply upward into the sky; he looked down at the darkening streets of Brooklyn and saw tiny dots that were autos passing below, and then Brooklyn passed out of sight as the ship stabilized at its flight altitude of 20,000 feet.

At that height they were well above the clouds, which formed a solid gray-white floor stretching to the horizon, billowing up here and there in puffs that looked like ice floes on a frozen sea. There was little sensation of vibration or of motion, but at no time was Kennedy deceived into believing that the plane was not moving, as so often he had felt aboard the spaceship.

He read for a while, but lost interest quickly and dozed off. Sooner than he expected, they were in Milwaukee; his watch read 2213, but he jabbed the setting stud to put the hands back an hour, to conform with local time.

The Milwaukee airport probably had been a local wonder a century before; now, it merely looked cheap and shabby, a weathered old edifice of green glass and plastic. Kennedy treated himself to a cup of synthetic caffeine drink in one of the airport restaurants, and considered his next several steps.

It was an hour’s drive from Milwaukee to Brockhurst, where he had been born and where his older brother still lived. But it was late, and he felt hesitant about barging in on them unannounced when he knew he could not get out there much before midnight. Steve had always been a man of regular habits, and though he probably wouldn’t say anything if his brother arrived unexpectedly near midnight, it would upset his routine.

Instead of going out there, Kennedy took a cab to town and rented a room in the first hotel he found. In the morning he dialed his brother’s number as soon as he was up, at 0800. Steve would be having breakfast about that time, before going out on the day’s run.

He was right. A gruff deep voice said, “Kennedy speaking. Who’s this?”

“Kennedy, this is Kennedy. Of the Connecticut Kennedys, you know.”

A moment of silence. Then: “Ted?”

“None other.”

Hesitantly: “What—what’s on your mind?”

“I thought I’d come visit you,” Kennedy said. “I got into Milwaukee last night, too late to call.”

“Oh. I see.”

That wasn’t like his brother at all; Steve normally would have been effusively cordial. Now he sounded worried and tense.

“Look, Steve, I’ll take the next bus out to your place. I’m here alone, and I can’t explain everything over the phone. Can you wait till I get there? I’ll—”

“No,” Steve said bluntly. “Stay in Milwaukee. I’ll come see you. Where are you?”

“Hotel Avon. But—”

“You stay there. I’ll be there in an hour.”

Puzzled, Kennedy hung up. He didn’t understand. Steve always had an invitation ready for him. But now, when he needed him, Steve seemed unwilling.

Maybe, he thought, Steve was getting even. He knew he had neglected Steve for a long time, and maybe now Steve resented it. But the only thing he and Steve had ever had in common was a set of parents.

Steve was eleven years his senior, and, since their father had died when Ted was seven, had served as head of the family. Steve was the salt-of-the-earth type, the hearty middle-western sort, big-bodied and smiling, with a fondness for beer and fishing excursions. He was a faithful churchgoer. He had quarreled endlessly with his brother, until Ted, more nervous by temperament, introverted and intellectual, had left home after high school, gone to Chicago and enrolled in Northwestern.

The brothers had met just once since Kennedy’s marriage to Marge—in 2039, when a vacation trip of Steve’s had brought him East. It had been an awkward meeting; Steve and his plump wife Betty had been ill at ease in the modern surroundings of the Kennedy home. The music he played for them had bored them, the books had awed them, and once Betty had hit a raw nerve by asking Marge when she expected to start raising a family. Betty had had two children already, with a third on the way. Marge had blushed and tried to explain that it wasn’t because they didn’t want children that they didn’t have any. Since that time, Kennedy had exchanged letters with his brother sporadically, but as the years passed they had had less and less to say to each other. It was nearly ten months since he had last written to Steve.

Now he waited, pacing tensely around the confines of the shabby Milwaukee hotel room. Shortly after 0900, Steve arrived.

He had grown gray, Kennedy noticed, but he still looked impressive, a big-muscled, thick-bodied man with deep, sad eyes that belied the essentially untroubled mind behind them. He squeezed Kennedy’s right hand mercilessly. Next to his brother, Kennedy felt suddenly shamefaced; he was Easternized, high-strung, overintellectual, and probably looked a woeful figure to his healthy, happy brother.

“I want to apologize,” Steve said huskily. “I couldn’t let you come out to the house.”

“Why not?”

Steve flicked his eyes uncertainly around the room. “Are you in some kind of trouble, Ted?”

“Not really.”

“I can always tell when you lie to me. You just lied. Ted, I was always afraid you’d get mixed up in something bad. I tried to teach you to do your day’s work and leave well enough alone, but I guess it never really took, or else the people down East taught you different. What did you do, Ted?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Kennedy lied. “I just want to stay at the house, quietly, for a while.”

“You can’t do that.”

Coming from Steve, that was flatly incredible. “Why?”

Steve sighed. “I got a call last night from the local Security people. They wanted to know if I was your brother. I said yes. They said you were in big trouble back East, and you were wanted by Security. They wouldn’t tell me what for. Then they said I’d have to cooperate or I’d be subject to arrest as an accessory after the fact.”

Kennedy felt cold despite the blistering heat. “What else did they say?”

“They said you were missing and were likely to try to come to me. That if you came out here I was to notify them immediately, or else they’d make it hard on me. Then they asked me for a list of any other relatives of ours anywhere in the country, and I guess I gave it to them. Then they hung up. Ted, what have you done?”

Kennedy gripped his brother’s thick arm tightly. “I swear to you I haven’t done anything wrong. I’ve been framed by a bunch of criminals, and I have to hide for a while. I want to stay here with you.”

“That’s what they said you’d want to do. Sorry, Ted. You can’t.”

“Can’t?”

Steve shook his head. “I’ve got a wife and five kids, Ted. A place in the community. I can’t risk losing all that They told me I could go to prison for twenty years if I helped you.”

“It’s a lie!”

“Be that as it may. You better go somewhere else.” Steve fished into his pocket. “I brought you some money. I guess you need it. Don’t argue; just take it.”

He pushed a thousand dollars in small bills into Kennedy’s nerveless fingers.

“I better go now,” Steve said. “Maybe they followed me. If they catch you, don’t tell ’em you saw me at all. Or spoke to me.” Beads of sweat dribbled down Steve’s heavy face; he looked close to tears. “I’m sorry about this, kid. But I have to think of my family first. You understand?”

“Yeah, Steve. I understand.”