The vast airfield shook with motor noise in the gray, windy afternoon. A dozen huge bombers had left the hardstands and roared out on the runways to take off on a regular training flight.
Each one had six propellers. Each prop sent back a wash of air and dust and din, adding it to the boring Texas wind.
Chuck Conner, Lieutenant Conner, closed the door of the office with difficulty. The building behind him, long, low, caked from its corrugated roof to its foundations with dirt, was like fifty buildings parallel to and behind it and fifty more, barracks, on the opposite side of the field. Chuck hunched in his coat, took a better grip on the brief case under his arm and looked for a jeep. There wasn’t any in the vast, concrete environ. Just cement and wind and stinging dust, cold, and the planes moving like things from Mars, far out on the Hat, tremendous field.
He walked.
Another day, another job, he thought.
A jeep buzzed behind him and he got aboard. Riding was colder. The sky was a yellowish-gray, the color of old laundry soap. The clouds must be moving fast, he thought, but they were without definition, so you couldn’t tell.
The jeep stopped at a less dusty building, less dusty, less caked by the wind, because GI’s cleaned it with water every day. Chuck went through a storm door and a second door and performed the military amenities with the officer of the day. He went to the colonel’s conference room, turned over his brief case to Sergeant Lee, saluted. There were four men in the room: Colonel Eames, the Commanding Officer, Major Wroncke, Major Taylor and Captain Pierce.
They looked more serious than usual. Usually nobody took the weekly Intelligence meeting with any seriousness at all.
The colonel, sitting at the head of a worn conference table, returned Charles’s salute.
Charles sat down and unlocked the brief case. He was acting for Major Blayert, the Staff Intelligence Officer at the base. As assistant, Charles was not always even present at these Staff Intelligence meetings. But the major had been detached, temporarily, to duty at the new briefing school in Flagstaff.
“We have,” the colonel said, “some new, secret orders. From Washington.” Eames looked at the officers. “They are pretty elaborate and they mean plenty of work here at the base.”
Nobody appeared to be overjoyed at that news.
“As you know, contrails have been spotted for years, over Alaska, over Canada.”
“And we’re ordered to go up and erase ’em?”
Captain Pierce said that. It was like him. He was an anything-but-dour New Englander, a man with a wisecrack for every situation. Everybody liked Captain Pierce. But the colonel, at this moment, was not amused. “In other words,” he went on, ignoring the remark, “we’ve known for a long time the Russkis have reconnoitered our northern defense perimeter. Lately”—He tapped his own brief case—“they have moved in over the United States.”
“Is that positive?” Major Wroncke asked sharply. “Rumors—”
“I know.” The colonel hesitated. “Civilian spotting has fallen down badly. And with the last appropriations cut by Congress, the radar defense has had to be reduced.” He glanced unconsciously at his shoulder, at the eagle on his right shoulder.
The men at the table knew, with sympathy, what the glance meant. With the long effort at
“budget balancing,” with the many steps in reduction of Federal expenditures for military affairs, the armed forces had diminished in numbers. That meant, to officers like Colonel Eames, no promotion. As CO of the base he ought to have been at least a brigadier general. He remained a colonel just as the numbers of bombers at the base remained inadequate for the purposes envisaged in the event of war.
“What have they got on it?” Major Taylor asked. He was a fussy man who constantly tried to “move things ahead”—equipment, people, plans, conversations.
“Plenty,” Colonel Eames answered. “And not Flying Saucer material, either! Contrails over Nebraska, Iowa, Ohio and all the states down here in the Southwest. Definitely not our own.”
“Any contacts?” Major Taylor asked.
“None. Radar blips, though.”
“Plane types?”
The colonel frowned faintly at his impatient staff officer. “I’ll boil it down to this. GHQ is satisfied that there have been, for some months, numbers of Red planes over this country, flying very fast at very high altitude-probably turbo-prop types-probably photography recon.
None of our interceptors has so far gotten up to one fast enough to take a good look. We do have a few rather definite photographs, taken at long ranges with telephoto lenses from our own panes.”
“That’s pretty definite,” Captain Pierce murmured.
Eames nodded. “Very definite. With commercial stuff getting higher every year, of course, and moving faster, GHQ was pretty unwilling to accept the evidence at first. Besides, since the peace efforts are apparently on the verge of success, they didn’t believe the Reds would be foolish enough to push their northern recon planes over our states and cities. In fact, they took it for granted all last year that such stuff was being suspended.”
“We’ve felt them out,” Major Wroncke stated.
“And gotten burned for it,” Major Taylor said crisply.
“What’s the interpretation?” Captain Pierce asked.
Colonel Eames turned away and frowned. “None. Yet. The point is, we’re being ordered to put on a big show. For the next six weeks there are going to be ‘air exercises.’ That’s what the public, and the world at large, will be told. We’ll get everything in the air we can, as high as we can, with cameras and arms, also.” He tapped the brief case. “Orders here for a new friend-or-foe recognition pattern. Using that, we are expected to keep open eyes, to photograph anything unidentified we see, to fire on it when and if we can overtake it. Bombers are to do the job, not interceptors. The bombers can go up, stay, and cruise.”
Major Wroncke whistled.
Colonel Eames smiled without pleasure. “In a nutshell,” he said, acknowledging the whistle. “At this base, it means a lot of partly trained crews are going to have to fly some of the latest equipment. It means a logistic problem, just to keep what we’ve got up and on patrol. Six weeks is a long time. We aren’t supplied for it, so we have to get supplied, fast. It means we’ve got to expand the intelligence side; an Intelligence officer is supposed to fly in every plane.”
Captain Pierce laughed. “That’s going to chop up the Lieutenant, here, mighty fine.”
Charles also laughed a little, but his face was serious. “Excuse me, sir,” he said to the colonel, “but did Major Blayert show you the fabric at the last meeting?”
“Fabric?” the colonel repeated.
“That the rancher brought in, sir?”
They were looking at him. Eames said, “I’m afraid I don’t get it, Lieutenant. Blayert certainly didn’t bring ‘fabric’ of any kind to the Intelligence meetings, if that’s what you mean.”
Charles had felt it his duty to explain. But now he flushed. His superior officer hadn’t mentioned the shred of old cloth. By mentioning it now, in the major’s absence, Charles would be doing his superior officer a disfavor. But it was too late to stop. He explained briefly:
“A few days ago, about ten, an old rancher-prospector came to the base, here, in his Ford.
He had found, somewhere up in the Sawbuck Mountains, a piece of fabric, greenish, with some letters stamped on it in white ink. Stuff had been outdoors quite a while; it was faded. Looked like denim, about that weight. The point was, the lettering was Russian, the man thought.”
“Was it?” Eames asked sharply.
“Yes, sir. Numbers and initial letters.”
“Where is it?”
“In the office safe, I think, sir. Or a security cabinet. Major Blayert thought it of no importance. That is”—Charles felt further embarrassment—“he thought it could have been part of some war trophy or souvenir somebody had brought back from Europe, years ago, after the Second World War. Some piece of Russian equipment. A pillow cover, maybe.
Or wrapping from a box that held something.”
“What did you think, Lieutenant?” the colonel asked.
“It occurred to me, sir, that it could have come from a plane. Accident aloft. Explosive decompression might have ripped out some seat covering. Lining. Something.”
“But the major didn’t agree?”
“No, sir.”
Eames considered. “I’d like to see it. Maybe send it to the Pentagon. It could be more evidence of this sort of business.” He drew a studied breath and went on. “Anyway, appropriate orders for all of you here are being made out, as of now. We’re going, ostensibly, to hold air games. Actually the entire continent is to be scouted by the Air Force, at high altitude, for the next six weeks. During that time, incidentally, there’s to be a change in alerts. Condition Yellow will be confidential, as it used to be years ago.”
“Isn’t that risky?” Major Taylor snapped.
“GHQ thinks not. They’ve got good information lines into Russia, China, the satellite states. No sign of activity. No mobilization. No evidence, from any channel, of large air preparations. Attack is therefore regarded as out of the question. The point is, if Condition Yellow stood as at present, every tenth civilian sky watcher and every other Filter Center would constantly be reporting our own flights: they won’t be announced. Our own planes, then, would touch off hundreds of false alerts; Condition Yellow would flash into every city time and again.
The only way to prevent that is to return to the confidential basis.”
Charles said impulsively, “If the enemy knew, it would make a good opportunity for…
!” The colonel grinned. “It would, if the ‘enemy,’ as you call him, showed any signs now of preparation. But he doesn’t. So the Pentagon feels the plan is safe. The official opinion is that this business of reconnaissance is one more stupid action, one more mere crude breach of ordinary international etiquette. They spar for peace, but they can’t resist the improved chance it gives them to sneak a few photographs.”
“Sounds like them,” Major Taylor grunted.
“Still,” Charles said, “if they wanted to get our planes up, foul our warning system—”
The colonel nodded. “Orders,” he said. “Any more questions, gentlemen?”
There were none. The meeting ended. Colonel Eames walked across his office with Charles. “Bring back the fabric.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And don’t worry, Lieutenant, about the air games and your ‘enemy.’”
“No, sir.”
“I did myself, Chuck, at first. Went through exactly your train of thought. We have to rely on our own Intelligence.”
It was the first time the colonel had ever used Charles’s nickname, even his first name.
Charles was unaware that his commanding officer even knew his whole name. He felt flattered.
But he also perceived that the slight familiarity involved a skillful act. Things at the base were about to tighten up. Half-trained men were going to undertake the work of trained crews. Ships, inevitably, would crash. People would be hurt, and killed. The colonel, almost instinctively, had began to behave with that increased intimacy which danger and morale required.
All Charles replied was, “Yes, sir.”
But the colonel stayed beside him, walking toward the door. “I even called Washington myself, before the meeting,” he said. “I suggested restoring Condition Blue to the alert system, just in case. They thought I was crazy. And I guess I was.” He opened the door because Charles couldn’t, so long as the colonel talked. “I’ll put you in a staff car,” he said. “Long way back to your quarters, and a real cold day.”
Charles thanked him. He saluted and started for one of the cars.
The colonel called, “And about that—material. Appreciate your mentioning it. Proper, under the circumstances.”
A damned good officer, Charles thought, as a sergeant drove him swiftly along the edge of the big field.