At the Jim Williams home in Ferndale, Beth and Ruth, in the kitchen, were busy preparing the feast. A table, groaning already under stacks of plates, side dishes, preserves, jellies, mats for the hot dishes, silver, napery and favors, waited the onslaught of two hungry families. The silver-headed new baby, Irma, was watching the process of a big family dinner for the first time in her life, round-eyed, lying in a baby pen that had plainly contained other infants and also fended them from the world. Irma seemed pleased with the activity, for she smiled often, burped often, and occasionally shook her rattle.
Ted Conner was upstairs helping Bert fix his radio.
The three men, Jim, Henry and Chuck, sat in the living room minding the baby and such other young Williamses as streamed fretfully through the place. They were killing time, talking about the Sister Cities’ biggest Christmas boom in history.
When the phone rang, Ruth pushed open the swinging door. “Get it, Jim, will you? We’re making gravy.”
Jim went into the front hall and soon returned. He looked unhappy. “For you, Hank. Man who sounds upset.”
Henry Conner lumbered into the hall and said cheerfully, half playfully, “Merry Christmas. This is Henry.”
A very shaky voice came to his ears. “Henry Conner?”
“That’s right. Who is it? What’s the—”
“Been trying to reach you for half an hour! This is headquarters. Brock speaking.
Condition Yellow.”
Henry felt as if he’d been hit with a forty-five slug. His knees wobbled and he sat down hard on the hall chair. Then he realized it must be either a gag or some crazy test. If it was a test, it was a terrible time for one. Next, he realized that this sort of situation had been envisaged, and a code designed to cover it, so that only those who knew the code could check back on the announcement. For a moment, the proper words were swept out of his mind. He cudgeled his brain and said, in a voice that was nothing like his own, “How many sacks of potatoes?”
“Maine potatoes,” the voice replied. “And Idahos. I’ve got to break off.”
That was the question. That was the answer. It wasn’t a grim practical joke. It wasn’t a test.
It was Condition Yellow. Real.
So many things happened in his mind that he was astonished by the mere capacity to think of them all.
He would have to leave and so would Ted. Chuck could stay—no—Chuck was “military personnel” and entitled to the information.
It was going to ruin the pre-Christmas party.
And—What in God’s name am I thinking about a party, for? Hashed in his head.
“Condition Yellow,” in its latest construction, meant that enemy airplanes had been recognized over continental U.S.A. It was an alert, currently confidential, which was intended to reach and mobilize all Civil Defense people, police, firemen and other city employees, as well as “key” technicians in industry. For years, for many tedious years of drill, the inhabitants of big cities had planned for Condition Yellow. Henry thought, in the tumbling, muscle-weakening scramble of his mind, that all over America, men like himself, and women, would be reacting the same way to the identical two words.
Condition Yellow.
At the time they’d dreamed up a code to check alerts, Henry had thought the idea absurd.
He was glad now they’d done it. Green Prairie people like himself could at least be sure that CD headquarters—and that meant the military—believed the risk was great enough to warrant the shock and disturbance of a complete but quiet official turnout, on the Saturday before Christmas.
Next Henry thought of the Air Force “exercises” which had been going on for a month.
The probabilities were a hundred to one that some flight of our own bombers, off course somewhere, over California or New York or Alaska—anywhere—had been mistaken for enemy planes. It was a thought that immediately, or soon, Hashed through the minds of some millions of city dwellers who picked up telephones all over U.S.A. and heard the two words: Condition Yellow.
With the skies above the continent crossed and crisscrossed by American flights, how could they be sure? Why wouldn’t spotters be liable to error? After all, there hadn’t been any sign of hostility whatever on the enemy’s part.
Even men at the top of military and Government intelligence agencies—men “cleared” to know all the known facts—hesitated. There had been nothing from behind the Iron Curtain to indicate the assembly of long-range planes, the gassing up, the bombing up, the vast number of activities required to launch a “surprise” attack. If this was “it,” the experts thought almost as one man, the Soviets had outdone the Japs in their surprise onslaught on Pearl.
The experts, however, reacted dutifully. Others did not.
In cities on the West Coast, the East Coast, and in the South and the Middle West, hundreds of thousands of ordinary persons, men and women, ready for Christmas, thinking the world on the verge of assured and eternal peace, decided for themselves. They were not as well indoctrinated in the meaning of duty as the professionals. It had to be an error, these myriads thought-and went back to lunch, to the TV set, to mowing the lawn in Miami and shoveling snow in Detroit.
Not Henry.
When his brother-in-law came into the hall and said, “Something wrong? You’re ghost-white!” Henry smiled and nodded.
“Maybe, Jim. Look. Don’t say anything to the women.
Ask Chuck to step in, willya?”
Charles came. “Lord, Dad! What’s wrong?”
Henry motioned. Charles shut the hall door. His father said, “Just reached me from CD.
Condition Yellow, Chuck.”
The soldier, in the dark blue suit, lost color also. Fear jumped into his eyes and was mastered. His pale lips moved. “That’s—what—I’ve been scared of.”
“You think it could be the McCoy? Or some error …?”
Chuck strode to the phone, snatched it up, thought a moment and dialed. He waited, then set the phone down. “I called Hink Field—on a special number. Busy. So I can’t say. But we can’t take chances now.”
“On the other hand, I’d hate like the devil to scare Beth and Ruth and the kids half to death-and find it was a bloomer.”
“That’s true. Suppose you take our car, and Ted—he’s due to report, isn’t he?—and go.
I’ll try the phone awhile. We can tell the folks it’s a practice-for the moment. I’ll come along—
on Willowgrove, to keep clear of the Christmas crowds—right after dinner.”
“That’ll do,” Henry decided. He bellowed up the stairs, “Hey, Ted! Hurry down! The fools have called a practice alert and you and I have to make tracks!”
The door from the hall into the kitchen flew open. Two indignant women stood there.
“Henry,” Beth said, firmly, “this is really too much!”
“Of all the idiotic ideas, on a Saturday, at dinnertime!” Huth added.
Jim Williams came through the living-room door. “You two stay right here, Hank. This damn fool defense thing has gone too far.”
“Long as I’m in it, I have no choice.” Henry was shrugging into his coat, the blue one with the velvet collar. He threw a meaningful glance at his older son. “I’ll rely on you, Chuck, for everything. Come on, Ted; get cracking.”