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+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | Transcriber's note. | | | | This story was published in _Galaxy_ magazine, June 1960. | | Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the | | U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. | | | +--------------------------------------------------------------+
By EDGAR PANGBORN
The Good Neighbors
You can't blame an alien for a little inconvenience--as long as he makes up for it!
Illustrated by WOOD
The ship was sighted a few times, briefly and without a good fix. It wasspherical, the estimated diameter about twenty-seven miles, and was inan orbit approximately 3400 miles from the surface of the Earth. No oneobserved the escape from it.
The ship itself occasioned some excitement, but back there at thetattered end of the 20th century, what was one visiting spaceship moreor less? Others had appeared before, and gone away discouraged--or justnot bothering. 3-dimensional TV was coming out of the experimentalstage. Soon anyone could have Dora the Doll or the Grandson of Tarzansmack in his own living-room. Besides, it was a hot summer.
The first knowledge of the escape came when the region of Seattlesuffered an eclipse of the sun, which was not an eclipse but a nearshadow, which was not a shadow but a thing. The darkness drifted out ofthe northern Pacific. It generated thunder without lightning and withoutrain. When it had moved eastward and the hot sun reappeared, windfollowed, a moderate gale. The coast was battered by sudden high waves,then hushed in a bewilderment of fog.
Before that appearance, radar had gone crazy for an hour.
The atmosphere buzzed with aircraft. They went up in readiness to shoot,but after the first sighting reports only a few miles offshore, thatorder was vehemently canceled--someone in charge must have had a grainof sense. The thing was not a plane, rocket or missile. It was ananimal.
If you shoot an animal that resembles an inflated gas-bag with wings,and the wingspread happens to be something over four miles tip to tip,and the carcass drops on a city--it's not nice for the city.
The Office of Continental Defense deplored the lack of precedent. Butactually none was needed. You just don't drop four miles of dead ordying alien flesh on Seattle or any other part of a swarming homeland.You wait till it flies out over the ocean, if it will--the mostcommodious ocean in reach.
It, or rather she, didn't go back over the Pacific, perhaps because ofthe prevailing westerlies. After the Seattle incident she climbed to agreat altitude above the Rockies, apparently using an updraft with verylittle wing-motion. There was no means of calculating her weight, ormass, or buoyancy. Dead or injured, drift might have carried heranywhere within one or two hundred miles. Then she seemed to befollowing the line of the Platte and the Missouri. By the end of the dayshe was circling interminably over the huge complex of St. Louis,hopelessly crying.
She had a head, drawn back most of the time into the bloated mass of thebody but thrusting forward now and then on a short neck not more thanthree hundred feet in length. When she did that the blunt turtle-likehead could be observed, the gaping, toothless, suffering mouth fromwhich the thunder came, and the soft-shining purple eyes that searchedthe ground but found nothing answering her need. The skin-color wasmud-brown with some dull iridescence and many peculiar marks resemblingweals or blisters. Along the belly some observers saw half a mile ofpaired protuberances that looked like teats.
She was unquestionably the equivalent of a vertebrate. Two web-footedlegs were drawn up close against the cigar-shaped body. The vast, rathernarrow, inflated wings could not have been held or moved in flightwithout a strong internal skeleton and musculature. Theorists laterargued that she must have come from a planet with a high proportion ofwater surface, a planet possibly larger than Earth though of about thesame mass and with a similar atmosphere. She could rise in Earth's air.And before each thunderous lament she was seen to breathe.
It was assumed that immense air sacs within her body were inflated orpartly inflated when she left the ship, possibly with some gas lighterthan nitrogen. Since it was inconceivable that a vertebrate organismcould have survived entry into atmosphere from an orbit 3400 miles up,it was necessary to believe that the ship had briefly descended,unobserved and by unknown means, probably on Earth's night-side. Lateron the ship did descend as far as atmosphere, for a moment ...
St. Louis was partly evacuated. There is no reliable estimate of theloss of life and property from panic and accident on the jammed roadsand rail lines. 1500 dead, 7400 injured is the conservative figure.
After a night and a day she abandoned that area, flying heavilyeastward. The droning and swooping gnats of aircraft plainly distressedher. At first she had only tried to avoid them, but now and then duringher eastward flight from St. Louis she made short desperate rushesagainst them, without skill or much sign of intelligence, screaming froma wide-open mouth that could have swallowed a four-engine bomber. Twoaircraft were lost over Cincinnati, by collision with each other intrying to get out of her way. Pilots were then ordered to keep adistance of not less than ten miles until such time as she reached theAtlantic--if she did--when she could safely be shot down.
She studied Chicago for a day.
By that time Civil Defense was better prepared. About a millionresidents had already fled to open country before she came, and the lossof life was proportionately smaller. She moved on. We have no clue tothe reason why great cities should have attracted her, thoughapparently they did. She was hungry perhaps, or seeking help, or merelydrawn in animal curiosity by the endless motion of the cities and thestrangeness. It has even been suggested that the life forms of herhomeland--her masters--resembled humanity. She moved eastward, andreligious organizations united to pray that she would come down on oneof the lakes where she could safely be destroyed. She didn't.
She approached Pittsburgh, choked and screamed and flew high, and soaredin weary circles over Buffalo for a day and a night. Some pilots who hadfollowed the flight from the West Coast claimed that the vastlamentation of her voice was growing fainter and hoarser while she wasdrifting along the line of the Mohawk Valley. She turned south,following the Hudson at no great height. Sometimes she appeared to bechoking, the labored inhalations harsh and prolonged, like a cloud inagony.
When she was over Westchester, headquarters tripled the swarm ofinterceptors and observation planes. Squadrons from Connecticut andsouthern New Jersey deployed to form a monstrous funnel, the small endbefore her, the large end pointing out to open sea. Heavy bombers closedin above, laying a smoke screen at 10,000 feet to discourage her fromrising. The ground shook with the drone of jets, and with her crying.
Multitudes had abandoned the metropolitan area. Other multitudes trustedto the subways, to the narrow street canyons and to the strength ofconcrete and steel. Others climbed to a thousand high places andwatched, trusting the laws of chance.
She passed over Manhattan in the evening--between 8:14 and 8:27 P.M.,July 16, 1976--at an altitude of about 2000 feet. She swerved away fromthe aircraft that blanketed Long Island and the Sound, swerved again asthe southern group buzzed her instead of giving way. She made no attemptto rise into the sun-crimsoned terror of drifting smoke.
The plan was intelligent. It should have worked, but for one fighterpilot who jumped the gun.
He said later that he himself couldn't understand what happened. It wascourt-martial testimony, but
his reputation had been good. He was BillGreen--William Hammond Green--of New London, Connecticut, flying aone-man jet fighter, well aware of the strictest orders not to attackuntil the target had moved at least ten miles east of Sandy Hook. Hesaid he certainly had no previous intention to violate orders. It wassomething that just happened in his mind. A sort of mental sneeze.
His squadron was approaching Rockaway, the flying creature about threemiles ahead of him and half a mile down. He was aware of saying out loudto nobody: "Well, she's too big." Then he was darting out of formation,diving on her, giving her one rocket-burst and reeling off to the southat 840 MPH.
He never did locate or rejoin his squadron, but he made it somehow backto his home field. He climbed out of the cockpit, they say, and fellflat on his face.
It seems likely that his shot missed the animal's head and tore throughsome part of her left wing. She spun to the left, rose perhaps athousand feet, facing the city, sideslipped, recovered herself andfought for altitude. She could not gain it. In the effort she collidedwith two of the following planes. One of them smashed into her rightside behind the wing, the other flipped end over end across her back,like a swatted dragonfly. It dropped clear and made a mess on Bedloe'sIsland.
She too was falling, in a long slant, silent now but still living. Afterthe impact her body thrashed desolately on the wreckage betweenLexington and Seventh Avenues, her right wing churning, then onlytrailing, in the East River, her left wing a crumpled slowly deflatingmass concealing Times Square, Herald Square and the garment district.
At the close of the struggle her neck extended, her turtle beak graspingthe top of Radio City. She was still trying to pull herself up, as thebuoyant gasses hissed and bubbled away through the gushing holes in herside. Radio City collapsed with her.
For a long while after the roar of descending rubble and her own roaringhad ceased, there was no human noise except a melancholy thunder of theplanes.
The apology came early next morning.
The spaceship was observed to descend to the outer limits of atmosphere,very briefly. A capsule was released, with a parachute timed to open at40,000 feet and come down quite neatly in Scarsdale. Parachute, capsuleand timing device were of good workmanship.
The communication engraved on a plaque of metal (which still defiesanalysis) was a hasty job, the English slightly odd, with some evidenceof an incomplete understanding of the situation. That the visitors werethemselves aware of these deficiencies is indicated by the text of themessage itself.
Most sadly regret inexcusable escape of livestock. While petting same, one of our children monkied (sp?) with airlock. Will not happen again. Regret also imperfect grasp of language, learned through what you term Television etc. Animal not dangerous, but observe some accidental damage caused, therefore hasten to enclose reimbursement, having taken liberty of studying your highly ingenious methods of exchange. Hope same will be adequate, having estimated deplorable inconvenience to best of ability. Regret exceedingly impossibility of communicating further, as pressure of time and prior obligations forbids. Please accept heartfelt apologies and assurances of continuing esteem.
The reimbursement was in fact properly enclosed with the plaque, and maybe seen by the public in the rotunda of the restoration of Radio City.Though technically counterfeit, it looks like perfectly good money,except that Mr. Lincoln is missing one of his wrinkles and the words"FIVE DOLLARS" are upside down.
--EDGAR PANGBORN