The newspapers didn't know it. On inside pages and bottom corners, the
London papers might refer briefly to the remarkable rumor that had swept
over Greece about an invasion force said to have crossed its border. The
London papers would say that the Greek government officially denied that
such a happening had taken place. The New York papers would be full of a
political scandal among municipal officials, the Washington papers would
deal largely with a Congressional investigation committee hearing, Los
Angeles would have a new and gory murder to exploit, San Francisco news
would be of a waterfront strike, Tokyo would talk of cherry blossoms,
Delhi of Pakistan, and the French press would discuss the political
crisis. But no newspaper, anywhere, would talk about Invaders.
* * * * *
In the United States, radar technicians had been routed out of bed and
informed that night fighters had had a fight with an alien ship manned
by non-humans and had destroyed it, but their radars detected nothing at
all. An hour after sunrise in Naples they had come up with a
combination of radar frequencies which were built to detect everything.
Instructions were going out in code to all radar establishments on how
to set it up on existing equipment. Long before that time, business
machines had begun intricate operations with punched cards containing
all known facts about the people known to have dropped out of sight.
Other machines began to integrate crackpot reports of things sighted in
divers places. The stores of Hunter and Nereid rockets--especially the
remote-control jobs--were broken out. Great Air Transport planes began
to haul them to where they might be needed.
In England, certain establishments that had never been mentioned even in
Parliament were put on war alert. There was frantic scurrying-about in
France. In Sweden, a formerly ignored scientist was called to a
twice-scrambled telephone connection and consulted at length about
objects reported over Sweden's skies. The Canadian Air Force tumbled out
in darkness and was briefed. In Chile there was agitation, and in Peru.
There was earnest effort to secure cooeperation from behind the Iron
Curtain, but that did not work. The Iron Curtain stood pat, demanding
the most detailed of information and the privilege of inspecting all
weapons intended for use against anybody so far unnamed, but refusing
all information of its own. In fact, there was a very normal reaction
everywhere, except that the newspapers didn't know anything to print.
These secret hassles were continuing as the dawnlight moved over Italy
and made Naples and its harbor quite the most beautiful place in the
world. When daylight rolled over France, matters were beginning to fall
into pattern. As daybreak moved across the Atlantic, at least the
measures to be taken began to be visualized and orders given for their
accomplishment.
And then, with sunrise in America, real preparations got under way.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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