His rescue was a miracle--though they called it a myth.
I
The legends clustering around the new people began before the war,
while the man who started the group, old Jal Jonnor, was alive, but
they received their greatest circulation during the conflict.
If the war is long and the fighting is bitter, with neither side able
to achieve victory or even a substantial advantage, soldiers eventually
begin to tell strange stories of sights seen when death is near, of
miraculous deliveries from destruction, of impossible ships seen
above the Earth, and even of non-human allies fighting on their side.
Psychologists, given to believing only what they can see, feel, hear,
or measure, generally have credited these stories to hallucinations
resulting from long-sustained stress, or, in the case of the non-human
allies, to plain, wishful thinking rising out of a deep feeling of
insecurity. What psychologist was ever willing to believe that an angel
suddenly took over the controls of a falling fighting plane, righting
the ship and bringing it down to Earth in a crash landing that enabled
the wounded pilot to crawl away, then curing the wound the pilot had
sustained?
Red-Dog Jimmie Thurman swore this happened to him. He had tangled with
an Asian fighter group escorting a hot, high level bomber over the
north pole. This was in the early days of the war when such bombers
still slipped through the defenses occasionally. Red-Dog Jimmie Thurman
had got one of the fighters with a single burst from his guns and
was pushing his jet straight up at the soft belly of the bomber far
overhead when a shell, from an Asian fighter that he had not seen,
knocked off half of his right wing. A fragment of the exploding shell
hit him in the right shoulder, mangling the flesh and the bone.
Spinning like a leaf being whirled over and over in a hurricane, the
plane started the long plunge downward toward the polar ice cap below.
Jimmie couldn't work the seat ejection mechanism because of his broken
arm.
Just before the ship crashed, he realized that someone else was in the
cockpit with him, fighting to take over the controls. Since Jimmie was
still in the seat, this was not easy, but somehow the other one had
managed, not only to take over the controls, but had been able to bring
the ship down in a crash landing. The other one pulled Jimmie out of
the burning wreck. Then, discovering Jimmie's broken, mangled shoulder,
"it" had cured it.
At least this was the story Red-Dog Jimmie Thurman had told after a
helicopter had picked him up and had taken him back to his base. He
was very stubborn about it, defiantly insisting that someone else had
brought the plane down. The only conclusion Jimmie had been able to
reach about the other one in the cockpit with him--he did not know
whether it was male or female--was that it had been one of the new
people.
When the psychos had asked him how another human being could have
gotten into a falling plane while it was still thousands of feet in the
air, Jimmie had had no answer, except to point out that since the new
people were apparently able to accomplish feats beyond the power of an
ordinary mortal, they were probably not human.
This comment had marked him as permanently unfit for flight duty.
Jimmie began to grieve his heart out at this, for he had really loved
flying. Then he began to wonder why the new people--presuming they
existed--would save his life at the cost of his sanity. He went over
the hill a year later.
With Spike Larson it was different. Larson was the commander of an
atomic-powered submarine operating in the Persian Gulf. He was lying
doggo on the bottom waiting for a fat convoy that should be hugging the
shore when three destroyers smelled him out. Larson never knew quite
how they had spotted him, but he was in shallow water and, when the
first depth charges went off, he knew he had to head for the depths.
With charges on the port side making his plates creak, he headed for
the channel. The scanning beam reported rocks dead ahead. Swiftly
checking his charts, he discovered that no such rocks existed.
Cursing, Larson flung the charts across the room. Either they were
wrong or the bottom here had shifted. A boom ahead told him it made no
difference. His escape had been cut off by a destroyer in the channel.
"We'll take her up and fight it out on the surface," he told the
lieutenant with him.
The officer's face went white at the order. But he was a navy man.
"Aye, sir," he said.
"I would recommend otherwise, commander," another voice spoke.
Larson and the lieutenant froze. There was no one else in the control
room. When Larson finally managed to turn his head, he found he was
wrong in his belief that no one else was in the control room.
Telling the story later, to a naval board of inquiry, he said.
"She was standing right there beside me, all in shining white, the
most beautiful woman I have ever seen. I was too dazed to act, too
bewildered to think. A woman on my ship! And what a woman! While I
stood there like a dummy, she stepped forward to the controls. 'With
your permission, commander, there is a new channel close inshore that
does not show on the charts. The bottom here has shifted quite a lot
since this area was last mapped. The destroyers will not dare follow us
into the new channel, even if they know of its existence, because of
the danger from rocks on one side and from sand banks on the other. If
you will give me permission to con the ship--'"
"All I could do was nod," Larson reported to the board of inquiry. "As
it turned out, this was the last command I ever gave in all my life.
She turned the nose of the sub seventy degrees, pulled in the scope,
shut off the depth finders and the sonar, and sent us up until we were
almost breaking the surface. While she was doing all this, she also
dodged two depth charges that should have got us. She scraped paint off
our port bow on a set of rocks that should have snatched the guts out
of us; she dodged a sandy bottom on our starboard where we ought to
have hung up like sitting ducks under the guns of the destroyers, but
she took us out of that hole and into deep water. Then she turned the
controls back to Lieutenant Thompson, and said, 'Thank you, commander.
I'm sure you can handle the situation very competently from now on.'"
The members of the board of inquiry were leaning forward in their
chairs so as not to miss a word of Larson's report. When he had
finished, the senior member, an admiral, asked breathlessly, "And then
what happened to her, commander?"
"She vanished," Larson said.
The admiral collapsed like a punctured balloon.
"Lieutenant Thompson will back up every word I have said," Larson
continued. He shook his head to indicate that he still couldn't
understand it, though he had thought of little else since the day it
had happened.
"Who do you think she was, commander?" a member of the board asked.
"I think she was one of the new people," Larson answered. His voice was
firm but he was still shaking his head when he walked out of the room
where the board had met.
They gave him shore duty. The psychos did all they could for him, but
something seemed to have snapped inside his brain. Eight months later
he deserted.
* * * * *
Then there was the story of Colonel Edward Grant, USAF. Grant was the
only man aboard the new Earth satellite station. He was the only man
aboard because at that time no way had been found to build and to
launch a satellite that would carry more than one passenger. In fact,
no way had been found to do more than launch such a station and get it
into its orbit. It could not return because it could not carry enough
fuel for the return journey. A spaceship was being built which would
carry additional fuel and food supplies to it, but this vessel was not
yet completed when the satellite was launched.
Grant, who had flown everything with wings, volunteered to ride with
the station and put it in its orbit, knowing that when the power was
exhausted he might be marooned in space forever.
However, neither he nor anyone else had anticipated that he would
be marooned. This eventuality had only occurred when the production
demands of the new war forced a halt on the construction of his rescue
ship.
Colonel Grant became the loneliest man in the history of Earth. The
stars were his companions. Only the moon kept him company. He would
remain a lonely Flying Dutchman of the sky, until the end of the
war permitted finishing the ship that would bring him relief. Or
forever--whichever came first.
It was inevitable that the Asians would get the idea that he was spying
on them as he passed in his regular orbit far above their heads. In
reality, this was sheer nonsense; he was much too high to make out any
military details of any importance whatsoever. Also, they were taking
full advantage of his broadcasts of scientific information, which could
be obtained by tuning in to the bands he used.
In an effort to remove this imagined menace from the sky above them,
the Asians fired a rocket torpedo at his satellite.
Colonel Grant, reporting later on what had happened, said, "That
torpedo must have been on its way, when the little man appeared on my
satellite. He told me about the rocket that was coming my way. I told
him this was very interesting but that I didn't see what the hell I
could do about it. The station had no power and couldn't be moved. I
didn't even have a chute, and even if I had had one I couldn't have
used it. Anybody who jumped from that height would have frozen to death
long before he reached enough air to sustain life. Describe the little
man for you? Sure, general. He looked like a miniature Moses, white
beard, glittering eyes and everything else. No, general, I never saw
Moses. Clothes? A loin cloth, general. No, sir I am not making light of
the dignity of this court, I am telling in the words at my command what
I saw happen with my own eyes."
At this point, the colonel's voice became a little stiff. The general
shut up. A man who had done what Grant had done might snap a general's
head off and get away with it.
"What happened next? The miniature Moses told me he was going to land
the satellite. He said that even if they missed with this torpedo they
would be sure to try again, for no reason except to give the morale of
their own people a big boost."
"Land the satellite, colonel?" the general asked again. "But as I
understand it, the station was without power!"
"You understand the situation correctly, general. But that was what he
said and that was what he did. In as neat a landing as I ever saw. And
if you don't believe me, you can go look for yourself."
The space satellite sitting in the middle of a Kansas wheat field was
evidence that could not be ignored. It was solid, it was metal, it was
real. Colonel Grant might have gone wacky from the stress of remaining
too long in space, but the station, at least, had remained sane. Power
must have been used to move it. But what power?
Colonel Grant could not answer the question of what happened to the
miniature Moses after the station had been landed. He flung up his
hands. "Moses went the same way he came, without me seeing him."
On the basis of Grant's report, an investigation was begun. A vast mass
of data was assembled, some of it dating from the time of Jal Jonnor,
but when no practical results were immediately forthcoming, the project
was shelved, at least temporarily. Its manpower was desperately needed
for other purposes. Men fighting for their lives have no time to think
of the future.
This dusty, forgotten mass of data was exhumed by a tall, lean man
named Kurt Zen, a colonel of intelligence, who had a reputation for
daring even among that elite band of men who daily looked death in the
face.
Zen was assigned to this investigation, not only because of his
reputation, but because the stories of the new people had increased in
number to the point where they had to be given some credence. Also,
they became more fantastic in content. For instance, a bomber pilot
insisted that a woman had ridden on the wing of his ship all the way to
Asia, dropping from the plane in the highlands of western China. Zen
regarded this story as obvious hallucination. Much of the data about
the new people belonged in this category. He morosely wondered if it
was possible to tell where reality left off and hallucination began.
The colonel soon discovered that his job was not going to be as easy as
he'd hoped.
Aside from the stories told by the soldiers--and the Asian fighting men
also had their tales to tell--only one thing was certain: if the new
people existed at all, they were very elusive. Only the grave of the
man who had founded the group, old Jal Jonnor, was still to be found in
the high Sierras of California. Zen did not go looking for this grave,
but he saw photographs of it. He also studied the biographies that had
been compiled on this colossal but enigmatical figure. Were the grave
and the thick files the only remaining evidence that at least one
human had dared to dream of a new day? Zen did not think so. Most of
all, he longed to capture one of the new people for questioning.
Then, in a daring coup that was intended to strike a spearhead at the
heart of America, Cuso, the top Asian fighting leader, and thousands
of tough Asian paratroopers floated down into the mountains between
British Columbia and the United States.
Cuso and his men, hiding out in the high mountain ranges, resisted all
efforts to dislodge them. They became a festering thorn in the side
of America, a threat that was not quite big enough to take seriously,
or slight enough to overlook. He was hidden so deep in the mountain
caverns that he could not be bombed out and the terrain was so rugged
that his paratroopers could withstand the assault of a full army.
As his men began making forays into the lower ranges, searching for
food and women, the inhabitants of the area fled in terror.
This was the situation when Kurt Zen accompanied a body of troops up
the last fairly good trail toward Cuso's hidden lair. Neither the
troops nor Cuso really interested him. What interested him was an army
nurse with the medical detachment. He suspected this nurse was one of
the new people.
In months of patient, painstaking work, she was the only good lead to
this group that he had uncovered.
He was going up a steep mountain trail, with troops ahead and behind,
when something that sounded like a wounded lion began to cough in the
sky overhead.