Warren Murphy: Encounter Group

"Uh. Ugh. All of them?"

"Starting with America's missile systems."

Amanda suddenly felt very sick. Taking on the U.S. military establishment wasn't exactly an appealing thought.

"There are a lot of missiles," she said weakly. "Hundreds, maybe."

"Thousands. That is why you must organize preparation groups for the task. You will be Preparation Group Leader Amanda Bull. You will recruit the groups. You will direct them. I will supply the tools and advise you."

"Where am I going to get followers?"

"Not far from here are several who will follow you. You have met them. I watched you. And when we descend from the skies, you and I, to fulfill their greatest desire, to make contact with beings from another world, they will follow. Are you agreeable?"

"Yes... definitely," said Amanda, who liked the idea of being in charge of something— especially of something as big as this. "Just one question: are you a man or a woman?"

"On my world, those words are meaningless. I am a person."

And for the second time that night, Amanda Bull smiled. "I'm glad," she had said. "Now I know everything's going to be all right."

* * *

It hadn't been hard to convince the Little Rock, Arkansas chapter of FOES. Not when a spacecraft floated down upon them, as if it were weightless. The World Master had told Amanda that the lightness of the ship was produced by antigravity generators. Solar powered, of course. At first the sky watchers, confronted with the very thing they searched for, scattered in a blind panic. But Amanda called out to them. As the ship alighted, its lights dimming enough for her to be seen, Amanda stepped into view.

"Hey! It's that blonde," someone shouted. "The one with the hair on her nose."

And one by one the others drifted back, while Amanda explained about the World Master from Betelgeuse and the mission she had been given, the mission they were invited to share. Suddenly they weren't frightened anymore. They were eager.

"We want to see him," they shouted like kids at recess. "Let's see the alien."

"Here's not an alien," someone else cut in. "He's what you call an extra-terrestrial."

"No, he's an ancient astronaut."

But when a rectangle of pebbled glass showed suddenly in front of the object on the ground, and the torso of the creature within showed itself weirdly, a hush gripped the group as if they had been asphyxiated. The World Master spoke no words, but everyone saw it wave two hands, and everyone saw that those hands were both on the right side of its body.

"Oh, wow," said Orville Sale. "A real extraterrestrial. A genuine creature from Out There. Hey, everybody! We're all contactees now," meaning that they could claim contact with alien beings.

"Yeah, but I'm not so sure about this missile stuff," said Lester Gex, who ran a secondhand bookstore in Damascus, Arkansas, and who, although a member in good standing with FOES, sometimes thought the group had more than its share of wackos. "What I mean is, this could be serious business. What if we here start disarming America and over there in Russia, they get wind of this and decide this is their chance to blow us all away?"

"The World Master has already explained that to me," Amanda called out quickly. "We're going to operate in secret. Like a commando team. The government will be too embarrassed by our success to dare let any of this get into the papers. That way, the Russians won't know a thing until we begin to work on their weapons."

"I still don't like it," said Lester Gex. "I'm leavin'."

Lester Gex walked ten paces in his Wrangler boots when a silver tube popped out below the port in the spaceship, and a cold blue pencil of light licked out and dropped him in his tracks, a burnhole just over the eighth dorsal vertebra of his back. He never made a sound. He was dead.

"No one must be allowed to interfere with the dawn of the new era of peace and goodness that will be Earth's once we have prepared the human race," the World Master said musically.

"That's right," Amanda Bull said sternly.

"Oooh," a woman said, looking at the body, from which a curl of stinking smoke rose. "It was just like a laser."

"Except it was blue," Orville Sale pointed out. "Lasers are red, so it couldn't have been a laser, even though it burned Les like one."

"Yes, that's right."

After that, there were no more problems.

* * *

That had been a week ago. A week in which to arm and train Preparation Group One and take them out to scout their intended targets. The World Master gave the orders, which were relayed by Amanda Bull. Once each night, she drove out alone to a prearranged spot where the ship was always waiting, to report and receive new orders. The World Master always received her from behind the pebbled glass. Last night Amanda had reported that Preparation Group One was ready. Or, as she put it, "as ready as they're ever going to be."

"Very good, Preparation Group Leader Amanda Bull. Your first target will be the 55th Missile Wing of the United States Air Force. Here are your instructions."

Amanda subsequently learned that a missile "wing" was a loosely grouped cluster of missiles buried in scattered silos. The 55th Wing was deployed in a fan between 30 and 60 miles north of Little Rock. Because the silos, each holding a 103-foot Titan II missile, were deployed over such a wide area, they would have to attack them one at a time, retreat, and move on to the next target. It was not going to be easy, but as Amanda led Preparation Group One to within a few yards of the first missile site without being challenged by anyone, she thought that maybe it would not be all that hard, either.

"Everybody keep down," Amanda hissed to the others.

From the highway, the site seemed to be nothing more than an acre of land, fenced off, in which carefully trimmed grass grew. There were no buildings visible, just the sliding concrete silo roof set low to the ground and, not far from it, another concrete structure that was too squat to be a building. This contained electronic detection devices that were hooked up to the radar scoops set at intervals behind the perimeter fence.

"Those thingies must be radar," whispered Lucy Lamar, a 32-year-old housewife who weighed 169 pounds and looked as if her scalp was growing stubby horns under her knit cap. This was because she hadn't had time to take the curlers out of her hair earlier that evening. Until a week ago, she had fervently believed that flying saucers were the advance force of an invasion fleet that lurked just beyond the moon, waiting for the proper moment to strike— which she knew would be on April 28, 1988, because she had read that in an article in UFO Pictorial Quarterly.

"Yeah," said Amanda. "We don't have to worry about those. They're there to detect incoming missiles."

"Then why aren't they pointed into the sky?" asked Orville Sale. "Look at them. They're all pointing out, not up."

"Maybe they're resting," someone offered hopefully.

"Never mind about the stupid radar," Amanda snapped. "Orville! Get to work on that fence, with the wire cutters. The rest of you cover him."

Orville sneaked forward and attacked the chain links of the fence with the wire cutters while the remainder of the group hunkered together nervously, bunching up in exactly the manner soldiers in Vietnam were taught never to do because one machine gun could take them all out with a single burst.

Orville got seven entire links open and was working on the eighth when a voice called out of the darkness, "You there! This is a government installation. Stand where you are and don't move!"

"A guard!" Amanda said. "Cut him down, somebody."

When no one made a move, Amanda brought her .22 Swift up, sighted and fired. The guard went down, moaning. Probably no one was more surprised than Amanda herself, who had never hit a target in the week since she'd purchased the weapon.