Warning from the Stars | Page 8

of the newspapers.
The Russian ambassador was closeted with the Secretary of State for a record six-hour talk. Then the Soviet Foreign Minister took off for Washington at 30 minutes' notice, and another record was made when he spent all day with the President. The Washington columnists began to hint of lessening tension in the cold war, and the wire services carried reports of Russian radio broadcasts talking of a new era of cooperation between East and West.
Only fragments of the broadcasts could be monitored, because radio reception had suddenly deteriorated right across the world. The reports could not be confirmed because Russia had cut all phone communication with the outside world. There was no possible mode of contact.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, in the United States, television reception was blacking out for hours at a time, with no explanation available. The Civil Aeronautics Administration and the Air Force banned all plane movements under instrument flight conditions, because radar navigational equipment had become so unreliable as to be useless.
Newspapers across the nation were reporting sudden fogs of short duration which baffled local weathermen. The U. S. Weather Bureau in Washington refused to comment.
For the first time in the history of an East-West conference, there was no haggling, no propaganda speeches. Hour after hour, even as the talks went on, the cream of the world's scientific brains quietly continued to disappear, it was revealed later.
In three days, the major powers accomplished what they had failed to do in the previous 15 years. Just 4 days and 21 hours after Forster had first talked to General Morganson at the Pentagon, a treaty was signed ending the world atomic weapons race.
And it had all happened, was over and done, before the people of the globe could realize what was happening, before they could rise in mass panic in the face of the incredible unknown.
Almost immediately after the announcement, radio and radar communications suddenly returned to normal, and reports of the mysterious fogs ceased.
Back at the Center, as he walked down the floodlit ramp of the heliport towards his car, Forster found himself thinking of the experimental work on the dream state which he had performed as a graduate student. He knew that a dream which might take half an hour to recount took only a fraction of a second to occur in the sub-conscious of the sleeper as he awoke.
It was the same way with the events of the last five days; already details were becoming fuzzy and blurred as though they had happened five years ago.
He opened the car door, and the soft glow of the dome light filled the interior.
Then he saw again the neat rectangular discoloration on the seat covers, and the jolt back to reality was almost a physical thing. Relief, overwhelming, flooded over him.
He looked up into the indigo-velvet sky. Above him was the enormous triangle formed by Deneb, Vega, and Altair. Framed within it were a thousand other dimmer stars, but all, he knew, far, far bigger than the speck of solidified gases called Earth.
Somewhere out there, living, thinking, breathing was Bentley.
"Good night," Forster said out loud.
And somehow, he was sure he wasn't talking into thin air.
THE END

Transcriber's Note
This etext was produced from Amazing Science Fiction Stories April 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.

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