Warning from the Stars | Page 8

a lot more worried than I am except we
have the first indications that the other side is in the same boat. I broke
every regulation in the book last night when I talked to Malinowski. I
took the liberty of warning him, on the basis that there was nothing to
lose. His reaction then was that it was all a Wall Street-capitalist

plot--'psychological warfare,' he called it.
"He phoned me an hour ago. Sounded as though he'd just seen a ghost.
He said the Russian ambassador had asked for an appointment with the
Secretary of State this morning...."
Forster, bewildered and out of his depth in these global problems, let
the flood of words pour over him.
Then he realized that Morganson was staring at him over the telephone
receiver at his ear, and that the room was very quiet.
Then Morganson said respectfully: "Very well, Mr. President. We'll
have Doctor Forster there."
Forster was relegated to the sidelines after his interview with the
grave-faced man in the White House. Events were moving
swiftly--events which Forster could read behind the blurred black
headlines 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.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Warning from the Stars, by
Ron Cocking
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WARNING
FROM THE STARS ***
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