Fox B. Holden

“ Silently, Steele took the folder. There was an expectant look on Zukow's flushed face as his superior read the brief message. Then Steele looked up.
"No," he said. "It's not a Notification of Error and Correction. Simply a follow-up directive ordering all recalled craft to navigate the final ten thousand miles of their Earth-approaches in intervals of not less than twenty minutes each. Seems the Invaders have their entire headquarters and supply set-up in a mother-ship circling Earth—and they aren't taking any chances." ”

“ General Taylor sank into his chair and stared at them, a grim hopelessness in his eyes.
Then the newsmen walked from the room. Slowly and silently.
Robert Manning, civilian Pentagon clerk, told himself that the Invaders might better kill everybody off and get it over with than to just regiment the hell out of everything. A man couldn't even stay home so his wife could take care of his cold for him. ”

“ Taylor said wearily, leaning across the desk, his knuckles white against the smooth surface. "I could talk about our stressing of cultural advancement in this 21st century, rather than technological ... a trend that has always made us of the military fearful of the future—now at hand—but what's the use of rehashing problems of the past.... Plainly and simply, gentlemen, the Invader is superior to us in every phase of known warfare. ”

“ We're the smallest and newest unit there is, so we'd lie right at the bottom, page fifteen. But we're not there. We're not listed at all, sir."
He looked. Grady was right. And OK'd and signed by Taylor himself, no mistaking that.
"Get Major Zukow, sergeant. On the double!"
"Yes, sir!" The communications non-com stumbled awkardly; acclimatization to lesser gravities came quickly only with long experience. He recovered, and then in a curious loping fashion began to run.
For terse seconds Steele spoke clipped words into a unit-communicator. And then he waited for Zukow. ”

“ And yet, somehow, it seemed always worth the venture. One day, no matter the cost or the hurt, men's outposts would be flung to the stars themselves. This thing he knew.
The sergeant was speaking, and there was a fear in his eyes.
"Something's—happened, home, sir. You'd better read this right away. All the way to the very end, sir."
Steele ran a freckled, stub-fingered hand slowly and deliberately along the close-cropped iron-gray side of his squarish skull.
Attention all stations, the message read. URGENT IMPERATIVE. Earth has been successfully invaded. ”

“ With Earth at stake, Taylor would allow no such error. Taylor knew every one of his units by heart, he must....
He thought about Taylor. He thought about him the way he had known him as both soldier and individual, as general and as a man. Character. Principle. Guts. The three biggest things about Taylor. A man who followed orders to the letter—a man who would surrender of his own volition, no matter what price to pay the piper ... ”

“ With a planetful of people in the balance. Sir, do you think Taylor's a lunatic or something?"
Steele groped for an answer that would take the cold logic out of Zukow's questions. The exec had to be wrong. There must be an answer.
"Zukow," he heard himself saying at last, "there were only three of our craft out today—all behind the Big Boy, and I've ordered them in—damped, and clammed up. I've grounded the rest. And if we don't get anything from communications within the next couple of hours, like a Notification of Error and Correction—"
"You must be out of your head, Colonel." ”

“ The rapidity, timing, and infallibility of the attack has made the necessity of immediate capitulation unquestionable. The following-listed units are therefore commanded, for the good of the planet, to return to home Earth bases at once, with all armament either completely dismantled or destroyed. The conquerors have warned that failure to comply with this command will result in wholesale liquidation of Earth's populace.
The long list of outposts followed for fifteen closely-spaced pages. ”

“ Force: 20 Lancer-type J-88 destroyers. Complement: 600. Commanding: Col. Geofferey Steele—
He felt his insides turning to cold jelly. He would have to call Sweeney. God! Sweeney would skin him alive. Somehow, the tail ends of one of the double-wound reels must have stuck out a little, got sliced neatly off when he'd hastily jammed its pan-cover back on after inspecting it. Then the severed squares of microfilm had slipped down, unnoticed, through one of the desk-top cracks where the sonotyper fold-away unit was. ”

“ There was a sickness in his stomach, and he knew it was not from his cold.
"Manning—"
He looked up. It was Sweeney, the chief clerk. Manning always thought of him as a man who should've been a first-sergeant somewhere. He was big enough and loud enough, and certainly had temper enough.
"Yes, Mr. Sweeney?"
"Need these damn records right away. They all here? Each reel double-wound with positive and negative both?"
"Yes, sir." Sweeney picked up the bundlesome stack of microfilm reels. "Mr. ”