Very gently, the Martians selectively erased Jean’s memory so that all she remembered the next morning, when she woke up a half a mile from a Mohave gas station, was that she had been abducted by aliens from another world and taken aboard a flying saucer.
The authorities wanted to put her in a nuthouse, of course. But I sent a squad of lawyers to spring her, since she was under contract to my movie studio. The studio assumed responsibility for her, and my lawyers assured the authorities that she was about to star in a major motion picture. The yokels figured it had all been a publicity stunt and turned her loose. I actually did put her into a couple of starring roles, which ended her career with the IRS, although I figured that not even the feds would have had anything to do with Jean after the tabloids headlined her story about being abducted by flying-saucer aliens. I took good care of her, though. I even married her, eventually. That’s what comes from hanging around with Martians.
See, the Martians have a very high ethical standard of conduct. They cannot willingly hurt anybody or anything. Wouldn’t step on an ant. It’s led to some pretty nasty scrapes for us, though. Every now and then, somebody stumbles onto them, and the whole secret’s in jeopardy. They could wipe the person’s brain clean, but that would turn the poor sucker into a zombie. So they selectively erase only the smallest possible part of the sucker’s memory.
And they always leave the memory of being taken into a flying saucer. They tell me they have to. That’s part of their moral code too. They’re constantly testing us—the whole human race, that is—to see if we’re ready to receive alien visitors from another world. And to date, the human race as a whole has consistently flunked every test.
Sure, a handful of very special people know about them. I’m pretty damned proud to be among that handful, let me tell you. But the rest of the human race, the man in the street, the news reporters and preachers and even the average university professor—they either ridicule the very idea that there could be any kind of life at all on another world or they get scared to death of the possibility. Take a look at the movies we make!
“Your people are sadly xenophobic,” Jazzbow told me more than once, his big liquid eyes looking melancholy despite that dumbbell clown’s grin splitting his face.
I remembered Orson Welles’ broadcast of The War of the Worlds back in ’38. People got hysterical when they thought Martians had landed in New Jersey, although why anybody would want to invade New Jersey is beyond me. Here I had real Martians zipping all over the place, and they were gentle as butterflies. But no one would believe that; the average guy would blast away with his twelve-gauge first and ask where they came from afterward.
So I had to convince the president that if he sent astronauts to the moon, it would have catastrophic results.
Well, my people and Kennedy’s people finally got the details ironed out, and we agreed to meet at Edwards Air Force Base, out in the Mohave. Totally secret meeting. JFK was giving a speech in LA that evening at the Beverly Wilshire. I sent a company helicopter to pick him up there and fly him over to Edwards. Just him and two of his aides. Not even his Secret Service bodyguards; he didn’t care much for having those guys lurking around him, anyway. Cut down on his love life too much.
We agreed to meet in Hangar Nine, the place where the first Martian crew was stashed back in ’46, pretty battered from their crash landing. That’s when I first found out about them. I was asked by Professor Schmidt, who looked like a very agitated young Santa Claus back then, to truck in as many refrigeration units as my company could lay its hands on. Schmidt wanted to keep the Martians comfortable, and since their planet is so cold, he figured they needed mucho refrigeration. That was before he found out that the Martians spend about half their energy budget at home just trying to stay reasonably warm. They loved Southern California! Especially the swimming pools.
Anyway, there I am waiting for the president in good old Hangar Nine, which had been so top secret since ’46 that not even the base commander’s been allowed inside. We’d partitioned it and decked it out with nice furniture and all the modern conveniences.
I noticed that Jazzbow had recently had an interociter installed. Inside the main living area, we had put up a big water tank for Jazzbow and his fellow Martians, of course. The place kind of resembled a movie set: nice modern furnishings, but if you looked past the ten-foot-high partitions that served as walls you saw the bare metal support beams crisscrossing up in the shadows of the ceiling.
Jazzbow came in from Culver City in the same limo that brought Professor Schmidt. As soon as he got into the hangar, he unhooked his exoskeleton and dived into the water tank. Schmidt started pacing nervously back and forth on the Persian carpeting I had put in. He was really wound up tight: letting the president in on this secret was an enormous risk. Not for us, so much as for the Martians.
It was just about midnight when we heard the throbbing-motor sound of a helicopter in the distance. I walked out into the open and saw the stars glittering like diamonds all across the desert sky. How many of them are inhabited? I wondered. How many critters out there are looking at our sun and wondering if there’s any intelligent life there?
Is there any intelligent life in the White House? That was the big question as far as I was concerned.
Jack Kennedy looked tired. No, worse than that, he looked troubled. Beaten down. Like a man who had the
