Signal to Ground

At about ten o'clock at night in Lincoln West Bunker, five miles from the front, radio Mike Jackson jumped out of his seat and quickly tore off the headphone jack from the console.

"Jesus Mike," said Private Schwartz, the only other person present in the cramped and darkroom.

Jackson stared at the radio. "I can't believe it," he said.

"For Christ's sake, Mike, what's the matter?" Said Schwartz.

"Strangers are dying," Jackson said. "They are all dying."

"Do you have peanuts?"

"There was a voice," said Jackson. "The voice said they were dying."

Schwartz looked at the hanging phone. "Connect the bad thing again."

Jackson jumped on it. He put the headphones on his ears. "No," he said, "no."

"What now?"

"It's gone," Jackson said, putting his face in his hands. "I lost."

"Probably never," Schwartz said.

"You don't believe me?"

Schwartz shook his head. "For eight months we've been fighting these things, since they lasted, and during all that time no one has seen slugs without their machines, alive or dead. Hell, not even nukes have scratched them. You tell me they fall like flies? I don't buy them."

"I heard," said Jackson, opening the phone.

"You heard something," Schwartz said, "maybe a game, or a trick."

"A trick?"

"Who knows what those things will try to do."

"No," Schwartz said, "this was true. The reporter--"

"Journalist?" Said Schwartz. "There are no journalists out there."

"I heard it," Jackson said again.

Schwartz sighed. "We have to pass it on," he said.

"I was saying you don't believe me?"

"I don't do it. Anyway, we have to report it."

Jackson pulled out a typewriter. His hands rested a little on the keys. Everything was done in person now. Computers, electronic signals of any kind, were the sole domain of the attacker.

"What shall I say?"

"Say what you heard," Schwartz said. "You have heard what you think," he added.

Jackson bit his lips. He wrote, and when he finished the message he marked it urgently and passed it on to the runner in the hallway. "Performance," he commanded, "the best."

"You can hear it again," Schwartz said, "and you start recording."

Ten minutes later the door opened and Captain Richards came in. "What's the news?" he said.

Schwartz started talking but was interrupted by Jackson showing excitement. "She's back," he said. "It's back."

"Report man," said the Captain.

"Private Jackson has received a referral," Schwartz said, "that the aliens are dying."

"Are you dying?"

"I'm recording," Jackson said, gripping the tape reel. "I'm recording."

"Let me listen," said Richards.

Jackson dropped the headphones. Richards stayed. Schwartz and Jackson bustled about.

For a few seconds, Richards listened. He then slowly pulled out the headphones. With his face in his hands, he rolled forward so that his forehead touched the top of the console.

Jackson and Schwartz exchanged looks.

Richards stayed. She ran her hand through her hair. Wama.

"Sorry guys," "that's not what you thought."

"Sir?"

"A radio program," said Richards. "I once heard it as a child. World War is its theme."

"You're right--" Jackson began.

"It's a story," said Richards. "A drama, in which aliens invade the earth and are killed by native germs. A thing of the past."

"But where does it come from?" Said Schwartz. "No one is broadcasting."

"Who knows," said Richards. At the door he paused. "I once heard a story. Some radio couples in the old days first heard a radio that was decades old. They thought the signals were out of space and sometimes collided with an object, a planet, the moon, even, and jumped back to Earth."

"An old word," said Jackson. His shoulders slipped.

"You're doing a good job," said Richards. "Go ahead."

After the captain left, there was a long silence. Jackson went back to his headphones. Schwartz monitors the radar.

"I told you," he said, later, but not so much that Jackson heard.

Outside, the war continued unabated.