“Don’t be so pessimistic, Halwit. We’ve had a couple of dark days lately, and now the sun is finally coming up. They’re willing to negotiate about getting these alien groups together. That can only mean that they couldn’t get the information they wanted from the aliens they had. Once we get all the groups together we’ll see to it that they don’t get that information.”
“Are you sure we can do it,” Halwit asked a bit cynically, “and still get the information we want?”
“Oh, I admit it will be tricky,” the President understated with a laugh, “but it’s worth a try. At least if we both get the same information, it will be a race to see who produces what first.”
“And then?”
The President shrugged. “I’m very much afraid that my sense of prophecy doesn’t stretch quite that far.”
He put the paper down, studied it again for a moment, and then he asked Halwit:
“When is the first meeting set for?”
“They called me just before I came here.” Halwit looked at his watch as he spoke. “Their aliens are being flown here now. We’re to get together with them tonight at the U.N. Center as soon as they arrive. Our aliens are at the U.N. now. They have been questioned steadily by our scientists. As you know, they show a marked reluctance to release any real information until they’re all together. Of course, the Russians don’t know that, which is a definite point in our favor. The situation is critical all right, but I think we can handle it. At least if we can’t, we’ll find out soon enough.”
The heavy Russian bomber dove with a roar at La Guardia field. The pilot gunned his engines and made an initial pass at the main runway, barely thirty feet off the ground, in a grand attempt to show off his prowess as a pilot. He lifted it into an almost vertical climb at the end of the buzzing run, twisted into a tight left bank, and fish tailed down onto the runway against the wind.