Re: YASID: alien ship warning of interstellar war is a con job

On 25 Jun, 21:24, wdst...@xxxxxxxxx (William December Starr) wrote:
[ And before anybody says anything, no, not THE FORGE OF GOD. ]

Over in the "World War Series By Harry Turtledove" thread,

In article <14idnagfM9ZUn-PbnZ2dnUVZ_sbin...@xxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Stephen J. Rush" <sjr...@xxxxxxxxxxx> said:

You could also assume that the alien effort is crippled in some
way. For instance, instead of a planned invasion, you have one
powerful ship that has suffered some disaster and needs a
habitable planet to attempt a self- refit. Vaguely humanlike
aliens might, in that case, try bargaining instead of conquest:
"Help us get home, and the industries we will need to establish
will give you a *HUGE* boost toward becoming a spacefaring
civilization."

Which reminded me of a novel I read in the 1980s, in (I _think_) a
then-uncommon trade paperback volume. I'd spent all these years
vaguely remembering it as a Harry Harrison book, but when I look
through his bibliography today I don't see anything like it. (Nor
in the biblio of my back-up choice, Dean Ing.)

Details herein may be spotty and/or wrong, and of course they
comprise SPOILERS for the novel, whatever it was...

One fine day on contemporary or perhaps slightly near-future Earth,
an alien spaceship comes screaming into Earth's atmosphere, pursued
by a bigger one. Flying low over New York City it clips the edge of
a skyscraper in passing; falling debris kills a young mother and her
child in the baby carriage she was pushing. I can't remember
whether it crashes or (more likely) manages to escape back into
space.

Shortly afterwards, the bigger ship lands and its small contingent
of aliens tells its story of being at war with the Baddies, and
being far from home, damaged, and low on supplies, and hey, would
you guys like to help us out and boost your tech level at the same
time? (Which would be doubly good for humanity because the war's
coming this way.) They negotiate the rights to set up a base in
Antarctica and to get resupplied with consumables, electronics, raw
material, etc. They also tell about having set up a secret base on
the Moon, manned by several hundred of their people.

What with one inconsistency and delay after another, though, the
U.S. gets suspicious about it all. The President authorizes a
secret "If we're wrong about this, we are _so_ fucked" mission to
the aliens' Antarctic base. It involves one of the big
U.S.A.F. cargo planes that have been flying in supplies; this time
some of the crates will contain commando teams. To create cover
and confusion, the pilot deliberately crashes the plane on landing.
I remember (I think) one detail: to add verisimilitude, immediately
after the plane stops moving the intelligence officer who's posing
as co-pilot doses the pilot with knockout-gas and then breaks his
wrist.

(All this with the foreknowledge and consent of the pilot, who'd
been recruited for the mission by the intelligence officer with a
pitch that went something like "We need a volunteer for a mission
that might get a man a little bit killed.")

The commandos attack, advance, and finally get the aliens trapped
behind a reinforced door. After some back-and-forthing, they're
finally convinced that they won't be killed, no matter what Deep
Dark Secret they're concealing in the room, and they surrender. The
D.D.S. turns out to be that they have about an equal number of
Baddies with them, as comrades. There _is_ a war, but all of these
guys are deserters from it, from both sides. All they've got are
their two ships, so they run this con on whatever civilizations they
can while staying as far the hell away as they can from the actual
war.

Oddly, I remember the set-up and the big reveal but how the book
ended. I think that essentially the humans -- or just the U.S.? --
took over both ships, plus the small quantity of automated equipment
that the aliens had set up on the Moon to simulate a well-manned
base if they had to, and ended the book poised to make a nice
tech-level leap into space.

Ring any bells for anyone?


Harry Harrison, _Invasion: Earth_ The USA and the USSR work together
in the investigation.

Cheers,
Nigel.

.

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