Free Earth Has Been Found by D. F. Jones Page A

minimal coverage.
    Scientific and science fiction circles were amazed and totally baffled. Among scientists, the burning question was how it was done — and, that answered, who was doing it. Did no one have the faintest idea where the Research and Development had gone on, or who had been involved in it? Without the solid evidence of the Jumbo, most men of learning would have dismissed the whole affair out of hand.
    *
    It was elsewhere, chiefly in the Third World, that political reaction was strongest. Several heads of state, never famous for benevolence to their own people, raised holy hell at this latest example of capitalistic infringement on human rights. The imperialistic hawks, they screamed, admitted the Jumbo incident had been a mistake; a non-American airplane could as easily have been the victim of their irresponsible activities. A powerful lobby demanded and got an emergency meeting of the UN General Assembly.
    Hardly anything kills popular interest in a topic as quickly as discussion in the UN. A football score gets more attention than a whole month of the General Assembly’s deliberations. The man in the street hardly knew of the Jumbo debate, and if he knew he didn’t care.
    But there was one curious feature in the so-called debate. The Soviet bloc took no part in lambasting the U.S., and, along with most of the Western world, abstained from voting. The resolution was passed, but the massive abstentions rendered it, even by UN standards, a waste of time.
    The Soviet attitude puzzled Washington and the ICARUS Ten. They had told the Soviet Seven in advance of the time warp cover plan, and expected the Russians to make what capital they could in debate. Yet …
    The reason became obvious a few days later. A second-lead article in Pravda casually referred to the ideological aspect of Soviet space-time thought. There followed a great deal of indigestible prose; but for those that sifted through the dross, a few nuggets of gold emerged, notably a reference to “the need for Soviet pioneers in this new field to found their labors on sound Marxist-Leninist principles.”
    Whatever it conveyed to Pravda’s native readers, its significance was not lost on Western intelligence: rather coyly, the USSR had let it be known they too were in the time warp business. To the ICARUS Ten it meant something else. Either the Soviets were giving them discreet backing, or they were taking care not to be upstaged by the U.S. in the possession of this entirely contrived power.
    Either way the ICARUS Committee was satisfied. The prime, fearful question remained unanswered, but at least the Jumbo incident, if not closed, was under control. The President, who had some private pull with the Fourth Estate, got the cooperation of the media.
    Neither he nor anyone else could stop enterprising free-lance investigators from probing for the secret of the fantastic time warp machine, but the committee lost no sleep over the efforts of these diligent reporters. The real secret was that the machine didn’t exist.
    A few of the time travelers wrote pieces for the press — “My Lost Three Months” was one of the better titles — but few were published or featured on TV. None of them had anything sensational to say. Government lawyers were in the process of negotiating out-of-court settlements of claims, but small cash advances had been made. That helped to keep everybody happy — and quiet.
    The committee remained watchful and apprehensive, hoping against hope that there would be no more Events, comforted by the fact that no other planes had vanished in ICARUS conditions. They were also pleased that no word had come from Mark Freedman. The Soviet silence regarding the Ilyushin’s crew cast a small shadow, but with so much else to sweat about the subject was not pursued.
    If anyone had asked Frank Arcasso, Alvin Malin, or CIA Joe how he felt about ICARUS, the answers could have been summed up in two words: worried and frightened.
    They had no