By David S. F. Portree

All contents Copyright 1996-99 David S. F. Portree

At about 1450 GMT on April 19, 1951*, a spaceship entered Earth's atmosphere over the North Pacific Ocean. The saucer-shaped craft slowed to 6400 kilometers per hour at a cruise altitude of 61,000 meters. It passed over the battlefields of Korea, where American radar operators became the first humans to detect its arrival, then turned toward Hong Kong, where the British obtained the first accurate estimate of its speed. Traveling westward, it passed over China, the Himalayas, northern India, Persia, southern Russia, central and western Europe, and the North Atlantic in rapid succession, and slowed as it approached the east coast of North America. 

At 2047 GMT the ship landed on the Mall in Washington, D.C., U.S.A. Two hours later a humanoid alien named Klaatu emerged and was immediately shot down. The craft's Gort robot emerged and vaporized several tanks and artillery pieces before Klaatu ordered him to desist. Klaatu refused a meeting with President Harry Truman, explaining that his message concerned all of humanity and could not be given to any one leader without exacerbating Earth's "petty squabbles." He then attempted to negotiate a summit of all world leaders, but this effort fell afoul of geopolitics. 

Klaatu escaped from military custody on April 20. He befriended 11-year-old Robert Benson and his mother, Helen Benson, and met with astrophysicist Milton Barnhardt. On April 24 the emissary from space demonstrated his power by stopping almost all electrical devices on Earth for 30 minutes. Electrical systems which could not shut down without harm continued to operate as normal until the threat of harm was removed - for example, a DC-3 making approach to Las Vegas, Nevada operated normally until its wheels stopped rolling, then lost power. History thus knows April 24, 1951, as "The Day the Earth Stood Still." After being shot to death and resurrected, Klaatu shared his message with scientists Barnhardt had called together from all over the world. 

Humanity, said Klaatu, lived in a Community of Planets made peaceful by a police force of Gort robots. The Gorts were entrusted with irrevocable authority to destroy races that launched aggression against other inhabited planets. Klaatu invited humanity to join the Community. If, however, humanity chose to use atomic power and rockets to threaten other planets, the Gorts would destroy Earth. Klaatu then boarded the spaceship and left Earth behind. 
Klaatu's warning sent shockwaves around the world. By landing in Washington, he implied U.S. superiority, something which neither Stalin's Russia nor Mao's China was willing to accept. Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose demagogic subversion of the U.S. justice system in the name of flushing out communist infiltrators had just begun, added to his hit list suspected "alien sympathizers," including Professor Barnhardt, Helen Benson, and many science fiction writers. In April 1952, exactly one year after Klaatu's arrival, Russian-born Columbia University biochemist and science fiction author Isaac Asimov was made to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Speaking in a thick Brooklyn accent, Asimov masterfully humiliated McCarthy, setting the maverick congressman on the road to censure by the House in August and sudden downfall. 

The 1956 presidential election was the first in which aliens were a campaign issue. Adlai Stevenson of Illinois defeated Dwight Eisenhower by capitalizing on the old general's inability to respond to Klaatu's invitation and warning in a manner sufficiently reassuring to Americans. In all fairness, President Eisenhower should be credited with establishing the National Alien Study Administration (NASA), which was charged with an intensive effort to study Klaatu's technology and gather information on the Community of Planets. Stevenson appointed Dr. Asimov his cabinet-level Advisor on Alien Affairs in March 1957. Asimov was a co-founder with Helen Benson of a citizens group called The Friends of Klaatu. By mid-1957, the FK had a membership of more than a million people. 

In June 1957, the Soviet Union launched a prototype intercontinental ballistic missile. Intelligence sources informed Stevenson that the Soviet Union might launch an Earth-orbiting satellite carrying an atomic bomb within months. Asimov advised that it was difficult to predict how the Gort robots would respond. Stevenson immediately placed U.S. military forces on full alert and demanded that the Soviet Union desist from provoking Earth's annihilation. People around the world supported the U.S. position - in Egypt and India, for example, Soviet embassies were burnt to the ground. After much bluster, Nikita Kruschev was forced, on October 4, 1957, to renounce all plans to militarize outer space. 

Soon after, in January 1958, Kruschev was ousted by a new faction within the Kremlin. Known as the Zvezdniki, it consisted of leading Soviet scientists, many of whom had suffered in Stalin's purges in the years before the Second World War. Their leader was Sergei Korolev, the rocket scientist responsible for the missile which precipitated the June crisis. Initial concerns in Washington were ameliorated by Korolev's offer to meet with Stevenson. 

The first summit between the two leaders took place June 17-20, 1958, in Portland, Maine. Asimov and Korolev got along well, not least because Korolev was a fan of Asimov's science fiction stories. Korolev desired to explore and settle the universe in the manner described by Russian space theorist Konstantin Tsiolkovskii (1858-1933). Since hearing of the advanced technology possessed by Klaatu's Community of Planets, he had grown increasingly impatient with clumsy rockets. Korolev proposed a joint U.S.-Soviet effort to understand and duplicate the Community's technology and to determine Klaatu's point of origin. In October 1958, Soviet Premier Korolev traveled to Washington to address a joint session of Congress, an event unimaginable only a year before. 

On October 19, 1958, Stevenson and Korolev signed a treaty calling for joint analysis and duplication of the Community's technological capabilities. Then the two leaders spoke before the UN General Assembly, and enlisted the assistance of other nations in the project. The efforts of the Friends of Klaatu and young Senator John Kennedy were essential to the treaty's ratification on December 20, 1958. 

On April 20, 1960, a team of Soviet and American researchers led by Dr. Barnhardt managed to levitate a 2-ton "space motor" two feet above the ground for 12 seconds at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia. According to Barnhardt's memoirs (1969): "Klaatu offered us few insights into his science, but the knowledge that anti-gravity was possible, and indeed, was employed routinely by the Community of Planets, fueled our determination to see our research through to a successful conclusion." 

In the 1960 election, Adlai Stevenson chose John Kennedy as his running mate against Eisenhower's vice-president, Richard Nixon. On January 28, 1961, days after Stevenson's second inaugural, a robot space saucer lifted off from Langley on course for the planet Mars. Its mission: to determine if the planet was home to Klaatu's civilization. Many astronomers believed that the Red Planet was too harsh to support intelligent life. The probe confirmed this. A probe launched to Venus in March found that planet to be a furnace shrouded in acid clouds. 

Dr. Asimov advised President Stevenson that Klaatu's Community of Planets probably spanned the stars. If one took Klaatu at his word and accepted that he had traveled only 250 million miles in 5 months to reach Earth, then it was reasonable to assume that his spacecraft used a hyperspace "jump" drive which radically foreshortened interstellar distances. Stevenson reported this to Korolev, whose response was logical, if unexpected. If no one is at home on Mars, he said, then let us explore and settle the planet. If, in future, Earth inadvertently provoked the wrath of the Gorts, then a Mars settlement might survive to perpetuate the human species. 

Korolev and Stevenson met in Kiev on April 12, 1961, to sign a treaty launching a joint expedition to the planet Mars. If the expedition was able, it would press on to Jupiter to be certain the Community of Planets maintained no outposts there. Future expeditions would explore Mercury and the outer planets. Meanwhile, work began to duplicate Klaatu's hyperspace drive. 

The First Mars Expedition left Earth on June 30, 1963. Yuri Gagarin commanded the Soviet saucer Vostok, while the American saucer Freedom was commanded by John Glenn. The commanders emerged simultaneously onto the red dunes at Mars' north pole on July 20, 1963. After charting Mars for the first time, the expedition pressed on to Jupiter. The giant planet turned out to be a maelstrom of gas and radiation lacking any solid surface. The four Galilean moons were intriguing, but utterly uninhabited. Asimov's hypothesis that Klaatu's people came from the stars gained additional credence.

The expedition showed that Americans and Russians could work together. The new partnership between old adversaries catalyzed a sea-change in global relations. The Mars colonization program commenced soon after, with the first international base opened at Alba Patera in May 1964. Field parties found Mars to be rich in minerals which could provide a basis for a martian colonial economy and help relieve shortages expected to begin soon on Earth. Meanwhile, human saucers pressed outward to Saturn. 
John Kennedy won the presidency in 1964, and was inaugurated just in time to authorize the transport of 500 settlers to the martian colonies. He won re-election in 1968, and his brother Robert Kennedy won election in 1972. By the time Robert Kennedy moved into the White House, the population of Mars was more than 20,000, and about 5000 people inhabited Jupiter's moon Ganymede. In July 1976, saucers at last reached Pluto. Robert Kennedy was re-elected in 1976. 

In October 1979, an international team of researchers working in Budapest published a paper describing the workings of Klaatu's hyperspace drive. Early in 1980, a hyperspace probe jumped to Alpha Centauri and returned. 
Starting about 1965, Robert Benson, the man who as a boy befriended Klaatu, gradually assumed leadership of the Friends of Klaatu from his mother. He was elected to the Senate in 1976 on an "Interstellar Ticket," and ran as the Community Party's candidate for president in 1980. In January 1981, Benson was sworn in as President of the United States. 

Sadly, one of his first responsibilities was to attend the funeral of Sergei Korolev in Moscow. After paying his respects, President Benson addressed the solar system from Red Square. "The time has come," he said, "for humanity to answer Klaatu's invitation to join the Community of Worlds." Twenty minutes later, his words reached the burgeoning Mars colonies; 5 hours after that, research teams on Pluto heard them. In July 1982, for the first time in history, all humanity voted in a referendum and affirmed Benson's call. 

Humanity was ready but uncertain how to proceed. Dr. Asimov, who had long since returned to his first love, writing science fiction, suggested broadcasting to the Community a request for admission. A powerful transmitter was established on the moon, and a recorded request was broadcast continuously beginning on September 1, 1982. 
On November 12, 1982, a saucer ship appeared on the fringes of the solar system. On January 23, 1983, it settled onto the same spot on the Mall in Washington that it had left almost 32 years before. President Benson and more than 200 other world leaders and dignitaries waited at the foot of the saucer's extruded ramp while Klaatu emerged, looking scarcely older than he had in 1951. The alien strode down the ramp and took Benson's hand while a Gort surveyed the scene impassively. 

1999 sees human and alien saucers plying the spaceways between stars. While Klaatu's people are humanoid, others are exotically alien in form and outlook. Humans live and learn and trade under a hundred different suns. Gorts patrol as they have for millenia, remorselessly enforcing peace throughout the known galaxy.

Last revised on November 14, 1999.
* Some dates changed to those in the Timeline.

For more Alternate Histories written by D.F. Portree follow this link to http://members.aol.com/dsportree/alternate.htm