The Complete Serials

by Clifford D. Simak

  “How should I know?”

  “Who would know? Goddamn it, Jack, if I’m going to be fronting for the administration in this matter, I should know.”

  “Intelligence, I assume,” said Clark. “Maybe the CIA. Maybe the FBI.”

  “Under the circumstances, would anyone tell me?”

  “I doubt it,” Clark said.

  8. MINNEAPOLIS

  Garrison said to Jim Gold, “Has Kathy come on the line yet?”

  “No,” said Gold. “Stiffy Grant still is holding. He did a lot of talking to start with, but now we’ve run out of things to say. Gave me a pretty good description of the object. Told me something about the Lone Pine reaction to it. I turned it all over to Jackson. He turned in the story just a while ago.”

  Gold picked up the phone and spoke into it. “Mr. Grant, are you still there?”

  He listened for a moment and then laid down the phone. “He’s still there,” he said.

  Garrison sat down at his desk, picked up the copy of the first edition that a copy aide had left on his typewriter, spread it out to look at the front page.

  The headline said: SPACE OBJECT LANDS IN MINNESOTA.

  There was nothing but stories concerning the space object on the page—the main story; a sidebar on Lone Pine reaction supplied by Frank Norton; a story from the governor’s office; a statement by the head of the state highway patrol; a piece out of the Tribune’s Washington bureau; a speculative story written by Jay Kelly, exploring the possibility of intelligent life throughout the universe and the odds against the Earth being visited by one of the life forms; a map showing the location of Lone Pine.

  A good first effort, he told himself. Now if Kathy would only check in and Frank’s pictures show up.

  He asked Annie, “Any word from the fellow with the film?”

  “He phoned ten minutes ago,” the secretary told him. “From Anoka. Called when he stopped for gas.” Garrison glanced at the clock on the wall at the end of the newsroom. 10:05. There was still plenty of time to develop the rolls and get a couple of pictures ready for press.

  “Did Kathy’s young man call in?” he asked Annie. “When she gets to the phone, she’ll want to know.”

  “Not yet,” said Annie. “I looked in Kathy’s mailbox just a while ago. I thought someone might have taken a call and left her a note. There was nothing there.”

  “Maybe you better call his home. You have his name?”

  “Yes. Jerry Conklin. He’s a student at the U. He should be listed in the student directory.”

  Garrison looked around the room. Unlike the situation earlier, now there were a lot of people at their desks. Most of them, more than likely, should have left by now, their days’s work done. Jay, for example, had left early in the day to drive to Rochester to get the cancer story, had come back and written it and then written the piece on speculative life in the universe, and he was still here. As were many of the others, still sticking around, staying in case they should be needed. Good staff, Garrison grunted to himself. But, goddammit, he told himself, they shouldn’t be doing this; when their day was done, they should go on home.

  “One thing I forgot,” he said to his assistant. “We didn’t arrange for accommodations for Kathy and Chet. Where will they stay tonight? Is there any place in Lone Pine?”

  “A small motel,” said Gold. “Annie phoned for rooms.”

  “Annie thinks of everything.”

  “When she phoned,” said Gold, “the motel told her that Norton had reserved rooms for them.”

  “Well,” said Garrison, “that is taken care of.”

  Hal Russell, the wire editor, came up to Garrison’s desk. “Johnny,” he said, “the bureau is sending in another story. The White House just announced that a large, unknown object has been spotted in orbit. There seems to be some thought it may have something to do with the fall at Lone Pine. A mother ship, perhaps.”

  Garrison put his head in his hands. “Is the night never going to end?” he asked. “We’ll have to make room for it. Take the governor’s story off page one and shuffle the others around. We’ll have to give this one almost equal play with the main story. We’ll have to revise the main story lead, get some mention of it in.”

  “It just started now,” said Russell. “It’s scheduled at 750 words. We’ll be running out of room. We’ll have to throw something else out, maybe have a second jump page.”

  “Look, Hal, there’s a lot of crap we can throw out. Run off a copy of it and get it to me when it’s finished.”

  “Sure, Johnny,” said Russell.

  “I tried Jerry Conklin’s phone,” said Annie, “and there is no answer. I wonder what could have happened.”

  “When Kathy gets back, she’ll have his ears,” said Gold. “I wouldn’t want to be the one who stood her up; Even if she wasn’t here to be stood up.” Lumbering down an aisle between ranked rows of desks leading to the city desk came the tall, gangling form of Al Lathrop, the managing editor. He had the first edition clutched in his hand and a look of worry on his face. He came to a halt at the city desk and stood there in all his height, looking down at Garrison.

  “I don’t know,” he rumbled. “I’m just a little edgy. We’re acting as if this thing at Lone Pine really is something out of space, some sort of visitor out of space.”

  “But it did come out of space,” said Garrison. “It came down out of the sky and landed. We went over all of this at the news huddle . . .”

  “But it comes out different than I had envisioned it. The connotation is that it’s an intelligence out of space. Some sort of UFO.”

  “Read it again,” Garrison told him. Read it carefully. Nowhere have we said that. We’ve said what other people told us. If they believed it was a UFO, or an approximation thereof, we said so. But, otherwise than that . . .”

  “This story of Jay’s . . .”

  “A background piece. Sheer speculation and Jay says so. If there are intelligences in space, what could they be like, what are the chances they’ll ever visit us. It’s the kind of article that has been written again and again. Published in magazines and newspapers, aired over TV and radio. Jay puts in a qualification every second paragraph. If this should be the case, he writes. If this Lone Pine object is an intelligence out of space, or something else entirely . . .”

  “Johnny, we’ve got to be careful. We could create a panic.”

  “We’re being careful. We’ve reported objectively. We’ve not gone an inch beyond . . .”

  The phone rang and Annie answered it.

  “Well, all right,” said Lathrop. “Let’s keep on being careful. Let’s not go beyond the story.”

  Annie said to Garrison. “That was the photo lab. The kid just came in with the rolls of film.”

  Gold was reaching out his phone to him. “Kathy just now came on the line,” he said.

  Garrison took the phone, said into it, “Just a minute, Kathy.”

  He cupped the phone with his hand and said to Gold. “Tell the news desk they’ll have photos for the next run. A couple on the front page and maybe some inside. Take a look in the photo lab and see what they’ve got. If they are good, try to get the news desk to pick out a fairly open page for them. There’s a lot of junk in the paper that we can clear out to make room for them.”

  Lathrop, he saw, was going down the aisle between the rows of desks, the paper still clutched in his hand.

  Garrison spoke into the phone. “All right, Kathy,” he said. “What have you got?”

  “First of all,” said Kathy, “have you heard from Jerry yet?”

  9. LONE PINE

  Kathy struggled up from the depths of sleep. Someone was pounding at the door. Behind the drapes, the windows were faintly lighted by a weak and early dawn. She searched, fumbling, for the unaccustomed lamp on the unaccustomed bedside table. The room, even barely glimpsed, held a brutal barrenness. Where the hell am I? she wondered. Then remembered where she was: Lone Pine!

  Lone Pine and someo
ne hammering at the door.

  She found the lamp switch and turned it. Throwing back the covers, she searched with her feet for the slippers on the floor, found them, scuffed them on. She found her robe, lying across the foot of the bed, and struggled into it.

  The pounding still continued.

  “All right! All right!” she yelled. “I’ll be there.”

  Pulling the robe close about her, she shuffled to the door, pulled the bolt and opened it.

  Frank Norton stood outside.

  “Miss Foster,” he said, “I hate to bother you at this hour, but something’s happening. The thing that fell out of the sky is cutting down trees and eating them.”

  “Eating trees!”

  He nodded. “That’s right. It is cutting them down and chewing them up. It’s gulping down big trees.”

  “Please,” she said, “will you get Chet up. He’s next door. Number three. I’ll be right out.”

  Norton turned away and she closed the door. The room was miserably cold. When she breathed, faint wisps of her breath hung in the air.

  Swiftly, gasping with the cold, she got into her clothes, stood in front of a mirror to run a comb through her hair. She didn’t look her best, she knew. She looked a sight, but the hell with it. What would one expect, routed out of bed at this time in the morning.

  Norton was crazy, she told herself. The thing across the river couldn’t be eating trees. It might be no more than a joke, but Norton didn’t seem like someone who would spend much time joking. But why in the world would the contraption there be gulping trees?

  When she went outside, Chet already had emerged, laden with his camera gear.

  “You look good,” he said to Kathy, “even at this ungodly hour.”

  “Go chase yourself,” said Kathy.

  “I’m sorry,” said Norton, “for routing you out even before the sun is up. But I expected you would want to know. I thought about it for all of thirty seconds.”

  “It’s all right,” said Kathy. “It goes with the job.”

  “There are other newspaper people in town,” said Norton. They came in during the night. Dribbling in. Trowbridge from the Minneapolis Star, someone from the Kansas City Star, a couple of people from the Des Moines Register and Tribune. All of them brought photographers. I expect there will be others later in the day.”

  “How are they getting in?” asked Chet. “The roads were blocked.”

  “The state patrol got them unblocked. Got people turned around and turned back. A few cars left there. I suppose yours is among them. The patrol pushed them over to the shoulder of the road. They’re letting in the press and a few others, but keeping the public out.”

  “Any TV people?” asked Kathy. “Several crews,” said Norton. “They’re raising hell. They want to get across the river, but there’s no way to get there.”

  “No boats?”

  “They’ve been looking. Not many people here have boats. What boats there are are out at lakes in the area. No one uses boats on the river.” There were few people in evidence as they walked down the street. All of them, Kathy told herself, must be down at the end of the ruined bridge watching the thing chew up the trees.

  Well before they reached the river, they heard the occasional crash of a falling tree and a growling sound that rose and fell.

  “That’s the thing chewing up the trees?” asked Kathy.

  “That’s right,” said Norton. “It knocks down a tree and grabs it . . .”

  “But those are big trees,” objected Chet.

  “The thing itself is big,” said Norton. “Wait until you see it.”

  A good-sized crowd was gathered at the shattered bridge. Three TV crews were in position on the roadway. The car that had been flattened by the falling object had disappeared. A state patrol car was parked beside the road and two troopers lounged against it. Neither of them, Kathy noted, was the trooper who had been there the night before.

  Across the river lay the object. Kathy sucked in her breath in amazement. Everyone had been telling her how big it was, but, even so, she had not been prepared for the size of it. So big, that while most of the trees in front of it towered over it, it still stood up for half their height or more. Big and black—the blackest thing she had ever seen. But strangely, otherwise unspectacular. No antennae sprouted from it; nothing sprouted from it. None of the gadgets with which the TV shows on UFOs delighted in tacking on their flying saucers. Just a gaunt, overgrown black box. And, strangely too, with no menace in it. Nothing except its size to make it a thing to be frightened of.

  In front of it, one of the big trees slowly tilted and then came crashing down. In front of the object lay piled-up litter of other downed trees. From the thing came a steady growling of wood being chewed up, ground up, ingested, whatever the thing might be doing to the trees. The tree that had fallen seemed to have acquired a life of its own. It was bobbing and switching back and forth. And, slowly, it was being drawn in toward the front of the machine.

  “The damn thing just sucks them in and chews them up,” said Norton. “Since it started half an hour or so ago, it has moved almost its length. I’d figure that to be three hundred feet or more.”

  “What is it doing?” asked Kathy. “Trying to chew a path through the woods?”

  “If that’s what it’s doing,” Norton told her, “it has a long way to go. That forest extends for twenty miles or more, all of it heavy growth.”

  She stood and watched. There wasn’t much to see. Just the huge black box knocking down trees and gobbling them up. The frightening thing about it, she thought, was its slow, deliberate movement, its sense of power, its seeming confidence that nothing could prevent it from doing what it was doing.

  She walked over to the police car.

  “Yes, miss,” said one of the troopers. “Anything we can do to help?”

  “The car,” she said. “The one that was lying crushed at the end of the bridge. It isn’t there now.”

  “A truck came and hauled it away,” the trooper said. “The driver had the proper papers to requisition it and we let him take it. We checked by radio and were told it was all right.”

  “Where did the order come from?”

  “Miss,” the trooper said, “I can’t tell you that.”

  “The FBI?”

  “Miss, I cannot discuss it.”

  “Well, all right,” she said, “perhaps you can’t. Can you tell me what is going to happen next?”

  “Army Engineers will be coming in to build a temporary bridge. We expect them any time. One of those prefabricated bridges, as I understand it.” Chet came walking up. He said to her, “I’ve taken all I can from here. We ought to get up closer. Trowbridge and me and some of the others have been talking about it. We think we can wade the river. The stream below the pool is fast, but not too deep. Or that’s what the locals tell us. If we join hands, form a chain, help one another, we can get across.”

  One of the troopers said, “You can’t cross the river. We have our orders. No one is to cross the river.” Kathy said, “If you are going to cross, count me in. I’m going, too.”

  “The hell you are,” said Chet. “You stay here and guard the equipment that we have to leave behind. I’ll just take one camera and some film reloads across.”

  “Chet White,” said Kathy, “I am going. If the others go, I’ll go along too . . .”

  “You’ll get your ass soaked. That water’s cold.”

  “I’ve been soaked before. And cold before.”

  “The trouble,” said Chet, “is them TV jerks. They want to carry a lot of equipment over. They want us to help. That stuff of theirs is heavy.”

  The trooper who had spoken earlier moved in close to them.

  “You can’t cross that river,” he said. “We have orders.”

  “Show me them orders,” said Chet belligerently.

  “We haven’t got written orders. Our orders are verbal. Over the radio. No one’s to cross that stream.” Trowbridge, of the Min
neapolis Star, came up. “I heard you,” he said to the trooper. “You’ll have to use force to stop us. I don’t think you’ll use force.”

  The second trooper joined the first. “You goddamned newspaper people,” he said, disgusted. He said to his partner. “Get on the radio. Tell them what is going on.”

  Another man joined them. “I’m Douglas, Kansas City Star,” he told the trooper. “We’ll make note of your order, but we have to get across. It’s our job to get across. That’s federal land over there. You’re state. Lacking a court order. . .”

  The trooper said nothing.

  Douglas said to Kathy, “You’re determined to go with us?”

  “You’re damned right I am.”

  “Stick close to me, then. Hang on tight.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Kathy.

  “Here,” said Chet, handing Kathy a camera. “Drape this over your neck. I’ll help one of these TV jerks with his stuff.”

  “What will you do with the rest of your stuff?” she asked.

  “All of us will pile what we can’t take here on the road. The troopers will guard it for us.”

  “The hell we will,” the trooper said. He turned and walked back to the car, where his partner was talking on the radio.

  “You guys were tough with the troopers,” Norton said.

  “We’ll apologize later,” said Chet. “Goddammit, we got a job to do.”

  “There are laws about crossing fire lanes and such.”

  “This here ain’t no fire lane,” said Chet. “This here is a river.”

  “O.K.,” said Norton. “I’ll cross with you. On the other side of Kathy. Me and the Kansas City Star will see she doesn’t drown.”

  One of the troopers came back. “You can cross,” he said. “No further objection from us. But on your own responsibility. It’s your ass.” He said, looking directly at Douglas, “You can also take note of that.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Douglas. “Most willingly. And thank you.” The line was forming on the river bank. There was some shouting and shoving. Trowbridge hurried down the bank and took command.

  “Cut out the horseplay,” he shouted. “Get in line, grab hold of the man next to you. Take it easy. Take a deep breath. That water’s cold. It will freeze your balls.”