“We can’t close our eyes to it. My god, what a horrible situation!”
“What else did your men find?” Porter asked Allen.
“Not much. We know that the visitor is not metal. We are sure of that. We don’t know what it is. We tried to get sample . . .”
“You mean your men just walked up to it and pried away at it and scraped away at it?”
“Hell, man, they climbed all over it. They examined every inch of it. It paid them no attention. It never even twitched its hide. It just went on with its lumbering.”
“For the love of God,” asked Clark, “what are we dealing with?” No one answered him.
Crowell said, “One other thing puzzles me. How the swarm up there got into orbit. It takes a while to eject an object into orbit. Several times around the Earth until it’s where you want it and moving at the speed you want it. If this new object, if this swarm did any jockeying preliminary to getting into orbit our spotters would have caught it well ahead of time. But they didn’t. When they found it, it already was in a settled orbit. And, another thing: It would have had to know quite a lot about the planet around which it intended to set up an orbit—the planet’s speed, its rotation rate, its gravitational attraction. This would apply to any kind of orbit, but to set up a synchronous orbit, it would have to have all the factors figured to a fraction. Apparently, it just plopped in and settled to the correct altitude at the correct speed and how the hell that could be done, I don’t know. I’d say, offhand, it would be impossible.”
“So now that we have all the bad news,” said Hammond, “what are we going to do about it? That’s what this meeting is for isn’t it? So we can map out a course of action. In the morning, I’d like to be able to tell the man upstairs that we have some answers for him.”
“One thing we should do is to notify all the governors to put the National Guard on alert,” said Whiteside.
“That would be guaranteed,” said Hammond, “to scare the country senseless.”
“And make some of our international neighbors nervous,” said Clark.
The general asked, “How about passing the word along quietly? Tell the governors to be prepared to call out the Guard at a moment’s notice.”
“It would leak,” said Porter. “There’s no such thing as secrecy among forty-eight governors—fifty if you were to include Hawaii and Alaska and I suppose Hawaii and Alaska would have their noses out of joint if we passed them by. Governors are political creatures and some of them are blabbermouths. Besides, they all have staffs and . . .”
“Dave is right,” Hammond told Whiteside. “You’d simply be asking for it.”
“If it comes to that,” said Porter, “the country should be told, not only about what we are doing but why we’re doing it. They’ll find out in a few days in any case and it would go down better if we told the people at once. Let the news come from us rather than from someone else.”
“Otherwise than the National Guard, what can we do?” asked Whiteside.
“You persist,” said Allen, “in regarding these things as enemies.”
“At least, they’re potential enemies,” said the general. “Until we know more about them, we must be prepared to recognize them as possible threats. If they should invade us, then, automatically, they are enemies.”
“Maybe it’s time for us to lay out the situation to some of our international friends,” said Hammond. “We’ve held out from doing this, but if that swarm up there comes down, we’re not going to be the only ones involved. Maybe we owe it to the others to let them know what is going on.” Whiteside said, “The President should be sitting in with us on this.”
“No,” said Hammond. “Let him sleep. He needs the rest. A long, hard day is coming up.”
“Why do we assume that we are the only ones who sent out a shuttle to have a look at the swarm?” asked Porter. “The Soviets also have a space station. They could have sent out a shuttle. We announced the new object in space more than twenty-four hours ago. They’d have had the time.”
“I can’t be sure,” said Hammond. “I think it is unlikely. Their station is a considerable distance from ours, the shuttle trip would be longer. Not that distance makes that great a difference, but somehow I don’t think so. For one thing, they’d have less reason to react. The visitor is in our country, not theirs.”
“What difference does it make, anyhow?” asked Clark.
“We wouldn’t want to go to them,” said Porter, “and say, ‘Look, pal, we got these things up there’ if we had any reason to believe they knew as much as we do, maybe more than we do.”
“I think your objection is academic,” said Hammond.
“Perhaps so,” said Porter. “We just don’t want to look any sillier than we have to.”
“Let’s get back,” said Whiteside, “to the matter of defense. You vetoed the National Guard. If we can’t do that, the regular military establishments should be alerted.”
“If it can be done without publicity,” said Hammond. “If you can guarantee no leaks.”
“That can be managed,” said Whiteside.
“What I’m worried about is public panic,” said Hammond. “It’s been all right so far, but touch the wrong button and the country can go sky-high. There’s been so much talk, so much controversy, all these years, about the UFO’s, that the country’s ripe.”
“It seems to me all the UFO talk works to our benefit,” Porter told him. “The idea of aliens coming to Earth is a bit old hat. Many people are reconciled to the thought that someday they will come. Thus, they are more prepared for it. It will be less of a shock. Some people believe it would be good for us if they did come. We no longer have the H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds psychology. Not in full force at least. We have some philosophical preparation.”
“That may be so,” said Clark, “but one damn fool saying one wrong thing could trigger a panic.”
“I agree,” said Hammond. “Maybe your approach is correct, Dave. Tell the people what we know. Give them a little time to think it over, so if more visitors come the people will be half accustomed to the idea. A soothing word here and there, careful not to overplay the soothing syrup. Buy some time for sober reflection. Time to think it out, talk it over.”
“So what we have is this,” said Clark. “Military installations will be informed of the situation. Nothing will be done at the moment with the Guard, but we’ll be ready to put it on alert, throughout the country, on a moment’s notice. We’ll give earnest consideration to informing and consulting with other governments. We’ll tell the people as many facts as we can. How about the U.N.?”
“Let’s leave the U.N. out of it for a time,” said Hammond. “They’ll come charging in fast enough. And it is understood the man upstairs has to put his stamp of approval on all of this. He’ll be waking in a few hours. We won’t have to wait long. When we do move, we should move fast.”
“John, I’d like to get the word to my boys right away,” said Whiteside. “I can’t imagine you would object to that. It’s all in the family, so to speak.”
“No objection,” Hammond said. “That’s your turf.”
Allen said to Crowell, “The station is keeping watch, I’d assume. They’ll let us know if anything is beginning to happen? Or looks as if it is beginning to happen.”
“That’s right. The minute there’s anything going on, we’ll know.”
“What if one of our international friends gets trigger happy and proposes boosting off a nuke to blow the swarm all to hell?” asked Whiteside. “Or worse, acts unilaterally.”
“Henry, you think of the damnedest things,” said Hammond.
“It could happen,” said the general. “Let someone get scared enough.”
“That’s something we’ll just have to hope doesn’t happen,” said Porter.
“I think it’s most unlikely,” said Hammond. “Maybe I should get State out of bed. He’ll have to be briefed. Perhaps he could have breakfast with the President. He and a fe
w others. The attorney general, for one. I’ll make the calls.”
“And that’s it?” asked Crowell. “It would seem so.”
“It’s barely worth going back to bed,” said Clark. “In an hour or two, it will be morning.”
“I’m not going back,” said Porter. “There’s a comfortable couch in the press lounge. I’m going to stretch out there. In fact, come to think of it, there are two. Anyone care to join me?”
“I think I will,” said Clark.
TO BE CONTINUED
Communications might seem the first problem in first contact. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy.
SYNOPSIS
A black box the size of a large building lands at the small town of Lone Pine, Minn. In landing it crushes a car that has been left near a bridge by Jerry Conklin, who is fishing a pool below the bridge. A Lone Pine resident fires at the box and is killed when the box fires back. Conklin, a graduate forestry student at the University of Minnesota, is seized by a tentacle extruded from the box and hauled inside it. He is mystified, tells himself this may be a creature out of space. His attempts to communicate with it fail, but he does get the impression the box somehow is akin to a tree and receives a strong impression of home, which he believes may be an attempt by the box to communicate with him. Finally the box throws him out, but by this time the box has moved into a deep forest across the river, night has fallen, and Conklin, unable to find his way out, is forced to spend the night in the woods.
In the meantime Frank Norton, owner and editor of the weekly paper at Lone Pine, phones his old friend, Johnny Garrison, city editor of the Minneapolis Tribune, to tell him about the landing. Garrison sends Kathy Foster, a reporter, and Chet White, a photographer, to Lone Pine to cover the story. Kathy is Conklin’s girl friend; she and Conklin had planned to attend a concert that evening and she has been upset that Conklin has not phoned her. She resists the Lone Pine assignment, but finally agrees to it.
In Washington, D.C. President Herbert Taine is informed by Gen. Henry Whiteside, Army chief of staff, that a tracking station has discovered an unknown satellite. Early indications are that it is too massive to have been launched from Earth. David Porter, the White House press secretary, gets word of the Lone Pine landing and carries it to the President. The two of them speculate that the landing and the new satellite may be connected. If the big box at Lone Pine actually is an extraterrestrial visitor, as seems possible, the satellite may be its mother ship. They agree that federal investigators must be sent immediately to Lone Pine. They also agree that an alien visitor is something they can get along without. The administration has enough trouble without taking on more.
Porter phones Alice Davenport, daughter of a senator who is not friendly with the administration. Porter was to have taken Alice to dinner, but the Lone Pine incident has made that impossible. He also talks with Alice’s father, the senator, who insists that if the Lone Pine visitor is an alien the United States must seek whatever advantages it can from its alien intelligence and technology and put them to the nation’s use.
Kathy and Chet arrive at Lone Pine late; the roads are jammed with cars trying to reach the town and the state police are trying to seal the area off. By the time they arrive the visitor has crossed the river and entered the forest. Next morning, however, Kathy is awakened by Norton who tells her the visitor is eating trees. It is doing exactly that, eating a swath through the forest, converting the wood to cellulose and spewing bales of cellulose out behind it. While reporters are watching and wondering over this strange happening, Kathy wanders close to the edge of the forest and someone hisses at her. It is Conklin. He still is wearing waders and fears that because of this he may be recognized as the man whose car has been crushed. He shuns identity because he does not want it known that he had been “taken up” by the visitor, he does not wish to be another kook associated with flying saucers. Kathy gets him shoes to replace the waders, arranges for Chet to take him to a nearby town where he can catch a plane to Minneapolis.
In Washington cabinet members and the President’s staff get into a hassle over what the administration should do. This is a situation without precedent and everyone is up in the air. A shuttle sent out from a space station finds that the new satellite is a huge cluster of other visitors, apparently waiting word from the one at Lone Pine before they, too, come down to Earth.
The nation, despite the administration’s fear of a panic, had remained calm, but the news about the cluster of visitors creates near-panic in the White House.
16. LONE PINE
Stiffy Grant shuffled into the Pine Cafe, hoisted himself onto one of the stools at the counter. At the sound of the slamming front door, Sally came out of the back. She wiped the counter with a damp cloth.
“You working in the morning?” asked Stiffy. “I thought Judy worked in the mornings.”
“Judy has a cold,” said Sally, “so I’m filling in for her.”
The place was empty except for the two of them. “Where’s everyone?” asked Stiffy. “With all the people who are in town . . .”
“They sleep late,” said Sally. “Those who are here. A lot of them are staying in Bemidji, driving here and back. There’s no room for them here.”
“Those two folks from the Tribune are here,” said Stiffy. “The camera fellow and that girl writer.”
“They got here early when there was still room at the motel.”
“They’re all right,” said Stiffy. “Real white folks. That girl gave me five dollars for just answering a phone and then hanging on so no one else could get the line. Yesterday, the camera fellow slipped me a bottle for keeping watch of what was going on across the river so he could grab some sleep. Was supposed to run and wake him if anything happened. But nothing did. Good liquor, too. None of your cheap stuff.”
“Most of the folks are nice,” said Sally. “They tip good. Most folks around here don’t tip at all.”
“They ain’t learning much, though,” said Stiffy. “There don’t seem much to learn from that thing out there. The men from Washington are working real hard at it and not coming up with much. I talked with one of them the other day. He’d been pawing through some of the rubbish the thing is throwing out, what’s left after it makes those bales of white stuff. He was all excited about what he was finding but it didn’t sound like much to me. He said he wasn’t finding any pine seeds, or almost none. The cones had been broken up and the seeds were gone. He said that was unnatural. He seemed to think the thing was collecting the seeds and saving them. I told him maybe the thing was eating them; squirrels and such eat them. But he shook his head. He didn’t seem to think so.”
“What can I get you, Stiffy?”
“I guess some cakes.”
“Sausage or bacon?”
“Naw, you charge too much for them. I can’t afford it. Just the cakes. And plenty of syrup. I like lots of syrup.”
“The syrup is there in the pitcher. You can use as much as you want.”
“All right. Plenty of butter, then. A little extra butter. But don’t charge me for it.”
Sally went back into the kitchen to give the cook the order, then came back.
“How far has the visitor cut into the woods?” she asked. “I haven’t seen it for a while.”
“More than a mile, I’d say. It moves right along, day and night. Spitting out those bales of white stuff every few minutes. Leaving a long trail of them behind it. I wonder why it’s doing that. It don’t make no sense to me. Nothing about it makes any sense to me.”
“There must be a reason for it.”
“Maybe there is, but I don’t see it. I wonder, too, why it picked us out.”
“It had to be some place. It just happened to be us. If it was trees it was looking for, it picked a good place.”
“I imagine,” said Stiffy, “them forestry people ain’t too entranced with it. They set a lot of store by them trees. I don’t see why. They’re just trees, like any other trees.”
“It�
�s a primitive wilderness area,” said Sally.
“Yeah, I know,” said Stiffy. “A lot of foolishness.”
17. LONE PINE
The visitor had gotten lumpy. It had bumps all over it, but it kept on chopping down the trees and masticating them, or at least ingesting them, and at regular intervals the rear section of it slid up, ejecting bales of cellulose and great gobbets of waste from the chewed-up trees.
“We don’t know what is going on,” one of the two troopers told Kathy. “Maybe some of the people from Washington do, although I’m inclined to doubt it. They’re not talking, so we don’t know if they do or not. The lumps on the visitor were there this morning when it got light enough to see. They must have started in the night and they’ve been growing ever since. They are a lot bigger than they were when I first saw them.”
“Any reason why I can’t get closer?” asked Kathy. “Some of the other newsmen are.”
“Just watch yourself,” said the trooper. “Don’t get too close. We don’t want people getting hurt.”
“The visitor has made no move to harm anyone,” she said. “We’ve been practically living with it ever since it landed and it doesn’t even notice us.”
“You can never tell,” the trooper said. “If I were you, I wouldn’t push my luck. It killed a man, remember?”
“But he shot at it.”
“Even so, I don’t trust it. Not entirely, that is. This ain’t one of us.” Kathy and the troopers stood midway between the visitor and the river, now spanned by the temporary structure laid down by the army engineers. Behind them and in front of them the wide swath cut through the forest by the visitor was littered with white bales and clumps of tree debris. Both the bales and the debris were regularly spaced, laid out very neatly.
“The other troopers,” said the trooper, “are holding the sightseers on the other side of the river. We’re only letting in the official people and the press. You people know you’re here on your own responsibility. That’s been explained to you.”
The Complete Serials Page 164
