Stories grew—always of something that happened somewhere else, the preposterous index increasing with the distance—and embryonic legends began taking form.
The phenomenon of “being taken up” was heard increasingly, the reports coming from all parts of the nation, and snatched up swiftly to be exploited by the cults that had formed, likewise, in every corner of the nation. Various people claimed they had been “taken up,” that somehow, never with an adequate explanation of how it happened, they had been introduced into the bodies of the visitors and, having been taken up, were either allowed to envision many wondrous things or were given messages (again, of many different sorts) that they were charged to transmit to their fellow Earthmen. The cult members, and many others, gave varying degrees of credence to these reports of being taken off, while a greater number scoffed. It was recalled that in the early days of UFO appearances, or supposed appearances, there had been many who had claimed direct contact with the crews of the flying saucers.
But however these reports, or other legendary stories, may have been inaugurated or spread, the populace became aware of one fact that could not be denied. The Earth had been invaded by creatures out of space and none of the things had happened that science fiction writers, through long years of scribbling, had foreseen as happening.
It all had turned out, as viewed by one editorial writer on the staff of an obscure little daily published in the depths of Tennessee, to be a sort of cosmic picnic.
In the northeastern corner of Iowa, a farmer had just finished his plowing on a 160-acre field when one of the visitors turned up at the field. It flew up and down the field, making neat turns at the end of each flight up the field, to go back down it once again, flying so low that it barely skimmed the new plowed surface. The farmer stood beside his machine shed and watched it.
“I swear,” he told a newsman who came out from a nearby town to interview him, “it was as if that thing was planting something, or sowing something, in the ground I had just plowed. Maybe it waited until I had the plowing done before it showed up. When it had finished and had set down in a pasture, I went out to have a look—you know, to find out if it had sowed anything or not. But I never got there. That damn thing floated up and came at me—not threatening, you understand, not even moving very fast, but letting me know, plain as day, I was not to go near that field. I tried it several times, but each time it chased me off. I tell you, mister, I am not about to argue with it. It’s a lot bigger than I am. In the spring, when it comes time for me to plant, I’ll try it again. Maybe, by that time, it may have gone away or may have lost its interest. I’ll just have to wait and see.”
The reporter eyed the huge blackness of the visitor, squatted in the pasture.
“Seems to me,” he said, “it’s got something painted on it. Did you get close enough to make out what it was?”
“Yeah, plain as day,” the farmer said. “The number 101, painted on it in green paint. Now I wonder what sort of damn fool would have done a thing like that.”
In a medium-sized city in Alabama, the building of a stadium had been a local issue of some intensity for years, the issue fought out bitterly on the basis of funding, location and type of facility. But, finally, the issue had been settled and the stadium built. Despite all the disappointments encountered in the final decision, it was still a thing of civic pride. It had been furbished and polished for the game that would be the highlight of its dedication. The turf (live, not artificial) was a carpet of green, the parking lot a great extent of virgin asphalt, the stadium itself gay with pennons of many colors flapping in the breeze.
On the day before the dedication, a great black box came sailing through the blue and sat down, slowly and gracefully, inside the stadium, floating just above the green expanse of the playing field, as if the smooth carpet, so carefully mowed and tended, had been designed as a special landing space for big black boxes that came sailing from the blue.
Once the shock of rage had subsided slightly, there was great huddlings by official committees and interested civic groups. Some hope was expressed, early on, that the visitor might remain only for a matter of hours and then move on. But this did not happen. It remained within the stadium. The dedication was cancelled and the dedicatory game was postponed, occasioning major violence to the sacred schedule of the league.
The huddlings of the various groups continued and from time to time, suggestions were advanced and, amid great agonizing, all the suggestions were turned down as impractical. Quiet civic desperation reigned.
Sheriff’s deputies who were guarding the stadium intercepted and arrested a small group of sport enthusiasts who were trying to sneak into the area with a box of dynamite.
In Pennsylvania, another visitor settled down in a potato patch. The owner of the patch stacked a huge pile of wood against the side of the visitor, doused it with gasoline and set the pile ablaze. The visitor did not mind at all.
27. LONE PINE
Sally, the waitress at the Pine Cafe, brought Frank Norton his plate of ham and eggs and sat down at the table to talk with him. The door opened and Stiffy Grant came fumbling in.
“Come on over, Stiffy,” Norton called to him, “and sit down with us. I’ll buy you your breakfast.”
“That’s handsome of you,” said Stiffy, “and if you don’t mind, I’ll take you up on it. I been out watching them visitors of ours mowing down the trees. It was quite a walk, but I got up before light so I could get there early before any tourists showed up. Them tourists kind of take an edge off watching them. I wanted to see if maybe they were starting to bud, like the one that was here before.”
“And are they?” asked Sally.
“Well, not yet. It seems to me it’s taking them a little longer than the other one. But any day now they’ll be doing it. They got long rows of those bales of white stuff strung out behind them. I been trying to think what that stuff is called.”
“Cellulose,” said Norton.
“Since when did you get so interested in the visitors?” asked Sally.
“I don’t rightly know,” Stiffy told her. “I guess it was from the very start, when this batch first sat down. You might say I was sort of involved with them. There was this girl writer from down in Minneapolis and that first night, I held the phone for her so she could talk to her editor when she got back and then I was the one who brought word to her when the second batch landed. I was sleeping off a drunk this side of the river and saw them coming down and right away I told myself she would want to know. It didn’t seem right to me that I should go pounding at her door in the middle of the night, an old reprobate like me. I thought she might be mad at me. But I went and done it anyhow and she wasn’t mad at me. She gave me ten dollars later on. She and that camera fellow she had along with her, they were real nice people.”
“Yes, they were,” said Sally. “So were all the newspaper and TV people. It seems a little strange that they now are gone. Of course, there are still a lot of people coming to see the baby visitors. Sometimes they go down to see the others, too. But these people aren’t like the news people. They’re just sightseers. Drop in for a cup of coffee and a doughnut, once in a while a sandwich, but they don’t come for meals and they never tip. I suppose that in a little place like this, and not buying much, they don’t feel there is any need of it.”
“At first,” said Stiffy, “I went out to see the visitors, every single day like I’ve done since they came, telling myself I should keep watch of them so that if anything happened, I could let that girl reporter know. But I don’t think that’s the reason anymore, not the main reason. I’ve got so I like to watch them for themselves. Once I told myself they were things from a long way off and that they really shouldn’t be here, but it doesn’t seem that way now. It’s gotten so that they seem just like people to me. I used to be afraid of them, but now I’m not scared of them. I walk right up to them and put out my hand and lay it on their hides and they’re not cold, but warm, just like a person’s warm.�
��
“If you’re going to have breakfast,” Norton said to him, “you’d better tell Sally what you want. I’m way ahead of you.”
“You said that you were paying for my breakfast.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Frank, how come that you . . .”
“Well, you might say that I had an impulse that I may be sorry for. If you don’t hurry up . . .”
“Then,” said Stiffy, “I’ll have a stack of cakes with a couple of eggs, sunny side up, dumped on top of them. And if you have some sausages and maybe a piece or two of crisp bacon along with a couple of extra pats of butter . . .”
28. SOMEWHERE IN UTAH
The sergeant said to the colonel, “If these pissants of scientists don’t get their cameras and them other damn fool instruments set up to their liking pretty soon, the sun will be down and we’ll have to scrub this exercise.”
“They want everything just right,” the colonel told him. “It’s got to be right the first time. We don’t want to have to make a second try at it. You may not think so, sergeant, but this mission has the highest possible priority. It comes straight from Washington and we can’t afford to goof.”
“But Christ, sir, they sight in those cameras and then look through them and then sight them again. They been doing that for hours. They’re a pack of fumbling old maids, I tell you. They got that chalk mark on the visitor’s tail side and the rifle’s sighted in on it. I sighted it myself and I know where it is pointing. The visitor hasn’t moved and it still is pointing at the chalk mark. And that’s another thing, why for Christ’s sake, a rifle? Why not something a little heavier? You’re not going to tell much bouncing a .30 caliber bullet off that big a mass. It won’t do more than tickle it.”
“Frankly, sergeant,” said the colonel. “I have wondered about that myself. But that’s what the orders say. They are most specific—a .30 caliber from a hundred yards. That and nothing else. It’s got to be a .30 caliber from a hundred yards and the cameras and the other instruments must be positioned to the satisfaction of these gentlemen . . .”
The colonel broke off what he was saying when he saw that one of the scientists who had been fiddling with the cameras was walking toward them.
“Colonel,” said the man, when he came up to them, “you may proceed with the firing. Before you fire, however, be sure that personnel is at a distance of at least two hundred yards. We suspect that there may be considerable back blast.”
“I hope,” the sergeant said, “that the electronic gadget you fixed up to fire the piece will work.”
The man said, unperturbed, “I am sure it will.”
“Now, sergeant,” the colonel said, sharply, “if you will move the men out. We want to wrap this up as soon as possible.”
The sergeant moved off, started shouting orders.
The scientist asked a technician, “The cameras are ready?”
“They’ll start running with the signal that fires the rifle,” said the technician. “There’s so damn much film involved. Those cameras eat it up.”
“Colonel,” said the scientist, “it’s time for us to move out with the rest of them.”
The visitor stood as it had stood for hours, motionless in the midst of the sandy waste. The cross made in chalk shone dully against the blackness of its hide.
“What beats the hell out of me,” said the colonel, “is how it has stood there all this time with us fooling around to set up the shoot. Doesn’t it know we’re here?”
“I’m sure it does,” said the scientist. “My feeling is that it simply doesn’t care. I would suspect it has some contempt of us.”
Finally, the scientist halted his walking and turned about, the colonel turning with him.
“Sergeant,” yelled the colonel, “is the area cleared?”
The sergeant bawled back. “It’s all cleared, sir.”
The sergeant nodded to the man from Washington, who raised the tiny instrument he had been carrying in his hand and made a pressing motion with his thumb.
The rifle spat and the visitor spat back with a flood of raging energy that engulfed the mounted rifle. The colonel threw up an arm to shield his eyes against the brilliance of the flare. When he took it down, he saw that the rifle and the mount on which it had been positioned had turned into a shimmering whiteness from the heat. The whole assembly was slowly sagging to the ground. A clump of nearby sagebrush flared to floating ash.
The colonel glanced at the visitor. It was still where it had stood, as if nothing had happened, but the white chalk mark had vanished.
29. WASHINGTON, D.C.
Drink clutched in his hand, Senator Davenport paced up and down the room.
“Goddammit, Dave,” he said to Porter, “you people down at 1600 have to take some action. You can’t just let these things keep on taking over.”
“But, Daddy,” said Alice, “they’re not taking over. They’ve not really done anything at all.”
The senator paused his striding, stood glaring at his daughter.
“Not done anything!” he brayed. “They are using up our forests, they’re eating lumberyards. They made away with those cars . . .”
“Old cars,” said Alice. “Secondhand cars that some dealer was waiting to foist on an unsuspecting public.”
“The dealer paid good money for those cars,” her father said. “He took them in on trade-ins. He gave them room on his parking lot. He probably fixed them up. He was entitled to his profit. He had earned a profit.”
“You say the administration should be doing something,” said Porter. “Just what kind of action do you think that we should take?”
“How the hell should I know?” roared the senator. “I’m not the President, I’m not an advisor of his. If I did have some advice, he wouldn’t listen to me. I don’t know what is going on. Neither does anyone else. You’re the press secretary; why don’t you tell me what is going on? How much information do you have that you are holding back?”
“Offhand,” said Porter, “I’d say scarcely anything.”
“That milksop of a scientific advisor you have down there has been working on it,” said Davenport. “He has a large force in the field, he’s spending millions on his investigation. How come he’s not come up with something? I heard today the army had made some sort of firing test against one of the visitors. Can you tell me what came out of it?”
“I don’t know,” said Porter. “Dave, if you did know—let’s just say you do know—would you tell me?”
“Probably not,” said Porter.
The senator turned to Alice, “There you see,” he said. “That’s the kind of arrogance we can expect from the White House gang.”
“Dave has said he doesn’t know,” said Alice.
“Also he said that if he did know he probably wouldn’t tell me.”
“You have to give him credit for being honest with you, Daddy.”
“Honest, hell! It’s arrogance, I tell you.”
“Senator, I’m sorry if I seemed arrogant,” said Porter. “Also, I am sorry there’s nothing I can tell you. The fact is that you probably know as much as I do. And as for taking action of any kind at all, Alice is quite right. These things have done nothing that is actionable. Even if they had, what is there we could do about it? They’re too big to hassle. I have a feeling it might be dangerous to try to push them around, even if we had reason to push.”
“They’re disrupting the country,” said the senator. “The visitors are consuming some of our best timber stands and the building industry will suffer. A lot of lumberyards have been destroyed and the chances are that others will be. Lumber is already expensive and this will make it more expensive. New homes will cost more than they are costing now and the prices of new homes even now are so high that they are beyond the reach of most families.
“If the visitors don’t cut out riding herd on planes, the airlines will cut back their schedules. Some of them already are talking about it. There’s just too much
chance of accidents and the insurance companies, realizing this, are about to boost their rates. The airlines already are screaming that insurance costs are prohibitive and that they can’t stand another raise.”
“More than likely,” said Porter, “the entire situation is in a shakedown period. It may soon begin to straighten out. We are being hit right now with the worst of the impact. The public is a little nervous and upset and is inclined to exaggerate all consequences. Give it a little time . . .”
“I don’t think the situation will improve with time,” said the senator. “The public, you think, will settle down. I don’t think it will. These goddamn cults and holy roller preachers are injecting a lot of emotionalism into the social structure. The cults are bad enough, but we can live with them. The people, in general, know that they are crackpot based and what to expect of them. The real danger is the outburst of evangelism, the rush to the brain of old time religion. History tells us that in the Middle Ages there were similar outbreaks of religious frenzy. The peasant walked away from his land, the artisans away from their shops, all of them going off on a spiritual binge. The same is beginning to happen now. Industry and business is suffering from increased absenteeism, costly errors are being made in the work that is done.”
“It all comes down,” said Alice, “finally, to the dollar. Our businessmen and industrialists are losing money, or afraid they will be losing money.”
The Complete Serials Page 169
