He had given it plenty of time. He talked to it. He laid his hands upon it and still it made no sign. So finally he had walked away, going slowly, turning back every now and then to look at it, but each time he turned to look, it still sat there as stolidly as it had been sitting all the time.
Although, he told himself, it had not chased him off. It had chased off everyone else who had approached it, but it had made no move against him. And that, in itself, he thought, might be a sign of recognition.
“Mister,” said the station attendant, walking up to him and holding out the dipstick, “you need a quart of oil.”
“All right, put it in,” said Jerry. “This car always needs a quart of oil.”
He paid the man and, getting into the car, drove out to the road and headed toward the town.
But when he reached the business district, he drove around a block and came out on the road again, heading back the way that he had come.
He was going back to that farm again and just why he was going back was not quite clear to him. An essential stubbornness perhaps, he told himself, a desperate unwillingness to give up, a very stubborn faith in his silly conviction that there might be an answer he could get from 101. He didn’t deliberately decide to go back, he didn’t argue it out with himself, he didn’t ponder it; he simply drove around the block and it was not until he was headed back down the road the way that he had come that he realized he was going back. Now that he had done it, he did not try to fight it.
He couldn’t drive back to the farmyard again, he knew. While the farmer had been cordial, he had seemed a little nettled when he found that Jerry had not been chased by the visitor. Jerry had imagined that he detected in the farmer’s face some trace of a dark suspicion.
Actually, he told himself, he did not need to go back to the farmyard. By walking half a mile or so, he could reach 101 by parking on a gravel township road. It would be dark by the time he got there and it was unlikely that anyone would spot him. The night was clear and in a little while, a near-full moon would be coming up and there’d be light enough to get where he was going.
He had a few bad moments when he got close to the farm, fearing that he would be unable to locate the place. But there were a few landmarks that he remembered—a rickety iron bridge spanning a small stream, a lone oak standing in a pasture close to an old haystack. Shortly after ten o’clock, he found the gravel road, drove it up for a mile or so and parked. From there he calculated that he would be able to spot 101.
Either his navigating had been better than he’d known, or he was just plain lucky, for in a little time he did locate the farm and the dark bulk of 101 squatting in the hayfield. He was, however, farther from it that he had expected he would be. He began hiking across the fields, stumbling occasionally when a foot caught in furrowed stubble. He had to work his way through a couple of barb-wire fences and in the dark, that was a ticklish job to do. The night had turned chilly and he buttoned up his jacket, turning up the collar as protection from the wind. Down in a ravine off to his left, an owl was making tentative hoots every now and then, testing out its voice, and when the wind veered slightly, he could catch the baying of a distant dog.
He moved through a lonely emptiness and yet an emptiness that seemed to hold some threat within it. He had the feeling that at any moment, something could come welling up out of this land he crossed, although he never could quite determine what it might be that would come welling up.
The walk seemed to take forever. There were times when it seemed to him that he had not moved at all, that despite all his walking, he was only marking time in the self-same place. To make up for that, to overcome that terrible feeling of no progress, he drove himself without mercy, sometimes running. But he soon quit the running, for it brought too many stumbles. Then, suddenly, he was there. In front of him loomed the moon-limned bulk of 101.
He staggered across the last few yards and collapsed against the visitor, protected by its massiveness from the chill of the northwest wind. He had a strange compulsion to stay huddled there, as if he had reached some sort of refuge and must cling to it. But that was silliness, he knew, and staggered to his feet, leaning his head against it as he fought to regain his breath.
Leaning against the great black wall that rose above him, he tilted his head and saw the quiet sparkling of the stars that were cut off abruptly by the soaring blackness that was 101. The loneliness stayed on, the loneliness and lostness. He had thought that it perhaps would disappear when he reached the visitor. But reaching the visitor, it seemed, had made no difference.
He had done it again, he thought. He’d come back again to repeat the folly that he had committed earlier in the day, the act of folly that had commenced that moment in his room when he had picked up the phone to ask Charlie if he could use the car.
Yet he had been so sure—not sure in any sense of logic, but sure in a way that was beyond all reason.
His breathing had grown even now. He stepped back from the visitor, slowly began to turn about to face the fields again, reluctant to turn around, reluctant to take that first step that would lead him back to the car parked on the gravel road.
And, in that instant that he took the step, a snakelike something came swishing down upon him and snapped like an iron band about his chest. In mid-air he caught a glimpse of the autumn-bare fields, lit weakly by the moon, a glimpse of a tree bordered creek that angled down a valley, the sudden flash of light from a distant farmhouse.
Then he was in that strange darkness that was not dark, but blue, caught a whiff of the dank mustiness that lurked in the dry, hot air. There was once again the swiftness of the flaring and the flickering that revealed impossible shapes that would not stand still long enough to see. The rows of circular eyes still were staring at him. It was, he thought, as if he’d never left this place.
He had fallen to his knees and now he rose slowly to his feet and as he did, he reeled under a flood of hammering sensations that assailed him out of nowhere. He went to his knees again and stayed there, head bent, hands against the floor to keep from falling flat upon his face.
And all the while the sensations hammered at him, thundering in his brain, so many and so powerful that he could not shut them out, nor able to distinguish what might be the import of them.
“Take it easy,” he gasped. “Let up. Let me have a chance.”
The sensations went away and he swayed a little, as if he might have been leaning against something for support and it had been suddenly snatched away.
Then the sensations came again, but softer now, stealing up on him, as a cat might creep upon a bird.
TO BE CONTINUED
There’s a saying about “killing with kindness.” But it can be hard to know exactly what that means—while it’s happening.
SYNOPSIS
An alien, in the form of a black box the size of a large building, lands at the small town of Lone Pine, Minn. In landing, it crushes a car owned by Jerry Conklin, who has parked it at the end of a bridge while he fishes the pool below the bridge. A resident of Lone Pine fires a rifle at the black box, which returns the fire, killing him. Conklin is seized by a tentacle extruded by the alien and jerked inside it. Realizing it may be an alien, he tries unsuccessfully to talk with it. He is a graduate forestry student at the University of Minnesota and gains the impression that the alien is somehow like a tree; also he gets a strong impression of home and wonders if the alien is trying to communicate with him. When the visitor finally throws him out it has crossed the river into a heavy forest and night has fallen. Unable to find his way out, Conklin spends the night in the forest.
Alerted by Frank Norton, owner and editor of the Lone Pine weekly newspaper, Johnny Garrison, city editor of the Minneapolis Tribune, sends Kathy Foster, a reporter, and Chet White, a photographer, to Lone Pine to cover the story. Norton and Garrison are long-time friends; Kathy and Conklin are romantically attached.
In Washington, D.C., President Herbert Taine is informed by Gen.
Henry Whiteside, Army Chief of Staff, that tracking stations have discovered a new satellite, too massive to have been launched from Earth. At about the same time the President is told about the Lone Pine landing by David Porter, his press secretary. In the hours that follow the President’s cabinet and advisors attempt to formulate a policy to handle the situation, but are unable to; this is a situation without precedent and there are no guidelines. Porter talks with Alice Davenport, his girl friend, and her father, a senator who is not friendly to the administration. The senator urges that the United States learn all it can from the visitor and use what it learns to national advantage.
In Lone Pine, the visitor begins eating trees, ingesting them and extracting the cellulose, which it ejects in bales. Conklin finds Kathy and tells her what has happened, but says he does not want it known that he was “taken up” by the visitor; he does not want to become regarded as another flying saucer kook. With his crushed car hauled away by federal authorities, Kathy arranges for him to get back to Minneapolis.
A shuttle sent out from a space station learns that the new-found satellite is a cluster of other visitors, apparently waiting word from the Lone Pine visitor before coming down to Earth. The country so far has remained relatively calm, but this development results in near-panic in the White House.
At Lone Pine, the visitor begins budding tiny replicas of itself that immediately begin eating the bales of cellulose. When one of the baby visitors tips over and can’t right itself.
Kathy helps it. She puts her hand against the adult visitor’s side and says, “Mother, I helped your baby.” The hide of the visitor folds over her hand, gently enclosing it, as if in a handshake. Kathy is shaken and enthralled. A short time later the adult visitor takes off and flies away. Before it leaves, one of the federal investigators has painted the number 101 on it in green paint.
The cluster of visitors in space now begins to break up and the visitors start coming to Earth, most of them landing in the United States, a few in Canada. They cause much furor, but little damage. A few lumberyards are gobbled up for the cellulose they contain, a few houses also are ingested but this soon stops when the visitors apparently realize it is something they should not do. A few cars are snatched up from a used-car lot. By and large, however, the visitors seem to be refraining from causing trouble, but they are nuisances—they fly alongside planes, patrol roads, look over cities and industrial plants, land on airstrips at airports. A fair-sized group of them land at Lone Pine and begin eating trees; in many other places they also eat trees and spew out bales of cellulose. The public reacts fairly well. There are a few riots and some disturbances. Suddenly godstricken people flock to church; evangelists and cult leaders have a field day.
Shaken by the budding of baby visitors, the White House faces chaos with the arrival of thousands of visitors. Whiteside insists that tests be made of the visitors’ defense ability; he proposes firing a .30 caliber bullet at the visitor from a rifle similar to the one used by the Lone Pine resident, observing by high-speed cameras and other instruments what happens. Whiteside insists this is necessary in order that a defense against the visitors can be planned. There is argument over whether other nations should be invited to participate in the study of the visitors, whether the results of such a study should be shared with the world.
When Whiteside carries out the test, it is found that the visitor is able to convert the kinetic energy of the bullet into potential energy and throw it back to its origin. The consensus is that the visitors can do this with any weapon short of a nuclear missile. It is apparently, a purely defensive device.
At Lone Pine one of the visitors is found dead and a task force of investigators is sent there, the national guard sealing off the area while the visitor is dissected in an attempt to learn its physical characteristics. Kathy, covering the story, is unable to learn anything. Neither is the Washington press corps. Security is tight.
Norton, talking with Kathy at Lone Pine, invites her and Conklin to accompany him on an annual autumn trip he makes into the wilderness. He is going in a short time, he says. Kathy declines; she has used all her vacation time and Conklin is hard at work on his dissertation.
The first visitor to land, the one on which the number 101 has been painted, turns up on an Iowa farm. Conklin, haunted by the experience of being “taken up” by the visitor, determines to see the visitor again in hope that it may give him an answer. He borrows a car and goes to Iowa. The visitor at first pays no attention to him and he leaves. Halfway home, he turns the car around and goes back. This time the visitor takes him up and communicates with him.
37. WASHINGTON, D.C.
“Daddy,” said Alice, “I don’t like some of the things that I have been hearing.”
Senator Davenport, slouched in his chair, looked at her over the rim of his glass of Scotch.
“And what might you have been hearing, my dear?” he rumbled.
“All this talk up on the Hill—not out-loud talk, just cloakroom talk—about developing some sneaky way to get rid of the visitors. Like spraying psychedelic drugs on the trees that they are eating, like spending billions to develop a bacterium or a fungus that might be fatal to them. Saying it is better to spend a few million to get rid of them and let things get back to normal than to spend the same few million to find out about them.”
“I do believe,” said the senator, in an unusually mellow mood, “that I have heard snitches of such talk. Pest control, it’s called. Not waging war against them—just pest control.”
The senator shifted in his chair to look at Porter.
“Maybe our White House friend might have some comment on this.”
“I would think,” said Porter, “this is one I had better stand aside on.”
“Some of the boys, you know,” said the senator, “seem to be getting a bit wrought up about the situation. They’re just talking among themselves so far, but, before too long, they may go beyond that.”
“To even think, this early, about wiping out the visitors,” said Porter, “seems somewhat premature. I’ve heard some loose talk about developing a selective disease that would zero in on them. To my mind, it’s only talk. No one has the least idea of how to go about it. First, you’d have to know what the visitors are and how their life system functions. Only until you knew that would you have any clue as to how they might react to various agents. There’s a trap in the matter of selectiveness as well. How can we be sure that what would be developed would be selective? We might wind up with something that would wipe out not only the visitors, but the human race as well.”
“It’s a monstrous idea in any case,” said Alice. “We have no real grievance against the visitors.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said the senator. “Talk to a true blue environmentalist who has persuaded himself that unless some action is taken, these things will destroy the last remaining wildernesses and you might detect a grievance. Or the president of a lumber company who has just had a couple of lumberyards consumed as a quick lunch by one of our big, black friends. Or an airline official who is turning grey over the possibility that one of his jets will collide with a friendly visitor-escort. Or a man in an airport control tower who has one less strip on which to bring down planes.”
“It’s a matter of minority interests again,” said Alice. “Small cliques trying to push around the rest of us.”
“I’m surprised to hear you say that, daughter,” said the senator. “It has seemed to me that you have always been fairly well minority-oriented. The poor downtrodden blacks, the poor downtrodden Indians . . .”
“But this is different,” said Alice. “My minorities are cultural minorities; yours are economic—poor downtrodden businessmen who suddenly feel a pinch.”
“The environmentalists,” said the senator, “aren’t economic. They’re emotion-oriented troublemakers.”
“I’m beginning to have a feeling,” said Porter, “that the public attitude toward the visitors may be in the process o
f change. At first, they were novelties and an occasion for a great excitement. Now they seem to be becoming irritants. They now are just black lumps, perched around the landscape, or flying over it, and in a number of rather minor ways, they are interfering with the daily lives of some people. Given a few months, probably only a few weeks, the minor irritations may grow into dislikes, maybe even hatreds—not originating in the special interests that are most affected, but in that phenomenal area we call public opinion. It would be a pity if this should happen, for we simply have to have the kind of patience that will give us an opportunity to find out what they are and how we can get along with them.”
“Allen is working on that one out in Minnesota,” said the senator. “Is he finding anything at all?”
“Nothing that I know of, Senator. Nothing definite. He’s not made even a preliminary report, if that is what you mean. But there is some scuttlebutt floating about that they are plants—at least, that they belong to the plant kingdom.”
“Plants? Christ, that doesn’t make any sort of sense.”
“No, of course, it doesn’t. I’ve been trying to track down where the rumor came from, but have had no success.”
“There’s this business, too,” said the senator, “that the visitors may know how to control gravity. That’s the one I’m interested in. That’s something we could put to use.”
“Mostly it comes from the fact that they float a few inches above the ground and that when they move, they don’t seem to make use of propulsive units,” said Porter. “Or at least propulsive units as we think of them. No one really knows, of course. The idea is no more than someone grabbing for an explanation—any kind of explanation for a mode of operation that defies all the physical laws we know.”
“You two talk only about what we can gain from the visitors,” said Alice. “Doesn’t it enter your thinking that they may be thinking along the same lines—what they can get from us?”
The Complete Serials Page 173