The Complete Serials

by Clifford D. Simak

  “Well, sure,” her father said. “They are getting cellulose. And cellulose is cheap enough if we can get gravity control from them.”

  “They also got a few cars.”

  “Well, yes, a few of them. Just that one time. Not any more. They’re not taking cars any more.”

  “I’ve wondered,” said Alice, “what they wanted the cars for. And I can’t understand you, Daddy. To start with, you were up in arms about them—destroying trees and lumberyards, upsetting the country’s business.”

  “I rethought my position,” said the senator. “I began to see some rather attractive possibilities, if we can play our cards right.” He said to Porter, “I keep hearing about a weapons test conducted against the visitors. It’s a story that keeps floating around, but I can’t get a handle on it. What do you know about it?”

  “The same as you,” said Porter. “I keep hearing the story.”

  “Nothing positive? No details?”

  “None at all,” said Porter.

  “These things must have some sort of defense worked out,” said the senator. “Out in space, they must have been open to some sort of attacks, although I can’t imagine what kind of attacks. It would be nice if we could find what they have.”

  38. MINNEAPOLIS

  The editors sat at the news huddle in the conference room. The sound of clacking typewriters and the hum of conversation came through the halfway open door.

  “We have the Black Hills-Indian story that Jones wrote,” said Garrison. “We should be getting that in the paper soon.”

  “I thought you were saving that for the Sunday edition,” said Lathrop, with raised eyebrows.

  “So I was, but it kept getting crowded out. Keep it too long and it could get dated. There is, as well, a piece that Jamison has been working on for weeks, an analysis of what a real energy crunch could do to this area. It’s a good job. He talked with a lot of people. He really dug into it. It’s long, but it looks as if we have the space today. There isn’t much other news. I’d say we could strip it across the top of the front page.”

  “Haven’t we a good story on the visitors?”

  Garrison looked at Gold. The assistant city editor shrugged. “Nothing to get excited about. It’s beginning to level off.”

  “As a matter of fact,” said Garrison, “I’m beginning to have the feeling that the visitors haven’t as much impact as they had a week ago. The edge is beginning to wear off the story. The readers may be getting a little weary of it. We’ve played the story hard. That was fine so long as the readers were avid for it. But if we keep on cramming it down their throats . . .”

  “How about Kathy? She’s still up at Lone Pine, isn’t she?”

  “She is,” said Gold, “for all the good it does. There’s nothing coming out of there. No one’s getting anything, either from there or Washington. I’ve never seen the lid clamped down so hard.”

  “It sounds,” said Garrison, “as if something fairly big is going on. Otherwise, why all the secrecy? But, apparently, we aren’t going to get anything until someone is willing to talk.”

  “What about the Washington bureau?”

  Hal Russell, the wire editor, said, “They’re not getting anything, either. I talked with Matthews just a couple of hours ago. Nothing, he said. Absolutely nothing. Either no one knows anything or they are clamming up. Some rumors, but nothing that can be pinned down. Chances are, if anyone knows anything, it’s only a few. In Washington, if more than a dozen people know something, one of them is sure to be talking about it. The news leaks out.”

  “So why are we keeping Kathy up at Lone Pine?” asked Lathrop. “If Washington is tight-lipped, what chance does she have?”

  “Kathy is one damn fine reporter,” said Garrison. “She has as much chance to dig out something as the Washington bureau.”

  “I think we ought to get her back here,” said Lathrop. “With vacations and one thing and another, we are running shorthanded. We could use her here.”

  “If you wish,” said Garrison, grim with a sudden anger.

  “If you’re still looking for a backgrounder on the visitors,” said Gold, “Jay has an idea. He was talking the other day with someone at the university, a man in the Native American affairs department. This man was drawing a parallel between us and the visitors and the Indians and the white men when the whites first showed up in America. He said the reason the Indians finally lost out was that their technology was upset by the white man and that, as a result of this, they lost their culture. Their defeat dated from the day when an Indian wanted an iron hatchet, to replace his stone tomahawk, so badly that he was willing to sell his natural resources, to enter into trade arrangements that were unfair to him, to get it.”

  “A story like that would be oblique propaganda,” said Lathrop, “and both Jay and you should know it.”

  “Jay wasn’t about to write it from the Indian view alone,” said Gold. “He was going to talk to economists and historians and a lot of other people . . .”

  Lathrop shook his head. “With the Black Hills-Indian situation, I think we should keep away from it. No matter how well the story was written, no matter how objectively, we would be accused of bias.”

  “Oh, well,” said Gold, “it was only an idea.”

  39. IOWA

  The river gurgled and lapped against the shore. Dick’s Landing, located on a shelf several feet above the river, was made up of several dilapidated buildings. Above the buildings reared the steep heights of the Iowa bluffs. Beyond the river’s edge was an island that hemmed in the channel or, rather, one of many channels, for here the Mississippi, spreading out on a wide flood-plain, became a watery jungle. To the east loomed the blueness of the distant bluffs on the Wisconsin side.

  Jerry stood still on the riverbank, watching the progress of the small rowboat powered by a small and sputtering motor. The boat made its doubtful, hesitating way up the channel, bouncing in the roughness of the current. In the back of it crouched a hunched-over man, nursing the balky motor.

  Opposite the landing, the man angled the boat in toward shore, finally bringing it in against the shaky dock. When he clambered from the boat and tied it, Jerry saw that he was older than he first had thought. His hair was an unruly iron-grey and his shoulders slightly stooped, but when he moved it was with the sprightly spring of a man much younger.

  He came along the walkway of the dock and up the bank. When he came close, Jerry asked, “Are you Jimmy Quinn?”

  The man halted in his tracks and looked at him with clear blue eyes, the skin at the corners of them wrinkled and squeezed into intricate crows-feet.

  “That I am,” he said. “Who’s doing the asking?”

  “The name is Jerry Conklin. I was told you’d be coming in soon. I understand you know these bottoms.”

  “Man and boy I’ve known the Winnishiek,” said Quinn. “A river rat I’m called and I guess that’s what I am. These bottoms I have known since the day that I could toddle and a tangled mess they are. Islands and sloughs and lakes and channels, and I know them all for miles up and down the river. I’ve hunted them and fished and trapped them and I’ve poked into every corner of them. And what can I do for you?”

  “I understand that some of the visitors have landed somewhere in the area, somewhere in the river bottoms.”

  “Visitors? Visitors? Oh, yes, now I know. I’ve heard the name. You mean those big black boxes folks say came out of the sky.”

  “That’s what I mean,” said Jerry. “You sound as if you saw one.”

  “Over on Goose Island,” said Quinn. “That’s the big island, plumb in the center of the river valley, four or five miles downstream from here. Near as I could make out, there are three of them. I don’t know if they are still there. Just saw the tops of them, sticking out above the trees. It was getting on toward evening and I didn’t linger none. Maybe I wouldn’t have even if it hadn’t been getting on toward evening. Spooky things they were. Nothing that belonged there. Gives a
man shivers up his spine. Didn’t rightly know what they were first off. Figured it out later on that they must be these visitors. How come you know? I never told no one. People would have laughed at me. They think I’m crazy anyhow. To tell the truth, perhaps I am. I’ve been too long on the river.”

  “Would you be willing to take me to them?”

  “Not now,” said Quinn. “Not today. It’s getting on close to night. This river’s not a place to be at night. With the kind of motor that I have, it’s a long way down to Goose. Dark would catch us on the way.”

  “Tomorrow, then. Or the day after tomorrow, more than likely. There is someone else who will want to go along. It may take me a while to locate this other person and she’ll have to drive down from Minneapolis.”

  “A woman?”

  “Yes, a woman.”

  “What would a woman want with them visitors?”

  “She just possibly may know more about them than anyone in the world today.”

  “I be damned,” said Quinn. “These days you never know what to expect of a woman. Should I take you down there, would there be something in it for me?”

  “We’d pay you.”

  “Cash money?”

  “Cash money,” Jerry told him. “You expect to get up close to these things? If they still are there. They might have left, you know.”

  “We would want to get close to them,” said Jerry.

  “I tell you, mister, I’m not getting up close to them. I’ll take you there and I’ll wait to take you back. But I’m not getting close to them.”

  “You won’t have to come along with us. You just point them out. That’s all you’ll have to do. And wait to take us back.”

  “You let me know when you need me. Generally, I’m on the river the most of the day. Come in along toward evening.”

  “I’ll let you know,” said Jerry.

  40. WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Allen, the presidential science advisor, said, “This is only a preliminary report. Later on, there’ll be more.”

  “You’ve found something, then,” said the President.

  “Something,” said Allen. “Yes, something. It’s hard to believe. I have a hard time making myself believe it. But the analysis is there. The facts are undeniable. There is no ground to quarrel with them.”

  “Doctor,” said Whiteside, “you look a little pale around the gills.”

  “I suspect I do,” admitted Allen. “This goes against the grain, against all the knowledge that we have. Those damn things are made up of cellulose.”

  “Cellulose?” asked the President. “That white, fluffy stuff?”

  “When the visitors get through with it, it’s no longer white or fluffy.” Allen looked around the room. “There are only four of us. Will there be others arriving?”

  “Not this time,” said the President.

  “Later on, when we know more, there may be another briefing with other personnel. This time around, just the four of us. General Whiteside has a special interest and should know what you’ve found. Dave is here because, by and large, he knows everything I know. At the moment, everything you say here is confidential. I assume your staff is not doing any talking.”

  Allen stiffened. “Only four men are involved,” he said. “They understand the need of confidentiality.”

  “But there are a lot more involved than four,” said Whiteside.

  “The others are field workers,” said Allen. “Collecting samples and doing other basic work on the Minnesota visitor. Only four are involved in the lab work. They are the only ones who know what I’m about to tell you.”

  “O.K., Doctor,” said the President. “So go ahead and tell us.”

  “The creature basically is made up of cellulose,” said Allen. “But not cellulose in the form that we know it. To precisely describe the situation, we have had to make use of highly technical terminology.”

  “Which we wouldn’t understand,” said the President. “You’ll have to simplify it for us, Doctor.”

  “I’ll do what I can. What I tell you will have to be oversimplified. And because of the oversimplification, perhaps a little short of the exact truth, but it will give you an idea of what we have come up with.

  “The inner part of the creature is closely-packed cellulose, compressed to an unbelievable extent. So closely packed that it can withstand structural stresses of several tons per square inch. Ordinarily this would seem impossible, but the figures are there. How it can be managed we have no idea, no inkling as to the process involved.”

  “You talk about the inner part of the creature,” said Whiteside. “Does that mean the outer part is different?” Allen shuddered. “Yes, General, it is different. An entirely different story. It is what you might call a cellulose-silicon polymer involving in some manner that we’re not sure we understand the use of silicon-oxide bonds and hydroxyl bonds—that is, hydrogen-oxide bonds. There is a lot of oxygen in cellulose. In the silicon-oxygen bonding, there are a couple of different forms and, to make matters even more complicated, a mix of the two forms are employed. In some cases, it amounts to a tetrahedral structure, a silicate akin to rock—a structure similar to feldspar and quartz. It’s hard to say exactly what we have. There are a number of various linkages to make up what we tentatively describe as a polymer.”

  “It seems to me you are talking about the thing having a rocklike skin,” said Porter.

  “In layman language, that is what I am talking about,” said Allen. “Hard as rock, probably much harder, and yet the silicon provides it with some elasticity, some give. Rocks can’t normally be dented. This stuff can. It can be dented and then bounces back. It has at once hardness and ductility and an incredible thermal stability.

  “We have theorized the use to which these capabilities can be put. It is only a theory, of course, but it does make sense. If these things operate across vast extents of interstellar space, they would have to get energy from somewhere. Their high thermal stability means they could soak up all sorts of energy, a lot of it, perhaps, from the impact of interstellar dust. The dust particles, no matter how small, would carry some energy. But in the form of kinetic energy. We think the skins of these things can convert the kinetic energy to potential energy, possibly can change that energy to whatever form it needs. Occasionally, they might collide with larger pieces of matter. Such a strike would indent the skin, with the skin picking up as much energy as it could handle, deflecting what it can’t use when the indentation in the skin bounces back, in effect rejecting that part of the energy it can’t handle. The dent in the skin would produce a reflected wave of energy, getting rid of it as the surface of a mirror would reflect sunlight.”

  Porter sneaked a quick look at Whiteside, who had stiffened in his chair and now wore a slightly slack-jawed appearance.

  Allen sighed. “We also have some reason to believe,” he said, “and I can’t go into this as closely as I would like, for it can’t be explained in layman terms—but we have reason to believe that the skin’s composition is such that it can change gravitational flux and thus points to the possibility that the creatures can manipulate gravitational forces, that they can either be attracted or repulsed by gravitation. Which would explain, if true, how they are able to float an inch or two off the ground. It might also mean that gravitational control may be, at least partially, an explanation of how they travel through space. Locked in on a gravitational source in the direction in which they want to travel, they would move toward the source. Locked into another behind them, they could utilize it as a repulsor to push them away from that source.”

  Allen ceased talking and looked at each of the three in turn.

  “Well, that’s it,” he said. “It sounds insane and I keep telling myself it has to be insane. Aliens, we said. And these things are alien. What bothers me, what keeps me awake at night is this—if they are so alien in the physical sense, how alien are they mentally? What chance will we ever have of understanding them, what hope they will ever be able to und
erstand us?”

  “Perhaps the intellectual span is not as great as the physical span,” said Porter. “They seem to have done a fairly good job so far in understanding us. Somehow they seem to have sensed a lot of things they should not do. They have fairly well kept within the basic rules of human conduct.”

  “I hope you’re right,” said Allen. “I sincerely hope you are.”

  He spoke to the President, “In a couple of weeks, we may know more.

  We may find that some of our present thinking is wrong. We may have to modify our theories. Or we may come across some new and significant data. For the present, I have told you basically all I know. Of course, it could be elaborated upon endlessly, but there’s no point in doing that now.”

  He rose from his chair, hesitated for a moment.

  “There is one other thing,” he said. “Interesting, but probably not too significant. But it does throw some further light on the visitors. You have heard of 101, of course.”

  The President nodded. “The first of the visitors to land at Lone Pine. I understand it’s down in Iowa now.”

  “That is right,” said Allen. “It is guarding a field the farmer had just finished plowing. The farmer claims that it passed back and forth over the field as if it were planting something. When anyone approaches, it drives them off. One of our observers, however, managed to sneak up to the edge of the field without being driven off. He found that the visitor had planted pine seeds. Earlier we had been somewhat puzzled by the fact that the debris which was rejected by the visitors after they cut the trees contained virtually no pine seeds. Now we know why. The visitors winnow out the seeds and intend to plant them.”

  “It will take a long time to grow a new crop of pines from scratch,” said the President. “101 may have its work cut out for it guarding its planting.”

  “Perhaps not,” said Allen. “Our observer found that a number of the seeds had sprouted. Forestry experts tell us that such sprouting could not be expected this quickly. Our guess is that 101 treated the seeds in some way to speed up the sprouting process, probably to speed up the growth once they have started.”