"It's too big for them to handle, Johnny. Too big and too different. They are afraid of making mistakes. I have a feeling
that there is a hell of a squabble going on among the President's men, arguing what should be done, and not being able to get together on it. It's something entirely new, a situation that has never come up before, and there is no precedent. It's not simple; a lot like the energy situation."
"The energy situation's not simple, either."
"Well, hell, Johnny, you know what I mean."
"Yes," said Garrison. "Yes, I guess I do."
The highway was relatively deserted; only occasional ears moving on it. A few of the eating places that dotted the road were still lighted, but the other places of business were dark, the gas stations faint glows with the single light in the office burning, Off to the north, the twinkling glimmer of street lights swaying in the wind marked a suburban housing development off the highway.
We did it right, Garrison told himself, running the events of the past two days across his mind. Getting Kathy and Chet up to Lone Pine shortly after the landing had been a move that paid off. Kathy had done well. There had been a time, he recalled, when he had considered sending Jay to replace her; now he was glad he hadn't. Jay might, in certain regards, have done a slightly better job, he thought, but not enough to justify the shattering of Kathy's confidence. An editor, he reminded himself, did not have the sole job of getting stories in the paper; it also was his job to build a staff.
And aside from that, he thought, we kept the news objective. We wrote it as we saw it, we played it responsibly. We shunned any hint of sensationalism—straight, responsible reporting all the way. And there had been times when it had been difficult to determine that fine line between sensationalism and responsibility.
The sky was clear. A large, bright moon sailed halfway down the western sky. Here, beyond the glow of the inner city, the sky was speckled with a million stars. Cool, sharp air blew through the window at his left. He debated whether he would take the time for a good, stiff drink before he went to bed. Jane would be awake, perhaps in bed, but still awake, waiting for the sound of the car coming up the driveway. She would be up and waiting for him when he came in the door. He went a little soft inside, thinking of all the years Jane had been up and waiting for him, no matter what the hour. The kids would be in bed and fast asleep and the house would have that strangely empty feeling with the clatter of their running stilled and it would be good to sit in the living room a while and have a drink with Jane.
Ahead of him the moon was blotted out. A cloud, he thought, staring through the windshield in amazement. A tingle went along his spine, for a cloud was wrong. A cloud would not have dropped from overhead and it would not have moved so quickly and even if it had, it would be fuzzy at the edges, not so black, so sharp, so regular. He took his foot off the accelerator, began gently braking. The darkness that had swallowed the moon was blacking out the stars that gleamed above the horizon straight ahead of him. The car rolled to a stop in the right hand lane. Ahead of him, no more than half a mile ahead of him, the darkness that could not be a cloud came down to sit upon the road.
He opened the door and stepped out to the pavement. Another car came up beside him and stopped. A woman thrust her head out of the right hand window and asked, in a shrill, excited voice, "What is going on? What's that up ahead?"
"I think it's another visitor," said Garrison. "Like the one up
north."
"Oh, my God!" the woman shrilled. "Let's get out of here."
The man behind the wheel said, "Take it easy, Gladys. It may
not be a visitor."
He got out of the car and joined Garrison, who had walked out ahead of the cars, standing in the glare of the headlights. He ranged himself alongside Garrison and stood staring at the thing that loomed on the road ahead.
"How sure are you?" he asked.
"Not entirely," Garrison told him. "It looks like one. It popped
into my mind it could be one of them."
"It's big," said the other man. "I read about the one up north
and saw pictures of it. But I had no idea it could be that big."
It was big. It blocked both the traffic lanes and the grassy median that ran between them. It was black and rectangular and loomed high against the sky. Once having settled, it did not move. It sat there, a lump of blackness.
The woman had gotten out of the car and came up to them.
"Let's turn around and get out of here," she said. "I don't like
it."
"Goddammit, Gladys," said the man, "quit your caterwauling.
There's nothing to be afraid of. That one up north never hurt no one.
"It killed a man. That's what it did."
"After he shot at it. We ain't shooting at it. We're not going to bother it."
It must be a visitor, Garrison told himself. It had the square blockiness that the photos had shown. It was exactly as Kathy had described the one at Lone Pine. Except for its size; he was not intellectually prepared for the sheer, overwhelming size of it.
Two other cars had come up behind them and stopped, the people in them getting out to walk up the road to where the three of them stood. Another car came along, but did not stop. It ran off the road, crossed the median, gained the eastward traffic lanes and went roaring off.
The NASA announcement had said that the object in orbit appeared to be breaking up. It was doing a hell of a lot more, Garrison told himself, than simply breaking up; the visitors that had clustered in the orbiting object were coming down to Earth. There was one here, spraddled across the road, and the likelihood was that it was not the only one that had come to Earth. There would be others, scattered all over the world. That first landing at Lone Pine probably had been no more than a test attempt at landing, a preliminary probing to have a look at the situation. The Lone Pine visitor, before it had spawned and then had taken off, had been sending signals to its fellows orbiting in space and now the invasion was on. If it could be called an invasion. Garrison reminded himself that probably it was not an invasion in the classical sense of the term. A reconnaissance in force—could that be what it was? Or simply a visit, intelligences of another world dropping in to say hello?