Rusty crossed himself.
“I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it, it’s so awful. Its eyes are black and gleam like a serpent, the mouth is a kind of V-shape with saliva dripping from its rimless lips that seem to, oh, quiver and pulsate, and the monster or whatever it is can hardly move, it seems weighed down by…possibly gravity or something, the thing’s…rising up now, and the crowd falls back now, they’ve seen plenty. Oh, uh, this is the most extraordinary experience, ladies and gentlemen. I can’t find words…. Well, I’ll pull this microphone with me as I talk. I’ll have to stop the description until I can take a new position. Hold on, will you please, I’ll be right back in a minute….”
Brief dead silence was followed by a gentle waterfall of tinkling piano.
“So,” Rusty managed, “was I lyin’?”
“I better call ol’ Flannel Mouth,” the corporal said.
That nickname-whispered in select company only-referred to their much unloved lieutenant, who lived close-by.
“You better call Flannel Mouth is right, Corporal Stevens-you better right away!”
The corporal frowned and gestured dismissively. “Get back to your post! See what’s coming over the teletype about this thing!”
By the time a real Princeton professor-Arthur Barrington, Geology Department head, behind the wheel of his dark blue Chevrolet sedan-rolled into Grovers Mill, one might think police cars and other emergency vehicles, plus emissaries of the press (including rival radio stations), would be wall-to-wall in the tiny town.
But as student Press Club member Sheldon Judcroft, leaning out the front seat rider’s side window, reported, nothing much seemed to be cooking.
Even for a bump in the road, Grovers Mill was quiet. An old clapboard mill and a feedstore-no gas station or lunchroom or even bar-made up the entire “downtown.” A scattering of houses nearby represented the village itself. There wasn’t even a street lamp.
Professor Barrington, sitting up and peering out into a slightly foggy night, said, “See what the nearest town is, Sheldon.”
As assigned navigator, the student had charge of the map and was using a flashlight from the glove compartment.
“Cranbury, sir,” Sheldon said. “Just five miles.”
The boy pointed toward a road sign.
The professor-the real professor-nodded and drove.
Back at the Columbia Broadcasting Building, Walter Gibson remained unaware of the invasion’s impact on some of its listeners. He had a murder to try to solve, and an hour to do it in.
The speaker in the twentieth-floor lobby was sharing the latest fake broadcast: “We are bringing you an eyewitness account of what’s happening on the Wilmuth farm, Grovers Mill, New Jersey.”
As the program returned to gentle fingering of piano keys, Gibson pressed the button for the elevator.
“We now return you to Carl Phillips at Grovers Mill.”
The elevator car arrived and the writer rode down to the seventeenth floor, where yet another security guard-Fred-had seen neither Virginia Welles nor George Balanchine, nor the alley-thug trio. And if Fred had seen Dolores Donovan around, boy, he’d’ve remembered it, a dish like that.
Gibson did not bother speaking to any of the newspeople on seventeen, because they were either on the air or bustling around reading teletypes and making phone calls and typing up stories, much like a newspaper office.
Anyway, he had the immediate sense that in this building, the world of news and that of entertainment, several floors up, were twains that never met.
On the elevator he asked the same questions of the elevator operator, Leo, that featherweight “boy” pushing sixty who seemed to worship Welles.
As they spoke, the elevator car stayed on the seventeenth floor. Leo didn’t mind if Gibson had a Camel; in fact, Leo took the occasion to smoke a Chesterfield. Hey, it was Sunday night. Traffic was light.
Leo knew who Mrs. Welles was, didn’t think he’d seen her today; but then there was another elevator (self-service, for the ambitious), and a service one, too. So that meant next to nothing.
Floundering, Gibson said, “What did you mean, by you don’t think you saw Mrs. Welles?…”
“Well…I, uh…well…”
Gibson figured this stall for a prompt, and showed Leo a couple of bucks to prime the pump.
But Leo was damn near offended. “I don’t want your money, sir. Any friend of Mr. Welles is a friend of mine. But-there was a lady who could’ve been Mrs. Welles.”
“Could?”
“Yeah, well-she was in a coat and a scarf and sunglasses, and she kept her back to me.”
“Like she didn’t want to be recognized?”
“I dunno. Maybe.”
“When was this?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe an hour ago? Half hour? Forty-five minutes, maybe-I don’t keep close track. I just go up and down.”
“Thanks, Leo. Thanks. Listen, can you take me to see the janitor?”
“Sure. He’s on eighteen, right now. Fixing the men’s room. Name’s Louis. Him-he might take your money. In fact, I’d recommend offering it.”
“Thanks, Leo. Take me up a floor, would you?”
“That’s what they pay me for.”
The seventeenth-floor news center of the Columbia Broadcasting Building did not pipe in the network’s programming, so Gibson had not heard what so many others had-the Dorn sisters, for example.
The two sisters, seated in their rockers, having set their knitting aside, had with their own ears witnessed the opening foray of Armageddon.
“Ladies and gent…Am I on? Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, here I am, back of a stone wall that adjoins Mr. Wilmuth’s garden. From here I get a sweep of the whole scene. I’ll give you every detail as long as I can talk, and as long as I can see….”
Miss Jane reached bony fingers out to Miss Eleanor and the two sisters, still seated, held hands.
They listened mesmerized as reporter Carl Phillips told of more state police, a good thirty of them, arriving to cordon off the pit, but the crowd was staying back of its own volition now.
The captain of police was conferring with Professor Pierson, the astronomer from Princeton. Then the two men separated and the professor moved to one side, studying the object, while the police captain and two of his men approached, carrying a pole with a flag of truce.
“If those creatures know what that means…what anything means…. Wait a minute, something’s happening….”
Miss Jane squeezed Miss Eleanor’s hand and Miss Eleanor squeezed Miss Jane’s hand, as a terrible hissing turned into a diabolical hum that built and built and built….
“A humped shape is rising out of the pit. I can make out a small beam of light against a mirror. What’s that? There’s a…jet of flame springing from that mirror, and it leaps right at the advancing men. It strikes them head on! Good Lord…they’re turning into flame!”
Terrible screams seemed to shake the radio.
The screams continued as Carl Phillips soldiered on, reporting, “Now the whole field’s caught on fire, the woods, the barns, the…the gas tanks, tanks of automobiles, spreading everywhere, it’s coming this way. About twenty yards to my right-”
Dead silence.
The two sisters, as one, fell out of their chairs onto the floor and hugged each other, and began to pray silently, though their lips moved. Miss Jane’s prayer, in the sanctuary of her mind, went as follows: “God forgive me of my sins so that I will not be commited to eternal purgatory.” Miss Eleanor’s prayer was of a similar nature, though it included a private confession about touching herself in a sinful way (some years before-frequently, though).
Then the women froze as finally the awful silence was filled by an announcer’s voice, bright and almost cheerful as he said, “Ladies and gentlemen, due to circumstances beyond our control, we are unable to continue the broadcast from Grovers Mill. Evidently there’s some difficulty with our field transmission; however, we will return to that point at the earliest opportunity.”