9. LONE PINE

Kathy struggled up from the depths of sleep. Someone was pounding at the door. Behind the drapes, the windows were faintly lighted by a weak and early dawn. She searched, fumbling, for the unaccustomed lamp on the unaccustomed bedside table. The room, even barely glimpsed, held a brutal barrenness. Where the hell am I? she wondered. Then remembered where she was:

Lone Pine!

Lone Pine and someone hammering at the door.

She found the lamp switch and turned it. Throwing back the covers, she searched with her feet for the slippers on the floor, found them, scuffed them on. She found her robe, lying across the foot of the bed, and struggled into it.

The pounding still continued.

"All right! All right!" she yelled. "I'll be there."

Pulling the robe close about her, she shuffled to the door, pulled the bolt and opened it.

Frank Norton stood outside.

"Miss Foster," he said, "I hate to bother you at this hour, but something's happening. The thing that fell out of the sky is cutting down trees and eating them."

"Eating trees!"

He nodded. "That's right. It is cutting them down and chewing them up. It's gulping down big trees."

"Please," she said, "will you get Chet up. He's next door. Number three. I'll be right out."

Norton turned away and she closed the door. The room was miserably cold. When she breathed, faint wisps of her breath hung in the air.

Swiftly, gasping with the cold, she got into her clothes, stood in front of a mirror to run a comb through her hair. She didn't look her best, she knew. She looked a sight, but the hell with it. What would one expect, routed out of bed at this time in the morning.

Norton was crazy, she told herself. The thing across the river couldn't be eating trees. It might be no more than a joke, but Norton didn't seem like someone who would spend much time in joking. But why in the world would the contraption over there be gulping trees?

When she went outside, Chet already had emerged, laden with his camera gear.

"You look good," he said to Kathy, "even at this ungodly hour."

"Go chase yourself," said Kathy.

"I'm sorry," said Norton, "for routing you out even before the sun is up. But I expected you would want to know. I thought about it for all of thirty seconds."

"It's all right," said Kathy. "It goes with the job."

"There are other newspaper people in town," said Norton. "They came in during the night. Dribbling in. Trowbridge from the Minneapolis Star, someone from the Kansas City Star, a couple of people from the Des Moines Register and Tribune. All of them brought photographers. I expect there will be others later in the day."

"How are they getting in?" asked Chet. "The roads were blocked."

"The state patrol got them unblocked. Got people turned around and turned back. A few ears left there. I suppose yours is among them. The patrol pushed them over to the shoulder of the road. They're letting in the press and a few others, but keeping the public out."

"Any TV people?" asked Kathy.

"Several crews," said Norton. "They're raising hell. They want to get across the river, but there's no way to get there."

"No boats?"

"They've been looking for boats. Not many people here have boats. What boats there are are out at lakes in the area. No one uses boats on the river."

There were few people in evidence as they walked down the street. All of them, Kathy told herself, must be down at the end of the ruined bridge watching the thing chew up the trees.

Well before they reached the river, they heard the occasional crash of a falling tree and a growling sound that rose and fell.

"That's the thing chewing up the trees?" asked Kathy.

"That's right," said Norton. "It knocks down a tree and grabs it.. 7

"But those are big trees," objected Chet.

"The thing itself is big," said Norton. "Wait until you see it."

A good-sized crowd was gathered at the shattered bridge. Three TV crews were in position on the roadway. The ear that had been flattened by the falling object had disappeared. A state patrol car was parked beside the road and two troopers lounged against it. Neither of them, Kathy noted, was the trooper who had been there the night before.

Across the river lay the object. Kathy sucked in her breath in amazement. Everyone had been telling her how big it was, but, even so, she had not been prepared for the size of it. So big, that while most of the trees in front of it towered over it, it still stood up for half their height or more. Big and black—the blackest thing she had ever seen. But strangely, otherwise unspectacular. No antennae sprouted from it; nothing sprouted from it. None of the gadgets which the TV shows on UFOs delighted in tacking on their flying saucers. Just a gaunt, overgrown black box. And, strangely too, with no menace in it. Nothing except its size to make it a thing to be frightened of.

In front of it, one of the big trees slowly tilted and then came crashing down. In front of the object lay piled-up litter of other downed trees. From the thing came a steady growling of wood being chewed up, ground up, ingested, whatever the thing might be doing to the trees. The tree that had fallen seemed to have acquired a life of its own. It was bobbing and switching back and forth. And, slowly, it was being drawn in toward the front of the machine.

"The damn thing just sucks them in and chews them up," said Norton. "Since it started half an hour or so ago, it has moved almost its length. I'd figure that to be three hundred feet or more.

"What is it doing?" asked Kathy. "Trying to chew a path through the woods?"

"If that's what it's doing," Norton told her, "it has a long way to go. That forest extends for twenty miles or more, all of it heavy growth."

She stood and watched. There wasn't much to see. Just the huge black box knocking down trees and gobbling them up. The frightening thing about it, she thought, was its stow, deliberate movement, its sense of power, its seeming confidence that nothing could prevent it from doing what it was doing.

She walked over to the police ear.

"Yes, miss," said one of the troopers. "Anything we can do to help?"

"The car," she said. "The one that was lying crushed at the end of the bridge. It isn't there now.

"A truck came and hauled it away," the trooper said. "The driver had the proper papers to requisition it and we let him take it. We checked by radio and were told it was all right."

"Where did the order come from?"

"Miss," the trooper said, "I can't tell you that."

"The FBI?"

"Miss, I cannot discuss it."

"Well, all right," she said, "perhaps you can't. Can you tell me what is going to happen next?"

"The army engineers will be coming in to build a temporary bridge. We expect them any time. One of those prefabricated bridges, as I understand it."

Chet came walking up. He said to her, "I've taken all I can from here. We ought to get up closer. Trowbridge and me and some of the others have been talking about it. We think we can wade the river. The stream below the pool is fast, but not too deep. Or that's what the locals te1~ us. If we join hands, form a chain, help one another, we can get across.

One of the troopers said, "You can't cross the river. We have our orders. No one is to cross the river."

Kathy said, "If you are going to cross, count me in. I'm going, too."

"The hell you are," said Chet. "You stay here and guard the equipment that we have to leave behind. I'll just take one camera and some film reloads across.~~

"Chet White," said Kathy, "I am going. If the others go, I'll go along.

"You'll get your ass soaked. That water's cold."

"I've been soaked before. And cold before."

"The trouble," said Chet, "is them TV jerks. They want to carry a lot of equipment over. They want us to help. That stuff of theirs is heavy."