"I'm not sure," said Chet, "they'll ever know much more. I wouldn't know where to start to find out any more."

"They have ways," said Quinn. "They'll learn other things but probably not all we need to know. We may be dealing here with something outside our knowledge. We may have to change some of our thinking before we understand it."

A silence fell—a relative silence. The growling and the crunching of the visitor in its chewing up of trees had stopped. Now the sounds that had been drowned out by the chomping of the trees came through—the chirps and calls of distant birds, the sough of the wind blowing through the pines, the chatter and gurgle of the river.

The newsmen and photographers who were in the cleared swath swung around to look. For a moment nothing happened. Maybe, Kathy told herself, it is only resting for a moment. But why, she wondered, should it be resting now? Since the time it had started on its strange harvest of the trees, it had not stopped to rest, but had continued to bore into the forest, lengthening the swath that it left behind it.

The visitor began to lift, so slowly that at first its movement was barely perceptible, then gathering speed. It rose above the pines and hung there for a moment—and there had not been any sound. There had been no roar of motors, no noise emitted by propulsive mechanisms. There was no flame, no smoke, no sign that any propulsive device had been used. It had simply floated up until it hung above the trees, hanging there as silently as it had risen. In the light of the westering sun, the green 101 that had been painted on its side stood out in sharp relief against its blackness.

So slowly that it seemed to be doing no more than drifting in the wind, it began to move eastward and upward. It built up speed and swung from the east to the south, its apparent size diminishing as it moved.

So it is going, Kathy thought; it is leaving us. It came and stayed a while. It processed food for its babies and now is on its way, its purpose filled, its function done.

She stood and watched until it was a small dot in the sky and finally the dot was gone. She brought herself back to the cleared swath in which she stood. And the place, she thought, somehow seemed lonelier, as if a valued friend had left.

The youngsters that it had left behind it still continued their scurrying about, feeding greedily on the bales of cellulose. One of the observers was busily painting numbers on them, but on them the paint was red, not green.

20. MINNEAPOLIS

It was after midnight before Johnny Garrison got away from his desk. Now, driving west on Highway 12, he tried to relax. Relaxation, he found, came hard. There was nothing to worry about now, he told himself. The final edition was all wrapped up and Gold would stay on until the presses had started and he could have a look at one of the first copies from the pressroom. Gold was a good man; he could be depended upon to know what to do if something should come up. The chances were that nothing would occur. At the last moment before closing, it had been possible to squeeze out a few inches of space on page one to put in a bulletin carrying the NASA announcement that the new object in orbit appeared to be breaking up. As a matter of fact, the bulletin of the announcement was all that had appeared. There had been no official elaboration. When Garrison phoned the Tribune's news bureau in Washington, to catch Matthews standing the dog watch (a procedure that was followed only when big news possibly might be breaking), Matthews had been upset and slightly bitter.

"The bastards knew about it hours ago," he fumed. "I am sure they did, but they held the announcement up. Waiting for that sewing circle at the White House to figure out how it should be handled. They finally wound up letting NASA make the announcement, probably figuring it would have less impact than it would have coming from the White House. If you ask me, the White House doesn't know what to do. They're scared down to their toenails. I tried to reach Dave Porter, but he couldn't be found; neither could any of his staff. I imagine Dave is crisped to a cinder. He has spent the last two days assuring us that the White House would come clean on this one."

"What's the matter with them down there?" Garrison asked.

"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?"