"I am glad you called," he said. "I was tempted to call you, but

hesitated, because I thought you'd be asleep."

"Why should you be calling me?"

"Well, another visitor has landed. Right in our lap this time. It's sitting on one of the runways at the airport."

"That's only half of it," said Garrison. "There's a second one. Came down on Highway 12, about a mile east of Ridgedale shopping center. It's blocking off the road."

"You there now?"

"That's right. It landed half a mile or so ahead of me. I better come on in. These may not be the only landings in the area. You have someone you can send out to keep an eye on this one?"

"I don't know. I'll look around. Jay was still here, so I sent him to the airport. Have a photographer out there as well."

"What's happening at the airport?"

"Not much, so far. The visitor is roosting out there, not bothering anyone, but the men in the tower are up tight. Not much air traffic out there now, but it'll pick up in a few hours. The visitor being there means there's one less runway to handle the planes."

"Anything on the wires? Any other landings in other places?"

"Fragmentary reports. Nothing solid. Nothing confirmed. Someone in Texas phoned the police to report one down. Another report from New Jersey. Simple reports of sightings, nothing official yet."

"I'm afraid the swarm that was in orbit out there is beginning to come in.

"Look, Johnny, why the hell don't you go on home, get some rest. There must be ways to bypass the visitor blocking the roads It'll be twenty hours before we can go to press again."

"No. If need be, I can go down to medical service and stretch out on a cot, get a few hours sleep later on. Any word from Kathy?"

"None. Why would you expect her to be calling? She's probably been asleep for hours."

"I think when she does phone, we should call her in. The Lone Pine thing is finished. The action will be down here so far as we are concerned. Anything happen at Lone Pine, Norton can fill us

in. We need Kathy. She's the one who knows about these things."

"O.K. I'll tell her if she calls."

"I'll see you in a while," said Garrison.

He hung up, fished in his pocket for another dime, inserted it in the slot and dialed.

Jane answered. "Johnny, I'm sitting up, waiting for you. When will you be home?"

"I started out," he said, "then something happened."

"And you aren't coming?"

"Not for a while. One of the visitors landed on the road just ahead of me. I have to get back to the office. Jim tells me another one landed at the airport."

"You mean one landed on Highway 12?" "That's right. Just east of Ridgedale." "Johnny, that's only four or five miles from here." "Yes, I know. But there's nothing…Johnny," she said, "that's too close. I'm getting scared."

They came down through the night, like homing birds, although they were not homing birds, but were settling on a terrain that was alien to them. They came seeking through the dark, although it was not dark to them, and picked out their landing places with a certain care. There was little interference, for there was nothing, at this time of night, to interfere with them. They kept in touch with one another, talking back and forth, and there was nothing that one sensed the others did not know.

They landed in the watery delta lands where the Mississippi flowed into the Gulf, on the broad plains of Texas, the deserts of the American Southwest, the sandy beaches of Florida, the wheatlands of the West, the rustling cornfields of the Central States, the commons of New England villages, in Southern cotton fields and sweet potato patches, on the concrete of large airports, astride the great highways that spanned the continent, along the Western seaboard, in the forests of Oregon, Washington and Maine, in the woodlots of Ohio and Indiana.

They came down and landed silently with no more noise than the whisper of the air disturbed by their passage. They landed softly, then rose an inch or two from where they had landed and floated just above the surface. They disturbed few of the sleeping millions they passed over and landed among. Only on occasion were they sighted and, except when they landed on airports or highways, that by accident.

They made a flurry of soft, fluttering, moth-like tracks across the screen in the war room of the Strategic Air Command, but there the watchers of the screens, maintaining an intent, militarily professional surveillance, had been warned and were prepared for them, their only real concern being that the coming of the visitors cluttered up the board and might mask other kinds of incoming objects.

In those instances where they ~anded in forested areas, they almost immediately set to work harvesting cellulose. In a suburban Virginia housing tract, not far from Washington, one of them, in lieu of trees, began the harvesting of houses. Another, in Oregon, landed adjacent to a huge lumberyard and began the chomping of stacked lumber. But the most of them, coming to rest in less productive areas, simply squatted down and waited.

Gold was on the phone when Garrison came into the newsroom. The only other people in the room were three copyreaders and two sleepy dog-trick copy aides.

Gold hung up the phone and said to Garrison, "That was some screwball, calling to tell me that a group that calls themselves the Lovers are going to go out to the airport, sit down in front of the visitor there and love it all to hell. Isn't that the silly bunch that Kathy wrote about?"

"That's right. Did Kathy's story ever make the paper?"

"I never saw it. Just knew you sent her out on it."

"It's probably still in her typewriter. She was working on it when I interrupted her to ship her off to Lone Pine. Now that I am here, why don't you take off?"

"Not on your life," said Gold. "I wouldn't miss this for a million dollars."

"All right, then, if that's the way you feel, why don't we settle down and figure what we should be doing. Probably, in the next few hours, we should start calling in some of our people early. You have any ideas?"

"Jay's out at the airport now," said Gold. "I caught Sloane before he left and sent him out to Highway 12. Jones just got back from South Dakota and he'll have to write his Black Hills-Indian story for the Sunday paper.

"Let's forget the Black Hills piece," said Garrison. "We'll have plenty else and it can wait. Jones is a good man and we'll need him. He's had a good night's sleep. Call him in another hour or two."

"Freeman is another man we could use early," said Gold. "He knows his way around the statehouse. The governor, most likely, will be calling out the guard. We need someone who can sit here at a desk and keep tabs on what the state is doing. I phoned the highway patrol and it is on the job. They'll probably have troopers three deep around the visitor on Highway 12. Some at the airport, too, but the airport has its own security force and may not need much help."

"They'll have real problems out there when the traffic picks up later in the morning."

"They have problems now. It puts a crimp in handling air traffic when you have a runway out."

"Why the hell do on think that thing landed at the airport?"

Gold shook his head. "For that matter, why should one land on a highway? Why do they land in any one particular place?" Lie reached out his hand and picked up a sheaf of paper ripped off the teletypes. "All over the country," he said. "Mostly reports of sightings, but some of them now are being verified. One reported here, another there. Reports from truck drivers, late people driving home from work, night watchmen, from all kinds of night owls."