"Mr. President," said Whiteside, "I wish you wouldn't. Maybe eventually he can help with an answer, hopefully without actually knowing what he's doing. But he shouldn't be told about this. Six men know about it now; six men are too many, but there's nothing we can do about that. Let's keep it at the six. Allen is soft and a bit given to talk. He is somewhat bitten with the idea that scientific knowledge should be shared. The force that he has pulled together is working outside security and

"You don't need to belabor the point," said the President. "You are entirely right. We'll keep Allen out of it."

"My people think," said the general, "that with the visitors it is not a matter of defense at all. Not defense against an enemy, that is. They think the visitors absorb energy from any source that is available. Out in space, they'd absorb energy from all sorts of radiations or from small particles of matter, perhaps on occasion rather large particles of matter that might collide with them. In such an instance, they can convert the kinetic energy of such particles into potential energy, absorb what they can of it and reject that part they can't absorb. The ability is a sort of built-in safety valve against excess energy.

"You used a.3o-caliber projectile," said the President. "Do your people have any estimate of how much larger projectiles the visitor could withstand?"

"I suppose a nuke might destroy them," said the general, "but the probability seems to be they could withstand anything short of that. The dimple made by the rifle bullet was small and shallow. The dimple would increase in size with anything heavier, but there is plenty of leeway. The visitor we used for the test didn't seem to notice. When the bullet struck, it never even flinched. It was standing, doing nothing, before the test. At least, nothing we could notice. It was still standing there, doing nothing, after the firing. What I'd like to do is try something a little heavier, progressively heavier firing tests."

"You can't do that," warned Porter. "You would blow your Cover. Maybe we can get by, just barely get by, denying this one test. If you tried others, there wouldn't be a chance."

"That's right," said the President. "For the moment, we must be satisfied with what we have. What we must do now is find what the visitors are. How they are made. How they operate, if that's the word. Allen may be pulling something together soon that will help us."

"He hasn't much to work on," said Porter. "About all his people can do is stand to one side and observe."

The box on the President's desk beeped. Frowning, he reached out and punched a button.

"Grace, I thought I told you.

"I'm terribly sorry, sir. I thought you'd want to know. Dr. Allen is here. He says he must see you immediately. It seems that someone out in Minnesota has found a dead visitor."

33. MINNEAPOLIS

The room was closing in on him and that was strange, for it had not closed in before. For the first time since he had lived there—a long two years—he became aware of the room's smallness, its cluttered bareness, its squalidness. He saw the grime upon the windows, the water streaks upon the wall.

He shoved the papers on the desk to one side and stood up, looking out the window to where kids were playing one of those nonsensical, running-and-yelling games that had no significance to anyone but themselves. An old woman, struggling with a grocery bag, was limping down the broken sidewalk. A dog sat lopsided before the stoop of a ramshackle house. The old wreck of a car, its battered fenders drooping disconsolately, stood in its accustomed place beside the curb.

What the hell is the matter with me? Jerry Conklin asked himself. And asking, knew.

It was this visitor business. It had preyed upon him ever since it had happened. He had not, since then, been himself. The worry of it had robbed him of his dedication as a student, had nagged at him almost every waking hour. It would not let him be. It had interfered with his work on his thesis and the thesis was important. He simply had to get the thesis written.

Would it have been better, he wondered, if he had come forward to tell the story of what had happened to the proper authorities? And having gotten rid of it by the telling of it, he might now be shut of it and able to get down to work. Yet, for some reason, he had not been able to do that. He had told himself that he balked against the ridicule and the hidden laughter the story would have brought, although that might not be the only reason. Although he could not imagine what other reason there might be. He had thought that telling it to Barr might be some help, but it hadn't been. The exobiologist, despite the fact that he had listened without laughter, had been no help at all. Nor had the telling of it, even under the circumstances, had the cleansing therapy of a confessional.

And, now, he simply could not tell it. Telling it now, so long after the fact, would lump it with the stories all the kooks were telling about being taken up by the visitors. Telling it now would do no more than link him with the lunatic fringe that had sprung up with the advent of the visitors. Difficult to tell his story before, it was now impossible.

Although, more than likely, he was not through with it yet. At some time, the investigators who had hauled his car away would find a license plate or a motor number and the car would be linked to him. Perhaps, he told himself, they already had found the evidence that would link him to the car. He had done nothing about the car and perhaps he should have, but had not been able to decide what to do. He should have reported its destruction to his insurance company, but what could he have told them? For a time, he had considered reporting it stolen, but had not acted on that impulse. If he had, he probably would find himself in more trouble than he was right now.

He moved away from the window and back to the desk. Sitting down, he pulled the papers in front of him. No matter what, he told himself, he had to get some work done that afternoon. Kathy would be picking him up at six or so and they'd go out to eat.

Kathy, he thought. What the hell would he have done without

her? It had been her strength and steadiness, her loving solicitude

that had carried him through the last few days.

The phone rang and he picked it up.

Kathy said, "Jerry, I'm so sorry. I can't see you tonight. I'm going out of town. Up to Lone Pine again."

"Oh, hell," Jerry said. "I had been sitting here, counting on seeing you. What is it this time?"

"They've found a dead visitor up there. Washington probably will be sending in investigators. We have to have someone up there and Johnny picked on me."

"A dead visitor? V/hat happened?"

"No one knows. It was just found dead. Stuffy Grant found it.

You remember Stuffy. I introduced you to him."

"Yeah, I remember him. Tell me, how would Stuffy know if it was dead or not?"

"It was cold," she said. "No longer warm, but cold. And it wasn't floating. It was resting on the ground."

"And now they're going to rush in and dissect it to find how it works."

"I suppose that's the idea," Kathy said. "It has a gruesome sound to me."

"To me, too, but it's logical."

"When will you be back?"

"I don't know. A day or two, I think. I will see you then."

"I was counting on seeing you tonight."

"So was I. Jerry, I'm awfully sorry. And so disappointed."

"Oh, well, you have a job to do. So have I—the thesis. I'll get some work done on it."

"And, Jerry, something else. Old 101 has been found."

"Yes, don't you remember? I told you. How one of the men from Washington painted a green 101 on that first visitor to land."