33

He had somehow climbed a tree and got out on a limb and had been hanging onto it, for no reason that seemed quite logical, when a sudden violent wind had come up and now he was hanging grimly to the branch which was whipping in the wind. He knew that at any moment his grasp might be torn loose and he'd be thrown to the ground. But when he looked down, he saw, with horror, that there wasn't any ground.

From somewhere far off a voice was speaking to him, but he was so intent on maintaining his grip upon the branch that he was unable to distinguish the words. The shaking became even more violent. "Steve," the voice was saying. "Steve, wake up." His eyes came open a slit and he realized that he was in no tree. A distorted face swam crazily just above him. No one had such a face.

"Wake up, Steve," said a voice that was Henry Hunt's. "The President is asking for you." Wilson lifted a fist and scrubbed his eyes. The face, no longer distorted, was the face of Henry Hunt.

The face receded into the distance as the Times man straightened up. Wilson swung his feet off the couch, sat up. Sunlight was streaming through the windows of the press lounge.

"What time is it?" he asked.

"Almost eight."

Wilson squinted up at Hunt. "You get any sleep?" he asked.

"I went home for a couple of hours. I couldn't sleep. Things kept spinning in my head. So I came back." He picked a jacket off the floor. "This yours?" he asked.

Wilson nodded groggily. "I got to get washed up," he said. "I got to comb my hair."

He rose to his feet, took the jacket from Hunt and tucked it underneath his arm. "What's going on?" he asked.

"What you might expect," said Hunt. "The wires are clogged with screams of anguish over the business holiday. How come you didn't tip us off, Steve?"

"I didn't know. He never said a word about it."

"Well, that's all right," said Hunt. "We should have guessed it. Can you imagine what would have happened if the exchanges were open?"

"Any word about the monster?"

"Rumor. Nothing solid. One rumor says another got through in Africa. Somewhere in the Congo. Christ, they'll never find it there."

"The Congo's not all jungle, Henry."

"Where it's supposed to have happened, it is." Wilson headed for the washroom. When he returned, Hunt had a cup of coffee for him.

"Thanks," he said. He sipped the hot brew and shuddered. "I don't know if I can face the day," he said. "Any idea of what the President has in mind?"

Hunt shook his head.

"Judy in yet?"

"Not yet, Steve."

Wilson put the cup, still half full, down on the coffee table. "Thanks for getting me up and going," he said. "I'll see you later."

He went through the door into the pressroom. The lamp he had forgotten to turn off still shone feebly down upon the desk. In the corridor outside footsteps went smartly up and down. He straightened his jacket and went out.

Two men were with the President. One was General Daniel Foote, the other was one of the refugees, rigged out in a mountain-man outfit.

"Good morning, Mr. President," said Wilson.

"Good morning, Steve. You get any sleep?"

"An hour or so."

"You know General Foote, of course," said the President. "The gentleman with him is Isaac Wolfe. Dr. Wolfe is a biologist. He brings us rather frightening news. I thought that you should hear it."

Wolfe was a heavy man — heavy of body, deep in the chest, standing on short, solid legs. His head, covered by a rat-nest of graying hair, seemed oversize.

He stepped quickly forward and shook Wilson's hand. "I am sorry," he said, "to be the bearer of such disturbing facts."

"Last night," said the President, "rather sometime this morning, a farmer not far from Harper's Ferry was wakened by something in his chicken coop. He went out and found the henhouse full of strange beasts, the size, perhaps, of half-grown hogs. He fired at them and they got away, all except one which the shotgun blast almost cut in two. The farmer was attacked. He's in the hospital. He'll live, I'm told, but he was fairly well chewed up. From what he says there can be little doubt the things in the henhouse were a new batch of the monsters."

"But that's impossible," said Wilson. "The monster escaped only a few…"

"Dr. Wolfe came to me last evening," said Foote, "shortly after the monster escaped from the tunnel. I frankly didn't believe what he told me, but when the report of the henhouse episode came in from an officer of a search party out in West Virginia, I looked him up and asked him to come to the White House. I'm sorry, Doctor, for not believing you to start with."

"But it's still impossible," said Wilson.

"No, no," said Wolfe. "It is not impossible. We are dealing here with an organism entirely different from anything you've ever known. The evolutionary processes of these monsters are like nothing you have ever guessed. Their reaction to environmental stress is beyond all belief. We had known something of it and had deduced the rest, but I am convinced that under stresses such as the escaped monster is experiencing, the developmental procedures can be speeded up to a fantastic rate. An hour or so to hatch, an hour later hunting food. The same pressure that is placed upon the parent is transmitted to the young. For both the parent and the young this is a crisis situation. The parent is aware of this, of course; the young, of course, would not be. But in some strange manner which I can't pretend to know, a sense of desperate urgency is transmitted to the egg. Hatch swiftly, grow up quickly, scatter widely, reach the egg-laying stage as soon as possible. It is a genetic reaction to a survival threat. The young monsters would be driven by an evolutionary force that in an earthly life form would be inconceivable. They are members of a strange race that has a unique, an inborn, capability to use every trick in the evolutionary pattern to its advantage."

Wilson found a chair and sat down limply. He looked at the President. "Has any of this leaked out?"

"No," said the President, "it has not. The farmer's wife phoned the sheriff. The military search party had just reached the area and was talking with the sheriff when the call came in. The officer in charge clamped on a security lid. That is why you're here, Steve. We can't keep this buttoned up. It'll leak out — if not this particular incident, then others. There may be hundreds of these tiny monsters out there in the mountains. They'll be seen and reported. The reports will begin to pile up. We can't sit on all of them, nor should we."

"The problem," said Wilson, "is how to release the news without scaring the pants off everybody."

"If we don't tell them," said the President, "we create a credibility gap that will make everything we do suspect. And there is, as well, the matter of public safety."

"In a few days," said Foote, "all the mountains will be full of full-grown monsters. They probably will scatter. We can hunt some of them down, but not all of them. Probably only a small percentage of them. The only way we can manage it is to put in every man we can lay our hands on to hunt them down."

"They will scatter, that is right," said Wolfe. "By scattering, they will insure their chances of survival. And they can travel fast. By another day, perhaps, they'll be up in New England, down into Georgia. They will keep, at first, to the mountainous terrain because it would give them the best concealment. In time they'll begin branching out from the mountains."

"How long would you guess," asked Wilson, "before they begin laying eggs?"

Wolfe spread his hands. "Who can know?" he said.

"Your best guess."

"A week. Two weeks. I do not know."

"How many eggs in a clutch?"

"A couple of dozen. You must understand we do not know. We found only a few nests."