“Try it sometime,” he suggested. “Lots of interesting things on the ‘casts. Never mind. Seventeen hours—” he glanced at his finger watch and added, “—and twenty-three minutes ago an unidentified spaceship landed near Grinnell, Iowa. Type, unknown. Approximately disc-shaped and about one hundred fifty feet across. Origin, unknown, but—”
“Didn’t they track a trajectory on it?” I interrupted.
“They did not,” he answered, spacing his words. “Here is a photo of it taken after landing by Space Station Beta.”
I looked it over and passed it to Mary. It was as unsatisfactory as a telephoto taken from five thousand miles out usually is. Trees looking like moss . . . a cloud shadow that loused up the best part of the pic . . . and a gray circle that might have been a disc-shaped space ship and could just as well have been an oil tank or a water reservoir. I wondered how many times we had bombed hydroponics plants in Siberia, mistaking them for atomic installations.
Mary handed the pic back. I said, “Looks like a tent for a camp meeting to me. What else do we know?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing! After seventeen hours? We ought to have agents pouring out of their ears!”
“Ah, yes. We did have. Two within reach and four that were sent in. They failed to report back. I dislike losing agents, Sammy, especially with no results.”
Up to then I had not stopped to wonder about the Old Man himself being risked on a job—it had not looked like risk. But I had a sudden cold realization that the situation must be so serious that the Old Man had chosen to bet his own brain against the loss of the organization—for he was the Section. Nobody who knew him doubted his guts, but they did not doubt his horse sense, either. He knew his own value; he would not risk himself unless he believed coldly that it would take his own skill to swing it and that the job had to be done.
I felt suddenly chilly. Ordinarily an agent has a duty to save his own neck—in order to complete his mission and report back. On this job it was the Old Man who must come back—and after him, Mary. I stood number three and was as expendable as a paper clip. I didn’t like it.
“One agent made a partial report,” the Old Man went on. “He went in as a casual bystander and reported by phone that it must be a space ship although he could not determine its motive power. We got the same thing from the newscasts. He then reported that the ship was opening and that he was going to try to get closer, past the police lines. The last thing he said was, ‘Here they come. They are little creatures, about—’ Then he shut off.”
“Little men?”
“He said, ‘creatures’.”
“Peripheral reports?”
“Plenty of them. The Des Moines stereocasting station reported the landing and sent mobile units in for spot cast. The pictures they sent out were all fairly long shots, taken from the air. They showed nothing but a disc-shaped object. Then, for about two hours, no pictures and no news, followed later by close ups and a new news slant.”
The Old Man shut up. I said, “Well?”
“The whole thing was a hoax. The ‘space ship’ was a sheet metal and plastic fraud, built by two farm boys in some woods near their home. The fake reports originated with an announcer with more sense of humor than good judgment and who had put the boys up to it to make a story. He has been fired and the latest ‘invasion from outer space’ turns out to be a joke.”
I squirmed. “So it’s a hoax—but we lose six men. We’re going to look for them?”
“No, for we would not find them. We are going to try to find out why triangulation of this photograph—” He held up the teleshot taken from the space station. “—doesn’t quite jibe with the news reports—and why Des Moines stereo station shut up for a while.”
Mary spoke up for the first time. “I’d like to talk with those farm boys.”