The reporter eyed the huge blackness of the visitor, squatted in the pasture.
“Seems to me,” he said, “it’s got something painted on it. Did you get close enough to make out what it was?”
“Yeah, plain as day,” the farmer said. “The number 101, painted on it in green paint. Now I wonder what sort of damn fool would have done a thing like that.”
In a medium-sized city in Alabama, the building of a stadium had been a local issue of some intensity for years, the issue fought out bitterly on the basis of funding, location and type of facility. But, finally, the issue had been settled and the stadium built. Despite all the disappointments encountered in the final decision, it was still a thing of civic pride. It had been furbished and polished for the game that would be the highlight of its dedication. The turf (live, not artificial) was a carpet of green, the parking lot a great extent of virgin asphalt, the stadium itself gay with pennants of many colors flapping in the breeze.
On the day before the dedication, a great black box came sailing through the blue and sat down, slowly and gracefully, inside the stadium, floating just above the green expanse of the playing field, as if the smooth carpet, so carefully mowed and tended, had been designed as a special landing space for big black boxes that came sailing from the blue.
Once the shock of rage had subsided slightly, there were great huddlings by official committees and interested civic groups. Some hope was expressed, early on, that the visitor might remain only for a matter of hours and then move on. But this did not happen. It remained within the stadium. The dedication was cancelled and the dedicatory game was postponed, occasioning major violence to the sacred schedule of the league.
The huddlings of the various groups continued and from time to time, suggestions were advanced and, amid great agonizing, all the suggestions were turned down as impractical. Quiet civic desperation reigned.
Sheriff’s deputies who were guarding the stadium intercepted and arrested a small group of sport enthusiasts who were trying to sneak into the area with a box of dynamite.
In Pennsylvania, another visitor settled down in a potato patch. The owner of the patch stacked a huge pile of wood against the side of the visitor, doused it with gasoline and set the pile ablaze. The visitor did not mind at all.
27. LONE PINE
Sally, the waitress at the Pine Cafe, brought Frank Norton his plate of ham and eggs and sat down at the table to talk with him. The door came open and Stuffy Grant came fumbling in.
“Come on over, Stuffy,” Norton called to him, “and sit down with us. I’ll buy you your breakfast.”
“That’s handsome of you,” said Stuffy, “and if you don’t mind, I’ll take you up on it. I been out watching them visitors of ours mowing down the trees. It was quite a walk, but I got up before light so I could get there early before any tourists showed up. Them tourists kind of take an edge off watching them. I wanted to see if maybe they were starting to bud, like the one that was here before.”
“And are they?” asked Sally.
“Well, not yet. It seems to me it’s taking them a little longer than the other one. But any day now they’ll be doing it. They got long rows of those bales of white stuff strung out behind them. I been trying to think what that stuff is eafled.”
“Cellulose,” said Norton.
“That’s right,” said Stuffy. “That is what it’s called.”
“Since when did you get so interested in the visitors?” asked Sally.
“I don’t rightly know,” Stuffy told her. “I guess it was from the very start, when this batch first sat down. You might say I was sort of involved with them. There was this girl writer from down in Minneapolis and that first night, I held the phone for her so she could talk to her editor when she got back and then I was the one who brought word to her when the second batch landed. I was sleeping off a drunk this side of the river and saw them coming down and right away I told myself she would want to know. It didn’t seem right to me that I should go pounding at her door in the middle of the night, an old reprobate like me. I thought she might be mad at me. But I went and done it anyhow and she wasn’t mad at me. She gave me ten dollars later on. She and that camera fellow she had along with her, they were real nice people.”
“Yes, they were,” said Sally. “So were all the newspaper and TV people. It seems a little strange that they now are gone. Of course, there are still a lot of people coming to see the baby visitors. Sometimes they go down to see the others, too. But these people aren’t like the news people. They’re just sightseers. Drop in for a cup of coffee and a doughnut, once in a while a sandwich, but they don’t come for meals and they never tip. I suppose that in a little place like this, and not buying much, they don’t feel there is any need of it.”
“At first,” said Stuffy, “I went out to see the Visitors, every single day like I’ve done since they came, telling myself I should keep watch of them so that if anything happened, I could let that girl reporter know. But I don’t think that’s the reason anymore, not the main reason. I’ve got so I like to watch them for themselves. Once I told myself they were things from a long way off and that they really shouldn’t be here, but it doesn’t seem that way now. It’s gotten so that they seem just like people to me. I used to be afraid of them, but now I’m not seared of them. I walk right up to them and put out my hand and lay it on their hides and they’re not cold, but warm, just like a person’s warm.”
“If you’re going to have breakfast,” Norton said to him, “you better tell Sally what you want. I’m way ahead of you.”
“You said that you were paying for my breakfast.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Frank, how come that you.
“Well, you might say that I had an impulse that I may be sorry for. If you don’t hurry up.
“Then,” said Stuffy, “I’ll have a stack of cakes with a couple of eggs, sunny side up, dumped on top of them. And if you have some sausages and maybe a piece or two of bacon and a couple of extra pats of butter.”
28. SOMEWHERE IN UTAH
The sergeant said to the colonel, “If these pissants of scientists don’t get their cameras and them other damn fool instruments set up to their liking pretty soon, the sun will be down and we’ll have to scrub this exercise.”
“They want everything just right,” the colonel told him. “It’s got to be right the first time. We don’t want to have to make a second try at it. You may not think so, sergeant, but this mission has the highest possible priority. It comes straight from Washington and we can’t afford to goof.”
“But, Christ, sir, they sight in those cameras and then look through them and then sight them again. They been doing that for hours. They’re a pack of fumbling old maids, I tell you. They got that chalk mark on the visitor’s tail side and the rifle’s sighted in on it. I sighted it myself and I know where it is pointing. The visitor hasn’t moved and it still is pointing at the chalk mark. And that’s another thing, why for Christ’s sake, a rifle? Why not something a little heavier? You’re not going to tell much bouncing a .3o-caliber bullet off that big a mass. It won’t do more than fickle it.”
“Frankly, sergeant,” said the colonel, “I’ve wondered about that myself. But that’s what the orders say. They are most specific —a .30 caliber from a hundred yards. That and nothing else. It’s got to be a .30 caliber from a hundred yards and the cameras and the other instruments must be positioned to the satisfaction of these gentlemen .
The colonel broke off what he was saying when he saw that one of the scientists who had been fiddling with the cameras was walking toward them.
“Colonel,” said the man, when he came up to them, “you may proceed with the firing. Before you fire, however, be sure that personnel is at a distance of at least two hundred yards. We suspect that there may be considerable back blast.”
“I hope,” the sergeant said, “that the electronic gadget fixed up to fire the piece will work.”