Kathy started to speak, but caught herself in time. If she could only tell them, she thought, but she couldn’t. Not about Jerry, not even about the handshake she had experienced, although thinking of it as a handshake fell short of what it really had been. It had been something more than a handshake; it had been more personal and understanding than a simple handshake.
“Were you about to say something?” Lathrop asked her.
She shook her head. “Only to say that I do think of them as people. I wish I could say why, but I can’t. I can’t manage to define what I really feel.”
“One thing I’ve wondered about,” said Jay. “These things must have come from somewhere deep in space. It seems fairly apparent that they eat trees to provide cellulose as food for their young. They may even use some of the cellulose to feed themselves. That we cannot be sure about. But the point I want to make is that they probably are not from this solar system. On no other planet in the system would they find trees or anything else that would provide cellulose. Which would mean that they must come from some other solar system, probably from a planet that could produce cellulose. If this is so, then they must have crossed several light-years, perhaps a great many light-years, for it stands to reason that every solar system would not have a planet that could provide them with the cellulose they seek. Such a planet, with many differences, of course, would have to roughly approximate the Earth and .
“Jay,” asked Garrison, “just what the hell are you getting at?”
“There might be a number of considerations,” Jay said, “but the one I’m most concerned about is that their trip must have taken a great deal of time. Physicists tell us that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, probably not even close to the speed of light. This might mean that our visitors could have traveled for many thousands of years before they came to Earth.”
They must have been desperate,” said Kathy, “to embark on such a journey. Something must have happened to drive them out into space to search for another planet, having no idea where they’d find such a planet, perhaps not even knowing they’d find one at all. But they needed cellulose to feed their babies. Until they found cellulose, they could have no young. They would have been facing racial extinction.”
“You make quite a case for them,” Lathrop said to Kathy.
“She may be right,” said Jay. “The scenario she outlines could be close to truth. They may have had to look at a number of solar systems before they found one with a planet that fitted their needs. If that is the case, our visitors must be an extremely long-lived race.”
“You’re talking about some background articles,” Garrison said to Lathrop. “Kathy and Jay have given you a hypothetical estimate that would make a dilly of a backgrounder. How would you feel about them going ahead and writing it?”
Lathrop shrugged. “I don’t think so. It’s just too theoretical. It has no solid basis. It would come out with a sensational sound to it.”
“I agree,” said Garrison. “The same objection could be made to almost anything else that might be written. It would all be based on supposition. We have nothing solid on which to base any background writing. The best we can do is stick to what can be seen. If we get into theorizing, we’ll find that we have nothing on which to tie the theories. We can’t pretend to understand what is going on because we are dealing with a life form so unlike us that there’s no basis for understanding. Kathy’s belief that these things had to find a place where they could raise their young makes sense so far as we are concerned, but does it make sense so far as the visitors are concerned? They may have few concepts that would match our concepts. Their intelligence and outlook, their life style, if you want to call it that, may be, probably is, in large part not understandable to us.”
“Maybe you are right,” said Lathrop. “One thing—I don’t want any of us going off the deep end. In this matter, we simply can’t afford to be sensational. By the way, Matthews, in our news bureau, told me this morning there was a rumor in Washington that some sort of weapon test was tried out on one of the visitors.
Is there any news of that, any hint of it on the wires?”
Garrison shook his head. “Matthews filed just thirty minutes ago. The question was raised at the White House press briefing today and Porter, the press secretary, denied he knew anything about it.”
“How much can you depend on what Porter says?”
“It’s hard to tell. So far he seems to have been above board. The scuttlebutt is that there is a hell of a row going on inside the White House, Porter insisting on full disclosure of everything about the visitors and some of the White House people wanting to clam up. If there were a weapon test, I would suppose it might be military. The chances are the results would be classified. Porter might have to cave in on something like that.”
“Anything else?”
“Well, not much. Nothing but the regular flow of visitor news. A few days ago, a visitor showed up at an eastern Iowa farm, took over a freshly plowed field, went sailing up and down it until it had covered the entire field, then squatted down in a pasture to watch. It runs off everyone who tries to approach the field. The visitor, it seems, is an old friend of ours.”
“What the hell do you mean? An old friend?”
“It has the number 101 painted on it in green.”
Kathy jerked upright. “That’s the one that was the first to land at Lone Pine,” she said. “One of the federal observers painted the number on it. She was the one who had the babies.”
“She?”
“Well, it had babies, didn’t it? That makes it a she in my book.
How come I missed that story?”
“It never got in the paper,” said Garrison. “Got crowded out.
Showed up in the slop. I rescued it. We’ll get it in tonight. I don’t know how it happened.”
“We have to watch things like that,” said Lathrop. “That’s a good story. We should have run it.”
“Al, it happens now and then. Not often. But it does happen. It’s just one of those things. I’ve been wondering if Kathy should go down to Iowa and look into the situation. The visitor might remember her.”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Lathrop. “Not a single one of them has paid any attention to a human.”
“How do we know?” asked Garrison. “Sure, none of them has wandered over and said hello, but that doesn’t mean they don’t notice people. Kathy was at Lone Pine for several days and . .
“What good would it do if old 101 did remember her? There’s no way to interview one of them. No way at all to get any information out of them.”
“I know all that,” said the city editor. “I just have a hunch. I don’t think it would be a bad idea.”
“All right. Go ahead. You run the city room. If you have a hunch. .
The door burst open and Jim Gold thrust through it.
“Johnny,” he said, “Frank Norton’s on the phone from Lone Pine. Stiffy Grant has just found a dead one.”
“A dead what?”
“A dead visitor,” said Gold.
32. WASHINGTON, D.C.
Porter picked up the phone. “Dave,” said the President, “can you come in? There’s something I want you to hear.”
“Immediately, Mr. President,” said Porter.
He put the phone back in the cradle and got out of his chair. From her desk in the corner, his assistant, Marcia Langley, looked inquiringly at him.
“I don’t know,” said Porter. “More than likely trouble of one sort or another.”
As he came into the outer office he made a thumb at the door to the President’s office and asked, “Who is in there with him?”
“General Whiteside,” said Grace.
“Only Whiteside?”
“Only Whiteside. He arrived a couple of minutes ago.
Porter knocked on the door and opened it. The President was perched on one corner of his desk and Whiteside was sitting in a chair against the wall.
“Come in, Dave,” said the President. “Pull up a chair. The general has something rather strange to tell us.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Porter.
The President went around his desk and sat behind it, facing the two of them.
“I hear you had a rough half-hour with the press this afternoon.’,
“They wanted to know about some weapon test. I told them I had not heard of it.”
The President nodded. “That’s good. How did that sort of little white lie go down with you?”