The Visitors (v1.0)

23. THE UNITED STATES

People woke and turned on their radios to learn what kind of weather they might expect that day. There was no weather news; instead a running commentary, half news, half wonder and speculation, spewed out of the sets.

The people listened, prickled by the first faint touch of fear. The Minnesota visitor had been a novelty, an event that brought twinges of excitement and well-hidden apprehension, but there had been only one of them. It had stayed for a time and then had flown off and, except for the young that it had spawned, that had been the end of it. But now, suddenly, a horde of the things had descended on the Earth. Well-behaved, of course, not really causing trouble, but posing an uneasy wonder as to what kind of things they were, what they might expect of Earth.

The people went about their work, but all day long they met other people who were prone to stop and talk about the wonder of the visitors. Throughout the day, the uneasiness kept growing as rumor piled on rumor, as speculation grew, with each speculation adding to the sense of uneasiness and, at times, the sense of fear. Little work was done.

An Iowa farmer, not bothering to turn on his radio, went out in the early dawn to do the morning chores and was stopped in his tracks by the sight of the huge black box that was sitting in his cornfield. He hurried back into the house and came out again armed with a twelve-gauge shotgun, his jacket pocket sagging with a handful of shells. Riding a small farm tractor, he went to the cornfield and parked outside the fence that enclosed the field. Climbing from the tractor, he crawled through the fence and walked toward the visitor. It made no sign that it noticed his approach. Cautiously, he made his way around it. Apparently, it was doing nothing; it was only sitting there. Twice he raised the gun, his finger on the trigger; each time he decided not to shoot. There Was no way of telling, he reminded himself, what it might do if he shot at it. Finally, having circled it, he climbed through the fence, clambered on the tractor and went back to the morning chores.

Looking to his left, the airliner pilot spotted the visitor several miles away. He reached out a hand and nudged the man sitting next to him. "Look over there," he said. The other looked. "It's paralleling us," he said. "I thought all of them were down," the pilot said. "Sitting on the ground." They continued to watch it. It continued on course with them, matching their speed, moving no nearer or no farther off.

A man stood on a street corner in a ghetto area and raised his arms above his head. He bellowed to the others in the street. "Our brothers out of space," he howled, "have come to rescue us. They're dropping down to confront those who hold us in our bondage. Let us rejoice, brothers, for help has finally come." The people gathered to listen to his mad ranting, grinning or scowling as the words might strike them, but not believing him, for these people of the street believed no one at all, but sensing in him a primitive excitement that stirred in them a savage anger at their hopelessness. An hour later, there was looting and burning in the area.

In one New England village, someone (never identified) went into a church and began ringing the bell. Curious people came to learn why the bell was ringing. And to many of them, it seemed good to be there, proper to be there when visitors had come upon the Earth. So they went into the church and the minister, hurrying from the parsonage, found them there. To him, as well, it seemed proper that they should be there, so he led them in prayer. In other villages, other church bells rang and other people came to be led in prayer. Across the land suddenly God-stricken people flocked to church.

National guardsmen cordoned off the visitors that were sitting on the ground. Highway patrolmen worked to keep traffic moving as thousands of sightseers converged upon the sites where the visitors were sitting. And in some scattered places visitors, floating easily along, only a few hundred feet above the ground, patrolled the highways. Motorists stopped their cars to get out and gape and tangled traffic jams resulted. There were many accidents.