The Visitors (v1.0)

26. THE UNITED STATES

The visitors observed. Some of them, having set down, stayed where they were. Others, after a time, floated into the air and set about their observations. They cruised back and forth over industrial plants, they circled and re-circled cities, they made sweeps of vast stretches of farmland. They escorted planes, maintaining their distance and position, never interfering; they flew up and down long stretches of highways, selecting those areas where the traffic flowed the heaviest; they followed the winding courses of rivers, keeping watch of the boats and other craft that plied the watercourses.

Others of them sought out forests and settled down to eat. They gobbled up a number of lumberyards. In the St. Louis area, three of them landed in a used car parking lot, ingested a dozen or so cars and then took off. But aside from ingesting trees and the cars and gulping down forty or fifty lumberyards, they did little harm. Most people with whom they came in contact were only marginally inconvenienced; no one was killed. Pilots flying planes became jumpy at being shadowed by the visitors. The highway accidents, few of them more than fender benders, fell off as motorists became accustomed to the sight of the great black boxes floating up and down the highways, coming at last to pay but slight attention to them.

The visitors qualified as first class nuisances. They tied up the National Guard, various highway patrols, and other law and order personnel, in the process costing considerable money.

A few riots flared in some of the larger cities where social and economic situations were such that anything at all became an excuse for rioting. In the process of the rioting, there was some looting and burning. A number of persons were injured, a few died. On some college campuses, students mounted good-natured demonstrations, various groups joining in to advance the causes of their special hang-ups, but none of the demonstrations really

amounted to too much. Religious fanatics and other fanatics who were not religious held forth at street corners, parks, churches and halls. In certain areas, cult enthusiasms ran high. Newspaper columnists and TV commentators threw out a hundred different points of view, few of which, under any sort of objective scrutiny, made any sort of sense.

Stories grew—always of something that happened somewhere else, the preposterous index increasing with the distance—and embryonic legends began taking form.

The phenomenon of "being taken up" was heard increasingly, the reports coming from all parts of the nation, and snatched up swiftly to be exploited by the cults that had formed, likewise, in every corner of the nation. Various people claimed they had been "taken up," that somehow, never with an adequate explanation of how it happened, they had been introduced into the bodies of the visitors and, having been taken up, were either allowed to envision many wondrous things or were given messages (again, of many different sorts) that they were charged to transmit to their fellow Earthmen. The cult members, and many others, gave varying degrees of credence to these reports of being taken up, while a greater number scoffed. It was recalled that in the early days of UFO appearances, or supposed appearances, there had been many who had claimed direct contact with the crews of the flying saucers.

But however these reports, or other legendary stories, may have been inaugurated or spread, the populace became aware of one fact that could not be denied. The Earth had been invaded by creatures out of space and none of the things had happened that science fiction writers, through long years of scribbling, had foreseen as happening.

It all had turned out, as viewed by one editorial writer on the staff of an obscure little daily published in the depths of Tennessee, to be a sort of cosmic picnic.

In the northeastern corner of Iowa, a farmer had just finished his plowing on a i6o-acre field when one of the visitors turned up at the field. It flew up and down the field, making neat turns at the end of each flight up the field, to go back down it once again, flying so low that it barely skimmed the new-plowed surface. The farmer stood beside his machine shed and watched it.

"I swear," he told a newsman who came out from a nearby town to interview him, "it was as if that thing was planting something, or sowing something, in the ground I had just plowed. Maybe it waited until I had the plowing done before it showed up. When it had finished and had set down in a pasture, I went out to have a look—you know, to find out if it had sowed anything or not. But I never got there. That damn thing floated up and came at me—not threatening, you understand, not even moving very fast, but letting me know, plain as day, I was not to go near that field. I tried it several times, but each time it chased me off. I tell you, mister, I am not about to argue with it. It's a lot bigger than I am. In the spring, when it comes time for me to plant, I'll try it again. Maybe, by that time, it may have gone away or may have lost its interest. I'll just have to wait and see."

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.