Dr. Albert Barr said to Jerry Conklin, "Miss Foster phoned to say that you wanted to talk with me, but she wasn't too specific. She indicated it had something to do with the visitors." He said to Kathy, "You assured me this is not an interview for an article in your paper.

"It's not an interview," said Kathy, "and I was not specific because I think that Jerry should tell you what happened."

"I've been worried about it," said Jerry, "ever since it happened. .

"Please tell me what happened," said Barr. "Start at the beginning."

He lounged behind his desk, regarding his two callers with a quizzical expression. He was a sandy-haired man, much younger than Kathy had expected him to be, with the build of a football player. Through the open window of his office came the sounds of a late afternoon on campus, the shrill laughter of a girl, students shouting back and forth, the deep humming of a started car and the scream of tires on pavement as it was gunned to a sudden take-off. Golden spangles of light flecked the windows as the westering sun shone through a birch tree decked in bright autumnal color.

"You may have read about the car that was smashed when the first visitor landed at Lone Pine," said Jerry.

"Could it have been your car?" asked Barr.

"It could have been. It was. I had parked at the end of the bridge to get in some fishing. I had been told there were some big rainbow in the pool below the bridge."

Barr did not interrupt as Jerry told his story. A couple of times he seemed to be on the verge of asking questions, but he did not ask them.

When Jerry had finished, the exobiologist said, "There are a number of points I would like to raise and discuss with you, but tell me first, why have you come to me? What do you want of me?"

"There are two things," said Jerry. "This business of home. The visitor thought of home, or made me think of home. I've mulled it over and over and there seems to be no sense to it. I am convinced that it induced the thought I had of home. In a situation such as that, I would not have thought of home. And the thought was real enough-not just a brief impression, but something that continued. As if the visitor or whatever was inside the visitor wanted me to think of home, kept on pressuring me to think of home."

"Are you trying to say that telepathy was involved?"

"I don't know what was involved. If by telepathy you mean that it was talking with me, or trying to talk with me, no, that was not the case. I tried to talk with it, which might have been a foolish thing to do, but something, that under the circumstances, I imagine might have come quite naturally. There I was, trapped in a place that I did not understand and I was reaching out for information, for any kind of information that would help to explain what was going on. So I tried to talk with it, to establish any kind of contact, to seek some answers. Probably I was fairly well aware that it would be impossible to establish contact, but..

"Do you consider yourself in any way telepathic?"

"No, I do not. I have no telepathic ability that I am aware of. The simple fact is that it is something I had never thought about. I would say I'm not a telepath."

"And yet it talked to you. Or you think it talked to you."

"Dr. Barr, that's not what I said," said Jerry. "At no time did I think the visitor was talking to me. No conscious communication, no words forming in my mind, no pictures, nothing like that at all. There was just this feeling of home, this overpowering sense of home.~~ "You are convinced the feeling came from the creature?"

"Where else could it have come from? I am convinced the thought of home would not have occurred independently to me. There was no reason for it to. There were a lot of other things that were more important for me to think about."

"You said two things. What was the other thing?"

"It seemed to me," said Jerry, "that the visitor was a tree or very like a tree.~~ "You mean after you learned about the cellulose?"

"No. I'm convinced the cellulose had nothing to do with it. I don't think that was the case. I imagine there must have been some underlying question of what it was and there seemed to be some familiarity and . .

"You're in graduate work in forestry. You must know a lot about trees.~~ "He's in love with trees," said Kathy. "Sometimes I get the impression that he talks with them."

"She's exaggerating," Jerry told Barr. "But, yes, I do know a fair amount about them and I guess I could say I have a fair degree of empathy with them. There are people who are gone on animals, those who are flower enthusiasts, devoted bird watchers. Maybe you could say I'm a tree watcher."

"You used the word 'familiarity' back there a ways. What made you use that word?"

"Perhaps because I think I could have felt some familiarity with it, not being aware of it at the time. To start with, when I found myself inside it, I was frightened-deep-down, deadly, screaming frightened, although I didn't scream. But in a little time, a far shorter time than one would think, I wasn't frightened, at least not frightened in that way. I got all tense and cold, but I wasn't garden-variety scared any longer. I was even getting interested before it threw me out."

Barr said, "You must realize that an exobiologist is a strange Sort of animal. Really, there is no such thing. Rather, they are men in other disciplines, mostly the biological field, although physics and chemistry also could enter into the picture, who because of personal interest have branched out into a study of what might be expected under extraterrestrial conditions. So you understand, of course, that there is no real, precise science of exobiology."

"Yes, of course," said Jerry. "But at least the exobiologist would be thinking about what might be found in space and on other planets."

"So, with such a disclaimer duly noted," said Barr, "I must agree that your idea of an intelligent tree-like organism need not be too far off the mark. In the last twenty years or so, there have been botanists who have contended that on occasion plant life may show some capacity for sentience, possessing powers of sense or sense perception, experiencing sensation and feeling. For years, we have known that certain people seem to have green thumbs, under their care plants will flourish while under the care of others who do not have this capability, they fade and die. There are those who advocate that plant owners talk sympathetically to their plants. If plants, in fact, do have such sensitivity, then it is only a couple of long steps until we arrive at a true intelligence and full sentience. Could you explain a little more fully how you arrived at the realization the visitors could be plant-like, akin to trees?"

"I'm not sure I can," said Jerry. "I get a certain feeling when I look at a tree, or when I work with trees. A sort of kinship to them, which may sound strange.

"And you think you may have felt the same kinship to the visitor?"

"No, not kinship. The visitor was too alien to feel anything like kinship. Perhaps a realization that some of the same qualities I feel in trees were also in the visitor. But skewed around. Not like a tree of Earth, but a tree of somewhere else."

"I think I understand," said Barr. "Have you told anyone else of this?"

"No. Someone else would have laughed at me. You didn't and I thank you for that."

"The government would like to know. The federal observers and other scientists who are investigating the visitors would be grateful for any kind of data."

"I have no data," said Jerry. "Lacking data, they would try to dig it out of me, feeling that I must have some hidden information that I might not be aware of. Either that or they would think I was another UFO crackpot trying to cash in on the visitors."

"I see your point," said Barr. "If I were in your place, I would have the same reservation."

"You sound as if you believe me.

"Why not? Why should I have reason to disbelieve you? There is no reason in the world you should have made up such a story.

You felt a need to tell someone who might just possibly understand and take what you have to say at face value. I'm glad you came to me. I haven't been much help, but I'm glad you came. And on this business of thinking about home . . . I've been thinking. Could it be possible you misinterpreted what was going on?"

"I know there was a powerful compulsion to think of home."

"I don't mean that. Maybe the visitor was not talking to you at all, not trying to convey anything at all. You might have cued in on its thoughts. You may be just a little telepathic, whether you know it or not, or the signal, the emotions of the visitor, might have been so strong that no human could have avoided reacting to it. The thought comes to me that it may not have been broadcasting any thought of your home, but of its home."

Kathy gulped. "You mean here, the Earth? That it was thinking of Earth as home?"

"Consider this," said Barr. "It had come from God knows where, over no one can imagine how great a distance, looking for a planet where it could settle down, looking for a new home to replace the one that somehow had been lost. Maybe the Earth is that kind of planet-where it could bud and reproduce its young, find food for them, live the sort of life it perhaps had despaired of ever living again. Saying to itself, 'Home! Home! I've finally found a home!'"

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.

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."

The man said, unperturbed, "I am sure it will."

"Now, sergeant," the colonel said, sharply, "if you will the men out. We want to wrap this up as soon as possible."