Lathrop shook his head. "With the Black Hills-Indian situation, I think we should keep away from it. No matter how well the story was written, no matter how objectively, we would be accused of bias."

"Oh, well," said Gold, "it was only an idea."

39. IOWA.

The river gurgled and lapped against the shore. Dick's Landing, located on a shelf several feet above the river, was made up of several dilapidated buildings. Above the buildings reared the steep heights of the Iowa bluffs. Beyond the river's edge was an island that hemmed in the channel or, rather, one of many channels, for here the Mississippi, spreading out on a wide flood-plain, became a watery jungle. To the east loomed the blueness of the distant bluffs on the Wisconsin side.

Jerry stood on the river bank, watching the progress of the small rowboat powered by a small and sputtering motor. The boat made its doubtful, hesitating way up the channel, bouncing in the roughness of the current. In the back of it crouched a hunched-over man, nursing the balky motor.

Opposite the landing, the man angled the boat in toward shore, finally bringing it in against the shaky dock. When he clambered from the boat and tied it, Jerry saw that he was older than he first had thought. His hair was an unruly iron-gray and his shoulders slightly stooped, but when he moved it was with the sprightly spring of a man much younger.

He came along the walkway of the dock and up the bank. When he came close, Jerry asked, "Are you Jimmy Quinn?"

The man halted in his tracks and looked at him with clear blue eyes, the skin at the corners of them wrinkled and squeezed into intricate crows-feet.

"That I am," he said. "Who's asking?"

"The name is Jerry Conklin. I was told you'd be coming in Soon. I understand you know these bottoms."

"Man and boy I've known the Winnishiek," said Quinn. "A river rat I'm called and I guess that's what I am. These bottoms I have known since the day that I could toddle and a tangled mess they are. Islands and sloughs and lakes and channels, and I know them all for miles up and down the river. I've hunted them and fished and trapped them and I've poked into every corner of them. And what can I do for you?"

"I understand that some of the visitors have landed somewhere the area, somewhere in these river bottoms."

"Visitors? Visitors? Oh, yes, now I know. I've heard the name.

You mean those big black boxes folks say came out of the sky."

"That's what I mean," said Jerry. "You sound as if you saw one.~~ "Over on Goose Island," said Quinn. "That's the big island, plumb in the center of the river valley, four or five miles downstream from here. Near as I could make out, there are three of them. I don't know if they are still there. Just saw the tops of them, sticking out above the trees. It was getting on toward evening and I didn't linger none. Maybe I wouldn't have even if it hadn't been getting on toward evening. Spooky things they were. Nothing that belonged there. Gives a man shivers up his spine. Didn't rightly know what they were first off. Figured it out later on that they must be these visitors. How come you know? I never told no one. People would have laughed at me. They think I'm crazy, anyhow. To tell the truth, perhaps I am. I've been too long on the river.

"Would you be willing to take me to them?"

"Not now," said Quinn. "Not today. It's getting on close to night. This river's not a place to be at night. With the kind of motor that I have, it's a long way down to Goose. Dark would catch us on the way."

"Tomorrow, then. Or the day after tomorrow, more than likely. There is someone else who will want to go along. It may take me a while to locate this other person and she'll have to drive down from Minneapolis."

"A woman?"

"Yes, a woman.

"What would a woman want with them visitors?"

"She just possibly may know more about them than anyone in the world today."

"I be damned," said Quinn. "These days you never know what to expect of a woman. Should I take you down there, would there be something in it for me?"

"We'd pay you."

"Cash money?"

"Cash money," Jerry told him.

"You expect to get up close to these things? If they still are there. They might have left, you know."

"We would want to get close to them," said Jerry.

"I tell you, mister, I'm not getting up close to them. I'll take you there and I'll wait to take you back. But I'm not getting close to them."

"You won't have to come along with us. You just point them out. That's all you'll have to do. And wait to take us back."

"You let me know when you need me. Generally, I'm on river the most of the day. Come in along toward evening."

"I'll let you know," said Jerry.

40. WASHINGTON, D.C.

Allen, the presidential science advisor, said, "This is only a preliminary report. Later on, there'll be more."

"You've found something, then," said the President.

"Something," said Allen. "Yes, something. It's hard to believe. I have a hard time making myself believe it. But the analysis is there. The facts are undeniable. There is no ground to quarrel with them."

"Doctor7" said Whiteside, "you look a little pale around the gills."

"I suspect I do," admitted Allen. "This goes against the grain, against all the knowledge that we have. Those damn things are made up of cellulose."

"Cellulose?" asked the President. "That white, fluffy stuff?"

"When the visitors get through with it, it's no longer white or fluffy." Allen looked around the room. "There are only the four of us. 1vVill there be others arriving?"

"Not this time," said the President. "Later on, when we know more, there may be another briefing with other personnel. This time around, just the four of us. General Whiteside has a special interest and should know what you've found. Dave is here because, by and large, he knows everything I know. At the moment, everything you say here is confidential. I assume your staff is not doing any talking."

Allen stiffened. "Only four men are involved," he said. "They understand the need of confidentiality."

"But there are a lot more involved than four," said Whiteside.

"The others are field workers," said Allen. "Collecting samples and doing other basic work on the Minnesota visitor. Only four are involved in the lab work. They are the only ones who know what I'm about to tell you."

"O.K., Doctor," said the President. "So go ahead and tell us."

"The creature basically is made up of cellulose," said Allen.

"But not cellulose in the form that we know it. To precisely describe the situation, we have had to make use of highly technical terminology."

"Which we wouldn't understand," said the President. "You'll have to simplify it for us, Doctor."

"I'll do what I can. What I tell you will have to be oversimplified. And because of the oversimplification, perhaps a little short of the exact truth, but it will give you an idea of what we have come up with.

"The inner part of the creature is closely packed cellulose, compressed to an unbelievable extent. So closely packed that it can withstand structural stresses of several tons per square inch. On the face of it, this would seem impossible, but the figures are there. How it can be managed we have no idea, no inkling as to the process involved."

"You talk about the inner part of the creature," said White-side. "Does that mean the outer part is different?"

Allen shuddered. "Yes, General, it is different. An entirely different story. It is what you might call a cellulose-silicon polymer involving in some manner that we're not sure we understand the use of silicon-oxide bonds and hydroxyl bonds-that is, hydrogen-oxide bonds. There is a lot of oxygen in cellulose. In the silicon-oxygen bonding, there are a couple of different forms and, to make matters even more complicated, a mix of the two forms are employed. In some cases, it amounts to a tetrahedral structure, a silicate akin to rock-a structure similar to feldspar and quartz. It's hard to say exactly what we have. There are a number of various linkages to make up what we tentatively describe as a polymer."

"It seems to me you are talking about the thing having a rock-like skin," said Porter.

"In layman language, that is what I am talking about," said Allen. "Hard as rock, probably much harder, and yet the silicon provides it with some elasticity, some give. Rocks can't normally be dented. This stuff can. It can be dented and then bounces back. It has at once hardness and ductility and an incredible thermal stability.

"We have theorized the use to which these capabilities can be put. It is only a theory, of course, but it does make sense. If these things operate across vast extents of interstellar space, they would have to get energy from somewhere. Their high thermal stability means they could soak up all sorts of energy, a lot of it, perhaps, from the impact of interstellar dust. The dust particles, no matter how small, would carry some energy. But in the form of kinetic energy. We think the skins of these things can convert the kinetic energy to potential energy, possibly can change that energy to whatever form it needs. Occasionally, they might collide with larger pieces of matter. Such a strike would indent the skin, with the skin picking up as much energy as it could handle, deflecting what it can't use when the indentation in the skin bounces back, in effect rejecting that part of the energy it can't handle. The dent in the skin would produce a reflected wave of energy, getting rid of it as the surface of a mirror would reflect sunlight."

Porter sneaked a quick look at Whiteside. The general had stiffened in his chair and wore a slightly slack-jawed appearance.

Allen sighed. "We also have some reason to believe," he said, "and I can't go into this as closely as I would like, for it can't be explained in layman terms-but we have reason to believe that the skin's composition is such that it can change gravitational flux and thus points to the possibility that the creatures can manipulate gravitational forces, that they can either be attracted or repulsed by gravitation. Which would explain, if true, how they are able to float an inch or two off the ground. It might also mean that gravitational control may be, at least partially, an explanation of how they travel through space. Locked in on a gravitational source in the direction in which they want to travel, they would move toward the source. Locked into another behind them, they could utilize it as a repulsor to push them away from that~'

Allen ceased talking and looked at each of the three in turn.

"Well, that's it," he said. "It sounds insane and I keep telling myself it has to be insane. Aliens, we said. And these things are alien. What bothers me, what keeps me awake at night is this-if they are so alien in the physical sense, how alien are they mentally? What chance will we ever have of understanding them, what hope they will ever be able to understand us?"

"Perhaps the intellectual span is not as great as the physical span," said Porter. "They seem to have done a fairly good job so far in understanding us. Somehow they seem to have sensed a lot of things they should not do. They have fairly well kept within the basic rules of human conduct."

"I hope you're right," said Allen. "I sincerely hope you are."

He spoke to the President. "In a couple of weeks, we may know more. We may find that some of our present thinking is wrong. We may have to modify some of our theories. Or we may come across some new and significant data. For the present, I have told you basically all I know. Of course, it could be elaborated upon endlessly, but there's no point in doing that now."

He rose from his chair, hesitated for a moment.

"There is one other thing," he said. "Interesting, but probably not too significant. But it does throw some further light on the visitors. You have heard of 101, of course."

The President nodded. "The first of the visitors to land at Lone Pine. I understand it's down in Iowa now.

"That is right," said Allen. "It is guarding a field the farmer had just finished plowing. The farmer claims that it passed back and forth over the field as if it were planting something. When anyone approaches, it drives them off. One of our observers, however, managed to sneak up to the edge of the field without being driven off. He found that the visitor had planted pine seeds. Earlier we had been somewhat puzzled by the fact that the debris which was rejected by the visitors after they cut the trees contained virtually no pine seeds. Now we know why. The visitors winnow out the seeds and intend to plant them."

"It will take a long time to grow a new crop of pines from scratch," said the President. "101 may have its work cut out for it guarding its planting."

"Perhaps not," said Allen. "Our observer found that a number of the seeds had sprouted. Forestry experts tell us that such sprouting could not be expected this quickly. Our guess is that 101 treated the seeds in some way to speed up the sprouting process, probably to speed up the growth once they have started."

"Which poses another problem for us," said Whiteside. "Hundreds, if not thousands, of visitors taking over fields, planting them and then driving off the rightful owners. The farmers will be up in arms about that."

"To start with," said the President, "I had a queasy feeling about the visitors, a sort of gone-in-the-gut reaction. I think part of this, maybe all of it, was due to the fact that essentially I am a pure and simple political animal. I have political nerve endings. I twitch at every threat. I still realize that this business of the visitors, if I make one wrong move, could kill me politically. But, gradually, I have come to the belief that the two of us, we and the visitors, can get along together. They seem to think very much like us. If we could only communicate with them, I'm sure a solid understanding could be reached. The fact that 101 planted pine seeds re-enforces my thinking. The planting of a crop attests to a feeling for agriculture and the conservation of resources. In this way, too, their thinking parallels ours.

Allen started to speak, then hesitated.

"You were about to say something," said the President.

"That's right," said Allen. "I wondered if I should, but I guess there's no reason that I shouldn't. Perhaps of little significance, but to me intriguing. You remember when that first visitor came down at Lone Pine it landed on a car and crushed it."

"Yes, I do remember. There was no one in it, luckily. We wondered what became of the owner, why he, or she, never came forward."

"Exactly," said Allen. "We hauled in the car, if you recall."

"Yes, I do," said the President.

"Well, now we know. From the license plate. The owner is a young forestry student at the University of Minnesota. His name is Jerry Conklin. A few days after the incident, he came back to Minneapolis. So far as we can learn, he never told anyone about his car being totaled. He has not filed an insurance claim for the loss of the car. For a time, apparently, he acted fairly normally, but now that we have learned who he is, he has disappeared. The FBI is looking for him."

"What do you expect to learn when you find him?" Whiteside asked.

"I don't really know. You have to admit, however, that his reaction has been strange. There must be some reason he told no one what happened. And it's strange that he has not filed an insurance claim. He has not even made an inquiry as to who hauled away his car. I can't get rid of the feeling that he may know something that could be helpful to us."

"When you find him," said the President, "and I suppose you will, go easy on him. From where I sit he's committed no crime except to keep his mouth shut."

41. MINNEAPOLIS.

The phone was ringing when Kathy came into her apartment.

She answered it, and then, "Jerry, where are you? You sound excited-or upset. I can't tell which. What is going on?"

"I've been trying to reach you," he said. "I called your apartment and your office. The office told me you were at Lone Pine and I tried Lone Pine. You had already left."

"I just got back," she said. "Just this minute. From the airport. Are you in town? You don't sound as if you're in town. Your voice is faint and there is noise on the line."

"I'm in Iowa. At a place called Dick's Landing. It's on the Mississippi, opposite what is called the Winnishiek Bottoms. You ever heard of that?"

"Not Dick's Landing. The Winnishiek, vaguely. I have heard it mentioned. What in the world. .

"Kathy, I went to that farm in Iowa. I talked with 101. It took me in again .

"It remembered you?"

"I think so. We didn't really talk. It told me, it showed me. I got the impression that what it told me is important. But whether it is important to us or to 101 and the other visitors, I can't be sure."

"But Dick's Landing? And the Winnishiek?"