Operation Terror | Page 5

But
you pass it on and say that Vale's watching it. He's waiting for
instructions. He'll report everything he sees. I'm thirty miles from him,
but he can see the thing that came down. Maybe the creatures in it can
see him. Listen!"
He repeated just what Vale had told him. Somehow, telling it to
someone else, it seemed at once even less real but more horrifying as a
possible danger to Jill. It didn't strike him forcibly that other people
were endangered, too.

When Sattell signed off to forward the report, Lockley found himself
sweating a little. Something had come down out of space. The fact
seemed to him dangerous and appalling. His mind revolted at the idea
of non-human creatures who could build ships and travel through space,
but radars had reported the arrival of a ship, and there were official
inquiries that nearly matched Vale's account, which was therefore not a
mere crackpot claim to have seen the incredible. Something had
happened and more was likely to, and Jill was in the middle of it.
He swung the instrument back to Vale's position. His hands shook,
though a part of his mind insisted obstinately that alarms were
commonplace these days, and in common sense one had to treat them
as false cries of "Wolf!" But one knew that some day the wolf might
really come. Perhaps it had....
Lockley found it difficult to align the carrier beam to Vale's exact
location. He assured himself that he was a fool to be afraid; that if
disaster were to come it would be by the imbecilities of men rather than
through creatures from beyond the stars. And therefore....
But there were other men at other places who felt less skepticism. The
report from Vale went to the Military Information Center and thence to
the Pentagon. Meanwhile the Information Center ordered a
photo-reconnaissance plane to photograph Boulder Lake from aloft. In
the Pentagon, hastily alerted staff officers began to draft orders to be
issued if the report of two radars and one eye-witness should be further
substantiated. There were such-and-such trucks available here, and
such-and-such troops available there. Complicated paper work was
involved in the organization of any movement of troops, but especially
to carry out a plan not at all usual in the United States.
Everything, though, depended on what the reconnaissance plane
photographs might show.
Lockley did not see the plane nor consciously hear it. There was the
faintest of murmuring noises in the sky. It moved swiftly toward the
north, tending eastward. The plane that made the noise was invisible. It
flew above the cloud cover which still blotted out nearly all the blue

overhead. It went on and on and presently died out beyond the
mountains toward Boulder Lake.
Lockley tried to get Vale back, to tell him that radars had verified his
report and that it would be acted on by the military. But though he
called and called, there was no answer.
An agonizingly long time later the faint and disregarded sound of the
plane swept back across the heavens. Lockley still did not notice it. He
was too busy with his attempts to reach Vale again, and with grisly
imaginings of what might be done by aliens from another world when
they found the workmen near the lake--and Jill among them. He
pictured alien monsters committing atrocities in what they might
consider scientific examination of terrestrial fauna. But somehow even
that was less horrible than the images that followed an assumption that
the occupants of the spaceship might be men.
"Calling Vale ... Vale, come in!" He fiercely repeated the call into the
instrument's microphone. "Lockley calling Vale! Come in, man! Come
in!"
He flipped the switch and listened. And Vale's voice came.
"I'm here." The voice shook. "I've been trying to find where that
exploring party went."
Lockley threw the speech switch and said sharply, "The Army asked
Survey if any of us had seen anything come down from the sky. I gave
Sattell your report to be forwarded. It's gone to the Pentagon now. Two
radars reported tracking the thing down to a landing near you. Now
listen! You go to the construction camp. Most likely they'll get orders
to clear out, by short wave. But you go there! Make sure Jill's all right.
See her to safety."
The switch once more. Vale's voice was desperate.
"A ... while ago a party of the creatures started away from the lake. An
exploring party, I think. Once I saw a puff of steam as if they'd used a

weapon. I'm afraid they may find the construction camp, and Jill...."
Lockley ground his teeth. Vale said unsteadily, "I ... can't find where
they went.... A little while ago their ship backed out into the lake and