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Half an hour after the evening mess near sunset a security officer wearing a uniform hunted up Joe at the airfield. "Major Holt sent me over to bring you back to the Shed," he said politely. "If you don't mind," said Joe with equal politeness, "I'll check that." He went to the phone booth in the barracks. He got Major Holt on the wire. And Major Holt hadn't sent anybody to get him.
There was an immediate and intense conference. The lengths of shadows were measured. The size and slope and probable condition of the clearing's surface were estimated. A very light plane, intended for artillery-spotting, took off from the nearest airfield to Boulder Lake. And Lockley and Jill heard it long before it came in sight.
Between anxiety lest I run into a less pompous and more bloodthirsty group of representatives of the Republic One and Indivisible when it had come into being, how far its authority extended or how long it lasted I never learned and the burning and blistering of my feet in their thinsoled shoes, I doubt if I was more than a few miles from the airfield and therefore many from the coast when darkness fell.
Descent in the winged rocket was rough. But then he was gliding with a sibilant whistle through a natural atmosphere, again. Within minutes he was at the Station low, dusty domes, many of them deserted, now, at the edge of the airfield, a lazily-spinning wind gauge, tractors, auto-jeeps, several helicopters. He stepped down with his gear.
It had increased in size till it was as big as a "golf ball at arm's length," and it looked like a big ball of fire. It was so low that both the OD and his driver dove under the command car because they were sure it was going to hit the airfield. When they turned and looked up they saw the fireball make a 90-degree turn over the airfield and disappear into the northwest. The time was 10:47P.M.
Even the small planes that fly from the airfield are much bigger than the flying stingarees, but when the planes go over at about five thousand feet, they seem tiny. At that altitude the flying stingarees must be at the limit of really good visibility." "I read you loud and clear. So the objects are sent from Calvert's Favor, and they climb. They don't climb straight up, though.
"Airfield off to the right," said the co-pilot. "That's for the town and the job. The jets there's an air umbrella overhead all the time have a field somewhere else. The pushpots have a field of their own, too, where they're training pilots." Joe didn't know what a pushpot was, but he didn't ask.
Its construction was being kept as much of a secret as possible, for Arcot feared the interference of the crowds that would be sure to collect if the facts were known, and since the shops directly joined the airfield, it meant that there would be helicopters buzzing about the Transatlantic and Transcontinental planes.
Several hours later, at 7:20P.M., airfield towers all over the Midwest sent in frantic reports of another UFO. In all about a dozen airfield towers reported the UFO as being low on the southwestern horizon and disappearing after about twenty minutes. The writers of saucer lore say this UFO was what Mantell was chasing when he died; the Air Force says this UFO was Venus.
It's been five pushpots exploded and five pilots killed this week. It's getting a little bit serious." He looked sharply at Joe. "Better drink your coffee before you go look. You won't want to, afterward." He was right. Joe saw the crashed pushpot half an hour later. He found that his ostensible assignment to the airfield for the investigation of sabotage was quaintly taken at face value there.
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