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