changed. At that time Alaska reported an unscheduled celestial object
of considerable size, high out of atmosphere and moving with
surprising slowness for a body in space. Its course was parabolic and
it would probably land somewhere in South Dakota. It might be a
bolide--a large, slow-moving meteorite. It wasn't likely, but the
entire report was improbable.

The message reached the Military Information Center in Denver at 8:05
A.M. By 8:06 it had been relayed to Washington and every
plane on the Pacific Coast was ordered aloft. The Oregon radar unit
reported the same object at 8:07 A.M. It said the object was
seven hundred fifty miles high, four hundred miles out at sea, and was
headed toward the Oregon coastline, moving northwest to southeast.
There was no major city in its line of travel. The impact point
computed by the Oregon station was nowhere near South Dakota. As other
computations followed other observations, a second place of fall was
calculated, then a third. Then the Oregon radar unbelievably reported
that the object was decelerating. Allowing for deceleration, three
successive predictions of its landing point agreed. The object, said
these calculations, would come to earth somewhere near Boulder Lake,
Colorado, in what was to become a national park. Impact time should be
approximately 8:14 A.M.

These events followed Lockley's awakening in the wilds, but he knew
nothing of any of them. He himself wasn't near the lake, which was to
be the center of a vacation facility for people who liked the
outdoors. The lake was almost circular and was a deep, rich blue. It
occupied what had been the crater of a volcano millions of years ago.
Already bulldozers had ploughed out roads to it through the forest.
Men worked with graders and concrete mixers on highways and on bridges