"Count your blessings. Look, there's someone up ahead."
The "someone" turned out to be a two-star general, a chicken colonel and an enlisted man. Jeremiah stopped, and the trio climbed into the back seat. "Ate your staff car, did they, General?" he chuckled, taking off again. "Well, that's the way it goes."
"The name," said the general, whose middle-aged face had a greenish cast, "is General Longcombe, and I was on my way to Sugardale to reconnoiter the situation before committing any troops to the area. This is my aide, Colonel Mortby, and my driver, Sergeant Wilkins."
"Sheriff Smith at your service," said Jeremiah. "This here's Dexter Foote, who came to Sugardale to do a Big Story on our falling star."
"Tell me about these VEMs of yours, sheriff," General Longcombe said.
Jeremiah twisted around. "VEMs?"
"'Vehicle-Eating Monsters'," Colonel Mortby interposed. He was a small man with a pleasant youthful face. "It's standard army operating procedure to give an object a name before investigating it."
"Oh." Jeremiah twisted back again, saved the model A from going into the ditch with a Herculean yank on the wheel. "Well, Dexter here seems to think that our falling star is a spaceship and that they landed in it, and I'm inclined to believe he's right."
"After seeing the VEMs in person, I'm inclined to believe he's right myself," Colonel Mortby said. "I think that what we have to do with here," he went on presently, when the general made no comment, "is a form of metal-based life capable of generating an internal temperature of at least three thousand degrees Fahrenheit. The acrid odor they give off while 'feasting' probably arises from a substance analogous to our gastric juices which their heat-resistant stomachs supply to accomplish 'digestion,' only in this case 'digestion' consists primarily in melting down the metal they consume and in isolating its waste matter, after which the pure metal is reprocessed into 'body tissue' and the waste matter is thrown off in the form of slag. I think we might go so far as to call them a couple of animate open hearths."
Dexter had turned around in the front seat and was looking at the colonel admiringly. "I think you've hit the nail right on the head, sir," he said.