Earl was slow in answering. He said, "I don't know. I just felt it. Or maybe I do know. Nadine and that guy Ladd were small and got big in a hurry. What was to keep that thing from doing the same? That's part of it. The other part is just a feeling. They don't seem to want to advertise to the world that they're here. Maybe the damn thing became invisible or something. With stasis spheres and small people that get big, and paralysis guns, what's so impossible about that ship or whatever it is getting big and becoming invisible? I'll bet it's still there."
But though they passed back and forth over the entire area, with increasing boldness, they encountered nothing, visible or invisible, that was out of the ordinary.
There was a concave depression in the soil where Earl remembered the puffball shape to have been. Even fresh scars in the dirt around the depression.
For a while Earl blundered through the underbrush calling Nadine's name cautiously, without hope. Finally they were forced to give up and return to the lab building.
"We could call the police," Basil said doubtfully.
"Oh, sure," Earl said, his voice harsh. "What would we tell them? Dr. Glassman would be called in. Next they'd call the boys in the white jackets."
"Maybe they're just the boys we need," Basil said. "Or a good stiff drink. I like the idea of the drink."
It was ten o'clock in the morning when Irene Conner pushed open the door without knocking and strolled casually into Earl's laboratory. She saw him at the far end of the room, hunched over with his elbows on the window sill, his back to her.
"Hi, Earl," she called cheerfully. "Want to have mid-morning coffee with me?"