“No, not much. Luckily there was a sheriff and a couple of deputies to hold the crowd back. The things seemed amiable enough, just wanted information. Seems they wanted to know how to get to Owl’s Head Park in Brooklyn.”
“Of all places,” Conner observed with a slight chuckle.
“They’re being flown here now,” Andrews said as he continued his doodling.
“Well, you don’t sound exactly hysterical about it.”
“I’m not. These creatures seem to have an extremely advanced scientific background. Judging from the effects of their sidearms at Gravesend, I can only guess at what their heavier weapons might be capable of. It’s obvious that a government could make excellent use of any information they might care to offer.”
“So?”
“So,” Andrews drew a mushrooming atom-bomb plume, “we have two of those teams. Three others have landed elsewhere on this planet… I was just wondering where, that’s all.”
As Conner had said, the newspapers had the story and they had no in-tendon of letting it go. Glaring headlines from coast to coast shouted the news that “mysterious saucer monsters” had been captured after a “titanic struggle” with the army in Brooklyn, and were being held for questioning by the state department. All that the army and the state department could do after the news had leaked out was to sit tight and await developments. The first signs of the approaching diplomatic storm came the next morning when a crowd of couriers arrived at the state department, with sealed messages, from practically every embassy in Washington. The sum and substance of a typical message was an offer of scientific assistance, from the embassy’s mother country, in the interrogation of the aliens. There was also a thinly veiled demand—if the assistance was not desired—for a representative to be present at every questioning session.
News photographers waited impatiently outside the Russian Embassy in order to photograph the courier they expected to leave with a message for the state department. No one was more surprised than the state department when no message was forthcoming. When there was still no message the second day, the conclusion reached by the state department was an obvious one.
“They must have one or more of the teams,” Halwit, the secretary of state, said as he stared vacantly out of his office window.