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reply, and spirits sank again.
        Inter-channel memos slipped frantically down from President to Aide, to Secretary of Defense, to Undersecretary, to Chief of Staff, to the General, who passed the memos-bundled-to his Adjutant. Who worried.

    It had been the only one where there was any slightest sign of contact. “Look, pilot, I want you to fly across that dirty one,” the Adjutant said.
        “Begging the Captain’s permission...” the wide-eyed young pilot demanded, over his shoulder; he continued at the nod from Alberts “...but the last man who buzzed that big-O, sir, got himself scissored good and proper. What I mean, sir, is that we’re way off bounds, and if our clearances didn’t, uh, clear, we might have a flock of my buddies down our necks.” He spoke in a faint Texas drawl that seemed to ease from between his thin lips.
        The Adjutant felt the adrenaline flowing erratically. He had been taking slop from the General for three weeks, and now to be forced into flying up himself, into the very jaws of death (as he phrased it to himself), to look over the situation...he would brook no backtalk from a whey-faced flight boy fresh out of Floyd Bennett.
        Alberts shooed him off, directed him back to the stick. “Don’t worry yourself, pilot. “ He licked his lips, added, “They cleared, and all we have to worry about is that saucer line up ahead.”
        The discs were rising out of the late evening Nevada haze. The clouds seemed to have lowered, and the fog seemed to have risen, and the two intermingled, giving a wavering, indistinct appearance to the metallic line of saucers, stretching off beyond the horizon.
        The Adjutant looked out through the curving bubble of the helicopter’s control country, and felt the same twinges of fear rippling the hair along his neck that he had felt when the General had started putting the screws to him.
        The Sikorsky rescue copter windmilled in toward the saucer, its rotors flap-flap-flap-flapping overhead.
        The pilot sticked-in on the dirty saucer. It rose out of the mist abruptly, and they were close enough to see that there really was dust streaked with dirt along the dull metal surface of the ship. Probably from one of these Nevada windstorms, the Adjutant thought.
        They scaled down, and came to a hovering stop two feet above the empty metal face of the disc.
        “See anything?” the Adjutant asked.
        The pilot craned off to one side, swept his gaze around, then turned on the searchbeam. The pole of light watered across the sleek saucer bulk, and picked up nothing. Not even a line of rivets, not even a break in the construction. Nothing but dirt and pockmarks, and what might be considered patches, were this a tire or an ordinary ship.
        “Nothing, sir.”
        “Take us over there, right there, will you, pilot?”
        The Adjutant indicated a lighter place on the metal of the ship. It seemed to be a different shade of chrome-color. The Sikorsky jerked, lifted a few inches, and slid over. The pilot brought it back down, and they looked over the hull of the saucer at that point.
        It was, indeed, lighter in shade.
        “This could be something, pi-”
        The shaft rose up directly in front of the Sikorsky before he could finish the word.
        It was a column of transparent, almost glass-like material, with a metal disc sealing off the top. It was rising out of the metal where there had been no break in the skin, and it kept rising till it towered over them.
        “M-m-m-” the Adjutant struggled to get the word loose.
        “Move!” More a snarl than a command. But before they could whip away, the person stepped up inside the column, stared straight out, his gigantic face on a line with their cab.
        He must have been thirty feet tall, and completely covered with reddish-brown hair. His ears were pointed, and set almost atop his head. The eyes were pocketed by