10 (JULY 31, THURS.)
You came to me from out of nowhere so why don't you go back where you came from?
—Abe Burrows song title
I managed to shut off the alarm and get up without disturbing Mae. I was having breakfast when the back door slammed open. We don't lock our doors in countrified, law-abiding High Tor.
"Uncle Sam, Uncle Sam!" It was six-year-old Harry Tyler, the son of our neighbors. "There's a spaceship in the woods!"
"What were you doing in the woods at this uncivilized hour?" I said, the neighborly avuncular instinct grabbing the wrong end of his remark. Then I said, "What? A spaceship? In the woods?"
"I went out to pick some strawberries for my breakfast," Harry said. "That's why I was in the woods. It's big and black and nobody saw me, I don't think."
"How do you know it's a spaceship?"
"Everybody knows what a spaceship looks like. It's big and black, just the way it's supposed to be. Come on and see it."
"Is your daddy up yet?" I asked Harry. Len Tyler usually gets up a few minutes after I do. "Did you tell him?"
"He's on vacation," Harry said. I'd forgotten. "He's still asleep. So's Mommy. Come on and see the spaceship, Uncle Sam."
I always feel very martial when Harry and the other kids in the neighborhood call me Uncle Sam. I feel that I have to uphold the honor of the Republic and Set an Example.
"Son," I said, "you're on. Let us go investigate this phenomenon."
A telescope hung in the back hall where it had been gathering dust since I gave up being a satellite watcher. It was a pretty good Japanese telescope, not expensive, but not cheap either. I took it down and wondered whether to look for my old souvenir machete for protection. But I decided that would be overdoing it.
We have about an acre of clear ground behind our house, then the woods begin. It's really an abandoned apple orchard, with the apple trees grown tall and neglected and other trees grown to a respectable height between them. A lot of sticker-bushes live there, too—tough, nasty things with needle-sharp spines. I wished I'd brought the machete after all.
Harry and I had threaded our way a few hundred feet when I stopped. My left shirt sleeve was torn, my pants were wet up to the knees from the dew, and I was sweating.
"That's far enough, Harry," I said. "There's no spaceship here."
He was a few yards ahead, ducking under a spiny branch I'd have to lift out of the way at my peril.
"It's right over there, Uncle Sam," he said. "I think I see it now."
"Yeah? I'll go as far as you are, and if it's not there, young Marco Polo, we're turning back."
"Shh," he said. "Come on."
I joined him and looked. "Where?"
"Right there. Near that red apple there." He pointed.
There were thousands of red apples, fit only for making pies if the peeler had the patience to cut away the bad spots.
I followed his point and he was right. Nestled in among the trees was a big bulk of a thing, brownish gray. It certainly wasn't anything that had been in the woods before.
"Do you see any people?" I asked Harry.
"No. Let's go knock on their door."
"No!" I said. "Let's circle around and see what it looks like from the other side."
We circled. I managed to tear my other shirt sleeve on a sticker that also drew blood. Then for a while we made better progress along the bed of a sunken, abandoned road. We had kept the spaceship on our left and now I could see a huge clearing on the far side of it, strung over with some kind of camouflage netting.
"There they are!" Harry said.
"Quiet!" I said, pulling him down behind the lip of the old road. I was past caring about clothes now.
There were at least a dozen of them in the clearing. More were coming out of the open hatch of the spaceship. Apparently they hadn't heard us. I uncapped the telescope and looked.
They were wearing their native woolen cloaks and were setting up furniture in the clearing, which had been divided into room-size rectangles outlined on the bare ground with paint or strips of white cloth.
In addition to the chairs, tables, desks and bookcases they had a number of pieces of equipment which vaguely resembled movie or television cameras.
"What are they doing, Uncle Sam?" Harry asked. "Let me look through the telescope."
"I don't know. It looks as if they're building movie sets. Maybe the walls will come later." I handed him the telescope.
"Look, they're coming out different now," Harry said, and I grabbed the telescope back.
Those stepping out of the hatch now were wearing Earth-style clothes, and not carrying anything. But not all of the clothes looked American. There were men in wide-lapeled European suits, men in the white linen suits of tropical countries, men in the jodhpurs or dhotis of the Asian Indian, men in glittering military uniforms and men in drab, unadorned military jackets worn by the leaders of some totalitarian countries. They went to the various room-sized rectangles and sat or stood. No one was talking.
Then I looked closely at their faces. I almost dropped the telescope.
I saw the Prime Ministers of England and India, the leader of the United Arab Republic, the President of France and half a dozen other premiers or presidents, ex-, present or potential.
Gouverneur Allison was there for the United States, as was Rupert Marriner, the Secretary of State, and several other high administrative officials.
I was watching the Soviet Union's top men come out when I heard a noise behind us.
"Run!" I told Harry, getting up myself. "Run home and tell your daddy."
He hesitated. "Aren't you coming, Uncle Sam?"
"I'll go another way, to confuse them. Go on, now!"
Harry ran back along the sunken road. I started in the other direction. I hadn't taken twenty steps when a Monolithian in a woolen cloak rose up in front of me. I darted off sideways and ran into another one. There were five in all.
Escape would have been impossible even with the machete. Without speaking they escorted me toward the clearing.