The Visitors (v1.0)

5. LONE PINE

The fish was gone. The rabbit had hopped into the darkness and now was hopping back again, hopping slowly and deliberately, its nose aquiver, a much puzzled rabbit, wondering, perhaps, Jerry told himself, what manner of briar patch it might have ~landed in. The coon was pawing and nuzzling at the floor. The muskrat had disappeared.

Jerry had done some cautious exploring, but never moving so far away as to lose his orientation to the spot on which he had been deposited when he had been jerked into the place. He had found nothing. Approaching some of the strange shapes that had been revealed in the flicker of the lights, the shapes had gone away, receding and flattening into the kevel floor. He had investigated the circular patches that he first had thought of as eyes. He had thought when he had first seen them that they were positioned in walls, but found that they were located in mid-air. He could pass his hand through them and when he did, it seemed to have no effect upon them. They still remained circular luminosities and they still kept on watching him. He had felt nothing when he touched them. They were neither hot nor cold and imparted no sensation.

The flickering still continued and the pale blue light persisted. It seemed to him that he could see slightly better than he had earlier, probably because his eyes had adjusted to the paleness of the light.

He had tried on several occasions to talk with the strange presence that he fell was there, but there had been no response, not the slightest indication that he had been heard. Except for the sense of being watched, there was no sign that anyone or anything in the place was aware of him. He did not have the feeling that the imagined observer was in any way hostile or malignant. Perhaps curious, but that was all. The alien smell continued, but he had become somewhat accustomed to it and now paid it slight attention.

The terror and the apprehension had largely fallen from him. In its stead came a fatalistic numbness and a wonderment that such an event could happen. How could it be, he asked himself, that he had been so positioned in time and space for this incredible happening to befall him? From time to time, he thought of Kathy and the concert, but this was something, he told himself, that could not be remedied and the thought then was swept away by the concern for his predicament.

It seemed to him that from time to time he could detect some motion in the structure in which he was imprisoned. On a couple of occasions, there had been a lurching and a jerking as if violent movement were taking place. Of none of this, however, could he be positive. It might be, he told himself, no more than certain convolutions or biologic readjustments in the organism

And that was the crux of it, he thought—was it biologic? There had been nothing to start with, at the time it had fallen from the sky, to indicate it was—and perhaps not even now. It could be, rather, a machine, a pre-programmed, computerized machine able to react approximately to any number of arising situations. But there was about it the sense of the biologic, a feeling, for whatever reason, that it was alive.

While he had no evidence, he was becoming more and more convinced that it was a biologic being, a functioning consciousness that was observing him. A visitor from the stars that, immediately after it had landed, had set about learning what it could of the life indigenous to the planet, snatching up himself, a fish, a rabbit, a coon and a muskrat. From the five of them, he had no doubt, could be gleaned some basic information, perhaps even the beginning of an understanding of the principle upon which life here had evolved.

It was alive, he told himself; this great black box was a living thing. And even while he wondered how he could be so convinced, suddenly he knew, as if a voice had spoken to him, as if a special light of intellect had blinked inside his brain. It was like a tree, he thought. He could feel within it the same aliveness that he found in any tree. And that, he told himself, was ridiculous, for this thing was nothing like a tree. But the thought persisted: this thing inside of which he had been thrust was similar to a tree.

He tried to squeeze the idea out of his thinking, for it was, on the face of it, a silly idea at best. But it hung on, refusing to be banished, and now another idea came out of nowhere to link up with the idea of the tree—the unsummoned thought of home. But what this new idea meant, he did not know. Did it mean that this place was home to him? He rebelled at the thought, for it certainly was not home. It was about as far from home as any place he could imagine.

How, he wondered, had the idea come to him? Could it be that this living alien—if it was living alien—was trying to communicate with him, that it was planting suggestions in his mind, trying to bridge the gap that lay between their two intelligences? If that should be the ease, and he could not bring himself to think it was, what then did the alien mean? What connection could there be between a tree and home? What connotation was he expected to derive from the two ideas?

Thinking this, he realized that he was more and more begin-fling to accept the premise that the big black box was a visitor from outer space and that it was not only alive, but intelligent.

The ground, he reminded himself, had been well laid for such a thought and such acceptance. It had been talked about and written about for years—that some day, an intelligence from outer space might come to visit Earth, with all the attendant speculation of what might happen then, of how the great unwashed, uncomprehending public might react to it. It was not a new idea; for years it had lain skin-deep in the public consciousness.

The rabbit came hopping up to him. Crouched tight against the floor, it stretched out its neck to sniff at the toes of his shoes. The coon, through with its worrying of the floor, went ambling off. The muskrat had not reappeared.

Little brothers, Jerry thought. These things are my little brothers, gathered with me in this place, common denizens of what this alien being regards as an alien planet, gathered here to be studied by it.

Something whipped around him. He was jerked from his feet and slammed against the wall. But he did not hit the wall. The wall opened in a slit and he went through, sailing free of it.

He was falling. In the darkness he could see very little, but below him he could make out a blob of shadow and jerked up his hands to protect his face. He crashed into a tree and the upward-thrusting, but resilient branches slowed his fall. Desperately he reached out with one hand, the other still up to protect his face. Grabbing blindly, his fingers closed around a branch. It bent beneath his weight, slowing his fall; with the other hand, he stabbed out and his fingers found and closed upon a larger branch, which was stout enough to halt his fall.

For a moment he hung there, dangling in the tree, the sharp, welcome scent of pine redolent in his nostrils. A gentle wind was blowing and all around him, he heard the murmur of the conifers.

He hung there, thankful—filled with a surging thankfulness that he had escaped from inside the alien structure. Although escaped, he knew, on second thought, was not quite the word for it. He had been thrown out. They, or it, or whatever it might be, had gotten all it needed from him and had heaved him out. As it probably earlier had thrown out the fish and, in a little while, would heave out the rabbit, coon and muskrat.

His eyes by now had become partially adapted to the darkness and carefully he worked his way along the branch to the body of the tree. Once he reached it, he clutched it with both arms and legs, resting for a moment. Because of the thickness of the branches, he could not see the ground and had no idea how high he might be in the tree. Not high, he told himself, for he could not have been thrown out of the structure more than forty feet or so above the ground and he had fallen for at least a short distance before the tree had intervened to break the fall.

Slowly, he began his descent down the tree. It was not easy work, especially in the dark, for there were many branches sprouting from the trunk and he had to do some maneuvering to make his way down through them. The tree, he judged, was not very large or tall. The bole, he estimated, was no more than a foot in diameter, although, as he descended, it increased in size.

Finally, without warning, his feet touched the ground and his knees buckled under him. Carefully, he felt about with one foot to be certain he had reached the ground. Satisfied that he had, he released his hold on the trunk and fought his way clear of the low-growing, drooping branches.

He stood to one side of the tree and peered all about him, but the darkness was so thick that he could make out very little. He calculated he was some distance to one side of the road down which he'd driven before he parked the car, and was astonished and slightly terrified to find that he had no idea of direction.

He moved around a bit, hoping to find a place where the tree growth was less dense and he would have a chance of seeing better, but he had moved only a few feet before he became entangled in another tree. He tried another direction and the same thing happened. He crouched against the ground, peering upward, in hope that he could catch the dark outline of the thing that had come down from the sky, but was unable to locate it.

From where he was, he told himself, he should be able to glimpse the lights in the town of Lone Pine, but, try as he might, he could not see so much as a single light. He tried to make out some familiar patterns in the stars, but there were no stars— either the sky was overcast or the forest cover was too thick to see through.

Christ, he thought, crouched against the ground, here he was, lost in a woods not more than a mile from a town—a small town, of course, but still a town.

He could, of course, spend the night here until morning light, but the air was already chilly and before morning, it would get much colder. He could start a fire, he told himself, and then realized that he had no matches. He didn't smoke, so never carried matches. And the approaching cold, he told himself, was not the sole consideration. Somehow, as quickly as possible, he had to find a phone. Kathy would be furious. He'd have to explain to her what had held him up.

He remembered one adage for a lost man—travel downhill. Traveling downhill, one would come to water and by following water, soon or late, people would be found. If he traveled downhill, he'd come to the river. By following along its bank, he'd come to the road. Or he could try to cross the river, which might put him in striking distance of Lone Pine. Although that had small attraction, for he did not know the river and having to cross it could be dangerous. He could run afoul of deep or rapid water.

Or, perhaps, he could find the contraption in which he had been caged. If he could find it, then by turning to his left, he would find the road that led to the bridge. But even so, he could not cross the river, for the bridge was out. Or the contraption might still be sprawled across the river; he had thought he felt it move, but he could not be certain that it had.

He couldn't be too far away from it, he thought. He had been thrown from it and he could not have been too distant from it when he'd crashed into the tree. The structure in which he had been caged, he felt certain, could be no more than thirty feet away.

He started out or tried to start out. He got nowhere. He collided with trees, he became entangled in undergrowth, he tripped over fallen logs. There was no possibility of covering more than a few feet at a time; it was impossible to travel in a straight line. He became confused; he had no idea where he was.

Worn out with his effort, he crouched against a tree trunk, with the drooping branches almost on top of him, almost brushing the ground. God, he thought, it seemed impossible a man could get so thoroughly lost, even in the dark.

After a short rest, he got up and went on, floundering blindly. At times, he asked himself why he just didn't give up, hunker down for the night, waiting for the dawn. But he could never persuade himself. Each new effort that he made might be the lucky one. He might find the alien structure or the road or something else that would tell him where he was.

What he found was a path. He hadn't been expecting to find a path, but it was better than nothing and he decided to stick with it. The path, or trail, would surely lead him somewhere if he could only follow it.

He had not seen the path. He had found it by stumbling on it, tripping on something and falling flat upon his face upon it. It was fairly free of obstructions and he made it out by patting the ground with his hands, tracing out the narrow, hard-packed pathway. Trees and underbrush crowded close on either side of it.

There was only one way to follow it—on his hands and knees, feeling with his hands to keep himself upon it. So, thoroughly lost, not knowing where he was or where he might be going, he inched his way down the trail on his hands and knees.