The Visitors (v1.0)

8. MINNEAPOLIS

Garrison said to Jim Cold, "Has Kathy come on the line yet?"

"No," said Gold. "Stuffy Grant still is holding. He did a lot of talking to start with, but now we've run out of things to say. Gave me a pretty good description of the object. Told me something about the Lone Pine reaction to it. I turned it all over to Jackson. He turned in the story just a while ago."

Gold picked up the phone and spoke into it. "Mr. Grant, are you still there?"

He listened for a moment and then laid down the phone. "He's still there," he said.

Garrison sat down at his desk, picked up the copy of the first edition that a copy aide had left on his typewriter, spread it out to look at the front page.

The headline said: SPACE OBJECT LANDS IN MINNESOTA

There was nothing but stories concerning the space object on the page—the main story; a sidebar on Lone Pine reaction, supplied by Frank Norton; a story from the governor's office; a statement by the head of the state highway patrol; a piece out of the Tribune's Washington bureau; a speculative story written by Jay Kelly, exploring the possibility of intelligent life throughout the universe and the odds against the Earth being visited by one of the life forms; a map showing the location of Lone Pine.

A good first effort, he told himself. Now if Kathy would only check in and Frank's pictures show up.

He asked Annie, "Any word from the fellow with the film?"

"He phoned ten minutes ago," the secretary told him. "From Anoka. Called when he stopped for gas."

Garrison glanced at the clock on the wall at the end of the newsroom. 10:00. There was still plenty of time to develop the rolls and get a couple of pictures ready for the press.

"Did Kathy's young man call in?" he asked Annie. "When she ‘gets to the phone, she'll want to know."

"Not yet," said Annie. "I looked in Kathy's mail box just a while ago. I thought someone might have taken a call and left her a note. There was nothing there."

"Maybe you better call his home. You have his name?"

"Yes. Jerry Conklin. He's a student at the U. He should be listed in the student directory."

Garrison looked around the room. Unlike the situation earlier, now there were a lot of people at their desks. Most of them, more than likely, should have left by now, their day's work done. Jay, for example, had ~left early in the day to drive to Rochester to get the cancer story, had come back and written it and then written the piece on speculative life in the universe, and he was still here. As were many of the others, still sticking around, staying in ease they should be needed. Good staff, Garrison grunted to himself. But, goddammit, he told himself, they shouldn't be doing this; when their day was done, they should go on home.

"One thing I forgot," he said to his assistants. "We didn't arrange for accommodations for Kathy and Chet. Where will they stay tonight? Is there any place in Lone Pine?"

"A small motel," said Gold. "Annie phoned for rooms.

"Annie thinks of everything."

"When she phoned," said Gold, "the motel told her that ton had reserved rooms for them."

"Well," said Garrison, "that is taken care of."

Hal Russell, the wire editor, came up to Garrison's desk.

"Johnny," he said, "the bureau is sending in another story. The White House just announced that a large, unknown object has been spotted in orbit. There seems to be some thought it may have something to do with the fall at Lone Pine. A mother ship, perhaps."

Garrison put his head in his hands. "Is the night never going to end?" he asked. "We'll have to make room for it. Take the governor's story off page one and shuffle the others around. We'll have to give this one almost equal play with the main story. We'll have to revise the main story lead, get some mention of it in."

"It just started now," said Russell. "It's scheduled at 750 words. We'll be running out of room. We'll have to throw something else out, maybe have a second jump page."

"Look, Hal, there's a lot of crap we can throw out. Run off a copy of it and get it to me when it's finished."

"Sure, Johnny," said Russell.

"I tried Jerry Conklin's phone," said Annie, "and there is no answer. I wonder what could have happened."

"When Kathy gets back, she'll have his ears," said Gold. "I wouldn't want to be the one who stood her up. Even if she wasn't here to be stood up."

Lumbering down an aisle between ranked rows of desks leading to the city desk came the tall, gangling form of Al Lathrop, the managing editor. He had the first edition clutched in his hand and a look of worry on his face. He came to a halt at the city desk and stood there in all his height, looking down at Garrison.

"I don't know," he rumbled. "I'm just a little edgy. We're acting as if this thing at Lone Pine really is something out of space, some sort of visitor out of space."

"But it did come out of space," said Garrison. "It came down out of the sky and landed. We went over all of this at the news huddle.

"But it comes out different than I had envisioned it. The connotation is that it's an intelligence out of space. Some sort of

UFO."

"Read it again," Garrison told him. "Read it carefully. Nowhere have we said that. We've said what other people told us. If they believed it was an UFQ, or an approximation thereof, we said so. But, otherwise than that

"This story of Jay's.

"A background piece. Sheer speculation and Jay says so. If there are intelligences in space, what could they be like, what are the chances they'll ever visit us. It's the kind of article that has been written again and again. Published in magazines and newspapers, aired over TV and radio. Jay puts in a qualification every second paragraph. If this should be the case, he writes. If this Lone Pine object is an intelligence out of space, or something else entirely.

"Johnny, we've got to be careful. We could create a panic."

"We're being careful. We've reported objectively. We've not gone an inch beyond.

The phone rang and Annie answered it.

"Well, all right," said Lathrop. "Let's keep on being careful. Let's not go beyond the story."

Annie said to Garrison, "That was the photo lab. The kid just came in with the rolls of film."

Gold was reaching out his phone to him. "Kathy just now came on the line," he said.

Garrison took the phone, said into it, "Just a minute, Kathy." He cupped the phone with his hand and said to Gold, "Tell the news desk they'll have photos for the next run. A couple on the front page and maybe some inside. Take a look in the photo lab and see what they've got. If they are good, try to get the news desk to pick out a fairly open page for them. There's a lot of junk in the paper that we can clear out to make room for them."

Lathrop, he saw, was going down the aisle between the rows of desks, the paper still clutched in his hand.

Garrison spoke into the phone. "All right, Kathy," he said. "What have you got?"

"First of all," said Kathy, "Have you heard from Jerry yet?"