"Oh, never mind," Dexter said. "Show me the fallen star."
It was in a clearing deep in the woods. Or rather, the crater-like
hole it had made was. Peering down into the hole, Dexter saw the dark,
pitted surface of what could very well have been an ordinary, if
unusually large, meteorite. There was nothing that suggested an opening
of any kind, but the opposite wall of the crater did look as though
some heavy object had been dragged--or had dragged itself--up to the
level of the clearing. The underbrush showed signs of having been
badly trampled in the recent past.
He pointed out the signs to Jeremiah. "See how those saplings are
flattened? No human being did that. I'll bet if we followed that trail,
we'd come to the remains of the first car they consumed. Whose car was
it, by the way?"
"Mrs. Hopkins's new Buick. She'd just started out for the city on one
of her shopping trips. She was so scared when she came running back
into town her hair was standing straight out behind her head. Maybe,
though, it was because she was running so fast." Abruptly Jeremiah
leaned forward and squinted at the ground. "Looks almost like a big
footprint right there, don't it." He straightened. "But if the darn
thing is a spaceship like you say, how come it buried itself?"
"Because whoever or whatever was piloting it didn't--or
couldn't--decelerate enough for an orthodox landing," Dexter explained.
"Lucky it hit the clearing. If it had hit the trees, you'd have had a
forest fire on your hands."
Jeremiah looked worried. "Maybe we'd better be getting back to the
road. I feel kind of guilty leaving my model A sitting there all alone."
Dexter followed him back through the woods and climbed into the front
seat beside him. The road took them to the main highway, and not
long thereafter Jeremiah turned off the highway into another road--a
familiar road heralded by a familiar sign that said, SUGARDALE THREE
MILES. Two slag deposits marked the spot where once Dexter's proud
convertible had stood. He gazed at them sadly as they passed.
* * * * *
Suddenly Jeremiah brought the model A to a screeching halt. The two
desecrators of the American Dream Incarnate were in the midst of
another repast. The victim this time, judging from the still-visible
star and the O.D. color scheme, was an army staff car. The grill and
the motor were already gone, and half of the roof was missing. Yellow
haze enshrouded the sorry scene, and the countryside was resounding to
a series of horrendous CRUNCHES.
"Do you think if I sort of zoomed by, we could make it?" Jeremiah
asked. "I hate to go all the way around the other way."
"I'm game if you are," Dexter said.