"'Vehicle-Eating Monsters'," Colonel Mortby interposed. He was a small
man with a pleasant youthful face. "It's standard army operating
procedure to give an object a name before investigating it."
"Oh." Jeremiah twisted back again, saved the model A from going into
the ditch with a Herculean yank on the wheel. "Well, Dexter here seems
to think that our falling star is a spaceship and that they landed in
it, and I'm inclined to believe he's right."
"After seeing the VEMs in person, I'm inclined to believe he's right
myself," Colonel Mortby said. "I think that what we have to do with
here," he went on presently, when the general made no comment, "is a
form of metal-based life capable of generating an internal temperature
of at least three thousand degrees Fahrenheit. The acrid odor they give
off while 'feasting' probably arises from a substance analogous to our
gastric juices which their heat-resistant stomachs supply to accomplish
'digestion,' only in this case 'digestion' consists primarily in
melting down the metal they consume and in isolating its waste matter,
after which the pure metal is reprocessed into 'body tissue' and the
waste matter is thrown off in the form of slag. I think we might go so
far as to call them a couple of animate open hearths."
Dexter had turned around in the front seat and was looking at the
colonel admiringly. "I think you've hit the nail right on the head,
sir," he said.
General Longcombe was scowling. "We're here to survey the situation,
Colonel, not to jump to conclusions." He addressed the back of
Jeremiah's weather-beaten neck. "I trust we'll have no trouble finding
suitable accommodations in Sugardale, sheriff."
"Mrs. Creasy'll be glad to put you up at the Inn, if that's what you
mean," Jeremiah said.
* * * * *
Mrs. Creasy was more than glad. Indeed, from the way she looked at the
two officers and the NCO through her thicket of hair, you would have
thought they were the first roomers she'd had in months, discounting
the cockroaches, of course.
The general said petulantly, "Let's get down to business, Colonel.
I want an armored company brought up immediately, and I want the
fallen-star area put off limits at once. Have the sheriff show you
where it is." He turned to Sergeant Wilkins. "Sergeant, get on the
phone as soon as the colonel gets off it, and arrange for my personal
Cadillac to be delivered here first thing."
After phoning his paper, Dexter headed for the dining room and sat down
beside General Longcombe. "Anything new on the VEMs, General?" he asked.
General Longcombe sighed. There were shadows under his eyes, and his
cheeks showed signs of sagging. "They're still in circulation. Scared
the wits out of a couple of teenagers and ate their hot-rod. We've
got them under constant surveillance, of course, and what with all the
underbrush they trample it's easy enough to track them. But we can't
stop them. They eat our gas grenades and our fragmentation grenades,
and they're impervious to our tank killers and our antitank mines. A
small A-bomb would take care of them nicely, but even assuming there's
an area around here large enough and isolated enough to permit us to
use an A-bomb, there's no way of herding them into it."
"It just so happens that there is such an area," Jeremiah Smith said.
"Tillson Valley--about ten miles south of here. You'd have to vacate
Old Man Tillson, of course, but he'd be glad to go if you made it worth
his while. He hasn't grown a thing but weeds anyway since he got his
pension. Just sits around all day and sucks up beer."
"But there's still no way of getting the VEMs out there," General
Longcombe objected.
"Tell me, general," Dexter said, "have they eaten any of your jeeps or
trucks or personnel carriers?"
General Longcombe shook his head. "They've had plenty of opportunity
to, too."
"I have a theory," Dexter said.
The look that promptly settled on General Longcombe's face made no
bones about what he thought of presumptuous young reporters with
theories. Colonel Mortby, however, was considerably less biased. "It
won't do any harm to listen to what he's got to say, sir," he pointed
out, "and it may even do some good. It'll be at least a day before the
ship is excavated and even then we may not know any more about the sort
of life forms we're dealing with than we do now."
* * * * *
Dexter needed no further invitation. "I think it's pretty clear by
now," he began, "that our two visitors from Planet X aren't attracted
by metal in just any old form at all, but by metal in the form of new,
or nearly new, automobiles. This strongly suggests that their landing
was unpremeditated, because if it had been premeditated they would have
come down in a section of the country where such metallic concoctions
are in plentiful supply--near a city or a large town, or close to a
heavily traveled throughway.
"But what is it about these new cars of ours that they find so
irresistible? Let's try an analogy. Suppose that one of us has gone
into a bakery to buy a birthday cake and that money is no object.
Which cake is he most likely to buy? The answer is obvious: the one
with the most visual appeal. To return to our visitors from Planet X.
Suppose that all their lives they've been eating metal in various but
uninspired ingot forms--the metallic equivalents, let's say, of beans
and bread and hominy grits. Now suppose they find their way to another
planet where visual appeal in metallic creation is a major occupation,
and suppose that shortly after disembarking from their spaceship they
come upon a new convertible. Wouldn't they react in the same way we
would react if all our lives our diet had been confined to beans and
bread and hominy grits and _we_ traveled to another planet, disembarked
and came upon a delicious birthday cake just begging to be eaten?
Wouldn't they make pigs of themselves and start looking for more cakes?"
"But if it's the ornate nature of our late-model cars that attracts
them, why did they eat the staff car?" Colonel Mortby asked. "And why
did they eat the teenager's hot rod, and our gas and fragmentation
grenades?"
"I suggest," Dexter said, "that they ate the staff car because at the
moment there weren't any other cars immediately available. As for the
teenager's hot rod, I imagine it was loaded down with enough chrome
accessories to sink a battleship. And as for the grenades--your men
threw them at them first, did they not?"
Colonel Mortby nodded. "I see what you mean. Sort of like throwing
candy to a baby. I'll buy your theory, Mr. Foote."
"And now, if I may," Dexter continued, "I'd like to propose a means of
getting rid of our unwanted visitors from Planet X."