radar installations, checked
against a seismograph record of the time of the impact in the lake and
allowed no leeway of time for it to hover in mid-air to be admired.

But there were enough detailed and first-hand accounts of alarming
events to make a second statement by the Defense Department necessary.
It was an over-correction of the first soothing one. It was intended
to be more soothing still.

It said blandly that a bolide--a slow-moving, large meteoric
object--had been observed by radar to be descending to earth. It had
been tracked throughout its descent. It had landed in Boulder Lake.
Air photos taken since its landing showed that an enormous disturbance
of the water of the lake had taken place. It had seemed wise to remove
workmen from the neighborhood of the meteoric fall, and the whole
occurrence had been made the occasion of a full-scale practice
emergency response by air and other defense forces. Investigation of
the possible bolide itself was under way.

The writer of the bulletin was obviously sitting on Vale's report and
that of the workmen so as to tell as little as possible and that
slanted to prevent alarm. The bulletin went on to say that there was
no justification for the alarming reports now spreading through the
country. This happening was not--repeat, was not--in any way
associated with the cold war of such long standing. It was simply a
very large meteor arriving from space and very fortunately falling in
a national park area, and even more fortunately into a deep crater
lake so that there was no damage even to the forests of the park.

The bulletin had no effect, of course. It was too late. It was
released at just about the time the temperature in the metal
prison--which seemed likely to become a metal coffin--had begun to
fall. The moving sun had gone behind a mountain and the compost pit
shell was in shadow once more.

Again the cover of that giant box was opened. A porcupine was dropped
inside. The cover went on again. This was, at a guess, about five
o'clock in the afternoon. The chunky man said drearily, "If this is
supposed to be the way they'll feed us, they coulda picked something
easier to eat than a porcupine!"

The box now held four men, three rabbits--panting in terror in one
corner--half a dozen game birds and the just-arrived porcupine. All
the wild creatures shrank away from the men. At any sudden movement
the birds tended to fly hysterically about in the dimness, dashi