committing any troops to the area. This is my aide, Colonel Mortby, and my driver, Sergeant Wilkins."

"Sheriff Smith at your service," said Jeremiah. "This here's Dexter Foote, who came to Sugardale to do a Big Story on our falling star."

"Tell me about these VEMs of yours, sheriff," General Longcombe said.

Jeremiah twisted around. "VEMs?"

"'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 

 Prev. P 6/11 next