Pentagon.

"SPACESHIP LANDS IN ANTARCTICA!
_Alien Life Forms Aboard_
Scientists Alarmed."

No newspaper would spoil a good story by underplaying it. Wire services
wasted no time. There were other similar headlines all over the United
States.

It should be added that the first editions of the first newspapers to
print the story did mention that the invaders were in appearance like
human children, but somehow it did not sound plausible. Also, other
sorts of descriptions were more exciting. The description of children as
invaders was classed as a guess. Then as a bad guess. Then as something
so preposterous that it wasn't worth relating. Anyhow the point of the
story was that a ship from off the Earth had landed, with intelligent
beings in it, equipped with marvellous devices. And marvellous devices
would naturally--in the state of the world at that time--be weapons. So
rewrite men expanded the news service dispatches by the sound
business-like rule that the public is entitled to get what it wants. The
public likes to be scared.

A lieutenant-general greeted Captain Moggs at the Pentagon.

"This business is true?" he demanded. "A spaceship from off Earth has
landed? It had a crew? The crew's still alive? Hell and damnation! What
weapons have they got?"

* * * * *

Captain Moggs stammered but managed to give answers. They did not give
an impression of a properly complete investigation of the landing of an
alien spaceship. In particular, her statement that the crew of the ship
was human children simply did not register.

"Hah!" said the lieutenant-general, bitterly. "Nothing to go on! You,
Captain whatever-your-name-is, you were there when the ship was found,
you say. Very well. Keep your mouth shut. Get a plane and go back."

He addressed his men, "Bring up all their stuff, the stuff they brought
from their ship. Get the stray unburned parts of their ship. Get our
guided missile men set to work on them and find out how the drive
worked. They ought to come up with something! Round up some
special-weapons men to investigate those fragments too. See what they've
got! Work from these pictures until we've got the samples." He swung
back to Captain Moggs. "You go back and bring those aliens and
everything that can be brought! Bring everything! And in the meantime,"
he looked around his office, "a lid goes on this! Top secret--top-top
secret! The newspapers have to be choked