nse
authorities had seized the opportunity to use it for a test of
emergency response to a grave alarm. They had used it to trigger a
training program and test of defensive measures made ready against
other possible enemies. After the meteorite landed, the defense
measures were continued as a more complete test of the nation's
fighting forces' responsive ability. The object and its landing,
however, were being investigated.

Lockley tramped up hillsides and scrambled down steep slopes with many
boulders scattered here and there. He moved through a landscape in
which nothing seemed to depart from the normal. The sun shone. The
cloud cover, broken some time since, was dissipating and now a good
two-thirds of the sky was wholly clear. The sounds of the wilderness
went on all around him.

But presently he came to a partly-graded new road, cutting across his
way. A bulldozer stood abandoned on it, brand-new and in perfect
order, with the smell of gasoline and oil about it. He followed the
gash in the forest it had begun. It led toward the camp. He came to a
place where blasting had been in progress. The equipment for blasting
remained. But there was nobody in sight.

Half a mile from this spot, Lockley looked down upon the camp. There
were Quonset huts and prefabricated structures. There were streets of
clay and wires from one building to another. There was a long, low,
open shed with long tables under its roof. A mess shed. Next to it
metal pipes pierced another roof, and wavering columns of heated air
rose from those pipes. There was a building which would be a
commissary. There was every kind of structure needed for a small city,
though all were temporary. And there was no movement, no sound, no
sign of life except the hot air rising from the mess kitchen
stovepipes.

Lockley went down into the camp. All was silence. All was lifeless. He
looked unhappily about him. There would be no point, of course, in
looking into the dormitories, but he made his way to the mess shed.
Some heavy earthenware plates and coffee cups, soiled, remained on the
table. There were a few flies. Not many. In the mess kitchen there was
grayish smoke and the reek of scorched and ruined food. The stoves
still burned. Lockley saw the blue flame of bottled gas. He went on.
The door of the commissary was open. Everything men might want to buy
in such a place waited for purchasers, but there was no one to buy or
sell.

The stillness and desolatio