ssing
Canada headed for the United States.

There was a further time loss. Somebody in authority had to be awakened,
and somebody had to decide that a further report was justified. Then the
trick had to be accomplished, and a sleepy man in a bathrobe and
slippers listened and said sleepily, "Oh, of course you'll tell the
Americans. It's only neighborly!" and padded back to his bed to go to
sleep again. Then he waked up suddenly and began to sweat. He'd realized
that this might be the beginning of atomic war. So he set phone bells to
jangling furiously all over Canada, and jet planes began to boom in the
darkness.

But there was only one object in the sky. Over the Dakotas it went
higher. It went to seventy thousand feet, and then eighty. How this was
managed is not completely known, because there are still some details of
that flight that have never been completely explained. But certainly
jatos flared briefly at some point, and the object reached ninety
thousand feet where a jet motor would certainly be useless. And then,
almost certainly, rockets flared once more and well south of the Dakotas
it started down in a trajectory like that of an artillery shell, but
with considerably higher speed than most artillery shells achieve.

It was at about this time that the siren in the Shed began its choppy,
hiccoughing series of warm-up notes. The news from Canada arrived, as a
matter of fact, some thirty seconds after the outer-perimeter radar
screen around the Platform gave its warning. Then there was no
hesitation or delay at all. Men were already tumbling out of bed at
three airfields, buckling helmets and hoping their oxygen tanks would
function properly. Then the radars atop the Shed itself picked up the
moving speck. And small blue-white flames began to rise from the ground
and go streaking away in the darkness in astonishing numbers.

The covers of the guns at the top of the Shed slid aside. Miles away,
jet planes shot skyward, and newly wakened pilots looked at their
night-fighting instruments and swore unbelievingly at the speed they
were told the plunging object was making. The jet pilots gave their
motors everything they could take, but it didn't look good.

The planes of the jet umbrella over the Shed stopped cruising and
sprinted. And they were the only ones likely to get in front of the
object in time.

Inside the Shed, the siren howled dismally and all the Security men were
snapping: "Radar alarm! All out!