flyer from the local airport flew over Oracle and announced on his
return that he could see no signs of the town, that its immediate
vicinity was buried under an incredibly tall and tangled mass of
vegetation. "From the air it looks like giant stalks of spaghetti,
twisted, fantastic," was his description. He went on to say that he
noticed quite a few drifting globes and large birds with black,
glistening wings, but these offered no hindrance to his flight.

Now the wires hummed with the startling news. All the world was
informed of the tragedy. The great cities of the nation stood aghast.
An aroused Washington dispatched orders for the aerial forces of the
country to proceed to Arizona without delay. The governor of Arizona
mobilized the state militia. All border patrol officers proceeded to
the area affected. And yet in the face of what was happening they were
powerless to do a thing.

At two o'clock of the day following the wiping out of Oracle, the first
black globes approached Tucson. They floated down from the north,
skirting the granite ridges and foothills of the Catalinas, and were
met with a withering hail of lead from anti-aircraft guns, and burst,
scattering wide their contents. When some three hours later the first
squadron of the air fleet came to earth on the landing field a few
miles south of the city, the northern environs of Tucson, all the area
the other side of Speedway, and running east and west as far as the eye
could see, was a monstrous jungle a hundred or more feet tall--and
still growing.

Terrified residents fled before the uncanny invasion. People congested
the streets. Thousands fled from the city in automobiles, and thousands
of others thronged the railroad station and bus-line offices seeking
for transportation. Rumors ran from lip to lip that Russia was
attacking the United States with a newly invented and deadly method of
warfare; that it wasn't Russia but Japan, China, England, Germany, a
coalition of European and Asiatic powers.

Frantically, the city officials wired railroad companies to send in
emergency trains. The mayor appealed to the citizens to be quiet and
orderly, not to give way to panic, that everything was being done to
insure their safety. Hastily deputized bodies of men were set to
patrolling streets and guarding property. Later, martial law was
established. The south side of Speedway rapidly assumed the appearance
of an armed camp. At the landing field Flight Comma