"Yes, sir."
Under the captain's direction, stretchers were used to ferry the motionless black-clad shapes to the waiting helicopters. When the whup-whup of many blades had faded to the south, Calumet spoke quietly to the rancher.
"You realize what this means, don't you; Mr. Shattuck?"
"Always did hate rhetorical questions," came the piercing voice of Beth Shattuck. "They're what pass for smarts in Hollywood. Ask a lot of questions that you can make other folk give the answers to and they think you're downright brilliant. Suppose you tell us what it means, good-lookin'."
Slightly unsettled at the compliment, Calumet wrestled with a reply. "It means," he finally burst out, "that that thing up m your hayloft is dangerous. It paralyzed a couple of animals, and now it's apparently done the same thing to a large group of armed men. I saw guns in that room. Did any of you hear a shot?"
"Can't say as we did," Shattuck confessed. Calumet smiled grimly.
"That means that the craft-" He pointed toward the glowing object up in the barn. "-incapacitated nearly dozen experienced, no doubt ruthless individuals? whether they were directly in front of it or out on road, before any of them could resist in any way. I believe any reasonable legal authority, on learning that, would classify the device as dangerous and order it removed by the proper supervisory personnel.
"What will your Mr. Wheaton have to say about that?" he finished.
"Don't know," Shattuck admitted.
"He was called back to San Francisco on business," his wife informed them, "but he'll be back if we need him, don't you worry. All we have to do is give him a call."
"Give him a call?" Chester looked confused. "I thought you didn't have a telephone out here."
"We don't. We got a lady in Cisco takes phone calls for us and relays them to the ranch via CB radio. We can get messages out the same way. One of them sent Cable hotfooting out of here two days ago. Took the plane from Abilene to Dallas and then out to the coast." Her expression turned angry.
"Now, that thing up there hasn't killed a soul. It didn't kill those coyotes, and I don't expect it really injured those men. But I can see how you could jumble it up in a court to where you'd make it look like the thing was dangerous."
"Please believe me, Mrs. Shattuck," Calumet pleaded, "we don't want to take anything that's rightfully yours. You'll be suitably reimbursed just for finding it, I promise in the name of the government. In fact, in a few days you should be hearing from-"
"The President?" David blurted from the swing. "Ah, he called two nights ago. It was something!"
"I see," murmured Calumet, clearly surprised. "Uh, what did he say?"
"Pretty much what you all have told us, Mr. Calumet," Shattuck informed them. "Went on about how important the proper study of that thing would be to the country. How I ought to do my patriotic duty and turn it over to you without causing anyone any trouble and about how, like you just said, the government would make things right by us." He paused.
"I told him that if he wanted to make things right by us, he ought to take a look at how our taxes have gone up here for the past eight years."
"What did he say?" inquired a fascinated Chester.
"Said he'd look into it. Sounded like he meant it, too." The rancher pulled a pipe from a shirt pocket, commenced stuffing it with tobacco. At least, Chester was fairly sure it was tobacco.
"Reckon he's no better and no worse than any other Washington politician. They all sound sincere. Anyhow," Shattuck finished, lighting up, "I told him we'd cooperate."
"You did!" Calumet seemed to rise off the ground, turned to shout toward the barn. "Sarah, Perry-we can have it."
"In four days time," Beth Shattuck put in. Calumet turned back, blinking.
"In four days? Why four days?"
"Well," she went on, since her husband was puffing away, "we don't believe like some folks do in keeping the lights up until New Year's. It's Christmas we celebrate!. People think it's kind of funny of us to take them down so early, but then, they think we're kind of funny too."
"That's for sure," David put in, evidently relishing his family's notoriety.
"And they're right, for the most part," his mother went on. "For hereabouts, we are somethin' out of ordinary. Of course, we think everybody else around is a bit crazy, so there's a nice balance struck."
"Four days," Calumet grumbled. "I suppose we can wait, but-" He indicated the empty living room "-what if more of their types show up?"
"Now, I have to admit, that's a problem," agreed Shattuck, speaking around the stem of his pipe. "Soviets, you think?"
"Possibly," replied Chester guardedly. "One of them, their leader, was our driver. They knew exactly what was going on all the time, through him. But we have nothing far to indicate who they were working for." He indicated the fluorescent alien craft.
"That would have been worth anybody's trouble. Sure it might have been the Soviets, maybe the Chinese." his surprise, he found he was chuckling. "Or perhaps the French, or the Rockefeller Foundation, I don't know. Whoever it was will find out how monumentally unsuccessful they were.
"So if you don't mind, just as a precaution, we'll post a suitable guard around the ranch for the next four days."
"You don't mean you're going to let them keep it up there?" a startled Calumet broke in.
"What difference will four days make, Mr. Calumet?" Chester wanted to know, speaking in a sharp military manner for the first time. He was feeling a little lightheaded. "Remember the unfavorable publicity we could generate. We don't want Mr. Wheaton flying back from San Francisco with a planeload of panting photographers drooling at his heels.
"When the proper time comes, I want to see the public informed of our discoveries through scientific journals and channels, as I'm certain you do-not through the National Enquirer. Besides, it appears that the device likes it here. Any attempt to move it before we understand what motivates it and we could all be lying like logs out in the yard there.
"Anyhow," he added at the crestfallen expression on the young scientist's face, "I don't see why we couldn't set up a few trailers here where you could study the device without having to move it . . . if the Shattucks will give us permission." He faced the rancher.
"Long as they don't go breaking it apart until after the twenty-fifth," Shattuck finally agreed. He knocked his pipe against a post, worked to refresh it. "After that they can take it apart to their heart's content." He turned and stared at the subject of the discussion.
"It sure seems a shame, though, as pretty as it is." He let out a deep sigh, then turned back to Chester. "Not that we object to being protected, you understand, but be sure your people stay outside our fence. I don't want them scaring the cows and tramping through the winter garden."
"Don't worry, Mr. Shattuck," Chester reassured him, glad to be on familiar ground again. "They'll be stationed well away from the house. Remember, we don't want to draw attention to you."
"That's okay, then," Shattuck agreed. "You can put your trailers over there, behind the greenhouse."
Chester turned, squinted into the darkness at a dull white building across from the house. He hadn't paid much attention to it before.
"There are water outlets back there," Beth Shattuck told him. "You can hook your trailers up to them if you like . . .Tank's plenty full."
"Thank you. That's very hospitable of you," confessed Calumet, inclined to be friendly now. "What do you grow in your greenhouse, Mrs. Shattuck?" he asked . politely. "Tomatoes, house plants?"
She shook her head once, pulled out a pipe that matched her husband's, and began filling it. "Nope Tropical orchids. You'd be surprised what the market for fresh-grown orchids is in Dallas-Fort Worth. I've been experimentin' with some intriguing cross-pollination. I'll show you later if you're curious. Right now I'd better go, catch up on my beauty sleep. I need all I can get these, days." She turned and walked away, leaving the suave chemist standing open-mouthed.