Kathy struggled up from the depths of sleep.  Someone was pounding at the door.  Behind the drapes, the windows were faintly lighted by a weak and early dawn.  She searched, fumbling, for the unaccustomed lamp on the unaccustomed bedside table.  The room, even barely glimpsed, held a brutal barrenness.  Where the hell am I? she wondered.  Then remembered where she was: Lone Pine!

Lone Pine and someone hammering at the door.

She found the lamp switch and turned it.  Throwing back the covers, she searched with her feet for the slippers on the floor, found them, scuffed them on.  She found her robe, lying across the foot of the bed, and struggled into it.

The pounding still continued.

"All right!  All right!" she yelled.  "I'll be there."

Pulling the robe close about her, she shuffled to the door, pulled the bolt and opened it.

Frank Norton stood outside.

"Miss Foster," he said, "I hate to bother you at this hour, but something's happening.  The thing that fell out of the sky is cutting down trees and eating them."

"Eating trees!"

He nodded.  "That's right.  It is cutting them down and chewing them up.  It's gulping down big trees."

"Please," she said, "will you get Chet up.  He s next door.  Number three.  I'll be right out."

Norton turned away and she closed the door.  The room was miserably cold.  When she breathed, faint wisps of her breath hung in the air.

Swiftly, gasping with the cold, shegot into her clothes, stood in front of a mirror to run a comb through her hair.  She didn't look her best, she knew.  She looked a sight, but the hell with it.  What would one expect, routed out of bed at this time in the morning.

Norton was crazy, she told herself.  The thing across the river couldn't be eating trees.  It might be no more than a joke, but Norton didn't seem like someone who would spend much time in joking.  But why in the world would the contraption over there be gulping trees?

When she went outside, Chet already had emerged, laden with his camera gear.

"You look good," he said to Kathy, "even at this ungodly hour."

"Go chase yourself," said Kathy.

"I'm sorry," said Norton, "for routing you out even before the sun is up.  But I expected you would want to know.  I thought about it for all of thirty seconds."
"It's all right," said Kathy.  "It goes with the job."

"There are other newspaper people in town," said Norton.  "They came in during the night.  Dribbling in.  Trowbridge from the Minneapolis Star, someone from the Kansas City Star, a couple of people from the Des Moines Register and Tribune.  All of them brought photographers.  I expect there will be others later in the day."

"How are they getting in?" asked Chet.  "The roads were blocked."

"The state patrol got them unblocked.  Got people turned around and turned back.  A few cars left there.  I suppose yours is among them.  The patrol pushed them over to the shoulder of the road.  They're letting in the press and a few others, but keeping the public out."

"Any TV people?" asked Kathy.

"Several crews," said Norton.  "They're raising hell.  They want to get across the river, but there's no way to get there."