"What is it, Grace?"

"I don't really know. He's talking to the army chief of staff. Something about a new satellite that has been discovered."

Porter strode across the office, knocked on the inner door, then turned the knob and went in.

President Herbert Tame was hanging up the phone. He motioned Porter to a chair.

"That was Whiteside," he said. "He's got a hair up his ass. Seems some of our tracking stations have sighted something new in orbit. According to the general, something so big it scares you. Not one of ours, he says. Most unlikely, too, to be Soviet. Too big for either of us to put up. Neither of us have the booster power to put up anything as big as the trackers spotted. Whiteside's all upset.

"Something out of space?" asked Porter.

"Whiteside didn't say that. But it was what he was thinking. You could tell he was. He was about to come unstuck. He'll be coming over as soon as he can get here."

"Something fell, or landed, I don't know which, in northern Minnesota," said Porter. "It was just beginning to come in on the teletype when you phoned."

"You think the two of them could be tied up?"

"I don't know. It's too early to know what came down in Minnesota. I just caught part of a bulletin. It might be no more than a big meteorite. Anyhow, apparently, something came down out of the sky."

"Jesus, Dave, we have plenty of trouble without something like this happening," said the President.

Porter nodded. "I quite agree, sir."

"How was today's briefing?"

"They roughed me up. Mostly the Black Hills and the energy Situation."

"You doing all right?"

"Sir, I'm doing what I'm paid to do. I am earning my wages.

"Yes," said the President. "I suppose you are. It ain't easy, though."

A knock came on the door, which opened a ways, Grace sticking in her head. "Marcia gave me this," she said, waving a sheet of paper ripped from the teletype.