On impulse, he swung right and up around to Northern Boulevard, crossing over the parkway. He cut left through a half-moon turn-around--the wrong way--and swung deftly through the westbound traffic into the Boat Basin, and then back under the boulevard on the undulating road through the park. Passing under the towering elevated structure and the railroad overpass, he discovered with a strange mixture of exultation and apprehension that his deduction had been correct. The cylinder lay in smothering folds of darkness on the gently rising slope near The City of New York Building. He stopped, leaving the car's motor running, its headlights on high beam. Quickly he took a Geiger counter from the glove compartment and, dismounting, approached the object. The counter failed to respond. There was not even heat radiation. To his cautious touch the stern was neither warmer nor cooler than the night. He gazed fascinatedly at the object's expanse. Two hundred feet long, he guessed, increasing from its pointed bow to about a thirty foot diameter at its midpoint. The diameter was constant back to a point thirty feet forward of the stern, then became abruptly bulbous. It resembled a monstrous gourd--_bearing what strange seeds?_ Undoubtedly this silent, implacable thing came from far beyond man's ken, a misshapen _Nautilus_ fitted out to probe the void. Had it come deliberately or had it blundered--a derelict?--to Earth? The sultry night suddenly filled with sound. Awed and frightened motorists broke through the fence from Grand Central Parkway, and streamed across the park until a voice cried out authoritatively: "Keep back! This is the Army! This is a restricted area!" Other figures raced from within the park. Anti-aircraft crews, Winthrop thought. The man who had shouted the orders was coming toward him. "What are _you_ doing here?" "It isn't just idle curiosity, lieutenant," Winthrop said, quickly. "I'm a physicist. Los Alamos and other places. I'm afraid I'm damnably curious when something unclassified drops into our ordered world." "I see. All right, stick around, maybe you can help us classify it!" The lieutenant smiled, and swung away. Winthrop stood there alone as the soldiers got rid of the other civilians and established guardposts, then as prime movers urgently and noisily brought up ack-ack guns, searchlights, and engine generators. There was a bawling of commands, a tense, noisy excitement. Under the encircling searchlights' glare guards walked short posts, sub-machine guns ready. The noise subsided. Everything was in readiness and, Winthrop thought, God grant that everything would be enough! Suddenly lightning forked across the sky. With the crashing thunder came a teeming rain which drove Winthrop hastily back to his car.