A noted banker in Chicago created an uproar when he reported seeing "a giant, black shape" rise from the waters of Lake Michigan as he was driving home in the afternoon. An amateur astronomer in Alabama reported sighting a "strange ship" rising upward from the Earth's atmosphere "on a pillar of rocket fire." The ship had mysteriously disappeared "as soon as it left the atmosphere," the middle-aged hobbyist stated. A Swedish Air Force jet-pilot claimed he had sighted, given chase, fired at, and seen his tracers bounce harmlessly off a "black, fish-like craft" flying at 40,000 feet above the Baltic Sea. The news commentators added, in significant tones, that no airline pilots had yet reported seeing such craft. One added somewhat caustically that due to previous experiences the pilots probably wouldn't report anything to the authorities even if they did see anything, since the authorities persisted in treating such reports and the pilots who made them with painful ridicule; the commentator then launched into a condemnation of the current Administration. "It would seem," Smitty observed from all this, "that we are quite famous!" "'Notorious' is the word, I believe," Foster countered drily. "If this keeps up, some congressman is likely to introduce a bill providing that the government produce some Martians with black spaceships. The voters will demand it." "It's good disguise for us, anyway," Morrow mused. "Uh huh!" Foster grunted in reproof. "Unless we're found out, that is. If the public discovers that we've hoodwinked 'em and there aren't any Martian immigrants at all, they'll probably howl for our blood! I think this is going to develop into a scare-issue, Bill. I'm afraid people will want it, as an excuse to work off some of their nervous tension." "Fine!" Smitty said grimly. "If anybody's trying to catch us, a general scare-issue will have 'em looking all over the place. We're already supposed to be in Nebraska, in Lake Michigan, in the Baltic Sea, and somewhere out in space!" "Invisible, too!" Morrow laughed. * * * * * They passed over Louisiana in the early morning and proceeded northward up the Mississippi valley. Indicated air-speed was two hundred and thirty-eight miles per hour. Dawn was blanketed in a pouring rain. They turned off up the Ohio valley and reached the Allegheny Plateau in West Virginia, flying by instruments, topographical maps, and radio omni-range navigation. And once they almost blundered straight into a big, six-engined commercial stratoliner. The stratoliner pulled up almost at the last minute. By mid-afternoon, they were approaching Pennsylvania. The drizzling rain had changed to snow and sleet. Then they were forced down. The ship's air-speed fell off with an alarming suddenness. Then the entire tail structure took on a heavy load of ice. They settled tail-down into a clearing on a densely wooded slope. The ship wallowed deep into the soft, slushy snow.