Reporters, Winston found, pretended to be suspicious souls.  They believed nothing that he said.  They were as bad as the examiners at his Doctoral defense.  How did he know the airship had anything to do with the Blasted Heath?  He  emphasized the location, right above the Heath’s dead center, and the timing, the Star not having been noticed before the Heath was formed.  Having said that, he called for Federal help – “We’re a sheriff’s department, not  the Army Flying Corps,” he stressed.

“Army Air Service,” one of the reporters corrected.

“Yes, the Army,” Winston continued.  “Except the object is well above the altitude ever reached by any airplane or balloon.”

“Why here?”  another reporter asked. Winston decided that there were too many reporters for him to keep track of.

“I have no idea,” Winston answered.  “But, but, there are large parts of the world not in regular contact with civilization.  Antarctica.  Arabia.  Central Greenland. Western Tibet. We might not have the only blasted heath.  Someone should go and look.”

“Thank you, Doctor Cooper.” 

That, Winston thought, was the New York Times reporter. He’d been told how his event would end. It had. He offered a silent prayer to its ending.

* * * * *

Late that evening, Melanie Hayes noticed a stranger by the far end of her corral.  He was well-dressed, standing by his truck, fiddling with something, looking to be a long tube on a tripod.  The shape was wrong for a machine gun, but what was it? She strolled across the corral, pausing to scratch behind a horse’s ears, checked that her revolver was loose in its holster, and vaulted the fence. “Hello, stranger,” she said as she approached.   Whoever he was, he had long-cut dark hair under simple cap, a bushy moustache, and the trousers and long-sleeved white shirt she associated with someone respectably well-to-do.