The old man squinted into the lengthening shadows. "Seems to me them auto-eating tanks ought to make better reading than a common ordinary falling star."
Halfway out of the car, Dexter stared at him. "You mean to tell me you don't see the connection?"
Dexter got the rest of the way out. "Between the automobile-eaters and the spaceship, of course."
Jeremiah stared at _him_. "What spaceship?"
"Oh, never mind," Dexter said. "Show me the fallen star."
It was in a clearing deep in the woods. Or rather, the crater-like hole it had made was. Peering down into the hole, Dexter saw the dark, pitted surface of what could very well have been an ordinary, if unusually large, meteorite. There was nothing that suggested an opening of any kind, but the opposite wall of the crater did look as though some heavy object had been dragged--or had dragged itself--up to the level of the clearing. The underbrush showed signs of having been badly trampled in the recent past.
He pointed out the signs to Jeremiah. "See how those saplings are flattened? No human being did that. I'll bet if we followed that trail, we'd come to the remains of the first car they consumed. Whose car was it, by the way?"
"Mrs. Hopkins's new Buick. She'd just started out for the city on one of her shopping trips. She was so scared when she came running back into town her hair was standing straight out behind her head. Maybe, though, it was because she was running so fast." Abruptly Jeremiah leaned forward and squinted at the ground. "Looks almost like a big footprint right there, don't it." He straightened. "But if the darn thing is a spaceship like you say, how come it buried itself?"
"Because whoever or whatever was piloting it didn't--or couldn't--decelerate enough for an orthodox landing," Dexter explained. "Lucky it hit the clearing. If it had hit the trees, you'd have had a forest fire on your hands."
Jeremiah looked worried. "Maybe we'd better be getting back to the road. I feel kind of guilty leaving my model A sitting there all alone."
Dexter followed him back through the woods and climbed into the front seat beside him. The road took them to the main highway, and not long thereafter Jeremiah turned off the highway into another road--a familiar road heralded by a familiar sign that said, SUGARDALE THREE MILES. Two slag deposits marked the spot where once Dexter's proud convertible had stood. He gazed at them sadly as they passed.