Sweet Tooth

The falling star he had been assigned by his editor to write up had been an unusually brilliant one according to the report the paper had received. Maybe its unusualness did not stop there. Maybe it was something more than a mere meteorite. Certainly the two monsters could not be classified as local woodland creatures.

All of which was fine as far as copy was concerned. But it didn't bring his convertible back.

Presently he saw two sizable deposits of slag at the side of the road, and approaching them more closely, he discovered that they were still warm. Could they be the remains of a previously devoured automobile? he wondered. What an ignominious fate indeed to overtake a car! He looked at the two deposits once more before moving on. All he could think of were two piles of elephant dung.

A mile and half later, he emerged in a small valley that sported a handful of houses, a scattering of business places, a church or two and a goodly number of trees. A roadside sign informed him that he had reached his destination, that its population was 350, and that its speed limit was 20 mph. The population, however, was nowhere in evidence, and the speed limit seemed silly in view of the absence of cars.

A scared-looking housewife, upon whose door he knocked, told him he'd probably find the local minion of the law at the Sugardale Inn, "sucking up beer the way he always is when he should be out earning his money." The Inn turned out to be a sagging three-story structure in desperate need of a paint-job. There was a model A sedan parked in front of it, the first automobile Dexter had seen. Formerly the establishment had provided a haven for weary travelers. Now it provided a haven for contented cockroaches. Its fin de si├Ęcle bar was a collector's item, and standing at it, one foot propped on the brass bar-rail, was a lone customer. He was tall and thin, and somewhere in his sixties, and he was wearing blue denim trousers and a blue chambray shirt. There was a lackluster badge pinned on the fading shirtfront, and a beat-up sombrero sat atop the graying head.

"Sheriff Jeremiah Smith at your service," he said calmly when Dexter dashed up to him. He took a sip from the schooner of beer that sat on the bar before him. "Got troubles, have you, young man?"

"My car," Dexter said. "I was driving along the road and--"

"Got ate up, did it? Well, it's not the first one to get ate up around here." Jeremiah Smith faced the doorway that led to the lobby. "Mrs. Creasy, get this young man a beer," he called.

A plump middle-aged woman whose dark hair fell down over her eyes like a thicket came into sight behind the bar. She flicked a cockroach off the drain-board with an expert forefinger, drew Dexter a schooner and set it before him. Jeremiah Smith paid for it. "Drink her down, young man," he said. "I know how I'd feel if my car got ate up."

Manfully, Dexter dispatched half the contents of the schooner, after which he introduced himself and explained the nature of his mission to Sugardale. "I never figured on anything like this, though," he concluded.

"You must have made it through just before the road-block was set up," Jeremiah said. "You were lucky."

Dexter started at him. "Lucky! I lost my car."

"Pshaw. What's a car to a newspaper man when a Big Story's in the air? Take this newspaper fellow I saw on TV Saturday night. He--"

"Big Stories went out long ago," Dexter said. "Newspapermen work for a living the same as anybody else. Get back to my car. Aren't you going to do anything about it?"

Jeremiah looked hurt. "I've already done everything I can do. The minute I saw those tanks I knew it was a job for the army, and the state police agreed with me. So we notified them, after which we advised everybody to stay indoors and to keep their cars under lock and key. All we can do now is wait." Jeremiah sighed. "Crazy, if you ask me. Tanks eating automobiles!"

"I imagine," Dexter said thoughtfully, "that our diet would give them pause too. Where did this star of yours fall?"

"In Ed Hallam's north timber lot. Take you there, if you like. There's not much to see, though--just a big hole in the ground."

Dexter finished his beer. "Come on," he said.

The Model A parked in front of the Inn turned out to be Jeremiah's. They took off down the road at a brisk pace, wound through woods, dales, pastures and fields. Dexter hadn't the remotest idea where he was when at last Jeremiah pulled up beside a grove larger and darker than the others.

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?"

"What 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.

Suddenly Jeremiah brought the model A to a screeching halt. The two desecrators of the American Dream Incarnate were in the midst of another repast. The victim this time, judging from the still-visible star and the O.D. color scheme, was an army staff car. The grill and the motor were already gone, and half of the roof was missing. Yellow haze enshrouded the sorry scene, and the countryside was resounding to a series of horrendous CRUNCHES.

"Do you think if I sort of zoomed by, we could make it?" Jeremiah asked. "I hate to go all the way around the other way."