Close Encounters of the Third Kind Read Online Free PDF Page A

the first to go.”
    “I just heard the police reporting lights in Tolono.”
    “Jesus!” Harris shouted. “What, are you monitoring police calls on a night like this? Everything’s down, Neary. The whole network’s fallen.”
    Harris went off abruptly.
    Neary pulled back onto the road. Several minutes later, he saw a revolving amber light in the distance, which made him feel a little better. But not much. At least he wasn’t lost. Roy pulled over behind a utility trouble wagon and got out. Two crews were there, standing by, waiting for someone in authority to give the word. A yellow DWP cherry picker idled, ready to lift men to the top of the tower that loomed indistinctly high in the darkness.
    Neary felt inadequate. He’d never bossed line crews before. These guys were good—old-timers, most of them. Roy had put in his time on line crews himself, but these guys were fifteen years older than he was and ten times as experienced. Just because he’d moved up through the system didn’t mean a damn thing to these fellows, didn’t automatically mean they’d follow his orders, if he could think of any orders to give.
    Then Roy picked out a friendly face, a black one, Earl Johnson, who’d called him earlier.
    “Hi, Earl,” Neary said. “What’s up?”
    “Down,” said Earl, white teeth grinning in the revolving amber light. “Why do you think somebody would steal two miles of transmission wire?”
    “You’re kidding.”
    By way of answer, Earl lifted his six-volt flashlight and aimed its beam to the top of the tower. Then he traced a line where two thick copper wires should have sagged along to the next tower. But there were no wires.
    “The line’s not down,” he said. “It’s gone. There’s nothing from M-ten to M-twelve.”
    “I’ll be damned,” Neary said. “Maybe it’s the high price of copper,” he mused.
    Earl and Roy started back to Neary’s car to make their report.
    “Right,” Earl said. “Right. Stuff’s worth a fortune. I told them we ought to lay power cable underground.”
    “But where could the birds land?” Neary said.
    Before Roy could report to Ike Harris, the radio flashed a police call: “To any unit in the vicinity of Tolono foothills . . . a housewife reports . . . uh . . . her Tiffany lamp flashing in the kitchen window . . . upside-down lamp . . .”
    “Where’d he say?” Johnson asked. “Tolono?”
    “That’s the second report from Tolono,” Neary told him.
    “Can’t make it out clearly,” the police dispatcher came through again. “Very distraught . . . four one five five Osborne Road.”
    “But Tolono’s dark,” Earl said.
    “Maybe,” Roy said, picking up the car phone. “TR eighty-eight eighteen. Let me talk to Ike.” He handed Earl the map. “Find Osborne, will you?” he asked. “I never could read these damn things.”
    Harris came on. “Neary! What’s happening?”
    “Well,” said Roy conversationally, “I’m here at Mary ten. And . . . all the lines have been swiped. All the way to Mary twelve, Earl here says. It looks like vandals made a very sloppy cut at the terminals, then backed a truck in and pulled out all the grounds, but here’s something else—”
    “Here’s something for you,” Ike cut in. “We’ve got to pick up the system in one hour.”
    “One hour!” Neary exclaimed. “It’s a mile of empty poles out here. That’s impossible.”
    “Anything’s possible when you’ve got a general supervisor stuck in an elevator who wants out.”
    Roy gave Ike a small laugh, then asked, “Say, Ike? You haven’t restored power to Tolono, have you?”
    “I told you, Tolono was the first to go. It’s as dark as the inside of Grimsby’s elevator.”
    “Now look, Ike,” Neary began in a careful tone. “Hear me out. The police are reporting lights in Tolono. If the lines out there are energized and it’s not showing up on your data bank, one of your people working high around those terminals— ga-zzap! It happened in