What looked like a big black box - perhaps fifty feet high, two hundred long - had settled squarely on Jerry Conklin's car. The townspeople of Lone Pine, Minnesota, were the first to see it - and one of them was the first and only human to shoot at it. He paid for his rashness with instant death.

Within hours the public knew something strange had happened and was beginning to face the incredible possibility that the Earth harboured something from outer space. A machine? An intelligent being? There was no way to know. But Jerry Conklin knew. The Visitor had scooped him up, held him prisoner for several hours, then let him go. Jerry knew the Visitor was a living intelligent creature!