Our Children's Children by Clifford D. Simak

lifted the receiver and handed to Wilson.
    â€œThis is Henry,” said Hunt’s voice. “Sorry for breaking in, but I thought that you should know. One of the other tunnels failed out in Wisconsin. It just came in on AP.”
    â€œFailed, you say. Not like Virginia. Nothing came through?”
    â€œApparently. The message said it failed. Blinked out. Wasn’t there anymore.”
    â€œThank you, Henry. Thanks for telling me.”
    He said to the President, “Another tunnel is out. Cut off. Disappeared. I suppose the people did it at the other end. Gale told us, you remember, they had men on guard who were prepared to collapse the tunnels if anything went wrong.”
    â€œI do recall,” said the President. “The invaders must be getting at them. I don’t like to think about it. It must take a lot of courage to do a thing like that. The ones at the other end of the Virginia tunnel apparently didn’t have the chance to do it.”
    â€œAbout the speech, sir,” said Reynolds. “The time is getting short.”
    â€œAll right. I suppose I have to. Do the best you can. But don’t say anything about having it tracked down and cornered.”
    â€œYou’ll have to tell them what it is,” said Wilson. “There has to be an explanation of what the monster is. We’ll have to tell the people it’s monsters such as this the tunnel folks are fleeing.”
    â€œThere’ll be a scream to shut down the tunnels,” Reynolds said.
    â€œLet them scream,” said the President. “We don’t know of any way of shutting them except firing into them. And, without reason, we can’t fire into crowds of refugees—our own refugees.”
    â€œIn a short while,” said Howard, “there may be no need. One tunnel has shut down of itself. There will be others of them. In a few hours, maybe, all of them.”
    â€œI hope not,” said the President. “No matter what else happens, no matter what problems they may bring us, I can’t help but hope all the people do get through.”
    Kim stuck her head in the door. “Mr. Gale is here, sir.”
    â€œOK. Send him in.”
    Gale came into the room. He half-stumbled as he walked across the room, then stiffened and marched up to within a few feet of the desk. His face was haggard.
    â€œI am so sorry, sir,” he said. “I can’t properly express the regrets of myself or of my people. We thought we had taken safeguards.”
    â€œPlease sit down, Mr. Gale,” said the President. “You can help us now. We need your help.”
    Gale sat carefully in the chair. “You mean about the alien. You want to know more about it. I could have told you more this afternoon, but there was so much to tell and I never thought.…”
    â€œI’ll accept your word for that. You did make provisions to guard against what happened. Perhaps you did the best you could. Now we need your help to find this creature. We need to know something about its habits, what we can expect. We have to hunt it down.”
    â€œLuckily,” said Reynolds, “there is only one of them. When we get it.…”
    â€œIt is unfortunately,” said Gale, “not as lucky as you think. The aliens are bisexual creatures.…”
    â€œYou mean.…”
    â€œThat’s exactly what I mean,” said Gale. “The young are hatched from eggs. Any of the adults can lay fertilized eggs. And lay them in great numbers. Once hatched, the young need no care, or at least are given no care and.…”
    â€œThen,” said the President, “we must find it before it starts laying eggs.”
    â€œThat is right,” said Gale, “although I fear you may be too late already. From what we know of them, I would suspect that the creature would start laying eggs within a few hours after its emergence from the tunnel. It would recognize the crisis. You must,