"I'll call the Mayor's office," Stew said. "Maybe something will occur
to me."
I went over to the incoming teletypes to see if WW had developed
anything overseas. London's piece was chiefly newspaper comment
and unofficial speculation about what the Foreign Office would do.
Cooperate with the aliens if they were friendly and resist them if they
were not seemed to be about the size of it.
Paris reacted in the spirit of Jules Verne. There was an unofficial
report that the travelers of space would be invited to moor their
vehicle interplanetary to the Tour Eiffel.
Moscow was keeping mum. No mention of the story had appeared in
_Pravda_ or _Izvestia_, and Radio Moscow was also ignoring it. The
foreign diplomatic corps was agog, but no one seemed to have any idea
of what the Kremlin's official attitude would be to a true monolithic
state.
The evening papers came up. The _Post_ had interviewed a representative
collection of cab drivers, waitresses, etc. Israel Kraft, a Bronx
hackie, said the seven-foot aliens could ride in his cab any time if
they fit, but they better not try to palm off any funny money on him.
The manager of the Mayfair Theater, which was showing "I Was a Teen-Age
Necromancer," said all bona fide space aliens would be admitted free.
The manager of the Gaiety Delicatessen said he assumed the spacemen
had to eat and invited them to his place for the best hot pastrami
sandwich in New York. Patrolman Patrick O'Hanlon said he'd leave it to
the Commissioner to say how they should be treated, but if they tried
jaywalking they'd get a ticket just like anybody else.
The _World-Telegram_ had a front-page editorial asking how the aliens
had managed to get through our radar without detection. It was not the
first time the Defense Department and the Central Intelligence Agency
had been caught napping, the _World-Telegram_ said. It demanded a
Congressional investigation.
The third evening paper, the _Journal-American_, said it was reserving
judgment on whether the aliens were as friendly as they professed to be
and urged Americans to keep their guard up.