"Here is a bulletin just handed to me. A Monolithian spokesman
disclosed today that the first two-dozen aliens who landed on Earth
have been joined by at least two hundred--I repeat, at least two
hundred--more.
"This disclosure was made in answer to a question, reinforcing this
commentator's belief that our own government is keeping us in the dark
about matters of which we have every right to know the true facts."
"As opposed to the false facts?" I muttered, my copy-reader's instincts
affronted.
"Shh," Mae said. "Listen!"
"The Monolithians, on the other hand, appear to be willing to answer
almost any nonscientific question put to them, giving at least the
appearance of candor which our own officials so sadly lack," the
commentator went on.
"The question then arises whether it would be truer to say that our
government is _allied_ with the aliens, as our officials claim, or
whether it is _collaborating_ with them, having capitulated to their
unknown military strength in a sort of interplanetary Munich."
Mae gasped.
"Clearly it is the aliens who are acting with confidence, publicizing
their movements, while the U.S. government shows a curious
unwillingness to keep its own people--you and me--informed. Can it be
that the government itself is in the dark about these vitally important
matters? Can it be that our own government is acting as the tool of the
aliens, having secretly surrendered to a power the like of which this
Earth has never known?"
Mae had been listening in mounting alarm. "Do you think he's right?"
she asked me. "Is it possible?"
"That's old Clyde Fitchburn, the noted viewer with alarm," I told her.
"Don't take him too seriously."
"He can't be making it all up," she said. "Can he?"
"Only about 99 percent of it," I said. "He still hasn't got back to his
one little true fact--that two hundred more aliens have landed."