“I’m having communications difficulties over here, too,” Chris said. “I tell Mr. Ohghhi…” She stopped and looked at the alien’s name she had written on her hand so she could pronounce it. “Mr. Ohghhifoehnnahigrheeh that there isn’t room in my apartment and that he’s got to stop buying things, and he seems to understand what I’m saying, but he goes right on buying. I’ve only got a two-room apartment, Stewart.”

“You could move your couch out of the living room,” he said.

“Then where would I sleep? On top of the piano? You said you’d try to find him someplace else to stay.”

“I’m giving the matter top priority, darling, but you don’t know how impossible it is to find any kind of space at all, let alone space with the kinds of specifications Mr. Ohghhifoehnnahigrheeh requires.” A blond young woman moved into the image and put a computer printout down in front of Stewart. Chris braced herself against being put on hold again. “We were already full over here at NASA, and today Houston sent a dozen linguistic specialists up on the shuttle, and I don’t know where we’re going to put them.” He shook his head. “With all these reporters and tourists coming up, there isn’t a spare room on Sony.”

“Can’t you send some of these people back down to earth?” Chris said. “I’ve got two little girls living on my stairs who’re here because they think Spielberg’s bound to make a movie about the aliens so they came up here to try to get a part in it, which is ridiculous. I’m not even sure Spielberg’s still alive, but if he is, he’s got to be at least eighty. Isn’t there some way to send people like that home?”

“You know Sony’s got an automatic thirty-day travel permission wait. It’s been in effect since Sony was first built so that immigrants couldn’t change their minds before they got over shuttle-lag. NASA’s trying to get the Japanese to limit the earth-to-Sony traffic, but so far they’ve refused because they like all the business it’s bringing up.”