I called him from a telephone booth near the entrance and filled him in on the giveaway show. “Now, what I want to find out—”

“Nothing to find out,” he cut in. “There’s no such show, Bernie.”

“There sure as hell is, Morris. One you haven’t heard of.”

“There’s no such show. Not in the works, not being rehearsed, not anywhere. Look: before a show gets to where it’s handing out this kind of dough, it’s got to have a slot, it’s got to have air time all bought. And before it even buys air time, a packager has prepared a pilot. By then I’d have gotten a casting call—I’d have heard about it a dozen different ways. Don’t try to tell me my business, Bernie: when I say there’s no such show, there’s no such show.”

So damn positive he was. I had a crazy idea all of a sudden and turned it off. No. Not that. No.

“Then it’s a newspaper or college research thing, like Ricardo said?”

He thought it over. I was willing to sit in that stuffy telephone booth and wait: Morris Burlap has a good head. “Those damn documents, those receipts, newspapers and colleges doing research don’t operate that way. And nuts don’t either. I think you’re being taken, Bernie. How you’re being taken, I don’t know, but you’re being taken.”

That was enough for me. Morris Burlap can smell a hustle through sixteen feet of rockwool insulation. He’s never wrong. Never.

I hung up, sat, thought. The crazy idea came back and exploded.

A bunch of characters from outer space, say they want Earth. They want it for a colony, for a vacation resort, who the hell knows what they want it for? They got their reasons. They’re strong enough and advanced enough to come right down and take over. But they don’t want to do it cold.