reach us last, because we're at the far end."

"Well ..." I said.

"After all," he told me, "Astonishing Yarns and Weird Science Stories practically agree on it, and they're the leaders in the sci-fic field."

"But they're not scientists," I said.

"That doesn't matter," the kid told me. "They predicted the submarine before there was one. They predicted airplanes when scientists were saying the bumblebee couldn't fly. And rockets and radar and atom bombs. They've got the truth about this too."

He paused for breath. "Someone's gotta stop the invaders," he went on in a tone of utter conviction. He looked at me sharply. "You know, since they're dimension-changers, they can take the appearance of humans." Again he looked at me, suspiciously.

"Anyone might be one. You might be one."

I could see he was getting nervous, and maybe on the verge of handing me over to some committee or other, so I fed him milk and cake. That just made him more suspicious, but there wasn't anything I could do about it.

The newspapers took up the science-fiction theory just as the Thomas kid had told it to me, and added their own embellishments. Some guy said he knew how the invaders could be stopped. He had been approached by them, he said, and they'd offered him controllership of a small galaxy if he'd cooperate. Of course, he wouldn't.

It sounds foolish, but the sky was getting pretty bare. People in every country were saying foolish things and doing foolish things. We were starting to wonder how soon our own sun would go.

I watched every night, and the stars disappeared faster and faster. The thing seemed to increase at a geometric rate. Soon the sky was just filled with little lights going out, faster than you could count. Almost all of it could be seen with the naked eye now, because it was getting a lot closer to us.

In two weeks the only part of the Milky Way left were the Magallenic clouds, and the astronomers said that they weren't a part of our galaxy anyhow. Betelguese and Actares and Rigel winked out, and Sirius and Vega. Then Alpha Centauri disappeared, and that was our closest neighbor. Aside from the moon, the sky was pretty bare at night, just a few dots and patches here and there.

I don't know what would have happened if the voice 

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