The professor had something there. Communication with the vaders—a clipped form, of course, of invaders—was never established.
Radio stocks stabilized on the exchange the next day. But the day following that someone asked Dr. Helmets a sixty-four dollar question and the newspapers published his answer:
“Resume broadcasting? I don’t know if we ever shall. Certainly we cannot until the invaders go away, and why should they? Unless radio communication is perfected on some other planet far away and they’re attracted there.
“But at least some of them would be right back the moment we started to broadcast again.”
Radio and TV stocks dropped to practically zero in an hour. There weren’t, however, any frenzied scenes on the stock exchanges; there was no frenzied selling because there was no buying, frenzied or otherwise. No radio stocks changed hands.
Radio and television employees and entertainers began to look for other jobs. The entertainers had no trouble finding them. Every other form of entertainment suddenly boomed like mad.
“Two down,” said George Bailey. The bartender asked what he meant.
“I dunno, Hank. It’s just a hunch I’ve got.”
“What kind of hunch?”
“I don’t even know that. Shake me up one more of those and then I’ll go home.”