"Ah!" she exclaimed, pulling out a magazine. She fished some change from the little purse on her belt and passed it to the newsstand operator. "Okay, let's go."
"What've you got there?" Morrow asked.
"You can see it after I have," she retorted. "Why don't you buy one yourself, for a change?"
She flipped through the magazine's pages as they walked along. Morrow took her elbow, guided her around a telephone pole, and maintained a discreet silence.
As they seated themselves in a booth, Gwyn closed the magazine and slid it across to him. Smiling, Morrow glanced down at it—then stiffened, staring at the cover illustration.
It was no more than a typical science-fiction cover. The setting was a typical street scene at night—some dark side-street in the metropolitan section of some city like New York. In the foreground stood a young man....
But from there on, it was nothing ordinary. The young man was slumped back against the wall of a building as if he were trying to mold himself right into it. The expression on his face was one of mixed surprise, incredulity, and fear. It showed plainly that he knew no one else would believe him if he told what he was seeing; and furthermore, he didn't believe it himself.
In the background, farther up the street, a group of people were emerging from a doorway. A beautiful girl was in the lead, and behind her came creatures that looked like men with blue skins, except that they had tentacles instead of arms. The light of a street lamp revealed the skin-tight garments they were wearing, and the octopus-armed men had transparent helmets over their hairless heads. The girl wore a helmet that was thrown back.
And before them was a tall, gleaming rocket ship, standing on its tail-fins in the middle of the street!
And the young onlooker didn't believe it!