Art, Myra and Steve were old friends, and had attended the same college. But when Steve and Myra married, Art disappeared. They heard nothing of him for three years, until one day there arrived in the trans-spatial mail a copy of Art's home-town paper, marked at an article lauding Wurtsboro's native son for his successful founding of a university at the booming Earth colony of New City, Jupiter.
The upshot of his message was that, after several more cables, Steve went out and bought a space-launch, fully equipped for travel to high and far off places like the Sun's fifth planet.
The Horns hadn't expected an uneventful trip, having once taken a weekend excursion to the Moon. Myra had a vivid recollection of the things that had happened to them at that time: events including coping with a pyromaniac, an undecided suicide who leaped overboard in a space-suit, and a crackpot mutineer who had tried to enlist their aid in overcoming the captain and setting up an anarchist Utopia on Mars with the thirty-two passengers aboard.
But she had never expected to encounter a talking meteor.
"Shall we ignore it?" she asked her husband. "Or shall we be civil and chat a while?"
"I wash my hands of the matter," said Steve. "If you want to strike up an acquaintance with every impossibility that comes along, it's up to you."
The meteor was getting impatient. It began to bob up and down again, like a balloon caught in an air current. More letters appeared above it in space.
"HELLO?" it said. "EXTRA ENGLISH WHAT?"
"Okay, okay," soothed Myra. "Just a minute."