"Dr. Wilhelm Mentzner, at the Mount St. James Observatory, says that he has been unable, in recent weeks, to find some of the Milky Way stars. It would seem, Dr. Mentzner tells us, that they have vanished. Repeated photographs of certain portions of space do not show the presence of these dim, faraway stars. They were in place and intact in photographs made as recently as April, 1942, and...."
The article gave the names of some of the stars—they didn't mean a thing to me—and chided the scientists on their absentmindedness. "Imagine," it went on, "losing something as big as a star. Although," the writer summed up, "it doesn't really matter. They have a few hundred billion left to play around with."
I thought it was sort of cute at the time, although in questionable taste. I don't know a thing about science—I'm in the dress line—but I've always looked upon it with the greatest respect. The way I see it, you start laughing at scientists and they come up with something like the atom bomb. Better to treat them with a little respect.
I can't remember if I showed the article to my wife. If I did, she didn't say anything in particular.
Life went along as usual. I went to work in Manhattan and came home to Queens. In a few days there was another article. This one was written by a Phd., and it had dropped the kidding style.
It said that stars appeared to be disappearing from our Milky Way galaxy at a tremendous rate. Observatories in both hemispheres had estimated that a few million of the farthest stars had vanished in the past five weeks.
I stepped out the backdoor to have a look. Everything seemed in order to me. The Milky Way was still up there, smeared across the sky as thick as ever. The Big Dipper was shining away, and the North Star was still pointing toward Westchester. No difference. The ground was frozen under my feet, but the air was almost warm. Spring would be coming along soon, and Spring fashions.
In the distance I could see the red glow of Manhattan, across the 59th Street Bridge. That seemed to settle it. The only problem I had was dresses, and I went back inside to worry about them.
In a few more days the star-story had reached the front page. STARS DISAPPEARING, the headlines read. WHAT NEXT?