What did you do, though, when sci-fi turned real? People had been asking that question since the first V-2 fell on England, since the A-bombs incinerated two Japanese cities, since Sputnik beeped across the sky, and since Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. One of Jerry’s best moments ever had been watching Robert A. Heinlein talk about that live with Walter Cronkite. A not-so-good moment followed: remembering that Wernher von Braun, who’d pioneered the V-2, had also had a big hand in the moon-landing program. What was Mort Sahl’s line? I aim for the stars, but sometimes I hit London.

He left the news on till it ended, hoping they’d say more. They didn’t, though. He was watching the ABC affiliate here. He thought about getting up and switching to the Peacock and Johnny Carson. Before he could, a voice-over guy said, “Here is an ABC News special report, live with Harry Reasoner.” Jerry didn’t change the channel after all.

On came the ABC News anchorman. Jerry thought of him as Walter Cronkite Lite; he’d been Cronkite’s backup at CBS for years before moving to ABC, and he had the same kind of measured, reasonable delivery. Now Reasoner sat in front of a picture of the Glomar Explorer in Long Beach harbor.

“What did this ship find when it sailed into the North Pacific to try to raise a sunken Soviet submarine?” Reasoner said. “Whatever it was, learning of it was enough to make Leonid Brezhnev’s veteran ambassador virtually threaten war with the United States unless his country is included in examining and exploiting it. More than one source has told ABC News that the answer may literally be out of this world.”

So the real story was finally starting to come out. Jerry wondered whether Harry Reasoner’s sources were American or Russian. Reasoner had a fairly good notion of what had gone on while Humpty Dumpty was being raised, but he could have got that from either side.

“I know this will sound incredible to many of you,” he said. “It sounds incredible to me, too. But it seems believable to both the Soviet Foreign Ministry and the State Department. And the peace of the world may depend on their ability to reach a mutually satisfactory arrangement.” Then he proved he was indeed a TV man: “We’ll be back after these messages.”

Jerry endured the commercials. In due course, Reasoner returned. He said, “I am informed that there has been an ongoing dispute among the specialists on the Hughes Glomar Explorer, and in the highest echelons of the U.S. government, over how aggressively to investigate this, this object from another world. Thus far, I hear, caution has for the most part prevailed.”

“Thank you, Jesus!” Jewish Jerry exclaimed. However ABC News had got that, it was something he hadn’t known himself.