They left the room reluctantly, unhappily. The Great Man smiled at his wife. “Darling,” he said, “let’s go to the balcony. If those well-meaning friends of ours think they’re going to stop me from seeing my first flying saucers they’re tragically mistaken.” “Of course, dear,” his wife replied. She already had her knitting neatly stowed away in the needlepoint bag in which she customarily carried it. Now she removed her glasses and put them in their case, and rose quickly to her feet, still a trim, attractive figure of a woman despite her fifty years. As they walked toward the balcony, the Great Man wondered what he could have accomplished without her. Certainly, the nine years since their marriage had been his happiest--each a glowing milestone in his swift climb to political eminence. They stood side by side on the broad balcony, which was really the verandah roof, and looked out at the star-swept skies. Roughly gauging the direction with his eyes, the Great Man said, “If the reports are accurate, they should be coming from _there_.” He pointed toward the low flat sweep of the southwestern horizon. “Darling! Look over there!” There was controlled excitement in his wife’s soft voice. He followed her gaze a bit further north, and immediately saw them--one, two, three, and then three more--as they came sweeping earthward at an incredible speed. They looked like immense balls of light, slightly fuzzy around the edges, leaving faint trails of white fire in their wake. They were terrifyingly near--and they moved into silence. The Great Man knew that all around the house, in a complex involving many square miles, alert defenders were stationed--some at radar panels and others around electronic anti-aircraft cannon and Nike launchers, their weapons primed with atomic warheads. Yet the night was silent. A cricket chirped somewhere, but its song was quickly drowned in the faint unmistakable whine of a distant jet engine. The Air Force was on sky reconnaissance. The Great Man uttered a silent prayer that they would confine themselves to observation. There was another whine, and then another and another, each growing louder against the stars as the mysterious invaders swept rapidly closer. Although flying saucer stories had appeared in the press in waves, with long intervals between reports, in official circles that activity had not died down since their first sighting by Kenneth Arnold in 1947. Of late, more and more such activity had been reported. They had been seen over the big cities, as well as above more isolated regions. Unmistakably, it was a pattern of approaching climax. Over Europe, Africa, South America and behind the Iron Curtain as well as over North America, the Unidentified Flying Objects had been observed and had given birth to the wildest speculations.