Of course, even with the galaxy collapsing, the dress business had to go on, but I found myself buying a newspaper four or five times a day and keeping the radio on in the store to find out what was going on. Everybody else was doing the same. People were even arguing about it on street corners. The newspapers had about a thousand different theories. There were scientific articles on the red shift, and intergalactic dust; there were articles on stellar evolution and visual hallucination; the psychologists were trying to prove that the stars hadn't been there in the first place, or something like that. I didn't know what to believe. The only article that made any sense to me was one written by a social commentator, and he wasn't even a full-fledged scientist. He said it looked as if someone was doing a big job of housecleaning in out galaxy. The Thomas kid had his own theories. He was sure it was the work of invaders from another dimension. He told me they were sucking our galaxy into theirs, which was in another dimension, like dust into a vacuum cleaner. "It's perfectly clear, Mr. Ostersen," he told me one evening after work. "They've started sucking in the outside stars at the other side of the Milky Way, and they're working through the centre. They'll reach us last, because we're at the far end." "Well ..." I said. "After all," he told me, "_Astonishing Yarns_ and _Weird Science Stories_ practically agree on it, and they're the leaders in the sci-fic field." "But they're not scientists," I said. "That doesn't matter," the kid told me. "They predicted the submarine before there was one. They predicted airplanes when scientists were saying the bumblebee couldn't fly. And rockets and radar and atom bombs. They've got the truth about this too." He paused for breath. "Someone's gotta stop the invaders," he went on in a tone of utter conviction. He looked at me sharply. "You know, since they're dimension-changers, they can take the appearance of humans." Again he looked at me, suspiciously. "Anyone might be one. _You_ might be one." I could see he was getting nervous, and maybe on the verge of handing me over to some committee or other, so I fed him milk and cake. That just made him more suspicious, but there wasn't anything I could do about it. The newspapers took up the science-fiction theory just as the Thomas kid had told it to me, and added their own embellishments. Some guy said he knew how the invaders could be stopped. He had been approached by them, he said, and they'd offered him controllership of a small galaxy if he'd cooperate. Of course, he wouldn't. It sounds foolish, but the sky was getting pretty bare. People in every country were saying foolish things and doing foolish things. We were starting to wonder how soon our own sun would go.