"GUD MORNIG," they said. "HELO CQ UGH." "Ugh," said Steve. He put his hands over his eyes and sat down. He moaned, "This," he said, "is too much." * * * * * When, in 2021, the government created a Department of Education, it consolidated hundreds of colleges and universities throughout the country and introduced robot lecturers. Hundreds of instructors were left without jobs. One of them was Stephen Horn, Professor of American Literature. He faced no immediate worry, however. His salary had permitted him to save enough to provide for him and his wife for a few years. Myra Horn, more popularly known as Myra Classon, was a novelist whose books had received considerable attention--especially in Steve's American Lit classes, where he shamelessly proclaimed her to be one of the greatest living authors. After a period of futile searching for another professorial position in America or abroad, Steve came bouncing home one day waving a pink Space-Cable form. It had been addressed to him care of his old University, and read: "IMPERATIVE NEED FOR LIT PROF HERE SALARY PHENOMENAL STOP WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR LOVE TO MYRA (Signed) ART WILDER UNIVERSITY OF JUPITER" 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." She tore a page out of a notebook and printed something on it. She held it up to a porthole.