Doc laughed at that, sounding more like his old self. "No, Roy. No two people ever had instantaneous and identical hallucinations." "Look," I said. "I know this sounds crazy but maybe Joey--" Doc wasn't amused any more. "Don't be a fool, Roy. If those stars really moved you can be sure of two things--Joey had nothing to do with it, and the papers will explain everything tomorrow." He was wrong on one count at least. The papers next day were packed with scareheads three inches high but none of them explained anything. The radio commentators quoted every authority they could reach, and astronomers were going crazy everywhere. It just couldn't happen, they said. Doc and I went over the news column by column that night and I learned more about the stars than I'd learned in a lifetime. Doc, as I've said before, is an educated man, and what he couldn't recall offhand about astronomy the newspapers quoted by chapter and verse. They ran interviews with astronomers at Harvard Observatory and Mount Wilson and Lick and Flagstaff and God knows where else, but nobody could explain why all of those stars would change position then stop. It set me back on my heels to learn that Sirius was twice as big as the Sun and more than twice as heavy, that it was three times as hot and had a little dark companion that was more solid than lead but didn't give off enough light to be seen with the naked eye. This little companion--astronomers called it the "Pup" because Sirius was the Dog Star--hadn't moved, which puzzled the astronomers no end. I suggested to Doc, only half joking, that maybe the Pup had stayed put because it wasn't bright enough to suit Joey's taste, but Doc called me down sharp. "Don't joke about Joey," he said sternly. "Getting back to Sirius--it's so far away that its light needs eight and a half years to reach us. That means it started moving when Joey was only eighteen months old. The speed of light is a universal constant, Roy, and astronomers say it can't be changed." "They said the stars couldn't be tossed around like pool balls, too," I pointed out. "I'm not saying that Joey really moved those damn stars, Doc, but if he did he could have moved the light along with them, couldn't he?" But Doc wouldn't argue the point. "I'm going out for air," he said. I trailed along, but we didn't get farther than Joey's wheelchair. There he sat, tense and absorbed, staring up at the night sky. Doc and I followed his gaze, the way you do automatically when somebody on the street ahead of you cranes his neck at something. We looked up just in time to see the stars start moving again. The first one to go was a big white one that slanted across the sky like a Roman candle fireball--_zip_, like that--and stopped dead beside the group that had collected around Sirius. Doc said, "There went Altair," and his voice sounded like he had just run a mile.