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d spread it over his face. His eyes momentarily focused on MYSTERIOUS SIGNALS FROM OUTER SPACE, right over his nose.
"Sure, Cygnus," he muttered, and closed his eyes and dropped off to sleep.
When he was awakened, it was by an excited hand shaking his shoulder and a panting, "Freddy! Freddy! Lookit the Extra just came out!"
Freddy slowly sat up, ascertained the identity of the intruder and the fact that the sun was setting, and said, "Good evening, Willy. Please stop rattling that paper in my face."
"But just read it, Freddy," Willy shrieked, waving the paper so frantically that Freddy couldn't make out the big black headline. "'Positive contact from another planet,' the guy was yellin'. They put out an Extra so I snitched one from the boy. Read it to me, huh, Freddy? I'm dyin' o' curious."
"So give it here and I'll read it for you. Quit shakin' it or you'll tear it all up," Freddy snorted.
"Read it to me, huh, Freddy," Willy said, handing over the paper. "I don't know no one else that reads so good."
Freddy studied the headline and the first paragraph silently, then whistled lightly and lowered the paper.
"Y'know, Willy," he said, "the last thing I read before I dropped off a while ago was about these signals. But the funny thing is, I'd just assumed they were from Cygnus."
"What's a Cygnus, Freddy?" Willy asked, still pop-eyed. "A smoke? A dame? Or you mean like from Hunger?"
"Cygnus, my boy," Freddy explained patronizingly, "is a constellation within which there are two colliding galaxies. These colliding galaxies produce the most powerful electromagnetic radiations in the universe--an undecillion watts!"
"What's an undecillion?"
"An undecillion is ten raised to the 36th power," Freddy sighed, fearing that he wasn't getting through to Willy.
"No foolin'? What's a watt ... aw, you're pullin' my leg again, Freddy, talkin' riddles. Where'd ya ever learn to talk that way anyhow!"
"Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Oxford, Geo