when Linda Beach tried to hold the
show together in the teeth of uproar behind her, the tranquillized state
of the audience continued. When Linda Beach's necklace was snatched from
her neck it seemed intended to be funny.

It wasn't until the very end that anything occurred really to break the
mood professionally produced shows are designed to achieve. That
occurrence startled the viewers out of their semi-comatose state, just
as blatant obscenity or intolerable profanity would have done. Linda
Beach, in fine sincerity and in tribute to the children, made a
statement which was utterly explosive. When the show ended, people all
over the world were roused and horrified and enraged.

Only small children, waiting in space-helmets and with ray-guns ready,
complained aggrievedly that there hadn't been any monsters. The adults
felt that there had been. That there were.

They hated the children with a strictly personal hatred based on panic
combined with shame.

CHAPTER 7

Soames' rehearsed part in the broadcast was finished after he and Gail
and Captain Moggs had told the story of the finding of the ship. Their
narratives were deftly guided by Linda Beach's questions.

Soames wanted to get out of sight. He was sunk in gloom. It was a show
instead of what he would have considered a presentation of the facts,
though nearly everything said had been factual. He left the studio.

In an uninhabited room he found himself staring out a window, down at
the crowd before the Communications Building.

It was a restless crowd, now. The ground-floor plate-glass windows had
been filled with television screens, and those near them could see the
broadcast and hear it through out-door loud-speakers. But this crowd was
a special one, in that it hadn't gathered to see the broadcast but
extraterrestrial monsters, in the flesh or fur or scales or however they
might appear. It now knew that the monsters had arrived and there was no
chance of seeing them direct. It had been harangued by orators and
people who already began to call themselves humanity-firsters. It felt
cheated.

There were a large number of teen-agers in the crowd.

At the window, Soames recognized the oddity of the crowd below him. An
ordinary, curiosity-seeking crowd would contain a considerable
percentage of women. This did not. There were shouting voices which
Soames heard faintly. They were orators declaiming assorted emotional
opinions about monsters from spa