icity, through
which all sensations are emitted and received. These tentacles would act as
an ideal telephonic apparatus, so that there is every likelihood of Mr.
Dottle's having actually received a message from Saturn. I take 'Gurroo' to
be Saturnian for 'Hello.'"

_Signor Tromboni, the pioneer of wireless telephony_: "We are making
arrangements to test Mr. Dottle's interesting theory, and for this purpose
are erecting a special installation on the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro, which is
several thousand feet higher than Lavender Hill. At our own stations we
have frequently noticed mysterious ringings, which we have hitherto
ascribed to carelessness on the part of operators; but Mr. Dottle's letter
opens up a new world of possibilities. _The Daily Mandate_ is to be
congratulated on the prominence it has given to the subject, which has
already had the effect of sending Tromboni shares up several points."

_Mr. G. Shawburn_: "It is an insult to Creation to assume that ours is the
only populated planet. Of course Saturn is inhabited, but, unlike our own
world, by people of intelligence. In the matter of mental advancement
Saturn can make rings round the earth. All the same I don't for one moment
suppose that Mr. Dottle knows what he's talking about."

_The POSTMASTER-GENERAL_: "Nothing is known in the Department under my
control of telephone calls having been received from Saturn or the
neighbourhood. I do not propose for the present to take any steps in the
matter."

_The LORD MAYOR_: "Saturn is a long way off."

III.

(_Extract from leading article._)

"... Again we ask, 'What is the Government doing?' For several days now our
columns have been ringing with the world-wide acclamation of this
stupendous discovery, beside the potentialities of which the wildest
efforts of imaginative literature are reduced to pallid and uninspired
commonplaces. Even so cautious a scientist as Sir Potiphar Shucks has
declared that the idea of Saturn being inhabited is one that 'should not
lightly be set aside,' and has announced his conviction that under
favourable conditions communication with that planet should in the near
future become 'an accomplished fact.' Other eminent leaders of thought and
action, including Signor Tromboni, are even more enthusiastic in their
reception of the great theory first given to the world by Mr. Diogenes
Dottle in a letter to _The Daily Mandate_. But the POSTMASTER-GENERAL is
content to treat the question