The event was further heightened by a conflict of opinion by leading experts.

However, an unknown expert leaked to this paper-sources cannot be disclosed despite Supreme Court rulings — that all was not known about this event.

The unidentified expert, who shall be nameless, declared that this colony had been founded by an incursion from outer space under the command of that sterling revolutionary and nobleman of purpose and broad vision, none other than Prince Caucalsia from the province of Atalanta, planet of Manco.

Some of the survivors, who emigrated immediately to the Caucasus, which is behind the Iron Curtain and human beings can’t usually go there, were incarcerated by the KGB. Deportation soon followed and they arrived maybe in New York.

The public will be kept informed.

Heller punched Bang-Bang. “Read this.”

“Why me?” said Bang-Bang, groggy in what must have been a warm morning.

“Well, somebody has got to read it and pass it. It’s the end-of-course paper in Journalism. If nobody reads it and passes it, I can’t have the credit for it.”

Bang-Bang sat up. He read it with lip movement. “What’s this word incarcerated?”

“Put in the slammer,” said Heller.

“Oh, yeah. Hey, that’s a good word. ‘Incarcerpated.’ ”

“Well, do I pass?”

“Oh, hell, yes. Anybody that knows that many big words is a genius. Hey, I got to get going. Time for another line of charges!” Bang-Bang raced off, tassel of his mortarboard streaming in the wind.

Heller wrote, College Journalism. Passed with In-the-Field Citation.

Two more girls drifted by. They stopped to pass the time of day. “What’s your major?” one asked Heller.

“It was Journalism. But I just passed it with Battle Honors. What’s yours?”

“Advanced Criticism,” said one.

“See you around,” said Heller.

After a while, Bang-Bang came back. “First charges picked up. Second series laid.” He went back to sleep.

Frankly, they were driving me nuts! What were they doing? Why didn’t I hear some explosions as buildings went up?

Heller demolished a couple more subjects and passed himself in his notebook. Bang-Bang had come back again and was once again fast asleep.

Now Heller had gotten into high-school chemistry. But this time he was really tangled. I could tell. He was yawning and yawning. Tension! In fact, it was evidently too much for him for he laid it aside and picked up a text on high-school physics. He read for a while, yawning. Then he picked up the chemistry text again and began looking from it to the physics text.

“Hey,” he told the texts. “Agree amongst you on something, will you?”

A clear-cut case of animistic fixation, his habit of talking to things. No wonder he couldn’t understand clear-cut texts.

He finished up the chemistry including the college texts on it and then got going once more on physics. He kept going back earlier and looking again.

And then, I couldn’t believe it! He started to laugh. He always was sacrilegious. Little spurts of laughter kept erupting. And then he read some more and he laughed some more. And then he got to laughing harder and harder and rolled off the backrest and beat at the ground with his fists!

“What the hell is going on?” said Bang-Bang, waking up. “You reading comic books or something?”

Heller got control of himself and it was time he did! “It’s a text on primitive superstitions,” said Heller. “Look, it’s almost noon. Pick up those last charges and we’ll have some lunch.”

Ah, they were threatening the school! Demanding ransom?

Heller had everything gathered up and they went off and bought sandwiches and pop from a mobile lunch wagon.

“Operation right on schedule,” said Heller.

“We made our beachhead,” said Bang-Bang.

They enjoyed the view of girls as they strolled around. Heller bought a couple of papers. Then, “Time!” said Heller sternly. And Bang-Bang raced off again. When he came back, Heller had the command post all set up and Bang-Bang went to sleep.

If they weren’t blowing things up, and I had heard no explosions, this was about the strangest way to go to college I had ever seen. You’re supposed to go and sit down and listen to lectures and take notes and hurry to another class…

Heller was halfway through trigonometry when Bang-Bang said, “I’ll pick up the last series and lay the next. But then I got to go report to the Army and you’ll have to take over.”

Heller finished trigonometry and told it, “You sure go the long way round.” But he entered it in his notebook as passed.

Bang-Bang returned and dropped the rucksack he had been racing about with. “Well, here goes the pig into the mire. You got the watch now.”

Heller had gotten tired of studying, apparently, for he packed his books up. His watch winked at him in Voltarian figures that it was a bit after two. He opened up one of the papers he had bought.

He looked all through it. He couldn’t find a trace of what he was looking for: he kept muttering, “Grafferty? Grafferty?”

He opened up the second paper. He got clear back to the photo section before he found it. It was a picture of an indistinct fireman climbing down a ladder carrying an unrecognizable woman. The caption said:

Police Inspector Grafferty last night rescued Jean Matinee from a burning spaghetti parlor.

Heller told the paper, “Now that I am a passed-with-honors journalist, I can truly appreciate the grave responsibility of keeping the public informed.”

I heard that with some amusement. It just showed one how superficial he was. He had the purpose of the media all wrong! Its purpose, of course, is to keep the public misinformed! Only in that way can governments, and the people who own and use them, keep the public confused and milked! They trained us in such principles very well in the Apparatus schools.

And then an irritation of worry tinged my amusement. All this data he was getting, right or wrong, could be dangerous to me. It might accidentally make him think.

There was one field he mustn’t study. And that was the subject of espionage. I didn’t think it was taught in American public schools, even though I knew it was a required subject in Russian kindergartens so the children could spy on their parents. I knew that America often copied what the Russians did. I crossed my fingers. I hoped it wasn’t one of his required subjects. I tried to read some of the text titles that were spread around.

Heller went back to his studies. At 2:45 he packed up all his gear, hefted the two rucksacks and trotted off. He paused in a hall, watching a door.

Ah, now I was going to find out what they had been up to!

Students streamed out of the room. The professor came bustling out and went up the hall.

Heller walked into the empty classroom. He went straight to the lecture platform. He reached down into the wastebasket.

He pulled out a tape recorder!

He shut it off.

He put it in the rucksack.

Heller pulled out a small instant recording camera, stepped back and shot the diagrams on the blackboard.

He put the camera away.

He left the room.

He raced over to another building.

He stepped into an empty classroom. He went to the platform, took a different recorder out of the rucksack, verified that it was loaded with 120-minute tape, put it on “record,” placed it in the bottom of the wastebasket and threw some paper over it and then walked out of the room just as a couple of students were entering.

Outside, he leaned up against a building. He took the first recorder he had recovered, checked to make sure it had worked properly and removed the cassette. He marked the tape with date and subject, fastened the blackboard picture to it with a rubber band and put the package in a compartmented cassette box marked Advanced Chemistry. He checked the recorder battery charge, reloaded it with blank 120 tape and put it back in the rucksack.