Winston made his way into the front of the newspaper office. He said hello to Mavis, the receptionist/classified ad manager and went back to his tiny cubicle. He noticed Warren, the part-time sports guy, wasn’t at his desk. Surprise, surprise, he thought. And Hannah, the part-time features writer, wouldn’t be in for another hour. He switched on his computer, shoved aside the stack of mail piled on his desk. He sighed as he studied the list of possible stories for tomorrow’s paper. Even though the Planet came out only once a week, Jupiter wasn’t exactly a hot news town. Even so, he didn’t know about this UFO story. If he ran it, Nell Fleck would be a laughing stock. And so would he, probably.

That decided, he began writing the school board story when he sensed someone standing behind him. Turning around, he was unsurprised to see a short, graying figure in a tweed coat puffing contentedly on an unlit cigar.

“‘Morning, Hobart.”

“Good morning, Winston. Say, did you not get that memo?”

“Memo?”

“Yah. I left it on your desk.”

Winston rummaged around on his desk, shoving aside the accumulated debris of yesterday’s work: several notepads, a half-dozen files, unedited press releases, a stack of pictures, a Coke can, and an in-tray overflowing with newspapers. “Um, I haven’t seen it yet. Could you just brief me on what it said?” Winston knew this was a foolish request, but he couldn’t help asking anyway.

“Don’t have the time now,” Hobart Hobgood IV said as he spun on his heel. “Gotta go do some business.” Winston glanced at the wall clock, which read 8:30. Time for Hobgood to saunder down the street to the drug store and kill an hour sucking down coffee and donuts with the rest of the pillars of the community. Fine with him; it got Hobgood out of his hair for a while.

“If you can’t find it,” Hobgood had stopped and turned back toward Winston, “memo me and I’ll shoot you out another copy. It concerns that UFO business.” Then he was gone, and Winston could hear him telling Mavis to hold down the fort while he was gone.

Shit, he thought. How’d he hear about that? He dug around on his desk until he found the memo. Hobart Hobgood IV took his role as a leader of the print communications industry to heart; he preferred communicating by memo rather than verbally. Winston wondered idly if Hobart shoved written messages to his wife across the dining table every night. Or in bed.

Glumly, he read the memo:

“Re the UFO report. This is big, big, big. I want the full story. Let’s do it up right: Lead story on the front, banner head. Tell Leonard to run an extra couple hundred copies. And see if the wire services want to pick it up. Make sure we get credit.

P.S. Put that potty-trained cat story on the front, too. With pictures.”

Winston had been wrong. This day was stacking up to be one of the worst ever.