That did it! He was very interested. We discussed a reasonable fee for the story and he paid me on the spot. Within a week, it was in all the newspapers and on TV. The headlines said it all:
AMATEUR ASTRONOMER PREDICTS ALIEN INVASION was the least sensational…
GIANT ALIENS MAY BUILD BASES IN ENGLAND was perhaps the worst.
My idea was so obvious; others must have suspected it, too. The pressure built up, and eventually the government had to come clean and admit that some of its experts already had come to this conclusion. They announced that a special International Watch Force had already been set up using all the available large world telescopes. However, nothing new had been detected yet. Then, they revealed that a military shuttle had just gone into moon orbit containing a manned Luna
