“Ah Harkness, come in.  Happy Holidays.”

 

“Thank you sir.   And you sir.  Might I have a quick word?”

 

“Well Doris asked me to do some shopping on the way home…”

 

“This won’t take a moment sir.  I’ve got some good news.”

 

“Oh good.  Always room for good news.”

 

“Yes, you know the North Korean satellite?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Well we’ve shot it down.”

 

“We have?  I didn’t know we could do that.”

 

“No neither did we actually sir , but we gave it a shot and…right between the eyeballs.  First time.  We were shocked,  And happy obviously.”

 

“Well,  well done.”

 

“Thank you sir.  Only one problem.”

 

“Yes?”

 

“The satellite.”

 

“What about it?”

 

“It’s falling.”

 

“Where?”

 

“To the earth. “

 

“Well gravity….”

 

“Quite.  And it probably has a nuclear source on board and it’s plummeting and it’s going to hit in about half an hour.”

 

“Oh dear.  Where?”

 

“Not in America sir.”

 

“Oh good, wow that would be….”

 

“Yes, it would. However, it is going to hit…”

 

“Where?”

 

“Sydney.”

 

“Australia?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Oh dear.”

 

“Uhm.  Most unfortunate.”

 

“Can we shoot it down?”

 

“Well that’s what we’ve done sir.”

 

“No, can we shoot it down again?”

 

“Chances are about 2 billion to one.  Against.  It’s moving so fast you see.”

 

“I see.”

 

“So we have two choices, we tell them, and there’ll be panic.”

 

“Right.”

 

“And then everybody’ll blame us.”

 

“Or…?”

 

“We don’t tell them.”

 

“Blame the Koreans.”

 
“Exactly.”

 

“How long have we got?”

 

“A few minutes,”

 

“Those bloody Koreans.”

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