It was ine if those July days when it didn't seem as if the rain would ever stop. Maisie was walking to the shops,with the rain trickling down her neck, despite the waterproof jacket that she was wearing.She was tired and generaly fed up, all she needed was a loaf of bread, but to buy that she had to walk a mile each way.
The trees swayed in the stiff breeze, sending cascades of water droplets down from their branches. Maises dog, Bognor, squelched happily along in the mud beside the path, and then on the scent of something, he bounded off across the grass. Maisie called for him to come back , but he was too busy sniffing around a gorse bush. "Oh. bogger Bugner!" Maisie said aloud, as she plodded over to see what the wayward mutt had found.
To her suprise when she looked into the gorse bush Maisie found a shiney blue and silver ball, about the size of a tennis ball. She picked it up and opened it, without any thought as to what might happen. A beautiful single musical note emitted from the open ball. Maisie felt as if the world was a perfect place, beside her Bognor sat and gazed into the distance. Maisie snapped the ball shut, and the note was no more. Once again the rain was falling. Bognor scratched his fleas, and then shook himself, sending water all over Maisie.
Maisie took her discovery to the local paper, whose story attracted media attention from all around the world. As no-one could know to whom the ball belonged there was much speculation as to wether Maisie should decide what should happen to it. Governments argued, business men offered ever increasing sums of money, the people of the world looked on with varying amounts of interest. It had quickly been discovered that the ball once open emitted it's musical note for forty two seconds, and that the note could be heard up to thirty meters from the ball. Each living creature seemed to entranced for the notes' duration.
One day a very elderly learned proffessor announced that after careful thought, and a few naps to sleep on his idea, he was suggesting that the musical note be amplified through radio equipement. The note could then be heard by nearly everyone on the planet at the same time.
At the appointed time worldwide people tuned in. As the note sounded the world was, for forty two seconds, a place of harmony and peace. When the note stopped it was discovered that the ball that was now shut could not be opened again.
Millions of miles away across the Galaxy the note could be heard faintly as the Earth sang. The Jupiterians immediatly launched a spaceship to journey to the Earth. When they arrived they uttered the first known words spoken by a space alien to humankind, "Can we have our ball back, please?"
