The Press: Space Fiction by U. P.

Three days after the Associated Press's manned missile landed in oblivion, the United Press staged its own excursion into the wild blue yonder. Panted a U.P. bulletin from Helsinki: "The state radio here picked up signals early today which indicate Russia may have launched a moon rocket." European radio stations, said U.P., had picked up a "mysterious beep-beep-beep" which lasted three times as long as the signal from an orbiting Sputnik and "suggested the Doppler effect* that would be produced by a transmitter speeding away from the earth."

The space-singed A.P. waited 42 minutes, then filed a carefully sublunar story reporting that...