Aliens land on Earth. They are not aliens as people would've thought them to be: they have blue skin and are called "blues," but otherwise, they resemble humans. Several towns are designated as relocation centers, in which the aliens will live and interact with the local community. One group of blues is brought by bus to an apartment in a small town, where its inhabitants have a wide range of reactions to their presence. At first, people are curious. Kids and adults alike watch the blues from cameras that have been placed in the blues' apartments, some adults even getting sexually turned on from observing the blues. Children spy on the blues, a town woman reads their fortunes to them. Quickly, the people turn on the blues, as they begin to think of them as savages. The note how the blue boys are starved while the blue girls are overfed, how they have no discretion in their violence, how they avoid public gatherings and keep to themselves. The blue children are enrolled in the local schools but soon removed after they are bullied and refuse to mingle. A local marriage suffers from the strain of the wife's attraction to the blues. Some children are frightened by the blue children's aggressive behaviors in response to their curiosity. The civilians decide to get rid of the blues. They do, using an unknown method, and life returns to a relative state of normalcy. In the years that follow, several tragedies strike: the hot-for-blues wife is abused by her husband, one of the little girls that had gotten frightened by the blues kills herself, a little boy uses another little boy as the pet. It is unknown whether these cruelties would've occurred if the blues had never come. Regardless, the townspeople believe that they were better off without the blues. They maintain that they had to go.