Martians, Go Home

1.

TIME: Early evening of March 26, 1964, a Thursday.

PLACE: A two-room shack in desert country, near—but not too near; it was almost a mile from its nearest neighbor—Indio, California, about a hundred and fifty miles east and slightly south of Los Angeles.

On stage at rise of curtain: Luke Devereaux, alone.

Why do we start with him? Why not; we’ve got to start somewhere. And Luke, as a science fiction writer, should have been much better prepared than most people for what was about to happen.

Meet Luke Devereaux. Thirty-seven years old, five feet ten inches tall, weighing, at this moment, a hundred and forty-four pounds. Topped with wild red hair that would never stay in place without hair dressing, and he would never use hair dressing. Under the hair, rather pale blue eyes with, quite frequently, an absent-minded stare in them; the kind of eyes that you’re never sure are really seeing you even when they’re looking right at you. Under the eyes, a long thin nose, reasonably well centered in a moderately long face, unshaven for forty-eight hours or more.

Dressed at the moment (8:14 P.M., Pacific Standard Time) in a white T-shirt emblazoned Y.W.C.A. in red letters, a pair of faded Levis and a pair of well-scuffed loafers.

Don’t let the Y.W.C.A. on the T-shirt fool you. Luke has never been and will never be a member of that organization. The shirt belonged or had belonged to Margie, his wife or ex-wife. (Luke wasn’t exactly sure which she was; she’d divorced him seven months ago but the decree would not be final for another five months.) When she had left his bed and board she must have left the T-shirt among his. He seldom wore T-shirts in Los Angeles and had not discovered it until this morning. It fitted him all right—Margie was a biggish girl—and he’d decided that, alone out here in the desert, he might as well get a day’s wear out of it before considering it a rag with which to polish the car. It certainly wasn’t worth taking or sending back, even had they been on more friendly terms than they were. Margie had divorced the Y.W.C.A long before shed divorced him and hadn’t worn it since. Maybe she’d put it among his T-shirts deliberately as a joke, but he doubted that, remembering the mood she’d been in the day she’d left.

Well, he’d happened to think once during the day, if she’d left it as a joke, the joke had backfired because he’d discovered it at a time when he was alone and could actually wear it. And if by any chance she’d left it deliberately so he’d come across it, think of her and be sorry, she was fooled on that too. Shirt or no shirt, he thought of her occasionally, of course, but he wasn’t sorry in the slightest degree. He was in love again, and with a girl who was the opposite of Margie in almost every way. Her name was Rosalind Hall, and she was a stenographer at the Paramount Studios. He was nuts about her. Mad about her. Crazy about her.

Which no doubt was a contributory factor to his being alone here in the shack at this moment, miles from a paved highway. The shack belonged to a friend of his, Carter Benson, who was also a writer and who occasionally, in the relatively cooler months of the year, as now, used it for the same purpose for which Luke was using it now—the pursuit of solitude in the pursuit of a story idea in the pursuit of a living.

This was the evening of Luke’s third day here and he was still pursuing and still hadn’t caught up with anything except the solitude. There’d beers no lack of that. No telephone, no mailman, and he hadn’t seen another human being, even at a distance.

But he thought that he had begun this very afternoon to sneak up on an idea. Something as yet too vague, too diaphanous, to put on paper, even as a notation; something as impalpable, perhaps, as a direction of thinking, but still something. That was a start, he hoped, and a big improvement over the way things had been going for him in Los Angeles.

There he’d been in the worst slump of his writing career, and had been going almost literally insane over the fact that he hadn’t written a word for months. With, to make it worse, his publisher breathing down his neck via frequent airmails from New York astking for at least a title they could list as his next book. And how soon would he finish the book and when could they schedule it? Since they’d given him five five hundred dollar advances against it, they had the right to ask.

Finally sheer despair—and there are few despairs sheerer than that of a writer who must create and can’t—had driven him to borrow the keys to Carter Benson’s shack and the use of it for as long as he needed it. Luckily Benson lead trust signed a six months’ contract with a Hollywood studio and wouldn’t be using the shack for at least that long.

So here Luke Devereaux was and here he’d stay until he had plotted and started a book. He wouldn’t have to finish it here; once he’d got going on one he knew he could carry on with it back in his native habitat where he’d no longer have to deny himself evenings with Rosalind Hall.

And for three days now, from nine in the morning until five in the afternoon he’d paced the floor, trying to concentrate. Sober and almost going crazy at times. Evenings, because he knew that driving his brain for even longer hours would do more harm than good, he allowed himself to relax, to read and to have a few drinks. Specifically, five drinks—a quantity which he knew would relax him but would neither get him drunk nor give him a hangover the next morning. He spaced those five drinks carefully to last the evening until eleven. Eleven, on the dot, was his bedtime while here at the shack. Nothing like regularity—except that thus far it hadn’t helped him much.

At 8:14 he had made his third drink—the one which would last him until nine o’clock—and had just finished taking his second short sip of it. He was trying to read but not succeeding very well because his mind, now that he was trying to concentrate on reading, wanted to think about writing instead. Minds are frequently that way.

And probably because he wasn’t trying to he was getting closer to a story idea than he’d been in a long time. He was idly wondering, what if the Martians…

There was a knock at the door.

He stared at it for a moment in blank surprise before he put down his drink and got up out of the chair. The evening was so quiet that a car couldn’t possibly have approached without his having heard it, and surely no one would have walked here.

The knock was repeated, louder.

Luke went to the door and opened it, looked out into the bright moonlight. At first he saw no one; then he looked downward.

“Oh, no,” he said.

It was a little green man, about two and a half feet tall.

“Hi, Mack,” he said. “Is this Earth?”

“Oh, no,” Luke Devereaux said. “It can’t be.”

“Why can’t it? It must be. Look.” He pointed upward. “One moon, and just about the right size and distance. Earth’s the only planet in the system with one moon. My planet’s got two.”

“Oh, God,” said Luke. There is only one planet in the solar system that has two moons.

“Look, Mack, straighten up and fly right. Is this Earth or isn’t it?”

Luke nodded dumbly.

“Okay,” said the little man. “We got that settled. Now, what’s wrong with you?”

“G-g-g,” said Luke.

“You crazy? And is this the way you welcome strangers? Aren’t you going to ask me in?”

Luke said, “C-come in,” and stepped back.

Inside the Martian looked around and frowned. “What a lousy joint,” he said. “You people all live like this or are you what they call white trash? Argeth, what stinking furniture.”

“I didn’t pick it out,” Luke said defensively. “It belongs to a friend of mine.”

“Then you’ve got lousy taste in picking friends. You alone here?”

“That,” Luke said, “is what I’m wondering. I’m not sure I believe in you. How do I know you’re not an hallucination?”

The Martian hopped lightly up on a chair and sat there with his feet dangling. “You don’t know. But if you think so you got rocks in your head.”

Luke opened his mouth and closed it again. Suddenly he remembered his drink and groped behind himself for it, knocked the glass over with the back of his hand instead of getting hold of it. The glass didn’t break but it emptied itself across the table and onto the floor before he could right it. He swore, and then remembered that the drink hadn’t been a very strong one anyway. And under the circumstances he wanted a drink that was a drink. He went over to the sink where the whiskey stood and poured himself half a tumbler of it straight.

He drank a slug of it that almost choked him. When he was sure that it was going to stay down he came back and sat, glass in hand, staring at his visitor.

“Getting an eyeful?” the Martian asked.

Luke didn’t answer. He was getting a double eyeful and taking his time about it. His guest, he saw now, was humanoid but definitely not human. A slight suspicion that one of his friends had hired a circus midget to play a joke on him vanished.

Martian or not, his visitor wasn’t human. He couldn’t be a dwarf because his torso was very short proportionate to the length of his spindly arms and legs; dwarfs have long torsos and short legs. His head was relatively large and much more nearly spherical than a human head, the skull was completely bald. Nor was there any sign of a beard and Luke had a strong hunch that the creature would also be completely devoid of body hair.

The face—well, it had everything that a face should have but again things were out of proportion. The mouth was twice the size, proportionately, of a human mouth and so was the nose; the eyes were as tiny as they were bright, set quite close together. The ears were very small too, and had no lobes. In the moonlight the skin had looked olive green; here under artificial light, it looked more nearly emerald green.

The hands had six fingers apiece. That rneant he probably had twelve toes too, but since be wore shoes there was no way of verifying that.

The shoes were dark green and so were the rest of his clothes—tight-fitting trousers and a loose blouse, both made of the same material—something that looked like chamois or a very soft suede. No hat.

“I’m beginning to believe you,” Luke said wonderingly. He took another pull at his drink.

The Martian snorted. “Are all humans as stupid as you? And as impolite? Drinking and not offering a guest a drink?”

“Sorry,” Luke said. He got up and started for the bottle and another glass.

“Not that I want one,” said the Martian. “I don’t drink. Disgusting habit. But you might have offered.”

Luke sat down again, sighed.

“I should have,” he said. “Sorry again. Now let’s start over. My name’s Luke Devereaux.”

“A damn silly name.”

“Maybe yours will sound silly to me. May I ask what it is?”

“Sure, go ahead.”

Luke sighed again. “What is your name?”

“Martians don’t use names. Ridiculous custom.”

“But they’re handy to call someone. Like—say, didn’t you call me Mack?”

“Sure. We call everyone Mack—or its equivalent in whatever language we’re speaking. Why bother to learn a new name for every person you speak to?”

Luke took some more of his drink. “Hmmm,” he said, “maybe you’ve got something there, but let’s skip it for something more important. How can I be sure you’re really there?”

“Mack, I told you, you got rocks in your head.”

“That,” said Luke, “is just the point. Have I? If you’re really there I’m willing to concede that you’re not human and if I concede that there’s no reason why I shouldn’t take your word as to where you’re from. But if you’re not there, then I’m either drunk or hallucinating. Except that I know I’m not drunk; before I saw you I’d had only two drinks, weak ones, and I didn’t feel them at all.”

“Why’d yon drink them then?”

“Irrelevant to what we’re discussing. That leaves two possibilities—you’re really there or I’m crazy.”

The Martian made a rude noise. “And what makes you think those possibilities are mutually exclusive? I’m here all right. But I don’t know whether or not you’re crazy and I don’t care.”

Luke sighed. It seemed to take a lot of sighing to get along with a Martian. Or a lot of drinking. His glass was empty. He went and refilled it. Straight whiskey again, but this time he put in a couple of ice cubes.

Before he sat down again, he had a thought. He put down his drink, said, “Excuse me a minute,” and went outside. If the Martian was real and was really a Martian, there ought to be a spaceship somewhere around.

Or would it prove anything if there was, he wondered. If he was hallucinating the Martian why couldn’t he hallucinate a spaceship as well?

But there wasn’t any spaceship, hallucinated or real. The moonlight was bright and the country was flat; he could see a long way. He walked around the shack and around his car parked behind it, so he could see in all directions. No spaceship.

He went back inside, made himself comfortable and took a sizable swallow of his drink, and then pointed an accusing finger at the Martian. “No spaceship,” he said.

“Of course not.”

“Then how’d you get here?”

“None of your damned business, but I’ll tell you. I kwimmed.”

’What do you mean?”

“Like this,” said the Martian. And he was gone from the chair. The word “like” had come from the chair and the word “this” came from behind Luke.

He whirled around. The Martian was sitting on the edge of the gas range.

“My God,” Luke said. “Teleportation.”

The Martian vanished. Luke turned back and found him in the chair again.

“Not teleportation,” the Martian said. “Kwimming. You need apparatus to teleport. Kwimming’s mental. Reason you can’t do it is you’re not smart enough.”

Luke took another drink. “You got here all the way from Mars that way?”

“Sure, just a second before I knocked on your door.”

“Have you kwimmed here before? Say—” Luke pointed a finger again, “I’ll bet you have, lots of you, and that accounts for superstitions about elves and—”

“Nuts,” said the Martian: “You people got rocks in your heads, that’s what accounts for your superstitions. I’ve never been here before. None of us has. We just learned the technique of long-distance kwimming. Just short-range before. To do it interplanetary, you got to savvy hokima.”

Luke pointed a finger again. “Got you. How come, then, you speak English?”

The Martian’s lip curled. It was a lip well adapted to curling. “I speak all your simple silly languages. All of them spoken on your radio programs anyway, and whatever other ones there are I can pick up in an hour or so apiece. Easy stuff. You’d never learn Martian in a thousand years.”

“I’ll be damned,” Luke said. “No wonder you don’t think much of us if you get your ideas about us from our radio programs. I’ll admit most of them stink.”

“Then so do most of you or you wouldn’t put them on the air.”

Luke took a firm grip on his temper and another drink from his glass. He was beginning, finally, to believe that this really was a Martian and not a figment of his own imagination or insanity. And besides, it struck him suddenly, what did he have to lose in assuming so? If he was crazy, that was that. But if this was really a Martian, then he was missing a hell of an opportunity for a science fiction writer.

“What’s Mars like?” he asked.

“None of your damn business, Mack.”

Luke took another pull at his drink. He counted ten and tried to be as calm and reasonable as he could. “Listen,” he said. “I was rude at first, because I was surprised. But I’m sorry and I apologize. Why can’t we be friends?”

“Why should we? You’re a member of an inferior race.”

“Because if for no other reason it’ll make this conversation more pleasant for both of us.”

“Not for me, Mack. I like disliking people, I like quarreling. If you’re going to go namby-pamby and pally-wally on me, I’ll go find someone else to chin with.”

“Wait, don’t—” Luke suddenly realized that he was taking exactly the wrong tack if he wanted the Martian to stay. He said, “Get the hell out of here then, if you feel that way.”

The Martian grinned. “That’s better. Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“Why did you come to Earth?”

“That’s none of your business either, but it’ll be a pleasure to give you a hint. Why do people go to zoos here on your lousy planet?”

“How long do you plan to stay?”

The Martian cocked his head sidewise. “You’re a hard guy to convince, Mack. I’m not Information, Please. What I do or why I do it is none of your business. One thing I didn’t come here for is to teach kindergarten.”

Luke’s glass was empty again. He filled it.

He glared at the Martian. If the guy wanted to quarrel, why not? “You little green wart,” he said, “damned if I don’t think I ought to—”

“You ought to what? Do something to me? You and who else?”

“Me and a camera and a flash gun,” Luke said, wondering why he hadn’t thought of it sooner. “I’m going to get at least one picture of you. Then when I get it developed—”

He put down his glass and hurried into the bedroom. Luckily his camera was loaded and there was a bulb in the flash gun; he’d stuck them in his suitcase, not in the expectation of shooting a Martian but because Benson had told him coyotes often prowled quite close to the slack at night and he’d hoped to get a shot of one.

He hurried back, set the camera quickly, raised it an one hand and the flash gun in the other.

“Want me to pose for you?” asked the Martian. He put his thumbs in his ears and waggled his ten other fingers, crossed his eyes and stuck out a long greenish yellow tongue.

Luke took the shot.

He put another bulb in the gun, wound the film, aimed the camera again. But the Martian wasn’t there. His voice, from another corner of the room, said, “One’s enough, Mack. Don’t crowd your luck by boring me any worse.”

Luke whirled and aimed the camera that way, but by the time he’d raised the flash gun, the Martian was gone. And a voice behind him told him not to make more of an ass of himself than he already was.

Luke gave up and put down the camera. Anyway, he had one shot on the film. When it was developed, it would either show a Martian or it wouldn’t. Too bad it hadn’t been color film, but you can’t have everything.

He picked up his glass again. Sat down with it, because suddenly the floor was becoming just a bit unsteady. He took another drink to steady it.

“Shay,” he said. “I mean, say. You catch our radio programs. What’s the matter with television? You people behind the times?”

“What’s television, Mack?”

Luke told him.

“Waves like that don’t carry that far,” the Martian said. “Thank Argeth. It’s bad enough to listen to you people. Now that I’ve seen one of you and know what you look like—”

“Nuts,” said Luke. “You never invented television.”

“Of course not. Don’t need it. If anything’s going on anywhere on our world that we want to see, we just kwim there. Listen, did I just happen to find a freak, or are all people here as hideous as you are?”

Luke almost choked over a sip he was taking from his drink. “Mean to shay—say, you think you’re worth looking at?”

“To any other Martian, I am.”

“I’ll bet you drive the little girls wild,” said Luke, “That is, if you’re bisexual like us and there are Martian girls.”

“We’re bisexual but not, thank Argeth, like you. Do you people really carry on in the utterly disgusting way your radio characters do? Are you in what you people call love with one of your females?”

“None of your damn business,” Luke told him.

“Thats what you think,” said the Martian.

And he vanished.

Luke stood up—not too steadily—and looked around to see if he had kwimmed to another part of the room. He hadn’t.

Luke sat down, shook his head to clear it, and took another drink, to fuddle it.

Thank God or Argeth, he thought, that he’d got that picture. Tomorrow morning he’d drive back to Los Angeles and get it developed. If it showed an empty chair, he’d put himself in the hands of a psychiatrist, but fast.

If it showed a Martian—Well, if it did, he’d decide then what he was going to do about it, if anything. Meanwhile, getting drunk as fast as he could was the only sensible thing he could do. He was already too drunk to risk driving back tonight and the faster he drank himself to sleep the sooner he’d wake up in the morning.

He blinked his eyes and when he opened them again, there was the Martian back in the chair, grinning at him. “I was just in that pigsty of a bedroom, reading your correspondence. Foo, what trash.”

Correspondence? He didn’t have any correspondence here with him, Luke thought. And then he remembered that he did have. A little packet of three letters from Rosalind, the ones she’d written him while he was in New York tree months ago, seeing his publisher and talking him out of more money on the book he was now trying to start. He’d stayed a week, mostly to renew his acquaintances among magazine editors while he was there; he’d written Rosalind every day and she’d written him three times. They were the only letters he’d ever had from her and he’d saved them carefully, had put them in the suitcase thinking to reread them here if he got too lonely.

“Argeth, what mush,” said the Martian. “And what a damned silly way you people have of writing your language. Took me a full minute to break down your alphabet and correlate the sounds and letters. Imagine a language that has the same sound spelled three different ways—as in true, too and through.”

“God damn it,” said Luke, “you had no business reading my mail.”

“Chip, chip,” said the Martian. “Anything’s my business that I make my business and you wouldn’t tell me about your love life, Sweetie-pie, Darling, Honeybun.”

“You really did read it then, you little green wart. For a dime, I’d—”

“You’d what?” asked the Martian contemptuously.

“Toss you all the way back to Mars, that’s what,” Luke said.

The Martian laughed raucously. “Save your breath, Mack, for making love to your Rosalind. Bet you think she meant all that hogwash she fed you in those letters. Bet you think she’s as dopey about you as you are about her.”

“She is as dopey—I mean, God damn it—”

“Don’t get an ulcer, Mack. Her address was on the envelope. I’ll kwim there right now and find out for you. Hold your hat.”

“You stay right—”

Luke was alone again.

And his glass was empty so he made his way across to the sink and refilled it. He was already drunker than he’d been in years, but the quicker he knocked himself out the better. If possible, before the Martian came back, or kwimmed back, if he really was coming or kwimming back.

Because he just couldn’t take any more. Hallucination or reality, he couldn’t help himself, he would throw the Martian right through the window. And maybe start an interplanetary war.

Back in the chair he started on the drink. This one should do it.

“Hey, Mack. Still sober enough to talk?”

He opened his eyes, wondering when he had closed them. The Martian was back.

“Go ’way,” he said. “Get lost. Tomorrow I’ll—”

“Straighten up, Mack. I got news for you, straight from Hollywood. That chick of yours is home and she’s lonesome for you all right.”

“Yeah? Tole you she loved me, didden I? You li’l green—”

“So lonesome for you she had someone in to console her. Tall blond guy. She called him Harry.”

It partly sobered Luke for a second. Rosalind did have a friend named Harry, but it was platonic; they were friends because they worked in the same department at Paramount. He’d make sure and then tell off the Martian for tattling.

“Harry Sunderman?” he asked. “Slender, snappy dresser, always wears loud sport coats—?”

“Nope, this Harry wasn’t that Harry, Mack. Not if he always wears loud sport coats. This Harry wasn’t wearing anything but a wrist watch.”

Luke Devereaux roared and got to his feet, lunged at the Martian. With both hands extended he grabbed at a green neck.

And both hands went right through it and closed on one another.

The little green man grinned up at him and stuck out his tongue. Then pulled it in again. “Want to know what they were doing, Mack? Your Rosalind and her Harry?”

Luke didn’t answer. He staggered back for his drink and gulped the rest of it down.

And gulping it down was the last thing he remembered when he woke up in the morning. He was lying on the bed; he’d got that far somehow. But he was atop the covers, not under them, and fully dressed even to his shoes.

He had a God-awful headache and a hellish taste in his mouth.

He sat up and looked around fearfully. No little green man.

Made his way to the living room door and looked around in there. Came back and looked at the stove, wondering if coffee would be worth the effort of making it.

Decided that it wouldn’t since he could get some already made on his way back to town, less than a mile after he got on the main highway. And the sooner he got there and the sooner thereafter he got back to town the better. He wouldn’t even clean up or pack. He could come back later and get his stuff. Or ask someone to come and get it for him if he was going to be in the loony bin for a while.

Right now all he wanted was out of here and to hell with everything else. He wouldn’t even bathe or shave until he was home; he had an extra razor in his apartment and all of his good clothes were still there anyway.

And after that, what?

Well, after that he’d worry about what after that. He’d be nearly enough over his hang-over to think things out calmly.

Walking through the other room he saw the camera, hesitated briefly and then picked it up to take along. Might as well, before he did his heavy thinking, get that picture developed. There was still a chance in a thousand that, despite the fact that his hands had passed through it, an actual Martian and not an hallucination had been in that chair. Maybe Martians had stranger powers than being, able to kwim.

Yes, if there was a Martian on that photograph it would change all his thinking, so he might as well eliminate the possibility before making any decisions.

If there wasn’t—well, the sensible thing to do if he could bring himself to do it would be to phone Margie and ask her the name of the psychiatrist she’d tried to get him to go to several times during their marriage. She’d been a nurse in several mental institutions before they were married and she’d gone to work in another one when she’d walked out on him. And she’d told him that she’d majored in psychology at college and, if she could have afforded the extra years of schooling, would have tried to become a psychiatrist herself.

He went out and locked the door, walked around the house to his car.

The little green man was sitting on the car’s radiator.

“Hi, Mack,” he said. “You look like hell, but I guess you earned the right to. Drinking is sure a disgusting habit.”

Luke turned and went back to the door, let himself in again. He got the bottle and poured himself a pickup drink and drank it. Before, he’d fought off the idea of taking one. If he was still hallucinating, though, he needed one. And, once his throat had quit burning, it did make him feel better physically. Not much, but a little.

He locked the house again and went back to his car. The Martian was still there. Luke got in and started the engine.

Then be leaned his head out of the window. “Hey,” he said, “how can I see the road with you sitting there?”

The Martian looked back and sneered. “What do I care whether you can see the road or not? If you have an accident it won’t hurt me.”

Luke sighed and started the car. He drove the stretch of primitive road to the highway with his head stuck out of the window. Hallucination or no, he couldn’t see through the little green man so he had to see past him.

He hesitated whether or not to stop at the diner for coffee, decided that he might as well. Maybe the Martian would stay where he was. If he didn’t, if he entered the diner too, well, nobody else would be able to see him anyway so what did it matter? Except that he’d have to remember not to talk to him.

The Martian jumped down when he parked the car and followed him into the diner. There weren’t, as happened, any other customers. Just a sallow-faced counterman in a dirty white apron.

Luke sat en a stool. The Martian jumped up and stood on the adjacent stool, leaned his elbows on the counter.

The counterman turned and looked, not at Luke. He groaned, “Oh, God, another one of ’em.”

“Huh?” said Luke. “Another what?” He found himself gripping the edge of the counter so tightly that it hurt his fingers.

“Another Goddam Martian,” said the clerk. “Can’t you see it?”

Luke took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You mean there are more of them?”

The counterman stared at Luke in utter amazement. “Mister, where were you last night? Out on the desert alone and without a radio or TV? Jesus, there are a million of them.”

2.

The counterman was wrong. It was estimated later that there were approximately a billion of them.

And let’s leave Luke Devereaux for a while—we’ll get back to him later—and take a look at things that were happening elsewhere while Luke was entertaining his visitor at the Benson shack near Indio.

As near as matters, a billion Martians. Approximately one to every three human beings—men, women and children—on Earth.

There were close to sixty million in the United States alone and an equivalent number relative to population in every other country in the world. They’d all appeared at, as near as could be determined, exactly the same moment everywhere. In the Pacific time zone, it had been at 8:14 P.M. Other time zones, other times. In New York it was three hours later, 11:14 P.M., with the theaters just letting out and the night clubs just starting to get noisy. (They got noisier after the Martians came.) In London it was 4:14 in the morning—but people woke up all right; the Martians wakened them gleefully. In Moscow it was 7:14 A.M. with people just getting ready to go to work—and the fact that many of them actually went to work speaks well for their courage. Or maybe they were more afraid of the Kremlin than of the Martians. In Tokyo it was 1:14 P.M. and in Honolulu 6:14 P.M.

A great many people died that evening. Or morning or afternoon, depending on where they were.

Casualties in the United States alone are estimated to leave run as high as thirty thousand people, most of them within minutes of the moment of arrival of the Martians.

Some died of heart failure from sheer fright. Others of apoplexy. A great many died of gunshot wounds because a great many people got out guns and tried to shoot Martians. The bullets went right through the Martians without hurting them and all too frequently came to rest embedded in human flesh. A great many people died in automobile accidents. Some Martians had kwimmed themselves into moving vehicles, usually on the front seat alongside the driver. “Faster, Mack, faster,” coming from what a driver thinks is an empty seat beside him is not conducive to his retaining control of the car, even if he doesn’t turn to look.

Casualties among the Martians were zero, although people attacked them—sometimes on sight but more frequently after, as in the case of Luke Devereaux, they had been goaded into an attack—with guns, knives, axes, chairs, pitchforks, dishes, cleavers, saxophones, books, tables, wrenches, hammers, scythes, lamps and lawn mowers, with anything that came to hand. The Martians jeered and made insulting remarks.

Other people, of course, tried to welcome them and to make friends with them. To these people the Martians were much more insulting.

But wherever they arrived and however they were received, to say that they caused trouble and confusion is to make the understatement of the century.

3.

Take, for example, the sad sequence of events at television station KVAK, Chicago. Not that what happened there was basically different from what happened at all other television stations operating with live broadcasts at the time, but we can’t take all of them.

It was a prestige program and a spectacular, rolled into one. Richard Bretaine, the greatest Shakespearean actor in the world, was enacting a condensed-for-television version of Romeo and Juliet, with Helen Ferguson playing opposite him.

The production had started at ten o’clock and by fourteen minutes after the hour had reached the balcony scene of Act 11. Juliet had just appeared on the balcony and Romeo below was sonorously declaiming that most famous of romantic speeches:

That was just how far he got when suddenly there was a little green man perched on the balcony railing about two feet to the left of where Helen Ferguson leaned upon it.

Richard Bretaine gulped and faltered, but recovered and went on. After all, he had no evidence yet that anyone besides himself was seeing what he was seeing. And in any case the show must go on.

He went bravely on:

The word green stuck in his throat. He paused for breath and in that pause he heard a collective murmur that seemed to come from all over the studio.

And in that pause the little man said in a loud clear sneering voice, “Mack, that’s a lot of bull, and you know it.”

Juliet straightened up and turned and saw what was on the railing beside her. She screamed and slumped in a dead faint.

The little green man looked down at her calmly. “What the hell’s wrong with you, Toots?” he wanted to know.

The director of the play was a brave man and a man of action. Twenty years before he had been a lieutenant of marines and had led, not followed, his men in the assaults on Tarawa and Kwajalein; he had earned two medals for bravery beyond the call of duty, at a time when bravery within the call of duty was practically suicide. Since then he had put on sixty pounds and a bay window, but he was still a brave man.

He proved it by running from beside the camera onto the set to grab the intruder and carry him off.

He grabbed, but nothing happened. The little green man gave a loud raspberry, Brooklyn style. Then he jumped to his feet on the railing and, while the director’s hands tried in vain to close around his ankles and not through them, he turned slightly to face the camera and raised his right hand, put thumb to nose and wiggled his fingers.

That was the moment at which the man in the control room suddenly recovered enough presence of mind to cut the show off the air and nobody who wasn’t in the studio at the time knows what happened after that.

For that matter, only a fraction of the original half million or so people who had been watching the show on their television sets saw the show even up to that point, by a minute or two. They had Martians of their own to worry about, right in their own living rooms.

4.

Or take the sad case of honeymooning couples—and at any given moment, including the moment in question, a lot of couples are on honeymoons, or some reasonable if less legal equivalent of honeymoons.

Take, for random example, Mr. and Mrs. William R. Gruder, ages twenty-five and twenty-two respectively, who that very day had been married in Denver. Bill Gruder was an ensign in the navy, stationed as an instructor on Treasure Island, San Francisco. His bride, Dorothy Gruder, nee Armstrong, was a want-ad taker for the Chicago Tribune. They had met and fallen in love while Bill had been at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station near Chicago. After Bill’s transfer to San Francisco they had decided to get married on the first day of a week’s leave Bill had coming, and to meet each other halfway, in Denver, for the purpose. And to spend that week in Denver as a honeymoon, after which he’d return to San Francisco and she’d go with him.

They had been married at four o’clock that afternoon and, had they known what was going to happen within a few hours, they would have gone to a hotel immediately to consummate their marriage before the Martians came. But of course they didn’t know.

At that, they were lucky in one way. They didn’t happen to draw a Martian immediately; they had time to prepare themselves mentally before they saw one.

At 9:14 that evening, Mountain time, they had just checked into a Denver hotel (after having had a leisurely dinner and then killing time over a few cocktails, to show themselves and each other that they had the will power to wait until it was decently time to go to bed and that anyway they hadn’t got married just for that) and the bellboy was just putting down their suitcases in the room.

As Bill was handing him a somewhat overgenerous tip, they heard the first of what turned out to be a series of noises. Someone in a room not too far away screamed, and the scream was echoed by other and more distant screams, seemingly coming from several different directions. There were angry shouts in masculine voices. Then the sound of six shots in rapid succession, as though someone was emptying a revolver. Running footsteps in the corridor.

And other running footsteps that seemed to come from the street outside, and a sudden squeal of brakes and then some more shots. And a loud voice in what seemed to be the room right next to theirs, too muffed for the words to be clear but sounding very much like swearing.

Bill frowned at the bellboy. “I thought this was a quiet hotel, a good one. It used to be.”

The bellboy’s face was bewildered. “It is, Sir. I can’t imagine what in the world—”

He walked rapidly to the door and opened it, looked up and down the corridor. But whoever had been running there was out of sight around a turn.

He said over his shoulder, “I’m sorry, Sir. I don’t know what’s happening, but something is. I better get back to the desk—and I’d suggest you bolt your door right away. Good night and thank you.”

He pulled the door shut behind him. Bill went over and slid the bolt, then turned to Dorothy. “It’s probably nothing, honey. Let’s forget it.”

He took a step toward her, then stopped as there was another fusillade of shots, this time definitely from the street outside, and more running footsteps. Their room was on the third floor and one of the windows was open a few inches; the sounds were clear and definite.

“Just a minute, honey,” Bill said. “Something is going on.”

He strode to the window, threw it up the rest of the way, leaned out and looked down. Dorothy joined him there.

At first they saw nothing but a street empty save for parked cars. Then out of the doorway of an apartment building across the street a man and a child came running. Or was it a child? Even at that distance and in dim light there seemed to be something strange about high. The man stopped and kicked hard at the child, if it was a child. From where they watched it looked for all the world as though the man’s foot went right through the child.

The man fell, a beautiful prat-fall that would have been funny under other circumstances, then got up and started running again, and the child stayed right with him. One of them was talking, but they couldn’t hear the words or tell which it was, except that it didn’t sound like a child’s voice.

Then they were out of sight around the corner. From another direction, far off in the night, came the sound of more shooting.

But there was nothing more to see.

They pulled their heads back in, looked at one another.

“Bill,” Dorothy said, “something’s—Could there be a revolution starting, or—or what?”

“Hell, no, not here. But—” His eyes lighted on a quarter-in-the-slot radio on the dresser and he headed for it, fumbling loose coins out of his pocket. He found a quarter among them, dropped it in the slot and pushed the button. The girl joined him in front of it and they stood, each with an arm around the other, staring at the radio while it warmed up. When there was a humming sound from it, Bill reached with his free hand and turned the dial until there was a voice, a very loud and excited voice.

“…Martians, definitely Martians,” it was saying. “But please, people, do not panic. Don’t be afraid, but don’t try to attack them. It doesn’t do any good anyway. Besides, they are harmless. They can’t hurt you for the same reason that you can’t hurt them. I repeat, they are harrnless.

“I repeat, you can’t hurt them. Your hand goes right through one, as through smoke. Bullets, knives, other weapons are useless for the same reason. And as far as we can see or find out, none of them has tried to hurt any human being anyway. So be calm and don’t panic.”

Another voice was cutting in, more or less garbling what was being said, but the announcer’s voice rose in pitch to carry over the new voice. “Yes, there’s one on my desk right in front of me and he’s talking to me but I’m keeping my mouth so close to the mike that—”

“Bill, that’s a gag, a fiction program. Like the time my parents told me about—back twenty years ago or so. Get another station.”

Bill said, “Sure, honey. Sure it’s a gag.” He turned the dial a quarter of an inch.

Another voice. “…don’t get excited, folks. A lot of people have killed one another or hurt themselves already trying to kill Martians, and they just don’t kill. So don’t try. Stay calm. Yes, they’re all over the world, not just here in Denver. We’ve got part of the staff monitoring other stations, covering as many of them as they can, and we haven’t found a station yet that’s operating that isn’t reporting them, even on the other side of the world.

“But they won’t hurt you. I repeat, they won’t hurt you. So don’t get excited, stay calm. Wait, the one that’s on my shoulder—he’s been trying to say something to me but I don’t know what because I’ve been talking myself. But I’m going to put the mike up to him and I’m going to ask him to reassure you. They’ve been being—well, impolite here to us, but I know that when he knows he’s talking to millions of listeners, he’ll, well—Here, fellow, will you reassure our great audience?” A different voce spoke, a voice a little higher pitched than the announcer’s. “Thanks, Mack. What I’ve been telling you was to screw yourself, and now I can tell all these lovely people to—”

The station went dead.

Bill’s arm had fallen from around Dorothy and hers from around him. They stared at one another. Then she said faintly, “Darling, try another station, That just can’t—”

Bill Gruder reached for the dial, but his hand never got there.

Behind there in the room a voice said, “Hi, Mack. Hi, Toots.”

They whirled. I don’t have to tell you what they saw; you know by now. He was sitting cross-legged on the window sill they had been leaning over a few minutes before.

Neither of them said anything and a full minute went by. Nothing happened except that Bill’s hand found Dorothy’s and squeezed it.

The Martian grinned at them. “Cat got your tongues?”

Bill cleared his throat. “Is this the McCoy? Are you really a—a Martian?”

“Argeth, but you’re stupid. After what you were just listening to, you ask that.”

“Why, you damn little—”

Dorothy grabbed Bill’s arm as he let go of her hand and started forward. “Bill, keep your temper. Remember what the radio said.”

Bill Gruder subsided, but still glared. “All right,” he said to the Martian, “what do you want?”

“Nothing, Mack. Why should I want anything you could give me?”

“Then scram the hell out of here. We don’t want company.”

“Oh, newlyweds maybe?”

Dorothy said, “We were married this afternoon.” Proudly.

“Good,” said the Martian. “There I do want something. I’ve heard about your disgusting mating habits. Now I can watch them.”

Bill Gruder tore loose from his bride’s grip on his arms and strode across the room. He reached for—and right through—the Martian on the window sill. He fell forward so hard that he himself almost went through the open window.

“Temper, temper,” said the Martian. “Chip, Chip.”

Bill went back to Dorothy, put a protecting arm around her, stood glaring.

“I’ll be damned,” he said. “He just isn’t there.”

“That’s what you think, Stupid,” said the Martian.

Dorothy said, “It’s like the radio said, Bill. But remember he can’t hurt us either.”

“He’s hurting me, honey. Just by sitting there”

“You know what I’m waiting for,” the Martian said. “If you want me to go away, go ahead. You people take your clothes off first, don’t you? Well, get undressed.”

Bill took a step forward again. “You little green—”

Dorothy stopped him. “Bill, let me try something.” She stepped around him, looked appealingly at the Martian. “You don’t understand,” she said. “We—make love only in private. We can’t and won’t till you go away. Please go.”

“Nuts, Toots. I’m staying.”

And he stayed.

For three and a half hours, sitting side by side on the edge of the bed they tried to ignore him and outwait him. Not, of course, ever saying to one another that they were trying to outwait him, because they knew by now that that would make him even more stubborn in staying.

Occasionally they talked to one another, or tried to talk, but it wasn’t very intelligent conversation. Occasionally Bill would go over to the radio, turn it on, and fiddle with it for a while, hoping that by now someone would have found some effective way of dealing with Martians, or would give some advice more constructive than simply telling people to stay calm, not to panic. Bill wasn’t panicky but neither was he in any mood to stay calm.

But one radio station was like another—they all sounded like poorly organized madhouses—except for those that had gone off the air completely. And nobody had discovered anything whatsoever to do about the Martians. From time to time a bulletin would go on the air, a statement released by the President of the United States, the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, or some equally important public figure. The statements all advised people to keep calm and not get excited, that the Martians were harmless, and that we should make friends with them if possible. But no station reported a single incident that indicated that anyone on Earth had succeeded in making friends with a single Martian.

Finally Bill gave up the radio as a bad job for the last time and went back to sit on the bed, forgot that he was ignoring the Martian and glowered at him.

The Martian was seemingly paying no attention whatsoever to the Gruders. He had taken a little fifelike musical instrument out of his pocket and was playing tunes to himself on it—if they were tunes. The notes were unbearably shrill and didn’t form any Earthly musical pattern. Like a peanut wagon gone berserk.

Occasionally he’d put down the fife and look up at them, saying nothing, which was probably the most irritating thing he could have said.

At one o’clock in the morning, Bill Gruder’s impatience exploded. He said, “To hell with this. He can’t see in the dark, and if I pull down the shades before I turn off the light—”

Dorothy’s voice sounded worried. “Darling, how do we know he can’t see in the dark. Cats can, and owls.”

Bill hesitated, but only a moment. “Damn it, honey, even if he can see in the dark he can’t see through blankets. We can even undress under the covers.”

He went over to the window and slammed it down, then pulled the shade, taking angry pleasure in reaching right through the Martian to perform both operations. He pulled down the other shade and then turned off the light. Groped his way to the bed.

And, although their feeling of a need for silence inhibited there in some ways, and they didn’t feel it right every to whisper to one another, it was a wedding night after all.

They’d have been less happy about it though (and were less happy about it the next day) had they known, as everyone found out within a day or two, that not only could Martians see in the dark, but they cold see through blankets. Or even walls. Some kind of X-ray vision or, more likely, some special ability like kwimming, enabled them to see right through solid objects. And very good vision it was too, for they could read the fine print on folded documents in closed drawers or in locked safes. They could read letters or even books without opening them.

As soon as this was learned, people knew that they could never again be sure of privacy as long as the Marbans stayed. Even if there wasn’t a Martian in the room with them, there might be one in the next room or outside the building watching them through the wall.

But that is getting ahead of ourselves, because few people learned or guessed it the first night. (Luke Deevereaux, for one, should have guessed it, because his Martian had read Rosalind’s letters in a closed suitcase—but there at that moment Luke didn’t yet know that the Martian couldn’t have simply opened the suitcase and handled the letter. And after Luke did have those two facts to couple together he was in no shape to do any effective coupling.) And that first night, before most people knew, the Martians must have seen plenty. Especially the thousands of them that happened to kwim into already darkened rooms and found themselves interested enough in what was going on there to keep their mouths shut for a while.

5.

America’s second most popular indoor sport took an even worse beating that night, and became impossible then and thereafter.

Take what happened to the gang that played poker every Thursday night at George Keller’s place on the beach a few miles north of Laguna, California. George was a bachelor and retired; he lived there the year round. The others all lived in Laguna, held jobs or owned shops.

That particular Thursday evening there were six of them, counting George. Just the right number for a good game, and they played a good game, all of them, with the stakes just high enough to make it exciting but not high enough to hurt the losers seriously. Dealer’s choice, but dealers chose only between draw poker and five-card stead, never a wild game. With all of them poker was more nearly a religion than it was a vice. Thursday nights from around eight until around one—or sometimes even two—in the morning were the highlights in their lives, the shining hours to which they looked forward throughout the duller days and evenings of the week. You couldn’t call them fanatics, perhaps, but you could call them dedicated.

By a few minutes after eight they were comfortable in shirt sleeves and with neckties loosened or taken off, sitting around the big table in the living room ready to start play as soon as George had finished shuffling the new deck he had just broken out. They’d all bought chips and they all had tinkling glasses or opened beer cans in front of them. (They always drank, but always moderately, never enough to spoil their judgment or the game.)

George finished his shuffle and dealt the cards around face up to see who’d catch a jack for the first deal; it went to Gerry Dix, head teller at the Laguna bank.

Dix dealt and won the first hand himself on three tens. It was a small pot, though; only George had been able to stay and draw cards with him. And George hadn’t even been able to call; he’d drawn to a pair of nines and hadn’t improved them.

Next man around, Bob Trimble, proprietor of the local stationery store, gathered in the cards for next deal. “Ante up, boys,” be said. “This one’ll be better. Everybody gets good cards.”

Across the room the radio played soft music. George Keller liked background music and knew which stations to get it on at any given hour of a Thursday evening.

Trimble dealt. George picked up his hand and saw two small pairs, sevens and treys. Openers, but a bit weak to open on right under the gun; someone would probably raise him. If someone else opened he could stay and draw a card. “By me,” he said.

Two more passed and then Wainright—Harry Wainright, manager of a small department store in South Laguna—opened the pot for a red chip. Dix and Trimble both stayed, without raising, and George did the same. The men who’d passed between George and Wainright passed again. That left four of them in the game and gave George an inexpensive draw to his two small pairs; if he made a full house out of them he’d probably have the winning hand.

Trimble picked up the deck again. “Cards, George?”

“Just a second,” George said suddenly. He’d turned his head and was listening to the radio. It wasn’t playing music now and, in retrospect, he realized that it hadn’t been for the past minute or two. Somebody was yammering, and much too excitedly for it to be a commercial; the voice sounded actually hysterical. Besides, it was around a quarter after eight and if he had the program he thought he had, it was the Starlight Hour, which was interrupted only once, at the half hour, by a commercial break.

Could this possibly by an emergency announcement—a declaration of war, warning of an impending air attack, or something of the sort?

“Just a second, Bob,” he said to Trimble, putting down his hand and getting up out of his chair. He went over to the radio and turned up the volume.

“…little green men, dozens of them, all ever the studio and the station. They say they’re Martians. They’re being reported from all over. But don’t get excited—they can’t hurt you. Perfectly harmless because they’re impal—im—you can’t touch them; your hand or anything you throw at them goes right through like they weren’t there, and they can’t touch you for the same reason. So don’t—”

There was more.

All six of them were listening now. Then Gerry Dix said, “What the hell, George? You holding up the game just to listen to a science-fiction program?”

George said, “But is it? I had the Goddam Starlight Hour tuned in there. Music.”

“That’s right,” Walt Grainger said. “A minute or two ago they were playing a Strauss waltz. Vienna Woods, I think.”

“Try a different station, George,” Trimble suggested. Just then, before George could reach out for the dial, the radio went suddenly dead.

“Damn,” George said, fiddling with the dials. “A tube must have just conked out. Can’t even get a hum out of it now.”

Wainright said, “Maybe the Martians did it. Come on back to the game, George, before my cards get cold. They’re hot enough right now to take this little hand.”

George hesitated, then looked toward Walt Grainger. All five of the men had come out from Laguna in one car, Grainger’s.

“Walt,” George said, “you got a radio in your car?”

“No.”

George said, “Damn it. And no telephone because the lousy phone company won’t run poles this far out from—Oh, hell, let’s forget it.”

“If you’re really worried, George,” Walt said, “we can take a quick run into town. Either you and me and let the others keep playing, or all six of us can go, and be back here in less than an hour. It won’t lose us too much time; we can play a little later to make up for it.”

“Unless we run into a spaceshipload of Martians on the way,” Gerry Dix said.

“Nuts,” Wainright said, “George, what happened is your radio jumped stations somehow. It was going on the blink anyway or it wouldn’t be dead now.”

“I’ll go along with that,” Dix said. “And what the hell, if there are Martians around let ’em come out here if they want to see us. This is our poker night, Gentlemen. Let’s play cards, and let the chips fall where they may.”

George Keller sighed. “Okay,” he said.

He walked back to the table and sat down, picked up his hand and looked at it to remind himself what it had been. Oh, yes, sevens and treys. And it was his turn to draw.

“Cards?” Trimble asked, picking up the deck again. “One for me,” George said, discarding his fifth card. But Trimble never dealt it.

Suddenly, across the table, Walt Grainger said, “Jesus Christ!” in such a tone of voice that they all froze for a second; then they stared at him and quickly turned to see what he was staring at.

There were two Martians. One was sitting on top of a floor lamp; the other was standing atop the radio cabinet. George Keller, the host, was the one who recovered first, probably because he was the one of them who’d come nearest to giving credence to the report they’d heard so briefly on the radio.

“H-hello,” he said, a bit weakly.

“Hi, Mack,” said the Martian on the lamp. “Listen, you better throw that hand of yours away after the draw.”

“Huh?”

“I’m telling you, Mack. Sevens and threes you got there, and you’re going to have a full house because the top card on the deck’s a seven.”

The other Martian said, “That’s straight, Mack. And you’d lose your shirt on that full because this slob—” He pointed to Harry Wainright, who had opened the pot.—opened on three jacks and the fourth jack is the second card from the top of the deck. He’ll have four of them.”

“Just play the hand out and see,” said the first Martian. Harry Wainright stood up and slammed his cards down face up on the table, three Jacks among them. He reached over and took the deck from Trimble, faced the top two cards. They were a seven and a jack.

As stated.

“Did you think we were kidding you, Mack?” asked the first Martian.

“Why, you lousy—” The muscles of Wainright’s shoulders bunched under his shirt as he started for the nearest Martian.

“Don’t!” George Keller said. “Harry, remember the radio. You can’t throw them out if you can’t touch them.”

“That’s right, Mack,” said the Martian. “You’ll just make a worse ass out of yourself than you are already.”

The other Martian said, “Why don’t you get back to the game? We’ll help all of you, every hand.”

Trimble stood up. “You take that one, Harry,” he said grimly. “I’ll take this one. If the radio was right we can’t throw them out, but damned if it’ll hurt to try.”

It didn’t hurt to try. But it didn’t help either.

6.

Human casualties in all countries that night—or, in the opposite hemisphere, that day—were highest among the military.

At all military installations sentries used their guns. Some challenged and then fired; most of them just fired, and kept on firing until their guns were empty. The Martians jeered and egged them on.

Soldiers who didn’t have guns at hand ran to get them. Some got grenades. Officers used their side arms.

All with the result that carnage was terrific, among the soldiers. The Martians got a big bang out of it.

And the greatest mental torture was suffered by the officers in charge of really top secret military installations. Because quickly or slowly, according to how smart they were, they realized that there no longer were any secrets, top or otherwise. Not from the Martians. Not, since the Martians loved to tattle, from anyone else.

Not that, except for the sake of causing trouble, they had any interest in military matters per se. In fact, they were not in the slightest degree impressed by their examination of secret armed-rocket launching sites, secret A- and H-bomb stock piles, secret files and secret plans.

“Peanut stuff, Mack,” one of them sitting on the desk of a two-star general in charge of Base Able (up to then our really top military secret) told the general. “Peanut stuff. You couldn’t lick a tribe of Eskimos with everything you got if the Eskimos knew how to vahr. And we might teach them to, just for the hell of it.”

“What the hell is vahring?” roared the general.

“None of your Goddam business, Mack.” The Martian turned to one of the other Martians in the room; there were four of them altogether. “Hey,” he said, “let’s kwim over and take a look at what the Russkies got. And compare notes with them.”

He and the other Martian vanished.

“Listen to this,” one of the two remaining Martians said to the other. “This is a real boff.” And he started reading aloud from a supersecret document in a locked safe in the corner.

The other Martian laughed scornfully.

The general laughed too, although not scornfully. He kept on laughing until two of his aides led him away quietly.

The Pentagon was a madhouse, and so was the Kremlin, although neither building, it must be said, drew more than its proportionate share of Martians, either at the time of their arrival or at any time thereafter.

The Martians were as impartial as they were ubiquitous. No one place or type of place interested them more than did another. White House or cathouse, it didn’t matter.

They were no more or less interested in big things like, say, the installations in New Mexico where the space station was being worked on than they were in the details of the sex life of the humblest coolie in Shanghai. They sneered equally at both.

And everywhere and in every way they invaded privacy. Privacy, did I say? There no longer was such a thing.

And it was obvious, even that first night, that for as long as they stayed there would be no more privacy, no more secrecy, either in the lives of individuals or in the machinations of nations.

Everything concerning us, individually or collectively, interested them—and amused and disgusted them.

Obviously the proper study of Martiankind was man. Animals, as such, did not interest them, although they did not hesitate to frighten or tease animals whenever such action would have the indirect effect of annoying or injuring human beings.

Horses, in particular, were afraid of them and horseback riding, either for sport or as a means of transportation, became so dangerous as to be impossible.

Only a foolhardy person, while the Martians were with us, dared try to milk a cow that was not firmly secured with its feet tied down and its head in a stanchion.

Dogs became frenetic; many bit their masters and had to be put away.

Only cats, each after an initial experience or two, became used to them and took them calmly and with aplomb. But then cats have always been different.