Fredric Brown: Martians, Go Home

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.

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.