Fredric Brown - Martians, Go Home

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.

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.

The Martians stayed, and no one knew or could guess how long they might stay. For all we knew, they might be here permanently. It was none of our business.

And little if anything was learned about them beyond what was obvious within a day or two after their arrival. Physically, they were pretty much alike. Although not identical, they averaged considerably less physical variation from one of them to another than human beings, of the same race and sex, average.

The only important difference among them was a difference in size; the largest among them was as tall as three feet and the smallest as short as two feet, three inches.

There were several schools of thought, among human beings, as to the explanation of this difference in height among them. Some people thought that they were all adult males—which, judging from their faces, they appeared to me—and that variation in height among them was as natural among them as is variation in height among human beings.

Other people thought that the difference in height indicated a difference in age; that probably they were all adult males but that, with them, growth did not cease at adulthood and that the short ones were relatively young and the tall ones relatively old.

Still other people thought that the tall ones were probably males and the shorter ones females, and that seen differences between them, whatever they might be, didn’t show except in height when they had their clothes on. And since no one ever saw a Martian with his clothes off, this possibility, like the others, could be neither proved nor disproved.

And then there was the theory that all Martians were alike sexually, being either bisexual or having no sex at all, as we understand sex, and that possibly they reproduced by parthenogenesis or some means we couldn’t even guess at. For all we knew they grew on trees like coconuts and dropped off when they were ripe, already adult and intelligent, ready to face their world, or to face and sneer at ours. In that case, the smallest among them could have been babies, as it were, just off the tree but fully as hateful as the bigger and older ones. If the smallest among them weren’t infants, then we never saw a Martian infant.