The Second Invasion from Mars

by Arkady Strugatsky

  Morpheus related that not far from Miletus a Martian flying machine had made a forced landing because the pilot was not accustomed to the increased force of gravity; it was then attacked by a group of malefactors, but it shot down every last one of them with a special electric gun, after which it blew up, leaving a huge hole with glass sides. All of Miletus was supposedly taking trips to look at the hole.

  Myrtilus, repeating what his farmer brother had told him, said that there was a ferocious band of Amazons attacking the Martians and abducting them for the purpose of procreation. One-legged Polyphemus, for his part, said the following. Last night, as he was patrolling Park Street, four Martian cars slipped noiselessly up on him. An unfamiliar voice, in broken speech and with an unpleasant lisp, asked him how to get to the tavern, and although the tavern does not represent any governmental significance, Polyphemus refused to answer out of pride and contempt for the conquerors, so the Martians had to move on with long faces. Polyphemus assured us that his life had been hanging by a thread all the while, he had even supposedly spied long black barrels aimed right at him, but he had never flinched and never budged.

  "What's wrong with you, would it put you out to tell them?,, asked Myrtilus, who hadn't forgotten the insult to his family. "I know bastards like that. You drive into an unfamiliar place, you feel like having a drink, and for no reason at all they won't tell you where the tavern is."

  It almost came to a fight again, but here Pandareus came up and, smiling joyfully, reported that finally Minotaur had been deported from our city. The Martians had deported him. They suspected him of connections of terrorists and of sabotage. We all objected: to leave the city without a honey-dipper in the hottest time of the year - why, it's a crime!

  "Enough!" roared one-legged Polyphemus. "We've suffered this damned yoke long enough! Patriots, follow my command! Fa-a-all in!"

  We had already begun to form lines when Pandareus calmed everyone by saying that the Martians intended to begin work next week laying in a sewer system, and meanwhile a young policeman would be put in place of Minotaur. Everyone said that his was another matter, and again they turned to conversation about the terrorists. And about how dirty it was to lay ambushes.

  Dymus, rolling his eyes, told us a frightening story. For three days now some kind of people have been roaming the town and treating everyone they meet with candy. "You eat a piece of that candy - and boink! - you've had it." They hope to poison all the Martians this way. We, of course, didn't believe his story, but it was scary anyway.

  Here Calais, who had been twitching and sputtering for some time, suddenly babbled: "B-b-but Apollo here has a son-in-law who's a terrorist."

  Everyone sort of moved away from me, and Pandareus, thrusting out his lower jaw, announced weightily: 'That's right. We have information to that effect."

  I became highly indignant and told them all that, first, a father-in-law is not responsible for his son-in-law; second, Pandareus himself has a nephew who spent five years inside for licentious behavior; third, I have always been at loggerheads with Charon, as anyone could confirm; and fourth, I know nothing of the sort about Charon - the man left on assignment and neither hide nor hair of him has been seen since. These were unpleasant moments, but the flimsiness of the accusation was so obvious that everything ended happily and the conversation turned to stomach juice.

  It turns out that the boys have been giving stomach juice for two days already and receiving cash for it on the spot. Only I am left out. In some incomprehensible way I am always left out of something profitable to me. There are such hapless people in the world: in the barracks they are always cleaning the urinals, at the front they fall into the "buckets," they are the first to get the worst, the last to get the best. That's the sort of man I am. Well, so be it. All the boys were boasting about how pleased they were now. How could they not be!

  Here a Martian car drove across the square, and one-legged Polyphemus pronounced thoughtfully: "What do you think, old buddies, if we let her have it with the shotgun, would it go through or not?"

  "Well, if it's a bullet," said Silenus, "then it ought to go through."

  "That depends on where you hit it," objected Myrtilus. "If it's fore or aft, then no way will it go through."

  "And if it's broadside?" asked Polyphemus.

  "Broadside it'll probably go through," answered Myrtilus.

  I was about to say that a grenade wouldn't even go through it, but Pandareus beat me to the punch by saying profoundly, "No, old boys, you're arguing over nothing. They're invulnerable."

  "Broadside they're invulnerable?" asked Myrtilus venomously.

  "All over," said Pandareus.

  "What, even by a bullet?" asked Myrtilus.

  "Even to cannonfire," said Pandareus with great gravity.

  Here everyone began to shake his head and slap Pandareus on the back. "Yeah, Pan," they said. "You're the one. You slipped up that time, Pander, old fellow. You didn't think, old-timer, you just babbled." And grouchy Paralus rubbed it in right away, saying that if you fired a cannon at Pandareus broadside, you might make a dent, but if you hit him aft, in the head, it would just bounce off.

  Well, Pandareus puffed up, buttoned his jacket all the way up to the top button, rolled his crayfish eyes and bawled: "You've had your say - that's it! Dis-s-perse! In the name of the law."

  Losing no time, I headed for the donor station. Of course, failure awaited me once again. They didn't take any juice from me, so I didn't get any money. It turns out they have a rule that they must draw off the juice on an empty stomach, and I had had lunch only two hours before. They gave me a donor card and invited me to come tomorrow morning. By the way, I ought to say that the donor station produced a most favorable impression on me. The most recent equipment. The probe is smeared with the very best brands of Vaseline. The stomach juice is obtained automatically, but under the supervision of an experienced physician, not some kind of ruffian. The personnel are without exception polite and well mannered; it's immediately apparent that they are well paid. Everything is spanking clean, the furniture is new. While waiting your turn in line you can watch television or read fresh newspapers. And what kind of line is there? Far shorter than in the tavern. And the money is paid out immediately, straight from the machine. Yes, a high level of culture, humaneness and concern for the donor are felt throughout. And to think that only three days ago this house was the den of such a man as Mr. Laomedon!

  However, thoughts of my son-in-law did not leave me, and I felt it necessary to discuss this vexing new problem with Achilles. I found him, as always, behind the cash register looking through his issue of Cosmos. The tale of my adventures made a big impression on him, and I felt that he was looking at me now with completely different eyes. But when we came to Charon, he simply shrugged his shoulders and said that my course of action and the dangers I had faced would not only fully rehabilitate me, but possibly Charon as well. Besides, he pretty much doubted that Charon was capable of becoming involved in anything illicit. Charon, he claimed, was most likely in Marathon helping to re-establish order, thereby trying to do something useful for his hometown, as behooves every cultured citizen, and all those envious townsmen, those Pandareuses and Calaises, who can only spout irresponsible gibberish, were simply slandering him.

  I had my doubts on that score, but naturally I kept silent and simply marveled that we, the residents of really only a small town, knew each other so poorly. I realized it had been pointless to talk about this matter with Achilles, and so, pretending that his considerations had calmed me, I turned the conversation to stamps. But here is where the surprising event occurred.

  I recall that at first I was speaking with some constraint, because my main purpose was somehow to distract Achilles from our conversation about Charon. But it happened that we began to talk about that blessed inverted lithographic overprint. Some time ago I had expounded completely irrefutable proof to Achilles that this was a forgery, and it seemed the question had been settled. However
, the day before, Achilles had read some miserable pamphlet and deemed himself qualified to put forward his own considerations. This was something unprecedented in our relationship. Naturally, I lost my temper, flew into a rage and said straight out that Achilles didn't know anything about philately, a mere year ago he didn't know the difference between a Klemmtasche and a Klassier and it was no wonder that his collection was chock full of defective specimens. Achilles also flared up, and we began a real knock-down drag-out fight, of which I am capable only with Achilles and only over stamps.

  I seemed to become vaguely aware, while we were arguing, that someone had come into the drugstore and extended a paper to Achilles over my shoulder, and Achilles had fallen silent for a moment, which silence I immediately used to drive a wedge into his incompetent observations. After that I recall an irritating difficulty, something extraneous persistently pressing into my consciousness, preventing me from thinking systematically and logically. However, this eventually passed, and the next stage of this occurrence, which is most interesting from the psychological point of view, was the moment when our argument ended and we fell silent, tired and somewhat offended at each other.

  I recall that at that precise moment I suddenly felt an overwhelming need to look over the premises, and I experienced a dull surprise when I discovered no particular change. At the same time I distinctly knew that some kind of change should have occurred during our argument. Here I noticed that Achilles was also experiencing some emotional discomfort. He also looked around and then walked along the counter, glancing under it. Finally he said, "Tell me, would you, Phoebus - didn't someone come in here?" He was disturbed by exactly the same thing as I. His question dotted all the i's, and I understood what all my confusion was about.

  "A blue hand!" I exclaimed, enlightened by a suddenly bright recollection. As if before my very eyes, I could see blue fingers holding the piece of paper.

  "No, not a hand!" said Achilles excitedly. "A tentacle! Like an octopus!"

  "But I distinctly remember fingers...."

  "A tentacle, like a polyp!" Achilles repeated, looking around feverishly. Then he grabbed the book of prescriptions from the counter and hurriedly flipped the pages. I went numb all over from a dark foreboding. Holding the piece of paper in his hand, he slowly raised his wide-open eyes to me, and I knew what he would now say.

  "Phoebus," he uttered in a hushed voice. "It was a Martian."

  We were both shaken, and Achilles, as a man close to medicine, considered it necessary to fortify me and himself with cognac, a bottle of which he took from a big cardboard box labeled "Norsulphazolum." Yes, while we were arguing over that inauspicious overprint, a Martian had stopped in the drugstore, handed Achilles a written order to turn over to the bearer all medicinal compounds containing narcotics, and Achilles, without understanding or remembering anything, had handed him a package of such medicines prepared in advance, after which the Martian had gone away without leaving anything in our memory besides snatches of recollections and a dim image caught out of the corner of the eye.

  I distinctly recalled a blue hand with short sparse hairs and meaty fingers without nails, and I was amazed that a sight like that did not instantly knock out of my head any ability to carry on an abstract argument.

  Achilles did not recall any hand, but he did remember a long tentacle, incessantly pulsating, extended toward him as if out of nowhere. Besides this, he recalled that the sight of this tentacle had caused him extreme irritation, for he considered it a joke that was quite out-of-place. He recalled also how he had angrily tossed the package of medicines on the counter without looking, but on the other hand he absolutely did not recall whether he had read the prescription and entered it in the book, although it was obvious that he had read it (since he had released the medicines) and had entered it (since it was there).

  We drank another glass of cognac, and Achilles called to mind that the Martian had stood to the left of me and had worn a fashionable sweater with a V neck, and I recalled that on one of the blue fingers there had been a sparkling ring of white metal with a precious stone. Besides this, I recalled the sound of an automobile. Achilles wiped his brow and announced that the sight of the prescription reminded him of the sensation of dissatisfaction at someone's attempts, insistent to the point of impoliteness, to break into our argument with some completely ridiculous point of view about philately in general and inverted overprints in particular.

  Then I remembered that, yes, the Martian had actually spoken and his voice had been piercing and unpleasant.

  "Rather, it was low and condescending," objected Achilles.

  However, I held my own view, and Achilles, getting hot again, called his assistant out of the laboratory and asked him what sounds he had heard during the last hour. The assistant, an uncommonly dim-witted young man, blinked his stupid eyes and mumbled that all the time he heard only our voices, but once it seemed that someone had turned on the radio, but he hadn't paid any special attention to it. We sent the young pharmacist away and downed another drop of cognac. Our memories cleared up completely, and although we differed in our opinion of the Martian's appearance as before, we fully agreed on the sequence of events. The Martian, without a doubt, had come to the drugstore in a car; he did not turn off the motor, he entered the premises, he stopped to the left of me, almost beside me, and he stood for a while without moving, examining us and listening to our conversation. (My flesh crawled when I realized my complete helplessness at that terrible moment.) Then he made several remarks to us, apparently concerning philately and apparently completely incompetent, then he extended the instructions to Achilles. Achilles took it, looked at it hastily and stuck it in the book. Further, Achilles, put out by this intrusion, handed over the package of medicines, and the Martian left, having understood that we did not wish to admit him into the conversation. Thus, leaving aside the details, there arose the image of this creature who, although poorly versed in matters of philately, was by no means devoid of a proper education and a certain humanity, if you take into consideration that he could have done with us whatever he'd wanted. We drank another glass of cognac and felt that we could no longer remain here and keep the boys in ignorance of this occurrence. Achilles hid the bottle, left the assistant pharmacist in charge and we beat it to the tavern on the double.

  The boys reacted to our story about the Martian's visit in various ways. One-legged Polyphemus openly called it a lie. "Just take a sniff, they're reeking of it. They've guzzled so much, they're seeing blue devils."

  Rational Silenus proposed that it had not actually been a Martian, but some kind of Negro - sometimes Negroes have a bluish tint to their skin.

  Paralus - well, he was the same old Paralus. "A good druggist we've got," he said grouchily. "Someone unknown comes from somewhere unknown, slips him some unknown piece of paper, and he gives it to him without a peep. No, we won't build a reasonable society with druggists like that. What kind of druggist is it who doesn't know what's going on because of his lousy stamps?"

  But all the others were on our side, the whole tavern gathered around us. Even the golden youth with Mr. Nicostratus in the lead poured over from the bar to listen. They made us repeat again and again where I had stood and where the Martian had stood when he'd extended his extremity, and so on. Very soon I noticed that Achilles was beginning to embellish the story with new details, shocking for the most part. (Such as that the Martian blinked only two eyes like us when he was silent, but when he opened his mouth some additional eyes opened, one red, the other white.) I commented on this, but he objected that cognac and brandy had a remarkable effect on human memory, this was, so to say, a medical fact. I decided not to argue with him, asked lapetus to serve me supper and, laughing to myself, began to observe how Achilles was surely becoming his own worst enemy. In ten minutes or so they all knew he was talking through his hat, and they stopped paying any attention to him. The golden youth returned to the bar, and soon the same old complaint was heard from there: "I'm tired
of it…. It's so dull around here. Martians? Bull, senility.... What should we knock off tonight, sports?"

  At our table the old argument about stomach juice was renewed. What in the world is it, what good is it, what do the Martians need it for, and what do we ourselves need it for? Achilles explained that man needs stomach juice for the digestion of food, it would be impossible to digest food without it. But his authority had already been undermined, and no one believed him.

  "You ought to shut your trap, you old enema bag," Polyphemus told him. "What do you mean, impossible. This is the third day I've given the juice, and nothing's wrong, Fm digesting. You should digest so good.. .."

  In despair they turned to Calais for consultation, but this naturally led to nothing. After prolonged spasms, which kept the entire tavern on tenterhooks, he only burst out: "A g-g-gendarme's already an old man at thirty, if you really want to know." These words referred to some half-forgotten conversation which had taken place at The Five Spot sometime before lunch, and in fact was meant not for us, but for Pandareus, who had gone to work a long time before. We left Calais to work up an answer to our question, while we fell to speculation.

  Silenus proposed that the civilization of Mars had come to a physiological dead end; they no longer could produce their own juice, and so they had to locate other sources.

  Iapetus put in his two bits from behind the bar, stating that the Martians use the stomach juice as a ferment for the production of a special kind of energy. "Like atomic energy," he added as an afterthought.

  But that fool Dymus, who had never distinguished himself for bold flights of fancy, stated that human stomach juice for a Martian was the same as cognac or beer for us, or say, juniper vodka, and with this statement spoiled the appetite of everyone who was just beginning to eat.