Martians, Go Home

by Fredric Brown

  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:

  But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?

  It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!

  Arise, far sun, and kill the envious moon,

  Who is already sick and pale with grief,

  That thou her maid…

  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:

  …art far more fair than she:

  Be not her maid, since she is envious;

  Her vestral livery is but sick and green—

  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 i
n 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—”