Martians, Go Home Page 5

  And they certainly created sounds. Actual sounds, not just in the mind of the listener; the fact that the sounds they made could be recorded on wax or tape was proof of that. They could really talk and they could also (but seldom did) knock on doors. The Martian who knocked on Luke Devereaux’s door on what came to be called Coming Night had been an exception in that particular respect. Most of them had kwimmed their way, without knocking, right into living rooms, bedrooms, television stations, night clubs, theaters, taverns (there must have been some wonderful scenes in taverns that night), barracks, igloos, jails, everywhere.

  They also showed clearly on photographs, as Luke Devereaux would have found out had he ever bothered to have that roll of film developed. Whether they were there or not, they were opaque to light. But not to radar, and scientists tore their hair over that.

  They all insisted that they had no names, or even numbers, and that names were ridiculous and unnecessary. None of them ever addressed a human being by name. In the United States they called every man Mack and every woman Toots; elsewhere they used local equivalents.

  In one field at least they showed tremendous aptitude—linguistics. Luke’s Martian hadn’t been bragging when he said he could learn a new language in an hour or so. The Martians who appeared among various primitive peoples whose tongues had never been broadcast by radio arrived without knowing a word of the language, but they were speaking it adequately within an hour, fluently within a few hours. And whatever language they spoke, they spoke it idiomatically, even slangily, with none of the stiffness and awkwardness with which human beings speak a new language which they have recently acquired.

  Many words in their vocabulary were obviously not learned from radio broadcasts. But that isn’t difficult to account for; within seconds of their arrival they, or many of them, had plenty of opportunity to pick up a liberal education in profanity. The Martian, for example, who had broken up Romeo and Juliet on television with his vulgar comment on Romeo’s balcony scene speech was no doubt one who heel first kwimmed into, say, a tavern but had sought greener pastures within a matter of seconds when he had found too many others of his kind had kwimmed into the same place.

  Mentally, the Martians were even more alike than they were physically, although again there was minor variation—some of them were even worse than others.

  But one and all they were abusive, aggravating, annoying, brash, brutal, cantankerous, caustic, churlish, detestable, discourteous, execrable, fiendish, flippant, fresh, galling, hateful, hostile, ilI-tempered, insolent, impudent, jabbering, jeering, knavish killjoys. They were leering, loathsome, malevolent, malignant, nasty, nauseating, objectionable, peevish, perverse, quarrelsome, rude, sarcastic, splenetic, treacherous, truculent, uncivil, ungracious, waspish, xenophobic, yapping, and zealous in making themselves obnoxious to and in making trouble for everyone with whom they came in contact.

  2.

  Alone again and feeling blue—there wasn’t even a Martian present or he’d have felt bluer—Luke Devereaux took his time unpacking two suitcases in the little room in a cheap rooming house he’d just taken in Long Beach.

  It was just two weeks after Coming Night. Luke had fifty-six dollars left between himself and starvation and he’d come to Long Beach to look for a job, any kind of job that would keep him eating after that fifty-six dollars was gone. He’d given up even trying to write, for a while.

  He’d been lucky in one way, very lucky. He’d been able to sublet his hundred-dollars-a-month Hollywood bachelor apartment, which he’d furnished himself, for the same figure by renting it furnished. That left him free to cut his living expenses and still hang onto the bulk of his possessions without having to pay storage on them. He couldn’t have sold them for enough to bother about anyway because the most expense items were his television set and his radio, and both of those were utterly worthless at the present moment. If the Martians ever left, they’d be valuable again.

  So here he was in the cheapest district of Long Beach and all he’d brought with him were two suitcases of clothes and his portable typewriter, the latter for writing letters of application.

  He’d probably have to write plenty of them, he thought gloomily. Even here in Long Beach the situation was going to be tough. In Hollywood it would have been impossible.

  Hollywood was the hardest hit spot in the country. Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Culver City and the whole movie colony area. Everybody connected in whatever capacity with the movie and television and radio businesses was out of work. Actors, producers, announcers, everyone. All in the same boat, and the boat had sunk suddenly.

  And by secondary reaction everything else in Hollywood was being hit hard. Bankrupt or failing were the thousands of shops, beauty parlors, hotels, taverns, restaurants and call houses whose clientele had been mostly among movie people.

  Hollywood was becoming a deserted village. The only people staying there were those who, for one reason or another, couldn’t get out. As he, Luke, wouldn’t have been able to get out, except by walking, if he’d waited much longer.

  Probably, he thought, he should have gone farther from Hollywood than Long Beach but he hated to cut deeply into his dwindling hoard for long-distance transportation. And anyway, things were tough all over.

  Throughout the country—except Hollywood, which simply gave up—BUSINESS AS USUAL had been the slogan for a week now.

  And in some businesses it worked, more or less. You can get used to driving a truck with a Martian sneering at the way you drive or jumping up and down on the hood—or if you can’t get used to it, at least you can do it. Or you can sell groceries across a counter with a Martian sitting—weightlessly but irremovably—on top of your head and dangling his feet in front of your face while he heckles you and the customer impartially. Things like that are wearing on the nerves but they can be done.

  Other businesses did not fare so well. As we have seen, the entertainment business was the first and hardest hit.

  Live television was particularly impossible. Although filmed television shows were not interrupted that first night, except at some stations where technicians panicked at the sight of Martians, every live television broadcast was off the air within minutes. The Martians loved to disrupt live broadcasts, either television or radio ones.

  Some television and radio stations closed down completely, for the duration, or forever if the Martians stayed forever. Others were still operating, using only canned material, but it was obvious that people would tire soon of seeing and hearing old material over and over again—when a temporary absence of Martians in the living room permitted them to see and hear it without interruption.

  And, of course, no one in his right mind was interested in buying new television and radio sets, so there went a good many more thousands of people out of work all over the country, all of those engaged in the manufacture and sale of television and radio sets.

  And the many thousands who had worked in theaters, concert halls, stadiums, other places of mass entertainment. Mass entertainment of any sort was out; when you brought together a mass of people you brought together a mass of Martians, and whatever was supposed to be entertainment ceased to be such even if it was possible for it to continue at all. Scratch baseball players, ticket sellers, ushers, wrestlers, projectionists…

  Yes, things were tough all over. The Great Depression of the nineteen thirties was beginning to look like a period of prosperity.

  Yes, Luke was thinking, it was going to be a tough job to find a job. And the sooner he got at it the better. He tossed the last few things impatiently into the dresser drawer, noticing somewhat to his surprise that Margie’s Y.W.C.A. T-shirt was among them—why had he brought that?—felt his face to remind himself that he’d shaved, ran his pocket comb quickly through his hair, and left the room.

  The telephone was on a table in the hall and he sat down at it and pulled the phone book over. Two Long Beach newspapers came first. Not that he had any real hope of getting on one, but reporting was the le
ast onerous type of work he could think of, and it wouldn’t cost him anything to try, except for a couple of dimes in the telephone. Besides he knew Hank Freeman on the News, which might give him an in on one of the two papers.

  He dialed the News. There was a Martian at the switchboard jabbering along with the switchboard girl, trying to foul up calls and sometimes succeeding, but he finally got through to Hank. Hank worked on the city desk.

  “Luke Devereaux, Hank. How are things?”

  “Wonderful, if you don’t care what you say. How are the Greenies treating you, Luke?”

  “No worse than anybody else, I guess. Except that I’m looking for a job. How are chances of getting on the News?”

  “Zero point zero. There’s a waiting list as long as your arm for every kind of job here. Plenty of ’em with newspaper experience, too—left newspaper work to go into radio or TV. You never worked on a newspaper, did you?”

  “I carried a route when I was a kid.”

  “You couldn’t even get a job doing that now, pal. Sorry, there isn’t a ghost of a chance of anything, Luke. Things are so tough we’re all taking pay cuts. And with so much high-powered talent trying to get in, I’m afraid of losing my own job.”

  “Pay cuts? With no competition from newscasts, I’d think newspapers would be booming.”

  “Circulation is booming. But a newspaper’s revenue depends on advertising, not on circulation. And that’s way down. So many people are out of work and not buying that every store in town’s had to cut its advertising budget with a dull ax. Sorry, Luke.”

  Luke didn’t bother to phone the other newspaper.

  He went out, walked over to Pine Avenue and south into the business district. The streets were full of people and Martians. The people were mostly glum and silent, but the strident voices of the Martians made up for that. There was less auto traffic than usual and most drivers drove very cautiously. Martians had a habit of kwimming suddenly onto the hoods of cars, right in front of windshields. The only answer to that was to drive slowly and with a foot on the brake pedal ready to stop the instant vision was cut off.

  It was dangerous, too, to drive through a Martian, unless you were sure that he wasn’t standing in front of some obstacle to block your view of it.

  Luke saw an example of that. There vas a line of Martians part way across Pine Avenue just south of Seventh Street. They seemed to be very quiet, for Martians, and Luke wondered why—until a Cadillac came along at about twenty miles an hour and the driver, with a grim look on his face, suddenly speeded up and swerved slightly to drive through the line. It had been masking two-foot-wide trench dug for laying sewer pipe. The Cadillac bounced like a bronco and the right front wheel came off and rolled ahead of it down Pine Avenue. The driver broke the windshield with his head and got out of the wrecked car dripping blood and profanity. The Martians yelled with glee.

  At the next corner, Luke bought a newspaper. And, seeing a shoeshine stand, decided to get a shine while he looked at the ads. His last paid-for shine until after he was solvent and working again, he told himself; hereafter he’d keep his own shoes shined.

  He turned to the want ads, looked for MALE HELP WANTED. At first be thought there weren’t any such ads, then he found a quarter of a column of them. But there might as well have been none, he realized within a few minutes, as far as he was concerned. Jobs offered were in two categories only—highly skilled technical jobs demanding a special training and experience, and NO EXPERIENCE NEEDED sucker ads for house-to-house canvassers on straight commission. Luke had tried that toughest of rackets years before when he was in his twenties and just getting a start at writing; he’d convinced himself that be couldn’t even give away free samples, let alone sell anything. And that had been in “good tunes.” No use his trying it again now, no matter bow desperate he got.

  Folding back the paper to the front page, he wondered if he’d made a mistake in picking Long Beach. Why had he? Not, certainly, because the mental hospital his ex-wife Margie worked at was here. He wasn’t going to look her up; he was through with women. For a long time, anyway. A brief but very unpleasant scene with the fair Rosalind the day after his return to Hollywood had shown him that the Martian hadn’t been lying about what had happened in her apartment the night before. (Damn them, they never lied when they tattled; you had to believe them.)

  Had Long Beach been a mistake?

  The front page of the paper told him that things were tough all over. DRASTIC CUT IN DEFENSE SPENDING, the President announced. Yes, he admitted that that would cause more unemployment, but the money was desperately needed for relief and would go farther that way. And relief—with people starving—was certainly more important than defense spending, the President told the press conference.

  In fact, defense spending wasn’t important at all, just at the moment. The Russians and the Chinese were having troubles of their own, worse than ours. Besides, by now we knew all their secrets and they knew all ours—and, the President had said with a wry smile, you can’t fight a war that way.

  Luke, who had served a three-year hitch as an ensign in the navy ten years before, shuddered at the thought of fighting a war with the Martians gleefully helping both sides.

  STOCK MARKET STILL ON TOBOGGAN, another article told him. But entertainment stocks, like radio, moving picture, television and theater, had staged a slight comeback. After being considered completely worthless the week before, they were now being bid for at about a tenth of their former value, as a long-shot long range gamble, by people who thought and hoped that the Martians might not stay long. But industrials reflected the defense spending cut with a sharp drop, and all other stocks were down at least a few points. The big drops, all down the lane, had happened the week before.

  Luke paid for his shine and left the paper on the seat. A line of men, and a few women, that led around a corner caused him to turn the corner to see where the line led. It was an employment agency. For a moment he considered going back and joining the line; then, in the window, he saw a sign that read REGISTRATION FEE $10, and decided the hell with it. With hundreds of people being registered the chance of getting a job through that agency certainly wasn’t worth ten bucks of his dwindling capital. But hundreds of people were paying it.

  And if there were any employment agencies that didn’t charge registration fees, they’d be mobbed even worse.

  He drifted on.

  A tall elderly man with fierce eyes and a wild gray beard stood on a soapbox at the curb between two parked cars. Half a dozen people stood listening listlessly. Luke stopped and leaned against a building.

  “…and why, I ask you, do they never tell lies in their meddling? Why are they truthful? Why? So that, since they tell no small lies, you will believe their BIG LIE!

  “And what, my friends, is their BIG LIE? It is, that they are Martians. That is what they want you to believe, to the eternal damnation of your souls.

  Martians! They are DEVILS, devils out of the foulest depths of hell, sent by SATAN, as is predicted in the Book of Revelations!

  “And, O my friends, you are damned, damned unless you see the TRUTH and pray, pray on your bended knees every hour of the day and night, to the ONE BEING who can drive them back whence they carne to tempt and torment us. O my friends, pray to GOD and to His Son, ask forgiveness for the EVILS of the WORLD that loosed these demons…”

  Luke drifted on.

  Probably, he thought, all over the world religious fanatics were taking that line, or a similar one.

  We’ll, they could even be right. There wasn’t any proof that they were Martians. Only thing was, he personally believed that there could be Martians and he didn’t believe in devils and demons at all. For that reason, he was willing to take the Martians’ word for it.

  Another queue, another employment agency.

  A boy walking along with a pile of handbills handed Luke one. He slowed down to glance at it. “GREAT OPPORTUNITIES IN NEW PROFESSION,” he read. “BECOME A PSYCHOLOGICAL CONS
ULTANT.”

  The rest was in smaller type and he stuffed it into his pocket. Maybe he’d read it later. A new racket, probably. A depression breeds rackets as a swamp breeds mosquitoes.

  Another line of people leading around a corner. It seemed longer than the two other lines he’d passed and he wondered if it might be a public employment agency, one that wouldn’t charge a registration fee.

  If so, it wouldn’t hurt to register, since he couldn’t think of anything more constructive to do at the moment. Besides, if his money ran out before he got a job, he’d have to be registered there before they’d let him go on relief. Or even get on any of the WPA-type projects that the government was already getting ready to organize. Would there be a Writers’ Project this time? If so, he could certainly qualify for that, and it wouldn’t take creative writing, just boondoggling along on something like a history of Long Beach, and even if he was burned out as a writer he could do that. In his sleep.

  And the line seemed to be moving fairly fast, so fast that he decided they must be just handing out blanks for people to fill out and mail in.

  Just the same, he’d check the head of the line first and make sure that was what was going on.

  It wasn’t.

  The line led to an emergency soup kitchen. It led through a doorway into a big building that looked as though it had once been a skating rink or a dance hall. It was filled now with long tables improvised from planks laid over sawbucks; hundreds of people, mostly men but a few women, sat at the tables hunched over bowls of soup. Scores of Martians ran up and down the tables, frequently stepping—but without other than visual effect, of course—into the steaming bowls and playing leapfrog over the diners’ heads.

  The odor of the soup wasn’t bad, and it reminded Luke that he was hungry; it must be at least noon and he’d skipped breakfast. Why shouldn’t he join the line and husband his dwindling financial resources? Nobody seemed to be asking any questions; anybody who joined the line got a bowl.