I hurried to The Five Spot.
Almost all the boys were crowding at the entrance to the mayor's office and arguing furiously about some kind of tracks in the dirt. The tracks had been made by the Martian who had come, they knew this for a fact. Morpheus asserted that he, as an old hairdresser and masseur, had never seen such marvels before. "Spiders," he was saying, "huge hairy spiders. That is, the males are hairy, but the females are naked. They walk on their back feet and grab you with their front. Did you see the prints? Horrifying! Like holes in the ground. That's where he walked by."
"He didn't just walk by," said Silenus thoughtfully. "The force of gravity is greater on Earth, as Apollo here will confirm, so that they can't simply walk with their legs. They need special stilts with springs, and that's what made the holes in the ground."
"Right, stilts," seconded Iapetus indistinctly with his bandaged-up jaw. "Only they're not stilts. They have a certain kind of car, I saw it in the movies. It doesn't run on wheels, but on levers, on stilts."
"Our comptroller has gone off the deep end again," said grouchy Paralus. "The last time it was a hail storm of unusual force, and the time before that he announced locusts, but now he's whipped up Martians - in keeping with the times, the conquest of space."
"I can't look at these tracks without getting excited," repeated Morpheus. "Horrifying. What d'ya say, buddies, let's go have a drink."
Calais stammered, sputtered and shook. Finally he pronounced: "G-g-good weather we're having, old boys! How d-d-did you sleep?" Due to his speech defect he always lags behind events. And yet he's a veterinarian; he could have said something worthwhile about the tracks.
"Myrtilus has already packed off," said Dymus, giggling stupidly. " 'Goodbye, Dymus,' he says, 'we were always on good terms. Look after my gas pump,' he says, 'and if you have to, burn it,' he says, 'so we leave nothing to the enemy.' "
Here I cautiously inquired what had been heard about Marathon.
"They say Marathon was burned down," Dymus answered readily. "They say people phoned from there with the terms for peace."
This absolutely convinced me that all of this was a bunch of senseless rumors, and I was getting ready to refute them when the wailing of a police siren cut through the air and we all turned around.
Minotaur came running across the square, staggering and zigzagging like a bunny, splattered with mud and swollen, and hot on his heels came Pandareus in his police buggy, standing up and holding onto the windshield, shouting something and waving a pair of handcuffs.
"The jig's up, he'll catch him now," said Morpheus.
"That's what you think," objected Dymus. "See what he's doing?"
Minotaur ran up to a telephone pole, threw his arms and legs around it and began to scramble up. However, Pandareus had already jumped out of the vehicle and fastened onto his pants. With the help of a subordinate, he tore the honey-dipper away from the pole, packed him into the buggy, and put on the handcuffs. After this the subordinate drove away, and Pandareus, wiping his face with a handkerchief and buttoning himself up on the way, headed toward us.
"Got 'im," reported Morpheus, addressing Dymus. "You argue over everything."
Pandareus drew near and asked what was new with us. He was told of the Martian tracks. He immediately squatted down and became engrossed in an investigation of the matter. I even felt an involuntary twinge of respect for him, because right away you could see his true professional knack: he looked at the tracks sort of from the side and didn't touch anything with his fingers. I began to expect that everything would soon be cleared up. Pandareus moved alongside the tracks like a duck wagging its extruding backside
and kept repeating: "Aha.... That's clear.... Aha.... Clear...." We waited impatiently, preserving silence, and only Calais strained to say something and sputtered. Finally Pandareus straightened up with a groan and, looking over the square as if to spy someone, pronounced in short bursts: "Two of them. Took the money in a bag. One has a cane with a spike. The other smokes Astras."
"I also smoke Astras," said grouchy Paralus, and Pandareus glared at him.
"Two of whom?" asked Dymus. "Martians?"
"Right from the start I thought they were not our sort," said Pandareus slowly, not taking his eyes off of Paralus. "Right from the start I thought these fellows were from Milesia. I know them."
Here Calais burst out: "N-n-no, he won't catch him in that buggy."
"But what about the Martians?" said Dymus. "I don't understand. ..."
Pandareus, ignoring direct questions as before, looked Paralus up and down. "Hand me your cigarette, old man," he said.
"What d'ya need it for?" asked Paralus.
"I'd like to take a look at your bite," explained Pandareus, "and also, where were you today between six and seven in the morning?"
We looked at Paralus, and he said that in his opinion Pandareus was the biggest fool in the world, not counting the cretin who allowed him into the police force. We had to agree with him and started slapping Pandareus on the back, saying, "Yeah, Pandareus, you missed by a mile. You didn't know, Pan, old boy, that these were Martian tracks. But, of course, how could you know, old buddy, about Martians? They're not your usual honey-dippers, Pan!"
Pandareus began to puff up a bit, but here one-legged Polyphemus came out of the mayor's office and cut right into our enjoyment.
"It's a dirty business, boys!" he said in a troubled voice. "The Martians are attacking, they took Milesia! Our forces are retreating, burning the crops, blowing up the bridges behind them!"
My legs felt weak again and I didn't have the strength to push my way through to a bench and sit down.
"They've put down a landing party in the south: two divisions," croaked Polyphemus. "They'll be here soon!"
"They've already been here," said Silenus. "On special stilts. There are their tracks over there...."
Polyphemus merely took a glance and said in disgust that those were his tracks, and everyone realized at once that, in fact, they were. Not even his, but his crutch's. For me it was a big relief. But Pandareus, as soon as it got around to him, buttoned his jacket up to the last button, cast his eyes over our heads and bawled: "You've had your say - that's all! Dis-s-sperse! In the name of the law."
I went into the mayor's office. The place was packed with some kind of flat bags set along the walls in the corridors, the stair landings and even the reception room. The bags gave off an unfamiliar smell and the windows were wide open everywhere, but other than that everything was normal. Mr. Nicostratus was sitting at his desk and polishing his nails. Grinning in a vague way and speaking with a very dubious intonation, he gave me to understand that the duties of his position did not give him the right to enlarge on Martians, however he could definitely state that all this hardly had any connection with the question of my pension. Only one thing was certain: it would no longer be profitable to plant wheat in these parts, but it would be profitable to plant a certain new kind of nutritive grain which had, as he put it, universal properties. The seeds were stored in those bags, and from today on they would begin to distribute them to all the neighboring farms.
"Where did the bags come from?" I asked.
"Supplied," he answered weightily.
I overcame my diffidence and inquired who supplied them.
"Official persons," he said. He raised himself from behind his desk, excused himself and took himself with his loose amble into the mayor's office.