How I Conquered Your Planet (14 page)

“
You have chosen the right man, Zedo,” said one member of the
group.

“
Wait till we get to our objective,” advised Zedo, who was
famous for his caution.

“
No, I’m making my assessment now.”

“
Very well.”

I drove us to the Martian Defense Compound, stopped at the main
gate, and hailed the guard.

“
Hey, Hank! If you open this gate you can forget the fifty you
owe me.”

“
Deal!”

He swung the gate open and we drove through. It was a good deal
for everybody.

I parked the bus near the entrance to the main building. Nobody
had challenged us so far, but we still had a long way to go. And as our group
piled off the bus I suddenly noticed that we didn’t really look like we
belonged here. We looked like an army of slaves out for no good. This part of
the plan apparently hadn’t been thought out too well. I conferred with Major
Zedo and the other leaders. We finally agreed on what we would do. Once again,
I was the key to the plan.

I put on my feelers (which I always keep in my back pocket to
this day – you never know) and started kicking everybody through the front door
of the building.

“
Come on, let’s go, slave scum. Get moving.”

We ran into security personnel around every corner as we moved
through the building, but since I really was a professional slave-kicker and
these really were Earth slaves, our disguises were perfect. I remember I gave
Major Zedo a few especially hard kicks, because I remembered some of the things
he had said about me before.

Whenever someone challenged us, I told them I was using the
slaves to carry these heavy formidable weapons down to that new weapons storage
area by the top secret computers. Each time the sentry would nod and say
something like: “Carry harder then. Come on, slaveys, carry! Here, you! Pick up
that machine gun or I’ll whop you good!” I made a mental note to fire all of
these sentries if I was ever put in charge of this building.

With the help of my knowledge of security codes, and my
all-important retina scans, we were able to surmount every obstacle in our
path. Also, my familiarity with the installation itself turned out to be of
great value.

“
You can just jump over this. Oh, and this thing, don’t pay any
attention to that. I installed that.”

A dangerous moment came when we entered one of the more top
secret areas. It was heavily booby-trapped. If they hadn’t had me along they
never would have made it.

“
Now, when you go through this corridor,” I said, “disintegrator
beams will shoot out of the walls at chest height.”

“
What do we do?”

“
Go down this other corridor. Nobody ever goes down that scary
one.”

They followed me down a corridor lined with automated snack
machines. They all agreed that this corridor was better.

There was a guard at the end of the corridor. I hailed him.

“
Hey, Phil, help us with these boxes of dynamite, will you?”

“
Sure thing, Frank. Say, I thought they had you kicking slaves.”

“
I’ve been promoted. I lead slaves through buildings now.”

“
Sweet.”

Finally we found ourselves deep in the heart of the building
where all the most important stuff was – the missile defense system, the
planet-wide alarm system, the Hotline to Mars, all the stuff that the Martians
needed to defend themselves with. It took about an hour to smash or disable
everything.

Then we split up to see if there was anything of importance we
had missed. That’s why I was alone when I ran into Arthur Gremlin.

We didn’t see each other at first. I was in what turned out to
be his office, looking over some odd looking coded communiqués. They looked
sinister and important, so I spent a few moments trying to figure out whether
they should be destroyed or “liberated” (stolen and later sold). What struck me
most about them was that they were written in a strange hieroglyphic kind of
writing that I had only seen one place before - in the desk Arthur Gremlin used
back when he was working for me. I hadn’t been able to read the writing then,
because I didn’t know Martian. I knew Martian now, but I still couldn’t read
them for some reason.

While I was puzzling over these documents, the Gremlin was in a
connecting room behind a glass wall talking to someone over the radiophone. I
found out later that he was saying: “I don’t care if you’re running out of
supplies or not. We can’t do anything until Burly is located.”

Then he turned and saw me looking through his desk.

“
He’s been located. I’ll take care of him. Proceed with the
attack.”

Then he got up, made sure his gun was loaded, and joined me in
his office.

I was making one last attempt to read the communiqués. It had
occurred to me that maybe if I held them upside down, closed my eyes, and
pretended like I didn’t want to know what they said, I’d be able to figure out
what they said. As I was trying out this theory I heard a noise that sounded
ominously like a cleared throat. I opened my eyes and looked at Arthur Gremlin.
He was pointing a gun at me. He glanced at the paper I was holding.

“
So you’ve guessed,” he said.

Well, there’s only one answer to that. “Yes,” I said. “I’ve
guessed it all.” I let him think about that for a minute, then added: “Might as
well tell me what I’ve guessed.”

He sighed. “I was afraid this would happen.”

“
Well it has happened, so get used to it,” I said. I sensed I
had the upper hand now about something and decided to press home my advantage
until I found out what we were talking about. “Nothing in the world can change
it now.”

“
Yes.” He started to squeeze the trigger. “Good bye, Mr. Burly.”

“
Whoa! Wait a minute! Maybe it didn’t happen. Better tell me
what you think happened before you start shooting people.”

He stopped and stared at me a moment, then resumed squeezing
the trigger. Fortunately he had one of those movie guns that take about
nineteen minutes to go off. I had caught a break there. But I still had to
think fast. If I didn’t, in less than an hour I would be dead.

“
Before you shoot me, will you answer one question for me?”

He nodded. “One question.”

“
What the hell is this all about? Who are you? What’s going on?
Why am I being shot? Why won’t anyone tell me what’s going on? Has the whole
world gone crazy? Are you going to just stand there pulling the trigger or are
you going to answer me?”

“
That’s seven questions.”

“
No, it’s one question – a seven parter.”

“
Very well.” He sat down and lit a cigarette. “As you no doubt
have already figured out…” he began, and then he went on to explain a whole
bunch of stuff I would never have figured out if I’d lived to be a million. For
one thing, he wasn’t a Martian at all. The little bastard was from Neptune!

‘
Arthur Gremlin’ (this was not his real name, he told me, just a
cover name) had been sent by the Imperial War Council of Neptune to convince
the Martians to attack the Earth. This was a daunting task, because it was well
known that no planet in the Solar System was powerful enough to take the Earth,
which was estimated at that time to be 40% nuclear weapons. The Neptunians’
plan was to get the Martians to attack first, and after they had been
obliterated by the Earth’s awesome firepower, the Neptunian battle fleet could
come in on their tail and essentially attack the Earth before it could reload.

The Neptunians wanted the Earth primarily because of its good
location – not too close to the sun, not too far away - and because it’s so
easy to stand on. You don’t sink up to your neck in poison gas all the time.

Disguising himself as a “Country Martian”, Gremlin didn’t have
much trouble getting a high post in the Martian Government. He had a high IQ,
an A-type personality, and was considered the sneakiest little shit on Neptune.
And no one suspected he was an alien. None of the Martians believed there were
“little, slightly-less-green, men from Neptune.” Only children and astronauts
believed things like that. But it was difficult convincing them to try to take
over the Earth. The Martian motto, which was engraved on some of their early
coins was “Well, I dunno…” The Martians thought, quite correctly, that the
Earth could beat them pretty easily in a fight, but Gremlin convinced them that
most of the Earth weapons were just for show – display pieces made of cardboard
and those Styrofoam peanuts people use for packing boxes. And he assured them
that the Earth would make an ideal slave colony for the manufacture of the
cheap crap Martians like so much. There was money in this, gentlemen, he told
them. Big easy money.

It still sounded too risky to the Martians. What if they got
hit by some of those Styrofoam peanuts? Those things could raise a welt. The
Earth’s huge stockpile of weapons still worried them. After all, whatever they
were made of, they were still weapons. What finally convinced them to give it a
try was when Gremlin said he personally would go down to Earth with a
hand-picked group of saboteurs and they would “soften the Earth up” preparatory
to the invasion. Posing as magicians (an easy job for a Martian) they would
spend their free time infiltrating military installations and defense plants,
finding the cracks in the Earth’s defenses and creating cracks where there
weren’t any. By the time the Martian fleet was ready to embark on their
invasion, he told them, Earth would be ripe for the plucking.

They finally agreed to this plan, and the Gremlin traveled to
Earth to set up a landing field in some cropland outside of Central City which
was owned by Neptune. Then he got a job at the bus company, so he could get his
agents transported into town after they had landed. Everything was working fine
until I happened along.

The Gremlin said he had gotten a job with me so he could find
out how much I really knew, and whether I was a danger to the plan or not. When
he realized I wasn’t a danger, and in fact was quite stupid and a perfect dupe,
(I started to interrupt to protest this characterization which I felt was too
broad, but then I decided to let it go. It was close enough. Let’s hear what
else he has to say) he had his agents hire me to infiltrate places they hadn’t
been able to get into. I could just walk right past “No Magicians” signs, for
example.

This worked out quite well for them for awhile. I was saving
them time, and causing them no trouble. When I stumbled into one of their
meetings they tried to make me forget what I’d seen, but the amnesia wore off
and I not only remembered what I had seen, I started trying to tell others
about it. So they decided to ship me off to Mars, where I would at least be out
of the way.

Some months later, with the attack about to begin, Arthur
Gremlin was stunned to read in the Martian Army Gazette that I was to be one of
the leaders of the attack. The Council assured him that I was completely
brainwashed, probably, but the Gremlin decided he’d better keep an eye on me
anyway.

He was even more stunned when my Martian buddies and I defeated
the Earth in less than a week. This really threw a monkey wrench into the
Neptunian plan. Now the Martians had Earth’s arsenal at their disposal to use
against any attackers from space. The Neptunian fleet stopped in its tracks and
docked on the Earth’s two hidden moons – Sneaky and Hidey – to think things
over and await developments.

Arthur Gremlin felt all was not lost. He knew the Martians well
enough to know that when things were going well for them they not only didn’t
do anything to rock the boat, they didn’t even pay any attention to where the
boat was going. He was confident he could count on the Martians to let down
their guard.

He was right. The Martians grew lax immediately. They were a
Two-Planet People now. Life was good. They kicked back and relaxed. The
Neptunian fleet got ready to resume its attack.

But when I escaped and couldn’t be found, the Gremlin became
worried that I might use my inside information of Martian defenses to help the
Earthmen retake the planet. Earth weapons in the hands of pissed off Earthmen
were far more dangerous than in the hands of the Martians, who didn’t know how
most of them worked anyway. So the Gremlin told the fleet to hold its position
until I had been found.

Now that he had found me, I could be neutralized and the Earth
counter-attack would flounder in its tracks. Then the Neptunians could safely
take the Earth away from the decadent and ill-prepared Martians.

I was looking at my watch, wondering how long this explanation
was going to take when I realized he had finished and I hadn’t heard a lot of
it.

“
Could you explain that again? I was looking at my watch.”

He sighed and explained it again, in a shorthand way, pausing
each time I looked at my watch so I wouldn’t miss anything this time. Finally
he finished.

“
I knew it!” I said.

“
Oh you did not.”

“
Well I know it now. That’s the important thing. Say, you said
‘Arthur Gremlin’ wasn’t your real name, just a cover identity. What’s your real
Neptunian name?”