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could compare
my insides to some kind of list they had. I said I couldn’t. Couldn’t or
wouldn’t? Well, both, I guess. They didn’t like my attitude. I didn’t like
their attitude either. It was a standoff.
    They huddled for awhile, then told me I was going to have to
wait in an Official Waiting Area – which turned out to be a chair – until such
time as I had proper papers. I asked how I was going to get these proper papers
sitting in the chair and they said that was no longer their problem. It was the
chair’s problem now.
    I didn’t want any trouble – at least not any more than I
already had – so I sat down in the chair. Sitting in the chair next to me was a
skeleton. After a couple of hours, I tried sitting in a different chair, one
that seemed more promising, to have more going for it, to see if that would
result in more action. It didn’t.
    Since nobody seemed to be paying much attention to me, (I was
the chair’s problem, not theirs) I got up and wandered out into the main
concourse. I heard lots of sirens going off as I left the security area, but
nobody followed me right away because they were too busy holding their hands
over their ears and trying to turn the sirens down. I found out later they’d
been having problems with that ever since they had built that terminal.
    As I passed through each security checkpoint, more sirens went
off and more people began holding their ears and making phone calls to the
siren company.
    I wandered outside and took a look around. I wondered why I was
brought to this planet, and what I was supposed to do now? Certainly not just
walk up and down the streets eating a hot dog like I was currently doing. No
one would have brought me millions of miles through space just for that.
Nobody’s that eccentric. I asked a few pedestrians what they thought was going
on, but they just gave me a look and hurried away. Of course I hadn’t shaved or
bathed in a week - five weeks, come to think of it. That might have had
something to do with it.
    The only people I met who weren’t afraid to talk to me were people
who wanted to sell me things. They didn’t seem to be interested in the fact
that I didn’t want the things they were selling, or that I was a monster from
another planet. All that mattered to them was making sure I didn’t miss out on
a great bargain.
    “ It’s one of a kind,” they would say, waving something awful in
my face.
    “ Good.”
    “ You’ll never see another one,” they would add, making it squeak
and smile.
    “ I hope to God you’re right.”
    Since nobody was giving me any information, and I’d already
bought three of those squeaky smiley things, I finally decided to quit worrying
about why I was here and just spend the day taking in the sights. Martian
cities are something to see, let me tell you. There’s neon and chrome
everywhere, and electricity going up poles, and lots of theremin sounds. You
could tell you were on Mars all right. It had all the flash and glitter of a
drive-in movie theater. I could tell the Martians were far ahead of us. Or at
least as far ahead of us as drive-in movie theaters are.
    I had a small camera with me, so I started taking pictures of
anything that looked interesting. It occurred to me that pictures of a Martian
city might be worth money back on Earth. Assuming I ever got back to Earth, of
course.
    Finally I got tired of walking and stopped at an outdoor café.
There was a newspaper on the chair next to me. It was an extra. All about the
lunatic who had escaped from authorities at the terminal. I elbowed the guy at
the next table and showed him the paper.
    “ Does this look like me?”
    He looked at the picture, then at me.
    “ Kind of,” he said. “Screw your face up a little more.”
    “ What do you mean ‘a little more’?”
    “ Never mind.”
    I wanted to know what he meant, but at that moment, a small man
in some kind of official uniform rushed up to my table, mopping his forehead
and looking