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apologetic.
    “ Frank Burly?”
    “ Speaking.”
    “ Thank heavens I’ve found you. I was delayed in traffic or I
would have met you at the spaceport. Come with me. You’re under arrest.”
    Since he didn’t have a badge or any weapon that I could see, I
stayed seated. I don’t get up just because somebody tells me to. I looked
pointedly at his gun hand and cleared my throat. He apologized again and looked
through his pockets until he found a ray gun. He pointed it at me and repeated
his assertion that I was under arrest. I nodded and went along with him.
    I was escorted to a nearby government building and turned over
to a larger, less apologetic man.
    “ I bid you welcome to our world,” he said. “Strip to your
shorts.”
    I did as I was asked. My clothes were taken away, and I was
given a kind of futuristic smock to wear. Then I was escorted into a small room
where three stern-faced men sat glaring at me. I was certainly meeting a lot of
men today. I sat down. No one said anything for awhile.
    I decided it would be best to be pleasant, since these people,
whoever they were, seemed to be holding all the cards. I smiled at them.
“Hello,” I said engagingly.
    They stared at me.
    “ My name is Frank Burly.”
    Silence.
    “ Friendly Frank Burly, they call me. The Inquisitor’s Friend.”
    More silence. I slicked back my hair and brushed some crumbs
off my lap.
    “ I hope my appearance is pleasing to you. As well as my
demeanor.”
    They continued to stare at me stonily. I started to get
steamed. “Aw, who cares, anyway? So what? Who are you guys anyhow?”
    “ We are The Council,” said the one in the middle, whose name was
a Martian word that sounded a lot like Frederick.
    “ That’s kind of vague, isn’t it?” I asked. “I mean, ‘The
Council’ doesn’t really explain who you are.”
    “ You see? He thinks so too,” said the man on Frederick’s left.
    “ Quiet, Philip,” said Frederick. “We’ll resume our discussion
about that at ‘The Arguing Time’.”
    “ There’s another one!” Philip and I both exclaimed.
    “ Silence!” snapped Frederick. “You were brought to Mars before
‘The Council’, Mr. Burly, because it was feared you were becoming a danger to
our plans.”
    “ What plans?”
    “ Never mind.”
    “ I want to hear about those plans.”
    They wouldn’t tell me any more.
    “ Well if I’m such a danger to these “plans” you claim to have but
can’t produce, why did you bother to bring me all the way up here? Why didn’t
you just kill me?”
    “ We never thought of that,” said Philip. They looked at me with
sudden respect. It’s about time somebody looked at me with respect. A man needs
that once in awhile.
    The third member of The Council, a gaunt aged man with a long
white beard, whose name sounded like it was “Stinky”, held up the camera that
had been found in my pants pocket.
    “ You have been taking photographs of our most top secret parks,
statues, stray dogs and delivery trucks. With this…” He squinted his eyes to
read the brand name. “SpyMaster 3000. Why should we not treat you as a spy?”
    “ Spies aren’t the only people who take pictures. Saboteurs do it
too. And perverts.” I tried to think of other people who took pictures, but
couldn’t think of any more. “Everybody does it.”
    They didn’t seem convinced. Stinky examined the Spymaster 3000
again, accidentally taking his own picture a hundred times.
    I started to get impatient. “Hey, when can I get out of here?
When can I go home?”
    “ When you have answered all of our questions,” said Frederick.
    “ Okay, then, let’s get on with it.”
    “ Very well. What weapons does your planet have to attack us
with?”
    “ Or to defend against us,” added Philip.
    “ Quiet.”
    “ Oh, yeah, right.”
    “ Answer, Earthman.”
    “ Earth doesn’t have any weapons to attack you with. Earth thinks
Mars is uninhabited.”
    Philip said: “But your movies…”
    “ Pure