Yeah, that’s what the newspapers said. Even in these times they don’t print all the truth. They forgot about the strings I pulled with the Metropolita ward heelers, and the writ of habeus corpus. I’m out, even though I am watched as close as the seventh son of a seventh son with a bad case of croup. There is some things I did not tell the Twenty-fourth Estate as according to the records of the Spinks in my hermetically sealed cylinder they did not breed many idiots. If a relative of mine got me down here in a flying saucer, I am quite sure the character will decide to pick me up some day. And I’ll bet they’ve already towed the Earthian space pencil, XXX to one of their saucer garages. Well, only time will tell, and I hope it doesn’t play me as dirty a trick on me as it did Fixius Snark and Quartus Goog. Being one of Earth’s better known viso-screen hams, I am working at my favorite hobby one day when the Nougats hit Mars with a Pearl Harbor. Three Hydroradiumjets hit a Martian blasting-off station in medium outer space and wash it up faster than the Metropolita Yanks did Cincinnatu’s star southpaw in the last Interworld Series. I see and hear Earth brass contact the war lords of Mars and Venus. Even Jupiter is jumping. “All right, I am grounded,” I says. “I am a combo of Section Eight and Four F Minus, and am I blue! I will just put in a supply of popcorn an’ beer capsules and watch this on my favorite station. I might even go fission.” Then I hear the voice of Number One Coordinator of Space Strategic Command, Bjaal yelp, “Callin’ all space pilots, ready or not. Calling all space pilots. Inner and outer space pilots! Everybody who can walk. This also means you, Septimus Spink.” “I will protest!” I yelps. “I am a mental case. I want a space lawyer! “All malingerers will be shot at once!” Bjaal says in a pall-bearer’s voice. “This is a war of survival. Operation Curtains will go in effect at once.” “I changed my mind,” I says and run out of the house. My space suit and hot rocket are in the garage and I am about to open the door when I hear a voice behind me and it is not of this world. I pivot and look at something I didn’t believe the first time I saw it. “Exquobo gritzmo lexiquosoma!” The face is familiar, especially the nose. The character has two big eyes that bug out like those of a bullfrog with thyroid trouble. His skin is the color of a half ripe lemon. It is the C.O. of the creeps that dragged me out of the XXX! The little antenna on his pearshaped noggin is making little dada-dit-dit-da-da-dit sounds. “You are still out in left field an’ I don’t understand a word of your gibberish,” I says. “Look, git lost, as I have to go to war.”