MARTIANS, KEEP OUT! A POWERFUL NOVELET By Fritz Leiber, Jr. Illustration by Luros _Hatred of the Martians was being deliberately exploited, and Scatterday knew why. And the only way to fight the enslavement of humans, was to assist the Martians, even though it meant risking lynch-law!_ [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Future combined with Science Fiction Stories July-August 1950. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] And as if that sign weren't enough, someone with a red spray pencil had added THAT MEANS YOU, BUG! The stiff, black-shelled form, impaled on a spike beside the trafficway, with gummy beads of blue blood glistening in the sun, told the pretty little story much more graphically. It hadn't been decapitated; Martians lack external heads. Scat scanned the tableau, his scarred lean features impassive. "They didn't mention this," he commented. "Do we still go in?" "You ask questions like that just for the sake of the record, don't you?" Click-Click replied, using his black pincers to produce code in a way that explained his nickname. Though headless, Martians didn't lack brains. Definitely. Scat switched to the turbine for jetless surface-drive, and the utility car crawled into Bronsco. A hick town, Scat decided. A couple of 100-story skylons, a mainstreet of glastic commercial buildings, and rows of distressingly similar homes, all of them Paradise-37's or Eden-2's. But the skylons looked dead; the glastic was dingy, and the shrubbery drooped. A few cars were untidily parked by trafficway. Footpaths worn in the grass showed that the slidewalks hadn't been strategically placed, and not all of them seemed to be working. Crummy. But it was in burgs like this that the destiny of the Martians was being decided. In the big metropolis, intellectuals talked "Martian Question" all night. Here, things happened. Click-Click sat up in plain view--not to see, but to be seen. Eyeless perception gave him as good a picture as Scat's of the town--less range, but a lot more three-dimensional. His shiny black body and jointed arms brought some coldly unfavorable, lingering stares, but nothing more; broad daylight didn't lend itself to lynchings. When they entered the offices of the _Bronsco Newsbeam_, old Donnolan acted as if he had been betrayed. His scraggly eyebrows gyrated contortedly above his pale, close-set eyes. "If I'd had any idea that I was selling the _Newsbeam_ to a damn bug-lover...!" he finally howled impotently. "Get off my property," said Scat in a low voice.