In the morning he and Len strolled out in front. Every square inch of glastic was covered with black paint, still sticky and glistening from the spray guns.
"Kinda like the new color," remarked Len, loudly for the benefit of some passers-by. "Black for Free Martia!"
Scat sent him out to try and buy some food and rent sleeping quarters in the Bronsco Recreational Center, which occupied the Number Two skylon. Just for the sake of the record. Len would discover that the hostelry was full up and that, by some strange mischance, there didn't happen to be any food in Bronsco today.
A chalked sign—Kill the Bugs—came coasting by on the slidewalk. Scat put down his foot in front of it and let the slidewalk do the erasing.
Back in the transmission room he discovered that Click-Click's three companions had increased to five during the night.
"Passengers for the Underground Skyway?" asked Scat. And this time he just thought the question.
Click-Click coded an affirmative. "From Ten Mile. They guessed we must be in the neighborhood from the Martian Tape we're running in the Newsbeam. All the Martians out at Ten Mile are picking up the Tape—beam-perception or the good old telepathic grapevine. They're crazy about it; it's the first entertainment they've had in months."
The Martian Tape was one of the trickiest things that Scat handled. Any hint of agitation or even of attempted enlightenment among owned Martians was strictly forbidden—that was one point where the government would crack down fast. Hence the Martian Tape, adapted to beam-perception, had to be, and was, purely recreational—devoted to vastly complex brain-teasers in solid geometry and other mental sports dear to Martians.
Click-Click continued, "These two somehow managed to slip past the bug guard; they're begging me to send them to the Reservation."