Hoiman and the Solar Circuit

by G. Gordon Dewey

My bum slams the Martian and falls on him for the count, and wins the thoid fall and the match. That part is okay. But while the Martian is still up in the air I notice that all the squeaking from the Martians has stopped all of a sudden.

So from the Martians we are getting nothing but silence, strictly wholesale. I think maybe that's natural when their bum gets trun.

And then—plop! plop! plop!—and them flying light bulbs all drop down flat on the mat and lay there just like the Martian bum, until they isn't enough light in the house to see to strike a match. And then the squeaking starts again, like a million hungry rats, and I can just barely see them Martians starting for the ring.

I gets my bum by the arm and tells him something tells me we better blow the joint. We blow, fast. Them Martians is mad about something which I ain't had time to figure out, yet. My bum steps on one of them animated light fixtures when he gets out of the ring and squashes it. A puddle of light squirts out, and natch he steps in it. We are scramming through that crowd like mad, and we are in the clear. But we hear them squeaks behind us for a long time. They are follyin' the glowing footprints my bum is leaving to point the way.

He emptied the last bottle of beer, holding it upended for a long time waiting for the final laggard drop to detach itself. He stalled over his drink, waiting for me to ask him what happened, so I did. He put on his most wounded expression, and I knew then that he'd suffered a mortal blow—to his purse.

Yeah, we got away, I made my bum trun away his flashy shoes so they couldn't track us by them. We walked all the way back to Neopolis, the people city. All kinds of plain and fancy rumors beat us there, so the Colony Cops put us in protective custody until they got the straight story.

Nobody ever saw another Martian. It seems that they got some trick notions about theirselves. They are proud because they can walk on the ground and don't have to fly, so they got a hearty contemp for things that fly, like them insecks which they used for house lights.

Now, them insecks is dopes too and would give anything if they could walk like the Martians. And the Martians know the insecks can think a little, and it makes them feel good to have the insecks looking up to them. Lord knows nobody else does.

So when my bum lifted their bum up in the air and spun him around like a pinwheel it was a big insult to them. They took it that my bum was as much as telling them that he didn't think they was any better than them insecks flying around over the ring. And the insecks took it as a invite to come down and try the Martians racket so that's why they all flop into the ring and the lights go out. They was trying to walk.

That's more than the Martians can take. They swarm into the ring and kill all the insecks. They'da killed us too, but I got smart brains and we didn't hang around asking for it.