He x'ed out "natives" and substituted "Martians," remembering the memo he'd got about that.
"... both Earth people and Martians forgetting their political and physical differences to take part in planetwide carnivals. Business houses, government offices and stores have been closed down since Friday, and Pleasure is king. The two great cities on Mars—Iopa and Senalla—are ablaze with light, from their desert outskirts to the quarter-mile-high government buildings that mark the center of each. Parades, speeches...."
Scott snubbed out his cigarette, shoved his chair away from the desk. He looked out over Iopa toward the government building, spotted in searchlight rays from all sides of the city. It was bad enough writing this stuff—bad enough grinding out a routine night lead, to be later dictated to Interradio for transmission across space to Earth, simply because the news schedule demanded two daily Mars roundups—
But it wasn't even the truth.
The truth was that both Earth people and Martians were observing Landing Day with the usual fuss—but that it was all a big masquerade. The oldtime distrust of Terrestrials that had come with the first spaceship was still there. It had never been completely wiped out. The only ones being taken in were the people back home, who knew nothing about Mars except what they were told by people like Scott Warren, and who usually saw it only as a red pinpoint in the sky, if the weather happened to be right.
When he got to thinking this way, Scott Warren felt more like a propagandist for World Government than a newsman—the chief of the Mars bureau of Galactic News. He wished he could tell them the truth, a truth not dictated by Policy. Some day he'd write a book. That was what all newsmen said, wasn't it? The truth would have gone something like this:
"The distrust Martians have for Earth people—yes, that includes you, dear friends of the reading, listening and viewing audience—wasn't completely wiped out even when World Government corrected its first monumental blunder. Oh, yes, W.G. has made blunders, and the first was a whooperdoo, ladies, gentlemen and prodigies, a whooperdoo of the first order, a dilly whose details still are skirted when we talk about it, because they're very, very embarrassing.
"The first spaceship, you see, dealt naturally enough with those who had seemed to be the rulers of Mars, if not the duly elected representatives of the pee-pul. And so did the Earth emissaries who followed. These Martians in the welcoming party were a crafty race, stockily built with oversized heads like granite, hard-bargaining and double-crossing. Rockheads, we called them, and still do, underestimating them.
"As our politicians point out with pride, there has been no colonization of Mars—as such. Not even despite the cries of the imperialists back home. And there has been no war, you will remember, although for a while it was touch and go.