While the three companions were enjoying dinner on the beautiful coast of Spain, on the outskirts of foggy London the first of the bullets, or cylinders as some described them, screwed open with a hiss of steam and a red and yellow wink of light.
The screwing motion caused the lid to fall off, smack in the dust. A crowd, which had gathered at the rim of the crater caused by the impact of the cylinder, watched carefully. They had been watching for nearly a half hour.
"It's opening," said a short stocky man in the back of the crowd.
This was, of course, obvious. The short stocky man had been giving them a play by play since the crowd first arrived. As there was little to see other than the cylinder, he took it upon himself to describe the steam coming from the interior of the device, and was quick to describe it in excruciating detail, as if everyone present was blind.
"See the steam coming out. More steam than before. A lot of steam's coming out," he said.
This was true.
"Now the lid has fallen off. See that?"
Everyone saw that.
"Now there's some light. Do you see the light?"
The light was pretty obvious. Red and yellow.
"There's something moving in there. Did you see the shadow?"
Suddenly, without warning, a little man in the crowd screamed something impossible to understand, leaped on the explainer and began beating him. "We see it. We see it, you dumb bastard."
Police arrived and promptly jerked the small man off of the explainer, hauled him away, stuck him in the back of a police wagon. The police returned to the scene.
"Thank you, officers," said the explainer. "He had gone mad, he had. Oh, look, look, the shadow is growing larger."
Indeed, it had grown, and something was starting to come out of the cylinder.
"It's a bloomin' octopus," said the explainer.
In fact, a tentacle, reminiscent of an octopus, was waving out of the opening, as if hoping to snag something floating in the air.
"They've got a bloomin' octopus in that tube," said the explainer. "Can you see that? A bloomin' octopus. Now he's comin' out. More of him. You see that?"
The police officers looked at one another.
"Ah, two tentacles."
The higher ranking officer turned to the other. "Go let the little man out of the cage, will you?"
"Certainly."
"It's crawling out," said the explainer.
"Excuse me, sir," said the officer. "That is quite clear to all of us. Would you please shut your bleeding mouth."
"Why, I can't believe that. Did you hear that, friends. The officer told me to shut my bleedin'—"
It was just one quick shot of the billy club, between the eyes, and down went the explainer. The little man who had been caged came back with the lower ranked officer, stood with them, glanced down at the unconscious explainer.
"Should he awake," said the officer, "one word from him, you have our permission to finish what you started."
A shriek went up from the crowd.
A bulbous head with two red eyes peeked out of the mouth of the cylinder. Its two arms, which continued to wave, were joined by two others. It did very much look like an octopus.
It glanced up at the crowd with its odd red eyes, quivered its beak-like lips, omitted a sound like someone trying to breathe after running a fast mile, then retreated into the cylinder.
"It's frightened," said the little man who had jumped the explainer.
"You're not going to start now, are you?" said one of the officers.
Inside the cylinder, there was a sound like something being snapped together. Then there was a guttural sound like someone displeased. This was followed by more snapping and more guttural noises, as if some sort of trouble was being had with the fastening of a device.
Martian Translation of Gutteral Noise:
"It goes in the other hole, Gooldaboo."
"Which hole?"
"That hole."
"I don't get it. This hole?"
"No. One of your assholes. For heaven's sakes, give me that. Damn. That got me in the eye. You are always dooddiddledooin something. That could have put my eye out. There . . . I'll take care of this. You just sit there. And don't touch anything, Gooldaboo."
"Yes sir/ma'am."
As the people watched, metal tubing poked out of the cylinder, followed by what looked like an octopus with rectal pain. It scooted along the rough ground making a number of faces with its flex-ible skin and long broad mouth, which was quite unlike an octopus. It set the little framework of tubing on the edge of the cylinder, ro-tated it.
The other creature appeared, carrying a long thin tube of light. This was placed in one end of the cylinder. The octopus reached a tentacle around the end of the tubing and pulled. It extended. He rotated the cylinder again, pointing the tip of it at the crowd.
"What do you think he's doin'?" asked someone.
"Could that be a gun?" someone else said.
"Shit," said one of the policeman.
And then there came a guttural sound from one of the creatures—
—good-bye funny things—
—and the tube spat out a rod of light. The light hit the crowd. The crowd glowed. The crowd disappeared. Left in its place were piles of black dust.
The creatures flapped their tentacles wildly, made sounds that even humans would have recognized as laughing. One of the Martians climbed up on the edge of the crater, turned both assholes to where the crowd had been and cut an excruiating fart that flapped the edges of both his anuses, turned and said:
Take that, you inferior fuckers.