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according to my brainwashing, had never seen him. I tried to
reconcile these two facts, but my brain was just making cuckoo clock sounds.
(Again!). Gremlin told me he had been assigned to be my staff assistant and
would be there to help me and watch me wherever I went and whatever I did. I
welcomed him aboard. It always helps to have someone watching you to make sure
you do the right thing. That’s the first thing they teach a young Martian like
me. He hissed his way on board and sat down in the seat next to mine.
    Now that I had been living on Mars for awhile, it was easy for
me to see that Arthur Gremlin was different from other Martians. It was a
subtle difference, but it was there. As we were waiting to take off, I asked
him about it.
    “ I notice you’re different from the rest of us Martians,” I
said. “Bone structure or something. And the shade of green is a little
different.”
    “ Yes. I’m from ‘the country’.”
    I didn’t see what difference that would make. Then I realized
it was probably a euphemism.
    “ Oh, I get it. You’re a member of an inferior race.”
    “ Well I wouldn’t put it quite that way.”
    “ Too complicated a thought for your people to understand?”
    “ Not really.”
    “ Maybe if you just tried harder you wouldn’t be so inferior.
That’s what I do.”
    “ Yes. Thank you. Could we launch the attack now please?”
    I nodded and gave the signal to lift off.
     

CHAPTER TEN
     
    Our mighty invasion fleet hurtled through space. It was the
most magnificent array of battle machines Mars had ever assembled. No matter
what you think an alien spaceship should look like, we had one of those.
    Inside my flagship spirits were high. The troops were singing
anti-Earth songs like “We’ll Hang Joe Earth From A Sour Apple Tree”, and
stirring Martian anthems like “Here We Go, Martians, Here We Go!”
    Some of my troops were passing the time by reading my memoirs,
which told of my impoverished youth on Mars and my rapid rise to General,
adding a number of exaggerations and falsehoods to make it sound better. (I
didn’t invent moveable type! I forget who did, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t
me.) Also included in a special section of this book were the famous quotes
attributed to me (but actually they were just quotes I vaguely remembered
hearing back on Earth). Quotes like: “When Things Get Rough, The Rough Get
Things”, “Never Meet A Man That You Don’t Like”, and “Loose Lips Lookout
Below!” The troops would repeat these quotes to each other and then say to me:
“Good quote, sir.” And I would smile. I tried to encourage this kind of
brown-nosing in my outfit. It was good for my morale. I made a mental note that
if I ever needed my ass kissed for any reason – it might be a medically-related
reason or some other reason - these were the boys to do it.
    As we got deeper into space and the long confinement and the
usual war nerves started to get to some of the men, rumors started going around
that the enemy would be using real bullets, not just practice bullets like the
men were used to. And that our Generals were pompous buffoons who were leading
us to our doom. And that Mars didn’t have any real quarrel with Earth, we were
just pawns of those bastards on Neptune. And that there had been a shakeup in
the Army’s ranking system and Privates now outranked the King.
    I listened to this for awhile, then started a rumor that
everybody had better shut-up. They did, but they weren’t happy about following
orders from me now. The rumor was, I was a pompous buffoon.
    As they lapsed into a sullen silence, I felt it was time to
launch into the stirring speech I had prepared. The one that began: “I think it
was Benedict Arnold who said…” I was hampered in my speech-making by the fact
that I had come down with the Martian Flu the day before we took off, and it
was getting worse by the hour. I kept coughing on my audience, which they
dutifully applauded along with