Blind Spot

Blind Spot (in Short Science Fiction Collection 049 )

Everyone supported the Martian

program--until it struck home!

Johnny Stark, director of the department of Interplanetary Relations for

Mars' Settlement One, reread the final paragraph of the note which he

had found on his desk, upon returning from lunch earlier in the day.

His eye flicked rapidly over the moistly smeared Martian scrawl,

ignoring the bitterness directed at him in the first paragraphs. He was

vaguely troubled by the last sentences. But he hadn't been able to pin

the feeling down.

... Our civilization predates that of Earth's by millions of years.

We are an advanced, peaceful race. Yet, since Earth's first rocket

landed here thirteen years ago, we have been looked upon as freaks

and contemptuously called 'bug-men' behind our backs! This is our

planet. We gave of our far-advanced knowledge and science freely, so

that Earth would be a better place. We asked nothing in return, but

we were rewarded by having forced upon us foreign ideas of

government, religion, and behavior. Our protests have been silenced

by an armed-police and punitive system we've never before needed.

Someday you will awaken to this injustice. On that day in your life,

you have my sympathy and pity!

Stark knew that the Settlement's Investigations Lab could readily

determine the identity of the Martian who had written the note. But he

hesitated to send it over. Under the New System, such troublemakers were

banished to the slave-labor details of the precious-earth mines to the

North.

Crumpling the note in sudden decision, Stark dropped it into the office

incendiary tube. The morning visi-report had shown that there were more

than 17,000 workers at the mines. Only five had been Earthlings. Let the

armed-police sy