To this day, nobody knows why they carne or why they left.
Not that a great many people do not think they know, or at least have very strong opinions on the subject. Millions of people still believe, as they believed then, that they were not Martians but devils and that they went back to hell arid not back to Mars. Because a God who sent them to punish us for our sins became again a merciful God as a result of our prayers to Him.
Even more millions accept that they came from Mars after all and returned there. Most, but not all, give credit to Yato Ishurti for their leaving these point out that even if Ishurti’s reasoning was right down the line and even though his proposition to the Martians was backed by that tremendous affirmative, the Martians could hardly have been expected to react instantaneously; somewhere a council of them would have had to meet and weigh their decision, make up their minds whether we were by now sufficiently sincere and sufficiently chastened. And that the Martians stayed only two weeks after Ishurti’s speech, which is certainly not too long a time for such a decision to have been reached.
At any rate, no standing armies have been built up again and no country is planning sending any rockets to Mars, just on the chance that lshurti was right, or partly right.
But not everybody, by any means, believes that either God or Ishurti had anything to do with the departure of the Martians.
One entire African tribe, for instance, knows that it was Bugassi’s juju that sent the gnajamkata back to the kat.
One janitor in Chicago knows perfectly well that he drove away the Martians with his anti-extraterrestrial subatomic supervibrator.
And of course those last two are, and were given as, only random examples of the hundreds of thousands of other scientists and mystics who, each in his own way, had been trying his best to accomplish the same thing. And each naturally thought that he had finally succeeded.
And of course Luke knows that they’re all wrong. But that it doesn’t matter what they think since they all exist only in his mind anyway. And since he is now a very successful writer of Westerns, with four best sellers under his belt in four years and with a beautiful Beverly Hills mansion, two Cadillacs, a loved and loving wife and a pair of two-year-old twin sons, Luke is being very careful indeed how he lets his imagination work. He is very satisfied with the universe as he imagines it right now, and takes no chances.
And on one point concerning the Martians, Luke Devereaux agrees with everybody else, including Obersdorffer, Bugassi and the Scandinavian.
Nobody, but nobody, misses them or wants them back.