"I can't see, you idjit!"
"Before that."
"The damn alien did it," Bulla wailed. "He burned out my eyes."
"I'm looking at your eyes. They're still in your head."
"But I can't see."
"Settle down," said Remo, pressing on Bulla's other instep until the bones crackled. "What did you see?"
"It looked like a Martian," Bulla gasped. "Had its back to me. I walked up to it, and it spun around real sudden-like. It had a rod in its hand. Damn thing flashed at me. Felt like hot needles jabbing my eyeballs." Bulla's voice cracked. "Now I can't see my fingers before my poor face."
Remo and planetary geologist Tom Pulse exchanged glances while Bulla waved his hands in front of his blinking bloodshot eyes. There was so much red in the whites, the blue of his eyes looked purple by contrast.
Pulse shrugged helplessly. "I can't vouch for him. We only met today."
Remo looked into Bulla's sightless eyes and said, "Try closing them."
"They are closed!" Bulla insisted, all evidence to the contrary.
"Then open and close them."
Bulla did. They got wider and, if possible, redder.
"Any difference?"
"No. I can't see, open or closed."
"Keep them closed. Just relax. We'll figure this out."
Bulla began walking around in aimless circles, moaning and blubbering.
Remo sat him down and knelt beside him. "You said Martian?" he asked calmly.
"Yeah. It was a Martian."
"How do you know it was a Martian?"
"It looked like a Martian," Bulla said.
"You know what a Martian looks like?"
"No. 'Course not. But he was man shaped. Wore a quilted space suit with a square black glass porthole in front of his face. Had gloves and boots on and was looking around the way the old Apollo astronauts used to poke around the moon. You know, careful and clumsy-like at the same time."
"That doesn't make him a Martian," Remo declared.
"He sure wasn't press!" Bulla said bitterly.
Remo stood up and faced the Master of Sinanju. "Little Father, let's look around some more."
"We will discover who committed this foul deed," Chiun squeaked.
Remo called back to Tom Pulse, "Keep an eye on him."
"Sure thing."
Starting off, Remo undertoned to the old Korean, "He could be making this story up."
"Why?"
"To get the heat off the project."
The Master of Sinanju looked back at the rim of the BioBubble shimmering up heat waves under the broiling Arizona sun.
"If so, he is far too late."
"Not that kind of heat. You saw the way the press was acting when we pulled up."
"Yes. It was good that we remained away from their noise and insanity. Otherwise, they would have committed some barbaric indiscretion, such as interviewing you instead of a more worthy person."
"I don't believe in men from Mars," said Remo, walking with such care that his Italian loafers left no impression on the rust-colored Arizona sands. Chiun likewise disturbed nothing with his sandaled tread.
"Is Mars not a world like this one?"
"Yeah. But there's no air up there. It can't support life. It's a big red desert, kinda like this one."
"If no man of Earth has ever been there, how can you know this?" asked Chiun.
"We sent probes. They sent back video."
"Television probes?"
"Yeah."
Chiun scrunched up his chin. His wispy beard stuck out from under his lower lip like a fluttering tendril of smoke.
"And if there were men dwelling on the Fire Planet as there are Earth men, would they not have have seen these probes coming and showed them deceitful pictures of arid deserts and desolation to confound suspecting Earth men into thinking no one lived there?"
"I don't think so," said Remo, frowning.
They came to a set of footprints that trampled the sandstone ground with no discernible purpose or direction. The prints were humanlike, but heelless and corrugated for extra traction like a pair of running shoes.
Chiun indicated this confusion of prints with the curved jade nail protector that protected his right index finger.
"Behold, Remo. Proof!"