s caves, its
satellites and its catacombs--we knew more about it than anyone who
lives there.

We make no attempt to be comprehensive. We have no hope or aim to make
Mars a better place in which to live; in fact, we don't give a damn
what kind of a place it is to live in.

This will be the story of a planet that could have been another proud
and majestic sun with a solar system of its own; it ended up, instead,
in the comic books and the pulp magazines.

We give you MARS CONFIDENTIAL!

I

THE LOWDOWN CONFIDENTIAL

Before the space ship which brings the arriving traveler lands at the
Martian National Airport, it swoops gracefully over the nearby city in
a salute. The narrow ribbons, laid out in geometric order, gradually
grow wider until the water in these man-made rivers becomes crystal
clear and sparkles in the reflection of the sun.

As Mars comes closer, the visitor from Earth quickly realizes it has a
manner and a glamor of its own; it is unworldy, it is out of this
world. It is not the air of distinction one finds in New York or
London or Paris. The Martian feeling is dreamlike; it comes from being
close to the stuff dreams are made of.

However, after the sojourner lands, he discovers that Mars is not much
different than the planet he left; indeed, men are pretty much the
same all over the universe, whether they carry their plumbing inside
or outside their bodies.

As we unfold the rates of crime, vice, sex irregularities, graft,
cheap gambling, drunkenness, rowdyism and rackets, you will get,
thrown on a large screen, a peep show you never saw on your TV during
the science-fiction hour.

Each day the Earth man spends on Mars makes him feel more at home;
thus, it comes as no surprise to the initiated that even here, at
least 35,000,000 miles away from Times Square, there are hoodlums who
talk out of the sides of their mouths and drive expensive convertibles
with white-walled tires and yellow-haired frails. For the Mafia, the
dread Black Hand, is in business here--tied up with the
subversives--and neither the Martian Committee for the Investigation
of Crime and Vice, nor the Un-Martian Activities Committee, can dent
it more than the Kefauver Committee did on Earth, which is practically
less than nothing.

* * * * *

This is the first time this story has been printed. We were offered
four trillion dollars in bribes to hold it up; our lives were
threatened and we wer