The Man the Martians Made by Frank Belknap Long -Vintage science fiction short story sleepstory

For the Week of Horror Science Fiction we have this most excellent novelette by Master of such things Frank Belknap Long.

In the red deserts of Mars, the elusive Martians whisper on the wind but never show themselves. The Earth workers at the construction camp are as rough and rugged as they come, enduring the harsh conditions. They have a legend of Larsen, a Paul Bunyon-like larger-than-life persona that gets the blame for every misdeed that might happen. Your firewood gone missing? Larsen took it. Playing cards marked? Larsen marked them! Your food disappeared? Larsen ate it!

One day the workers wake up to find one of their own brutally beaten to death... and very large footprints around the corpse. Who did it? And Why?

An excerpt:
You have to make allowances for a lot of things on Mars. You have to start right off by accepting hardship and privation as your daily lot. You have to get accustomed to living in construction camps in the desert, with the red dust making you feel all hollow and dried up inside. Making you feel like a drum, a shriveled pea pod, a salted fish hung up to dry. Dust inside of you, rattling around, canal water seepage rotting the soles of your boots.

So you wake up and you stare. The night before you'd collected driftwood and stacked it by the fire. The driftwood has disappeared. Someone has stolen your very precious driftwood. The Martians? Guess again.


The original blurb:
No mortal had ever seen the Martians, but they had heard their whisperings—without knowing the terrible secret they kept hidden.

Frank Belknap Long (1901-1994) was a prolific freelance writer from the 1920s onward, writing Horror, Science Fiction and other genres, including non-fiction. He was a friend of H.P. Lovecraft, and contributed stories to his Mythos universe. He is a recipient of the Bram Stoker lifetime achievement award.

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