Mercutian n. 1

Hale is one of the men whom I should like to have shown to the Martians, Mercutians, et al., as a specimen of what old Mother Earth can do when she tries.

‘This light I conceive to be the chief weapon of warfare of the Mercutians,’ the professor went on. ‘There has been some talk of those two meteors being signals. That’s all nonsense. They were not signals—they were missiles. It was an act of aggression.’

There was emphatic approval. Mercury it was—the planet with one side always to the Sun. So far, so good. Marston took my other plaque—the relief map of Earth. ‘Earth—Earth.’ Yes, the Mercutian recognized it. He had seen it thus from space.

He was a young Viking Earthman; six feet four; obviously a strange sight here to these little Mercutians... In one of the upper halls he and Aerita encountered three of four little men. They were perhaps five and a half feet tall; some of them shorter—grey-skinned men with black and silver streaked hair, bushy to the base of the neck. Flowing, glistening fabric-robes of gaudy colors enveloped them.

The Venusian was flabby and doughlike, but not too unusual in appearance, while the Martian was big-headed, red-skinned, and seven feet tall. Both he and his interplanetary colleague were attired in regal looking garments and seemed to have no difficulty in breathing the oxy-hydrogen atmosphere. The Mercutian, however, was breathing heavily, as though he found the air too dense. He was enormous in height, fully ten feet tall, ridiculously thin, his body apparently encased in black scales.

After the qualifying run to the Moon, there would be only one ship allowed for each planet, but now even Mercury had three entries, while Mars and Earth each had twelve. Soft-spoken, smiling Venusans in oil-stained nylon brushed shoulders with narrow-eyed, suspicious Callistans. Laughing Mercutians bumped into slim, leather-clad Europans. But even in the confusion, Earthmen and Martians avoided each other. Mars had won the last three Classics by what Earth considered unfair trickery, and there was bitter feeling between the two planets.

If they decide to battle, they will have to deal not only with us but with the Ganymedans and Mercutians.

It is perhaps kinder to the human race not to tell the rest of the story of that night. [...] ‘No wonder it’s called the Forbidden Planet. Nobody would want to come here, if they knew what it was like.’ ‘They could show it to the Mercutians, as an Awful Example...’