Arcturan n. 1

Mr. Garrett P. Serviss is one of the few newspaper men qualified to supply us with news about other worlds than this…. ‘What sort of atmosphere do you think the Arcturians breath?’ [sic]

God’s laws to us must be like to his demands upon them. And for all of us, for Martians and Arcturians and Antarens and terrestrials, what more probable rule of ambition and conduct can there be…than is obtained in an old utterance of a Jewish sage: ‘He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth he require of thee but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly before thy God!’

Moreover, if there be any system of physics in Arcturus, it must be quite different from ours, unless the Arcturians have minds like ours.

‘Look!’ cried the Arcturian. [Ibid. 615/1] He…grasped those two limbs in his own hands and raised them as high as he could reach, holding the Arcturian above him by the sheer force of his powerful muscles.

There were Antareans, Vandemarians, Arcturians. There were representatives of scores, yes, hundreds of other solar systems of the galaxy.

‘The trouble with you Sirians,’ thought an Arcturian sarcastically, ‘is that you cannot imagine any mentality different from your own.’

If I could, I would kill every Arcturan alive, and if it meant I had to accept the death of a few million Earthmen to do it, that wouldn’t be too high a price.

It was when an Arcturan praised that Earthmen became offended. The Arcturan would lift one of his tripods and spray the praisee with a liquid that smelled like rotten onions.

The frequency spectrum around the hydrogen line was suddenly saturated with hundreds of narrow band signals. They came from the direction of Arcturus…. Someone remembered that the first commercial television programs had started seventy-two years earlier in the early 1940s. The Arcturians must have picked them up and replied.

The Arcturan was suddenly interested in continuing the conversation.

“No more chances!” the Arcturan replies. “To the spice mines with all of you!”

One dotty lady claimed she’d been impregnated by an Arcturan, but the baby popped out human.

We got a captain, an Arcturan named Zirvuk, and Admirals Hanson and Ross!