The Project Gutenberg EBook of Blind Spot, by Bascom Jones

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Title: Blind Spot

Author: Bascom Jones

Illustrator: Kossin

Release Date: November 11, 2009 [EBook #30454]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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BLIND
SPOT

By BASCOM JONES, JR.

Illustrated by KOSSIN

_Everyone supported the Martian
program--until it struck home!_

Johnny Stark, director of the department of Interplanetary Relations for
Mars' Settlement One, reread the final paragraph of the note which he
had found on his desk, upon returning from lunch earlier in the day.

His eye flicked rapidly over the moistly smeared Martian scrawl,
ignoring the bitterness directed at him in the first paragraphs. He was
vaguely troubled by the last sentences. But he hadn't been able to pin
the feeling down.

_... Our civilization predates that of Earth's by millions of years.
We are an advanced, peaceful race. Yet, since Earth's first rocket
landed here thirteen years ago, we have been looked upon as freaks
and contemptuously called 'bug-men' behind our backs! This is our
planet. We gave of our far-advanced knowledge and science freely, so
that Earth would be a better place. We asked nothing in return, but
we were rewarded by having forced upon us foreign ideas of
government, religion, and behavior. Our protests have been silenced
by an armed-police and punitive system we've never before needed.
Someday you will awaken to this injustice. On that day in your life,
you have my sympathy and pity!_

Stark knew that the Settlement's Investigations Lab could readily
determine the identity of the Martian who had written the note. But he
hesitated to send it over. Under the New System, such troublemakers were
banished to the slave-labor details of the precious-earth mines to the
North.

Crumpling the note in sudden decision, Stark dropped it into the office
incendiary tube. The morning visi-report had shown that there were more
than 17,000 worke