President Lyndon B. Vortz Bortz and the Men from Mars

By Eric Rozenman (September 2025)

It happened just this way, though of course the government—the one that used to be in Washington, D.C. and now is … well, we are not supposed to say, are we?—covered it up almost immediately. I know because I, what they called a “juvenile offender” in those days, was at the courthouse when it happened …

***

Monitoring Earth’s communications irritated Vortz. Something called “Top 40” filled the wavelengths used for “radio.” Occasionally supplemented by “Oldies but Goodies,” the sound was awful, like a rusty chainsaw on very hard wood. Vortz had heard chainsaws on one of their rent-a-car drives through the countryside. The noise strained his audio sensors, and he suffered.

It was no different for the high-frequency waves used for “television.” If anything, for Bortz, who wrote the journal I found at the courthouse that day, it was worse. The nasal intonations of humans offended Bortz, who was a drama critic when not performing the periodic  interplanetary surveillance mandatory for all Martian males, conscientious objectors exempted, of course. Even excusing the vulgar sounds they made, human’s bulbous noses disfigured their otherwise amusingly varied faces. Martians, as is well-known, breathe through gills appropriate for their home planet’s thin atmosphere.

Back home, Vortz was not a drama critic. On Mars he had bounced around from job to job until finding profitable work importing green cheese from the rich lodes mined on the dark side of the Earth’s moon. The stuff was practically life-saving, given Mars’ newly-arid environment. Some blamed climate change for the extended drought, others fracking, and a few  insisted it was due to the displeasure of Zeus, in whom most Martians stopped believing after the terrifying meteorite shower nearly 4,000 years ago.

In any case, as he and Bortz liked to say, “Little green men are infinitely adaptable.” The main thing the two had learned so far in their surreptitious surveillance was that humans were obsessed by fear of wet armpits and bad-smelling breath. So much so that they purchased all sorts of potions and elixirs to avoid them.

But, as the two observers also had found, no one seemed to take the question of alien exploration of Earth seriously. That is, no one unless he or she had just written a book on U.F.O.’s, or U.A.V.’s, terms neither Vortz nor Bortz understood. In fact, except for such writers, who seemed to be otherwise insignificant figures interviewed more for their entertainment than educational value, the phrase “little green men from Mars” was often a joke or an insult, which upset them both.

How had these Earthlings come by such an accurate description, Vortz and Bortz wondered, and then managed not to take it seriously? Perhaps the same way they knew about Zeus yet quite mistakenly ascribed him to “Greek mythology.”

Hardly the first Mars men to visit the third planet from the sun, the pair had been dispatched by Central to participate in the periodic survey of human activity. Forewarned was always four-armed, and not just in Martian baseball, as the saying went. On their fifth Earth day on the job, Vortz and Bortz got a shock. Following a radio song—more of a cry for help, really—called “I Like You Baby, But Love Your Grille-Work” by Huey and the Humanoids (“we can’t make this stuff up,” they wrote in their journal) and a commercial for a facial balm “guaranteed to removed blackheads, acne and wrinkles or your money back if not satisfactory”—whose money would not be satisfactory, Vortz wondered, he heard:

During the month of January all aliens must register with the Federal Immigration and Naturalization Service. Failure to do so is a punishable offense and may result in removal.

Vortz couldn’t believe it. He played the monitor back twice.

“Bortz! Bortz!” he shouted with all the excitement a Martian man can muster on Earth which, considering the thinner atmosphere they are accustomed to and gravitational disparity, is impressive, “I’ve got something!”

Together, they listened repeatedly, in amazement. Finally, Bortz spoke, unbelieving: “Do you know what this means? Not only do they know of visits such as ours, they require notification! Since this is the first Martian landing in 10 of their years, they must receive visits from elsewhere in the universe as well and developed their technology accordingly!”

After some discussion they agreed to register. They weren’t ready to return to Mars yet and did not want to break the law on Earth. So, in view of their new understanding of Earthlings’ awareness of extraterrestrial visitors, good relations with Earth might prove valuable.

Though feeling guilty about it, Bortz used his high-eye ray to melt the chain holding a directory at a nearby telephone booth and looked up the address of the federal building nearest them. They thought the book remarkable as a free public service, but quickly realized they could have photo-memorized all the pages and left the directory in place.

Materializing identical trench coats, sunglasses and hats (clothes worn by Earthlings on television when they didn’t want to be recognized), they left the hotel room in which they had landed their craft, which to be accurate was not really a saucer but more of a platter-shaped vehicle, definitely zero emissions but with quartz crystal, not lithium, batteries, went to the street and hailed a cab. Materialization was easy for a trained Martian surveillance adjunct; he (or, in rare cases, she) just concentrated on the desired object until a duplicate appeared. The copy lingered for up to a day after attention shifted to other matters.

With their collars up and hats pulled own, they were well concealed, although their height, or rather lack of it, neither topping three feet, six inches, rendered them somewhat noticeable. Still, this was the middle 1970s; even in a mid-sized city like Columbus, Indianapolis or Knoxville—given the current overlords I don’t want to get too specific, even now—a third of the population was stoned, another third didn’t want to get involved, and the last third usually was too busy supporting itself and the other 66.67 percent to pay much attention. So Vortz and Bortz arrived at the federal building without incident.

Well, almost without incident. When Bortz, looking at the cigar box holding fare money on the front seat, materialized the correct currency for the ride, the startled cabby banged his head so hard on the car’s roof that he knocked himself out. Bortz quickly materialized another dollar and left it on the man’s right hand as a tip.

Inside the large, columned building they located the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

“I’ll be with you in a second,” the receptionist said, barely looking up from her typing. “Why don’t you hang up your coats and hats and get comfortable?”

“How pleasant she is,” Vortz whispered to Bortz as they placed their garments on the coat-tree indicated. Turning back to her, Vortz extended a hand that looked something like a three-fingered spatula—they’d seen Earthlings do this when meeting on television—and said, “We’re here to register.”

The woman took her first good look at the pair and promptly fainted.

“She must be new here,” Bortz said.

In the next office the same scene, with slight variations, repeated itself. Bortz began to worry. “Maybe we made a mistake in coming. Maybe we’re supposed to register by remote,” he said. Vortz pointed out that they weren’t sure what registering entailed.

They searched out the regional director’s office. When he saw them he changed color, from a beige-pink to a pale white.

“Take note,” Bortz said. “Human ability to change color, as observed on television, verified.” When he asked for an explanation of the alien registration process, the regional INS director began making jerky motions with his hands and his breathing became especially noisy. His body temperature rose and sweat stood out all over his exposed flesh.

“Those anti-perspiration sticks don’t seem to work as advertised,” Vortz said.

Bortz hesitated, then spoke to the man. “I do not understand this strange behavior. We are here to comply with your law, and you all act as if you’ve just seen the wild woman of Venus, whom we all know exists only in old myths and the minds of lonely astronauts. We will leave, but we will register, however it is to be done!”

He and Vortz got their hats and coats, went out and hailed another cab. Bortz was still angry when they returned to their base camp, hotel room 322. “Holiday Inn my giant dunes!” he exploded. “I’m so mad I could bounce!” Bounce was what Martian men did instead of scream. Or, curiously, sing.

Their knees, in addition to bending, had shock-absorber joints. This enabled them, in addition to jogging without joint damage, to bounce up and down like pogo sticks, particularly when they experienced strong emotions. This was crucial since Martian women were nearly always about twice as tall as Martian men. By making repeated bounces, the latter could speak with the former face-to-face, intermittently.

Anyway, in the thin Martian atmosphere, screaming is frowned on. It’s wasteful. Instead, when men get very angry, they release their hostilities with high bounces. Or, when amorous, lower bounces while singing soothingly. Martian women, given their height, rarely get angry. They do, sometimes, feel amorous as well and then take the masculine bouncing-and-singing as flattery.

“We tried to obey their laws and what happens? They act like we have bad breath, perspiration wetness and athlete’s foot all at once, like on television!” Bortz said, between low, Earth-gravity bounces.

Vortz thought for a long time, then shouted, “I’ve got it!”

“Got what, dandruff?” replied Bortz, resting on the sofa after his strenuous jumps. He was beginning to talk like the commercials, Vortz realized with alarm.

“No. A way to register and get back at the Earthlings in the Immigration office,” he said.

That night they returned to the federal building in Columbus, Indianapolis or Knoxville and, using Martian mental waves and high-eye rays, altered the inscription over the main entrance. Then, standing tall—as tall as Martian men can, that is—they photographed themselves next to the Martian Central flag they’d planted in the concrete steps leading up to the big front doors.

“Hey, stop that, you two!” A security guard shouted as he stepped onto the portico of the Greek-revival style building. Vortz shot him a mild high-eye ray and the man slumped onto the steps. But as they hurried away, Bortz dropped his journal.

Back at their Holiday Inn base camp, after a slight detour on the way, Vortz called WKOL “Kool Radio!” It was one of the stations he monitored. “I want to give you a KOL News Klue,” he said. The station awarded $25 for the best KOL News Klue of the week and $500 for best of the year.

“Two little green men from Mars, I’m sure of it, were seen at the federal building a little while ago!”

“Sure, buddy,” the person at the station said.

“They did something to the building. Go see for yourself. And we got pictures of them, some of which we just left on the station parking lot. You can mail my prize to the address in the envelope with the pictures.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” the voice at the station said.

But Vortz already had hung up. It was time to pack, fire up their terrestrial module, which looked a lot like a large snow saucer with a Plexiglas bubble over it, and set course for home. Anyway, Vortz didn’t expect to receive the News Klue reward. The address in the envelope with the pictures was his all right, but on Mars—sparsely populated compared to Earth—they didn’t use ZIP Codes.

Dawning sunlight caught a bright, platter-shaped object streaking heavenward from the downtown Holiday Inn. On his way to work an hour later the regional director of Immigration and Naturalization noticed a crowd forming in front of the federal building. News cars were parked half on the street, half on the sidewalk and he could see someone from WKOL News interviewing people on the steps.

“Not another demonstration,” he thought. “What the hell is it this time? They probably want to free someone we haven’t taken into custody yet.”

He began to muse about giving up his political appointment and finding a real job. As he got closer he saw people staring at the inscription over the building’s magnificent columned entranced. A few were laughing.

“Now who do you supposed could’a done that?” one man asked, pointing to words that appeared to be burned into the stone.

The director heard the WKOL reporter talking into her microphone, saying something about strange pictures found in an envelope at the station early that morning. Over the entrance he read: “The Lyndon B. Vortz Bortz Martian Federal Building.”

The reporter spotted him and came running over. She showed the director the pictures discovered at the station. For the second time in less than 24 hours the director began to change colors. He also began to sweat again, profusely.

“Do you have anything to tell our listening audience?” she asked.

“Yes,” the regional director of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service managed to croak, “I resign.”

***

… The funny thing about the journal I found in front of the federal building that day, when I was to be released from a shop-lifting charge, another shop-lifting charge, that is, was that I could read it. At first the writing looked all scrambled, but as I stared at it, it turned into English. It did that for everyone apparently, turned into their native language whatever it was. I tried it on friends who were Vietnamese and Mexican—the gang we ran with called itself Los Amigos Fue Peligroso, not that we broke many bones—and they could read it as well.

A condition of my release was that I spend the rest of my high school years at a military prep academy in … never mind, geographic specificity could help lead them to my identity. I played football, learned Latin—hic, haec, hoc, huius, hunc, hanc, horum, etc., you probably didn’t know that Latin has a couple dozen different forms of the words this and that, and graduated with honors. I’m now a professor emeritus of classics at a well-known university in Columbus, Indianapolis, Knoxville or some place like them. But as emeritus, I hardly ever teach anymore. There’s not much demand for Greek and Roman history, literature or philosophy in any case, given current regulations. So, I’ve decided to write not so much my memoirs as a reflection on the past half-century and more. I’ve discovered a meaningful thread running through the period and Bortz’s journal. According to the Martians, like their home planet Earth will …  dxyn Z4! Pknfiw dd ont4# oooq78^& …. Water shortages intensify but cheese-making adapts and %$#)*&^!46&*!!a

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Eric Rozenman is a frequent contributor to New English Review and author of the newly-released The David Discovery, A Novel of the Near Future.

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