The weather in Samoa was simply relentless. I just couldn’t imagine how people lived there without complaining about it. The temperature was almost fifty degrees Celsius, and I felt the asphalt was about to bubble beneath my feet, making threads of sticky black gum stretch from the soles of my shoes when I walked. I stood in the airport parking lot with a small suitcase containing my entire collection of Samoan shirts—all dirty, by the way—wearing my last clean piece of clothing. I also had a humble collection of thorns hidden under my skin on the butt, which I hoped to smuggle through the customs office unnoticed. All of us—me, my threads, and the thorns—were very impatient to see Greenland, but before that, while waiting for our airplane, we were looking at a shiny red Ferrari convertible coming across the parking lot to see us off.

After half a minute, the car abruptly stopped, its tires screeching just a centimeter from my toes. Two beautiful chicks were inside—a brunette and a blonde. The blonde took off her sunglasses and looked at me, and the brunette—an extraordinary and charming but mute Indian girl—only smiled with her unblinking eyes fixed on mine.

“Well, I guess you are going after all!” The blonde said, visibly satisfied with my decision.

“I guess I’m going, yeah!” I answered briefly.

“What did you expect me to get from your weird text message, ‘Party in Failolo’? Did I have to put my beach dress on and come to dance?”

“Well, the situation was somewhat hot back there!” I pursed my lips. “I didn’t have much time to ask you out more properly, but I was sure you would get my point anyway.”

“Of course!” Peularia tossed her head, looking at me judgmentally. “I only had to compare the cloud pattern with satellite data, measure the blurring at the clouds’ edges to calculate their rough direction and speed, and finally, triangulate your exact location. A piece of cake for a person with a lot of spare time. Well, the angle wasn’t perfect at first, but then I realized you must have taken the picture through a window glass, which immediately solved my little problem. It was because of the light diffraction!”

I grinned, not knowing what to say. If she had really picked up all that information from my picture alone, she was surely the brightest being in the universe—a lot smarter even than the aliens. She was probably joking.

“Did you really do all that?” I hesitated after all because she seemed serious enough.

“It’s impossible to do that! Cloud systems are too dynamic,” she laughed. “People from the neighboring houses reported shootings in the motel.”

“Yeah, that must have been… my weapon,” I suddenly remembered I wasn’t supposed to possess any.

Gzundis ignored my explanation and just shrugged.

“What happened to Marty Cork? Do you have any idea?” I asked her, looking at Nereidi, who was pulling funny faces at me behind the inspector’s back.

“Yes, we’ve found him, or at least what was left of him. Half of his brain was boiled down to nothing,” Peularia informed me. “The other half is now fit for nothing! I don’t think he’ll exhibit signs of nervous activity that are more intense than an amoeba ever again. I’m not actually sure he had that before, anyway. The guy’s a true moron!”

I looked at her, puzzled because she wasn’t one of those people who would express their personal opinion about a man in such a manner. I knew she meant something particular when she said that.

“Greenland colleagues extracted some more footage from security cameras in DuPont’s neighborhood,” Gzundis explained. “After the Corvic, they also caught Cork in the same Hondsu he used for your setup at the Chinese restaurant half an hour later. The timestamp matched perfectly, and the funny thing is that he drove with his window open, orchestrating with his left hand in the air—obviously enjoying some music. Facial recognition was positive.”

“Well, the weather was unusually mild that week. He probably felt invigorated and happy.” I smiled because the guy was really a massive jerk.

“They found another material, too, this time in Miss Bjornson’s apartment. It contained a photo of Sharon in the same car holding a wrench in her hand, which the police believe is the murder weapon. The camera also had a few shots of Marty driving your car by the restaurant.”

“That’s a hell of a lot of footage! They could have found it earlier, though,” I grunted, thankful I had been such a prolific photographer back home. “What about Sharon? Any trace of her?”

The inspector shook her head sadly.

“The coast patrol followed the boat to Swains, but then a military vessel of the pirates stopped them. Later, a passenger carriage car was reported to have left the docking station. They say there was a Couloong spaceship waiting at the upper platform.”

“Was Sengupta in the car?”

Gzundis shrugged.

“Nobody knows, but probably he was. Tutuila will be hot for him now, you know.”

“That’s really funny! It means he’s not beloved by the moon anymore. Now he’s beloved by Mars!” I laughed while remembering the nervous situation on the boat as I walked down the gangway the previous day. I hadn’t even stepped onto the shore with both feet when the ramp started retracting, and I had to jump. I didn’t even have time to ask them to return my Beretta! Probably, Sengupta was too impatient to embrace his bright future on the red planet.

By the way, it was no wonder they were in such a hurry because after the spectacular fireworks show on the island of Ofu, the weird circumstances behind the ammonia madness emerged, and the Earth suddenly became dangerous for a Martian or a Martian collaborator. We practically stepped on an entirely new level of no relations with our ex-colony. It was revealed that their government had been using aliens for more than half a year to help them transfer massive amounts of nitrogen from our planet to theirs. Nobody on Earth was fully aware of the extent of it yet, but it seemed colossal. As Bobby said, it literally changed the rules of business here. Besides, it wasn’t just ammonia but also laughing gas, nitrogen dioxide, dinitrogen tetroxide, and more—basically everything containing nitrogen in any form. It was believed that the Martians needed it because they were building an atmosphere and a layer of soil on their planet—something we had denied to them for so long for lack of money. Naturally, the Earth was the closest and cheapest source of this element, and it explained pretty well why the Couloongs had given us the technology of docking stations in the first place.

However, this wasn’t even the most shocking of the revelations after the nitrogen theft became publicly known. There was something even more disturbing, and it was the Couloong’s long-term plans for the solar system. In the future, they wanted to turn our planet into a space resort for alien tourists, and in order to do that, they had to reduce the level of oxygen in our atmosphere to eighteen percent and lower the temperature by five degrees so that the guests felt more comfortable while enjoying their stay. The unwanted amounts of the gas were going to Venus, which was meant to be a macrobiotic farm for producing alien foods. Suddenly, the entire scheme here wasn’t just a theft anymore but an invasion. And, weirdly enough, the most crucial link in this plan was Britain.

After the news about the nitrogen scandal, I also learned about a significant change in the role the country was supposed to play in Couloong’s colonizing agenda. To the great disappointment of all the British, their island wouldn’t be a shopping mall because the aliens’ high command had realized they would need a lot of cheap labor when they finally settled down here. Instead of this, the Chinese states were upgraded to a mall, and Britain was demoted to be a forced labor camp, accommodating life-sentenced prisoners from all the planets in the Couloong’s sphere of influence. The upper house of the British Parliament was to be transformed to host an institutional body of Couloong lords, and an interim government of Martians was to be appointed to rule the country until the alien law came into effect. It was, in fact, the actual reason why Mars entered into that military union with the Couloongs. And the bitter irony was that down here, we had been stupid enough to play along for years in return for their little gadgets and trifles. Sharon was actually damn right when she described the entire situation. Our numerous languages, religions, customs, and other means of division had made us incredibly foolish and easy to manipulate, and we truly deserved what we had. We were a planet of complete idiots!

“So when is your plane taking off?” Peularia raised her hand to put on her shades because the sun was too fierce. The air above the engine hood shimmered from the heat, and the metal reflected the sunlight like a mirror, dazzling my eyes.

“In about half an hour,” I said, glancing at Nereidi, who was gnawing at the nails of her left hand and still pulling faces for me. “I probably need to go and check in already!”

“There’s really no chance for you to give up, then! I already got used to your presence here and the extreme crime rates you brought. Now I’ll have to go back to digging into animal corpses, and my life will be boring again.”

“Well, Swains is close enough, isn’t it?” I smiled. “When Couloong tourists come, they may get you into an entirely different kind of criminology!”

“We’ll see about that,” Gzundis shrugged. “Maybe the rising ocean will get to us first! And next time a Martian comes to you, Mister Mellrow, please don’t bring her here,” she added. “Try to keep her in Greenland!”

“I’ll try,” I promised, grabbing my suitcase. “Don’t hold your breath, though. After all, you know me!”

“So, goodbye then!” Peularia gave me her last smile and started the engine. “Call us if you decide to come around someday on a holiday or something. You know where we live.”

“I know. And I will! Thank you.” I replied, feeling sad that I was leaving. Now that my journey was over, I was sorry I didn’t have more time. I wished the dazzling beauty of these two women hadn’t blinded me so much, and I had tried to get to know them better.

Gzundis briefly adjusted the sunglasses on her face and waved her hand at me. Just before she stepped on the gas, Nereidi suddenly took her fingers out of her mouth and smiled charmingly. “Goodbye, Mister Mellrow! You have a very funny T-shirt, as always!” she giggled. Then, her boss violently hurled the car forward and took her away from me.

I looked after the Ferrari, dumbstruck. It was the first time I heard Nereidi’s voice, and it was so unexpected that I didn’t even manage to say goodbye to her. Soon, the vehicle made a sharp turn to go out on the street, and it vanished behind the next corner, just as it had on my first day on this island.

“Goodbye, Nereidi,” I mumbled and slowly turned around, confused. Then I thought dejectedly, “And don’t worry, Miss Gzundis! Next time I see a Martian in my office, I’ll shoot myself in the head instead of bringing her anywhere.”

Still sad and thinking about it, I entered the departure hall to check in my luggage, taking my place at the end of the line. I had just put my suitcase on the tile floor, waiting, when I remembered I hadn’t bought a magnet for my fridge and a gift for Jill, which would be inexcusable. Unfortunately, a few people were already behind me, and I had to put up with my plan B, as usual. I felt so stupid because I made the same mistake every time. But then again, that was precisely what stupid people would do, right? They would go to the other end of the world, stay there for a few weeks, and then buy gifts from the souvenir shop at Anuk Airport!

Since I had time to kill, I looked at the TV screen hanging on one of the walls to watch the breaking news. The sound was muted, but on the AP bulletin, I read that new discoveries had emerged, shedding light on a large-scale operation of the Martian Secret Service on Earth. One part of their plan was smuggling natural resources from our planet, but another goal was destabilizing our political system and laying the groundwork for future colonizing. Until now, nobody here had known anything about their existence, even though they had been operating for a couple of years, as it turned out. Their first mission was “Mission Drainage,” but that wasn’t the most shocking detail about them—not to me, at least. The most appalling thing was actually the name of the office. It was called Global Guards.

After a few minutes, the queue reached the scanner, and I was ready to step into it, still under the influence of what I had just learned. When I did it, the officer glared at me for a second, visibly annoyed, and I wondered what I had done wrong. Then I followed where his eyes looked and realized it was my T-shirt. Printed on the front with large capital letters, it read, “Check me out carefully! I’m special!” The man shook his head disapprovingly, and I just grinned awkwardly because I obviously had a big problem chasing me wherever I went. “When you arrive in Nuuk, please remember to burn this T-shirt before going to see Jill!” I thought, devastated. “It’s the last thing she needs to see you wearing when you meet her!” Then, I stepped out of the scanner, impatient to go home.

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