It is the year 2030. Maisy and Tacy are two short, five-legged, three-eyed, pink coloured Martians. They are best friends and sisters.

As they sit down for dinner one night in their luxurious villa, sucking berry-flavoured food capsules with their tentacle like mouths, Maisy looks up in the sky (as the villa’s roof is transparent) and exclaims, “How I would love to go to Earth and see those weird Earthlings!”

“Yeah, it would be fun,” says Tacy, pushing away her empty bowl of berries food capsules.

“Let’s go tomorrow!” cries Maisy knocking down a bottle of water in excitement.

“Okay, okay,” says Tacy, picking up the fallen bottle and smiling. “Why don’t we go and make a list of things to take?”

So here is their list: Camera, fruit-flavoured food capsules, notepad and pencils, two water bottles and rocket.

“Well, I guess it is hard to think of what to take apart from food. Do you think we should take along a good supply of water too?” asks Tacy.

“No need for that as, according to our Martians’ research, there is abundant water on Earth. We have got everything we need and that is all that matters, now I think that we should go to bed so that we can get up early tomorrow and go,” says Maisy. Soon after that, they go to bed.

Now my dear friends, as we barely know anything about Mars, let me tell you a few things. In Mars, males have blue skin colour while females are pink. And they have five legs and three eyes. On Mars, only one language is spoken, which we call English.

Martians females lay eggs, in which there are always two babies. A purple egg means both the babies are girls. If the two babies are boys, then the eggs colour would be grey.

A red egg represents a boy and a girl. Martians lay their eggs in a house and then leave. When the egg hatches, the siblings in the egg own the house and live there.

Each house has a garden. In their garden, they grow edible capsules of different flavours. Martians don’t trade, there is no buying or selling as they just have to hold a magic pebble to get their wishes granted. These magic pebbles, by the way, are found abundantly on Mars. But Martians never wish for evil things, unlike some humans, because they are the most kind-hearted and forgiving species in the universe. In that way Mars, is a peaceful planet.

Now back to the villa — it is early the next morning and Maisy jumps out of bed and excitedly wakes up Tacy. While Tacy makes breakfast, Maisy arranges the rocket and luggage. Finally, the moment that they both have been waiting for arrives.

“Three, two, one, blast off!” and the rocket launches.

As they reach the Earth’s atmosphere they put on special glasses, which they have in the rocket. With the help of these special glasses, they can look at the Earth as clearly as we do.

After a few days’ journey, the rocket lands in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Unfortunately, Maisy and Tacy do not have a very good and comfortable time on Earth as they think that the whole of Earth is exactly the same. They spend just three days on Earth and return to Mars where they write down details of their journey. And here is what they write:

Earth is surprisingly completely covered in sand. It is extremely hot during the day and cold at night. It is usually very windy on Earth and the sand hills change shape often. The wind flung the sand into our eyes mercilessly.

The creatures are not at all as we had imagined them to be. Earthlings are brown and have four legs with big, flat feet. They have two eyes with long eye lashes. They have one or two humps and in our three days on Earth, we never saw them eat or drink even once. Worst of all, they do not seem to be intelligent like we thought Earthlings would be!

Mysterious green, prickly and spiky plants grow here and there. But our worst experience was that we had taken very little water and had to cut short our journey because of that. Unfortunately, Earth has very little water (which proves that our research about Earth having a lot of water is not true) and we found some after a lot of effort and time.

To conclude, Earth is like a sea of burning sand and Martians should not visit Earth in future.

Signed, Maisy and Tacy.

So you see, my friends, there is no need to be scared of Martians invading the Earth!

Published in Dawn, Young World, September 29th, 2018