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The Spyders from Mars.

It appeared that some forty years ago a gold disc had fallen into a field near Far in the middle of the night. The people came from Far and Wide, the neighbouring village, to see the gold disc. After all they normally only associated a gold disc with a trendy pop star; perhaps a wormhole had picked up The Sweet?

This gold disc was like no other gold disc. It was at least twenty feet in diameter, giving it a radius of ten feet and a circumference of some 20π, depending on what type of pie you’ve been eating. It wasn’t a flat disc because that would be two dimensional and even in this tall tale there has to be some semblance of reality. The centre of the disc had a height of some eight feet, which turned out to be quite significant in the end.

The disc lay in a field somewhere between Far and Wide for forty days and forty nights, which somehow appears to be significant too. The local people became bored waiting for something to happen, though did notice how much the grass grew and some of them began to see the wood despite the trees. Anyway they soon returned to their homes and carried on with their usual games of pass the parsnip and count-your-feet – first one to two is the winner!

On the morning of the forty first day came a loud bang. At first folks just thought it was dawn breaking; it turned out the gold disc had split in half. As the gasses and stardust settled there emerged ten Spyders from Mars!

Well there was a tiswas and a to-do!

Large hairy eight-legged Spyders, all the way from Mars. Why were these Martians on Uranus? How did they get here? (well we know how because I’ve just described the gold disc they landed in). Why did they get here? Could they communicate with the local populace? The people of Far and Wide rarely talked to each other, wallowing in the pride of self-determination; ignore thy neighbour was the byword. They referred to themselves as COPS – Company of Perfect Strangers.

“Yes we can talk” said the apparent leader of the Spyders. It may be that he was telepathic as nobody had asked the Question yet.

“Well listen to this,” said Dwayne Pipe, the local yob and smarty pants. “Get the Hell out of here. We don’t the likes of you in these parts. You probably come from a corrupt place and countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe. You should go back to from where you came, because the COPS don’t need you and man they expect the same!”

“Wait! Look! High in the sky there!” said the apparent leader of the Spyders. As all the locals turned to look the Spyders collectively turned in the opposite direction and scurried off into the undergrowth.

“Bugger!” snarled Mr Pipe, “Fooled by that old chestnut! Let’s get some stick and stones and break their bones!” he shouted to any who would listen.

“Now hold on,” said Norman Knight, a somewhat anxious but understanding member of the community and supporter of good causes and things. “Maybe we should try to get to know our new neighbours,” he pleaded. “And besides Arachnids don’t have any bones to break if I remember rightly!”

“Kiss my arse!” said Pipe as he ran headlong into the undergrowth, whirling a large stick above his head.

He was followed by dozens of other maddened residents all of whom seemed intent on stepping fatally on a Spyder. Norman stood, still surrounded by many other reddened residents, embarrassed by the exploits of their fellows. There was many a swirling and a turning and a gnashing of jaws as the maddened crowd from Far hacked and slashed at the undergrowth.

The Spyders should have been destroyed by the onslaught. Fortunately they had stopped off at a sportswear shop just before leaving Mars and had bought forty pairs of running shoes. One of the Spyders had queried the apparent leader concerning the wisdom of such a purchase only to be slapped down with the phrase “just does it!”

And they did just do it. Spyders are pretty nimble on their eight feet anyway but donning four pairs of running shoes made them uncatchable! They were soon off and away running round Far and Wide, maddening and reddening the crowd with their speed.

Pipe stopped everything.

“Look,” he said, “We routed them from the undergrowth, so that’s saying something.”

“Far Rout?” suggested Norman Knight.

“Perhaps it’s time for a Parley” suggested Dwayne Pipe, “Or we’ll be running round all day and all of the night!”

“Good move,” said Norman. “We can see what they want. I’ll ask nice, gentle, probing Questions and you can be really forceful and nasty with your demands.”

“OK,” said Pipe, “so you want us to play the good COPS bad COPS routine?”

So it came to pass, alack and alas, that Norman Knight and Dwayne Pipe approached the apparent leader of the Spyders.

“Hello there apparent leader, how are you?” asked Norman.

The apparent leader took a couple of steps closer.

“Is this a ruse?” he asked. “Because I got my guys on the starting line and they will be off as quick as you can say ‘whirling dervish’.”

“What do you want here?” snarled Pipe.

“We came here in peace,” said the apparent leader. “Well that’s not strictly true. We didn’t come here deliberately. We were heading somewhere else but ten sets of eight legs in a tiny control room and things are bound to go wrong. It took us forty days and forty nights to realise we’d even landed anywhere. Still being invertebrates we were able to squeeze in there and enjoy the flight. We didn’t want a fight!”

“I knew you were spineless bastards the moment I set eyes on you!” said Pipe.

“Patience, patience, patience,” said Norman, immediately sitting down with a deck of cards.

When he finished his game of patience he turned to the apparent leader.

“Was that Spyder solitaire you were playing?” asked the eight-legged visitor.

“Patience,” said Norman. “Now tell us all about yourselves.”

The apparent leader sat down on his rear four legs.

“Nice to take the weight off every now and then,” he said.

“We are Spyders from Mars. I am called Old Tom Cobbler and these are my children.”

“That sounds like a load of Cobblers!” said Pipe, half laughing at his own joke.

“Patience, patience, patience,” said Norman.

The conversation continued after the next game.

“So why was that gold disc full of Cobblers?” asked Norman. “There must be a reason you set off in a cramped spaceship. Of course we should be absolutely intrigued as to how you built it, how it’s propelled etc. But just at this juncture I can’t be bothered to ask.”

“Funny you should ask,” said Tom Cobbler. “It’s powered by a Guided Unique Light Propulsion System call a G.U.L.P.S.”

“And what does that stand for?” demanded Pipe.

“Well it won’t stand for any messing about,” said Tom Cobbler. “This is probably why we’re where we’re not meant to be! Astonishing stuff. Me and the kids make the G.U.L.P.S operate – it takes your breath away.”

“Fascinating,” said Norman stifling a yawn. “You’re not a Physicist by any chance are you?”

“Why yes I am,” said Old Tom Cobbler, “How could you tell?”

“You’re boring the life out of us. So what can you do that would make us let you stay living here?” demanded Pipe.

“As I was saying the system operates on light,” continued the Spyder. “Me and the kids operate it.”

“How?” asked Pipe, interested despite his lack of Science Education.

“Well you see us eight legged freaks are much misunderstood and maligned. Although we have eight legs the assumption is that we therefore have eight feet,” explained the knowledgeable arachnid.

“Seems reasonable to me,” said Pipe who had taken total control of the conversation, Norman Knight having fallen asleep during the Science bit.

“Ok, then answer me this – how does a Spyder comb his hair?” asked Tom Cobbler.

Pipe scratched his head. It really wasn’t something he’d ever thought about.

“With a comb?” he ventured.

“And how is the comb held?”

“In your hand – your foot? I don’t know!”

“You’re dead right,” beamed the professorial Spyder. “In our hands and our feet as our hands are our feet! A vice versa! Talk about ambidextrous; we’re ambimanupedestriatus! Didn’t you wonder how we managed to tie the laces on these running shoes that keep us ahead of the game?”

“I thought they might be slip-on’s” said Pipe.

“And how fast could we move with four pairs of slip-on’s on? No; it’s three pairs of lace ups and one pair of slip-ons for me; the kids all have four pairs of lace-ups – I tied them on. It aids the frictional grip.”

Pipe was getting sleepy now with all this boring Science.

“Which brings me back to The G.U.L.P.S. drive. Me and the kids all put our hands on the propulsion system. And as you know many hands make Light Work. So off we shot until we found ourselves here!”

The old arachnid looked around. All of the Maddened Crowd from Far and the reddened residents of Wide were asleep.

Isn’t Science wonderful?

So the Spyders were accepted into the communities of Far and Wide, plus the outlying hamlet of Near. They were able to travel about Far, Near and Wide gathering information for all and sundry, and occasionally all on Sunday. For they were Spy–ders; they could Spy on anything. I suppose a mega cluster of eyes plus eight legs would be useful for any spy. If paid handsomely enough in buckets of dead flies they would Spy on COPS all day long.