"Sixty minutes to the dot," Joe affirmed.

Harl and Kir-Um stepped through the door and breathed deeply of the night air. It all seemed like a nightmare now, but the significant bulge in Kir-Um's coat pocket confirmed their brief interlude with the amazing genius, Joe Carson.

Kir-Um withdrew the book and painfully deciphered the title, by the light streaming from a window. It read: Joe Miller's Joke Book. The printer must have made a mistake, he reflected. It should read: Joe Carson's Joke Book. But no matter.

In the Martians' minds, a picture formed. It was a beautiful picture. Hundreds of sleek, fast spaceships hurtled down on Earth, forming almost a solid sky of steel above the hapless planet. They were strange spaceships, for apparently they carried no armament. The metal that would have been used to equip the ships with guns had, instead, gone into the building of more dreadnaughts of space, for they possessed a weapon far more destructive than any bolt from a ray-gun or blast of a disintegrator-cannon. On the bridge of each ship stood a renowned Martian scientist, a small book clutched tightly in his hand. And on the flagship, the Grand Councilor himself occupied the place of honor, the original copy of the weapon open on a stand before him. As the huge armada entered Earth's atmosphere, gigantic amplifiers blared forth messages of doom to the inhabitants. Words with horrible meaning assailed the ears of the population: 'Why doesn't a chicken cross the road? It doesn't want on the other side!' 'Who was that wife I seen you with last night? That was no wife, that was a lady!' Human creatures screamed in agony and fell in the streets. Ghastly moans of 'Ha haw oh hee!' escaped from clenched teeth and bodies retched with the unbearable pain of their torture. Slowly their bodies decomposed, losing a couple of billion atoms with each convulsion. Soon, not a human remained on Earth and this beautiful world and all its riches passed into the hands of the proven superior species—the Martians. Ah! It was a lovely dream. But soon it would be more than a dream—it would be happy reality. Harl and Kir-Um both sighed together.

Spacers would hover, their mighty weapons blaring forth.

They pressed buttons concealed under their coats and slowly began to fade, their outlines becoming indistinct and hazy. Kir-Um raised a hand to his head in salute.

"Poor, foolish Earthlings," he murmured, "this is the end. Always remember, if it had not been for Joe Carson's Joke, you would never 

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