Crick is a peaceful Martian. His spaceship ‘‘Trock and Troll’’ is heading for a blue planet which seems very romantic from a distance. His goal is to discover any sign of intelligent life on Earth and to return as soon as possible.
He has only one passenger on board - it’s his bosom friend Crock. Everybody is sure he has a bee in his bonnet. First of all Crock is dead certain life is possible outside Mars. He must be naive to believe it, but it’s O.K. Second, he always has a finger in every pie (maybe because his great-grandpa was a baker). And last but not the least, Crock is a wet blanket.
A light purse is a heavy curse, no wonder Crick and Crock worked round the clock to save enough money for space travels. Now their dream came true - the mysterious blue planet was within an arrow’s shot. None of them could hide their excitement. Crick drummed on the control panel with his left pair of tentacles. Crock hummed his favourite song ‘Trape Me’ waving his purple ears in time.
At last they landed in the middle of nowhere. It must have been a sort of settlement. Oddly enough the local houses were quite primitive: bars instead of walls, sand on the floors. Most of the aborigines were fast asleep. They had no clothes on, no household appliances, no interstellar communication, just nothing!
What kind of civilization could they have? Crick tried talking to a local guy with a huge mane but that only roared at him in reply and went back to sleep. Well, one can’t be so hot-tempered, after all. Actually it’s a rare case that visitors from space come to your place!
So as it turned out the strange town was a far cry from what they’d expected to see. Under such circumstances they had to come away none the wiser. All the way back Crock was surprisingly silent staring at the only souvenir he’d taken from Earth. It was a small plate with the strange words on it ‘‘Don’t feed the animals’’.
по мотивам одного из рассказов в "Технике Молодежи" 80х годов