Intergalactic Flea Market, by Glenn Lewis
From worlds beyond our own come these strange beings to mingle at an intergalactic flea market for a rare look at items taken–or stolen, more likely–from the earth. The tall, gray character with a friendless stare holds in one hand an authentic aboriginal star map from Australia. He is standing next to a globe of the earth, and the world’s first microscope. The stuffed bird is “Dodo Mounted on Wood.”
As a group of green-skinned aliens approach a parrot-boy creature, one of the three mischievously eyes the boy, causing the youngster to hug his mother’s leg while she studies with flamingo-like curiosity that oddity called a bird cage. The cage-thing is setting on top of Marconi’s first radio. The boy’s mother hasn’t yet noticed the bird bath (a nearby bargain for only 50 Qruens.) The boy’s father is looking the other way, toward a distant, antiquated touring car. Close by him is a 15th-century cannon, and an early telescope purported to have been created by someone named Galileo.
Twin sisters from Sirius glide along in unison to view this unusual assemblage of artifacts, and a blond alien seems to be watching us from behind his sunglasses. Sitting a ways beyond them on a velveteen Louis-XIVth chair is a piggish-looking, ‘poorly-dressed’ creature that appears to be openly annoyed by our presence.
The foreground displays a litter of other earthly treasures: an earthling’s elongated skull from South America; a large clay jar inscribed with Ancient, Mesopotamian markings, which are an accountant’s record of someone’s financial history; an Assyrian stone carving; an Eighteenth-Century porcelain doll; Thomas Edison’s first phonograph; a painting by Renoir (supposedly genuine); a gold, Egyptian cartouche fragment; a Grecian ornament stone (slightly chipped,) and an early model radio from the Art Deco period.
Contrasting the Polynesian clay figure and the Byzantine statue, there stands a tiny, wind-up toy mouse. As if to welcome another fleet of saucer craft, this animated character waves his arms like one who plays ‘Master of Ceremony’ to incoming cargo ships. The first of the ships now arriving are about to unload their cargo at the distant palace. Not everything that is in those shipments will end up for sale here under the archway, but a lot of it will…the ‘junk’ will, it surely will!
So, one wonders, how many Qruens is the Mona Lisa worth, in this galaxy?
