 How is one able to escape the Varsoom?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1944. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. "Beg pardon, thir," he said with his racial lisp, "thereth thome one to thee you in the main lounge." The Spacemen's was a sanctuary, a rest club where in-coming pilots and crewmen could relax before leaving for another voyage. The rule that no females could pass its portals was strictly enforced. There she stood before a frantically gesticulating desk clerk, leaning on her faded green umbrella. A little wisp of a woman clad in a voluminous black dress with one of those doily-like caps on her head, tied by a ribbon under her chin. Her high-topped button shoes were planted firmly on the varpla carpet and her wrinkled face was set in calm defiance. "Mithter Trenwith, if thith lady ith a friend of yourth, you'll have to take her away. Pure fiddle-faddle, that's what they are. To her publishers and her readers she might be Annabella C. Flowers, author of a long list of science fiction novels. Her annual income totaled into six figures, and her publishers sat back and massaged their digits, watching their earnings mount. They may have been dime novels, but they weren't synthetic. If Annabella C. Flowers wrote a novel, and the locale was the desert of Mars, she packed her carpet bag and hopped a liner for Craterville. If she cooked up a feud between two expeditions on Callisto, she went to Callisto. "All complete, I'll bet, with threats against the universe and beautiful Earth heroines dragged in by the hair." "What else is there in science fiction?" "You can't have your hero fall in love with a bug-eyed monster." Before I realized it, I was following her through the lounge and out to the jetty front. Five minutes later we drew up before the big doors of the Satellite . A theater to the grizzled colonials on this side of the planet meant a shack on stilts over the muck, zilcon wood seats and dingy atobide lamps. But the place was packed with miners, freight-crew-men—all the tide and wash of humanity that made Swamp City the frontier post it is. It read: ONE NIGHT ONLY DOCTOR UNIVERSE AND HIS NINE GENIUSES THE QUESTION PROGRAM OF THE SYSTEM As we strode down the aisle a mangy-looking Venusian began to pound a tinpan piano in the pit.
 By laughing
 By laughing  By using protection of a Venusian  Use of heat rays  By throwing Green Flames