The Secret of the Martian Moons is a science-fiction novel by Donald A. Wollheim. It was first published in 1955 by the John C. Winston Company. Playing world-class hide-and-seek with the Martians, Nelson Parr believes that he has found them... until the real Martians show up. This is the second novel that Wollheim wrote for Winston, the other two being The Secret of Saturn's Rings (1954) and The Secret of the Ninth Planet (1959). This is also one of the thirty-five juvenile novels that comprise the Winston Science Fiction set, which novels were published in the 1950s for a readership of teen-aged boys. The typical protagonist in these books was a boy in his late teens who was proficient in the art of electronics, a hobby that was easily available to the readers. Plot Returning to Mars from a four-year stay on Earth, sixteen-year-old Nelson Parr feels anger toward all the talk he hears about the possibility of the Earth authorities shutting down the Martian colony and bringing all of the colonists back to Earth. For a century the colonists had tried to make a living on Mars and, more importantly, to unlock the secrets of the abandoned cities that they found on the planet and now some people just wanted to give up. He’s distracted from his anger when he’s attacked by an intruder in his sleep cubicle. The assailant gets away but leaves behind, on the mirror over the wash basin, the evaporating print of a three-fingered hand. Nelson assumes that the burglar was looking for the letter that Leroy Perrault, a scientist with the Interplanetary Bureau, had given to him to pass on to his father, John Carson Parr. After arriving on Mars Nelson learns from his father that the planet is indeed being abandoned and over the next few days the remaining three hundred colonists are put on ships and sent to Earth. But Nelson, his father, his father’s assistant (Jim Worden), and three other men secretly stay behind. Perrault’s letter has authorized this clandestine group because certain anomalous events noticed over the previous century indicate that the Martians are still present, hiding in their impenetrably sealed cities. To catch out the hidden Martians the six men ride a small rocketship to Phobos, the larger and innermore of Mars’s moons, and set up camp with their telescopes. Weeks go by, but then Nelson sees a light