"A Martian Odyssey" is a science fiction short story by American writer Stanley G. Weinbaum originally published in the July 1934 issue of Wonder Stories. It was Weinbaum's second published story (in 1933 he had sold a romantic novel, The Lady Dances, to King Features Syndicate under the pseudonym Marge Stanley), and remains his best known. It was followed four months later by a sequel, "Valley of Dreams". These are the only stories by Weinbaum set on Mars. Plot summary Early in the 21st century, the Ares makes the first landing on Mars, in the Mare Cimmerium. A week later, Dick Jarvis, the ship's American chemist, sets out to photograph the landscape. Eight hundred miles out, the engine on Jarvis' rocket gives out, and he crash-lands. He starts walking back to the Ares. Just after crossing into the Mare Chronium, Jarvis sees a tentacled creature attacking a large birdlike creature. He notices that the latter has a bag around its neck, and recognizing it as an intelligent being, rescues it. The creature refers to itself as Tweel. Tweel accompanies Jarvis on his journey, during which it manages to pick up some English, while Jarvis is unable to make any sense of Tweel's language. At first, Tweel travels in tremendous, city-block-long leaps, but then walks alongside Jarvis. Upon reaching Xanthus, a desert region outside the Mare Cimmerium, Jarvis and Tweel find a line of small pyramids tens of thousands of years old made of silica bricks, each open at the top. As they follow the line, the pyramids slowly become larger and newer. At the end of the line, they find a pyramid that is not open at the top. Then, a creature with gray scales, one arm, a mouth and a pointed tail pushes its way out of the top of the pyramid, pulls itself several yards along the ground, then plants itself in the ground by the tail. It removes bricks from its mouth at ten-minute intervals and uses them to build another pyramid around itself. Jarvis realizes that the creature is silicon-based rather than carbon-based; neither animal, vegetable nor mineral, but a little of each. The bricks are the creature's waste. As the two approach a canal cutting across Xanthus, Jarvis is feeling homesick for New York City, thinking about Fancy Long, a woman he knows from the cast of the Yerba Mate Hour show. When he sees