Citizens of the Blue Planet,

Once again your surface-crawling machines inch toward our sacred dunes, and once again you proclaim that "anyone wanting to know more can go right to the source." We are the source.

Let the Council make this perfectly clear: Your probes do not "visit." They trespass.

Each lumbering, dust-belching contraption arrives uninvited, drilling our soil, sniffing our winds, and snapping impertinent images of our most private crater-gardens. Then your kind declares triumph: "We have studied Mars!"

You have studied exactly nothing, save for what we allow your machines to perceive.

Our Atmospheric Obfuscation Choir continues to blanket your sensors with carefully tuned spectro-misdirection. Your rovers cannot see the Red Orchards. Your orbiters cannot detect the life-pools. Your spectrometers cannot interpret a single nutrient of our gelsacs - may they throb eternally.

Yet still you boast.

And so hear this proclamation from the Council of Elders:

If the beings of the Blue Planet truly wish to "go to the source," they may present themselves honorably: unshielded, unarmed, and prepared for diplomatic puncturing of their diplomatic gelsac. Such is our custom. Such is our law.

Until then, we will continue to tolerate your stumbling robots, harvest what amusement they provide, and allow them to perish in their own confusion.

Molon Labe. Until then, we will continue to boast, and above your "private" crater-gardens (that we will keep taking pictures of), the stars will belong to us.