Ogg, the supreme dictatorial leader of Mars, holds a special rally to celebrate the exploits of Mars' first space explorer Colonel Cosmic, who has just returned from a trip to Earth. That trip was initiated by Ogg to overcome the problems of Ogg's own explosive-powered state limousine, by finding out how state limousines on other plants operated. By chance, Cosmic landed in big city USA, where he found that all Americans could move quickly and efficiently by gasoline powered automobiles. Despite the difficulty of finding and getting the raw resource of petroleum out of the ground, petroleum and distributing it to the masses is the panacea for many of the problems that Americans may have faced otherwise, not only as that efficient fuel source, but also for the manufacture of many other transportation and non-transportation related products. Cosmic also found another important component - competition - in making America the most most prosperous nation on Earth, which, if adopted on Mars, could overthrow Ogg's dictatorship.