“What have you got there, Vans?” I asked him, suspecting what it was.
“It is the original Evolution Machine,” he whispered.
“What do we want with that?”
“Well, you see, Don, I thought that, seeing Bommelsmeth is with us, if we could get him to tell us how the thing works we might be able to change Olla back into her natural form again. I want my wife back. You’ve no idea how it hurts me to see her like this.”
“Vans,” I said, sadly, “you know very well that all the best scientists in Mars have been working on that ray for months. They cannot find out how to control it. It is most erratic and unpredictable in its results. Do you think Bommelsmeth would stay a sea-lion if it were possible for him to become human again?”
“Yes, but it’s his machine. He knows how it works,” Vans persisted.
Olla has a much better husband than she deserves.
In the royal museum grounds we found the space-ship already cleaned up, oiled up, filled up, stocked up. All ready to start. It was Wimpolo’s surprise for us. Usulor grunted as though his worst suspicions were confirmed. Wimpolo, forgetting her sulks, ran all over the ship, explaining this point and that. It really was an elegant job. She was as happy about it as a schoolgirl on vacation.
We all met in the main room.
“Wimpolo,” Usulor was saying, “I give consent to your spending your honeymoon aboard this ship provided you go no further than—”
Just then a sudden roar and shock threw us all to the floor.
The rocket-tubes were in action, shaking the ship with their thunderous roar.
Usulor sat up, glaring at his daughter.
“You go too far with your jokes.”
“It isn’t me, dad,” Wimpolo assured him. “I gave no orders for this, I don’t know what’s happening.”
The sea-lion, barking excitedly, slithered and flapped his awkward way out of the door.
“Your engineers testing the machinery,” I suggested.
“Hrrrmph! More likely the fools forgot the safety catches, and the ship has started accidentally,” Usulor growled.
WE WERE all sitting on the floor, where the shock had thrown us.
“Where’s my Olla?” demanded Vans, looking round anxiously for the flamingo.
“Hrrrmph! Don’t bother about your useless bird now. Go to the control room. Find out what’s wrong. Stop the ship. Yes, by thunder! Stop her before she crashes into the cavern roof.”
“But that shock,” Vans persisted, “Might easily have broken my Olla’s legs. Or even her long, slender neck. I must find her.”
He struggled to his feet.
“Hrrrmph!” bellowed Usulor, excitedly. “That flamingo! Where did it get to? That bird is at the bottom of this. Find it!”
He got up to follow Vans.
“Don!” Wimpolo whispered to me. “Something is seriously wrong. Go and see.”
I could run the length of the ship in half the time it took the ponderous Martians. The acceleration-thrust was little handicap to me, since it was not a lot more than normal Earth gravity. To the Martians, of course, it was a heavy strain.
I ran along a corridor to the rocket-control room. Our brief inspection of the ship told me where it was.
The massive metal door was locked. I saw at once that the only way through was to cut a way through with a dissolving ray. Beyond the door the rockets were thundering. Somebody had started up those rockets and locked the door to prevent their being turned off again.
In a world like Mars, it didn’t take me a moment to realize what that meant. Assassination! Somebody was having another try to murder Princess Wimpolo, old King Usulor and me too. An inside job, just like the other attempt to murder Wimpolo had been. Some palace servant, possibly, seeing us go into the space-ship, had followed, locked the door to the rocket-rooms and started up the rockets. He would know, of course, that the unguided ship would very soon crash to destruction. Amazing luck that it had not done so already. The assassin, of course, must be some crazy fanatic, quite prepared to die with us if only he accomplish his end in destroying the King of Mars, his daughter, and his daughter’s husband.
Then a sudden thought struck me.
Was Olla the culprit? Of course, she knew where we were. She could slip away from the rest of us, lock the door and start up the rockets. And she would not need to die with us. She would just jump out of a door or window and fly down on her long, graceful wings. From what I knew of her character as a woman it seemed quite a possible thing for her to do.
I ran to a window and looked down. Far below the fast-driving ship was a fluttering patch of white. I felt sick of human nature then. After all Van’s love and care, undeserved though it had been, she tries to murder him and all the royal family with him, I thought.
FASTER and faster went the ship.
It was shooting up at an angle of about forty-five degrees now. Ahead was an immense wall of rock. A few more seconds and all would be over . . . Miraculously, the ship swerved to one side, gliding past the obstacle. It was a near thing. Ahead was another wall of rock. It was too much to hope that another such miracle would happen again. The end was certain to come in a minute or so. Nothing could prevent it. Well, none of us would know anything about it when it did happen. The impact would be annihilating.
Usulor was roaring through the ship.
“Don! Hargreaves! Earthling! Where are you?”
“It was useless for me to try to shout back. I haven’t got foghorn Martian lungs whose bellow can be heard almost a mile away. I ran out into the main center funnel of the ship with its zigzag staircase and let him see me.
“Oh, there you are!” he roared. “Why don’t you cut down the power of the rockets? We’ll all be killed.”
I raced up to him and told him the door was locked.
“You mean to tell me that you can’t get at the rocket compartments?”
“No.”
“And you haven’t been guiding the ship?”
“No.”
“Then who has?”
“Nobody I’m afraid,” I said. “This ship is running blind. Nobody is at the wheel.”
“Nonsense!” he bellowed. “If that was true we’d all have been killed long ago. Somebody is piloting this ship. Piloting it pretty recklessly, too. Twenty times we have avoided disaster by less than the length of my body. There we go again.”
The ship was now going at a speed I estimated to be rather over four hundred miles an hour. Usulor exaggerated a little but it certainly was unnerving to see mightily masses of rock rush at us at terrifying speed to jerk aside at the very last moment.
A star would gleam in the darkness. We would know it for a hanging lamp, a sort of Martian air lighthouse, hung there to warn their swift aircraft of a down-jutting pinnacle of rock. The light would expand at terrifying speed, and then our searchlights would show us a massive inverted mountain rushing at us. Or the wall of the vast cavern itself, or one of the mighty supports of its colossal roof.
“This speed among all these dangers,” Usulor rumbled. “It is suicide! Who is piloting this ship?”
I was sufficiently relieved to know that it was being piloted at all, although it was clear that the pilot, whoever he was, was having a hectic struggle to keep us off the rocks. And speed was increasing, too. Before long it would be beyond the power of any human eyes to see oncoming danger soon enough for human hands to make any move to avoid it.
“The door to the control-room is locked,” I said. “You’ll have to dissolve the lock to get in.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Wimpolo, sharply. “The pilot-room is this way.”
She pointed to the nose of the ship.
“But the rockets are that way,” I objected, pointing to the stern.
“The main driving rockets, yes. But the smaller, guiding rockets are in the nose. They turn the nose of the ship any way you want, correct any spin, wobble or other unnecessary movement of the ship. Didn’t I show you that during ou
r inspection?”
NOW I was reminded, I believe she did. But in the excitement I had forgotten. We had all forgotten.
So, we ail trooped to the little control-room. And, would you credit it? The sea-lion and the flamingo were seated at the controls, punching this lever, turning that wheel, guiding the ship. Making a good job of it, too.
Just as we got there they both left the controls, twittering and barking with relief, and rolled over the floor together, playing with each other. Looking out of a window, I saw that the spaceship was clear out of Mars, out in free space. She had come out of the great exit cavern of the planet. Danger was over for the time being.
“What is the meaning of all this?” Usulor demanded.
The sea-lion got out the list of letters he used to communicate with me and pointed to letters, spelling out Martian words. He said that the two animals, finding themselves unable to stop the ship, had gone at once to the control-room to guide it on the only safe course.
“But I thought I saw you flying away,” I said to Olla.
“It was probably the parachute of the real criminal that you saw,” Bommelsmeth answered.
The two animals had been quicker in thought and action than any of us human beings. That fact had saved all our lives. It seemed odd.
Usulor leaped for the radio-television. In a moment or so, on the amazingly efficient Martian network, which never seems to fail, he was talking to his police chiefs, army chiefs and astronomers. We could all follow.
Police officials were most apologetic. No notice had been given them of the visit of the royal party to the museum, there had been no reason to anticipate danger.
“Can that,” barked Usulor. “Have you any news of anybody jumping out of this ship?”
“Jumping out?” The Police Chief looked shocked. “I’ll have a search for the body. If anything is left of it. I hope it wasn’t the Princess, or Prince Don, or Vans.”
“Fool!” Usulor roared. “Can’t you see them in the screen, alive and well? And it wasn’t suicide. He went down by parachute.”
“Parachute? Oh, yes, I see.”
“Listen to this, and get this idea well into your thick head. You’ve got to find me that parachute-jumper, alive or dead. Because he is the criminal who tried to murder us all.”
“Certainly, Your Majesty. But it’ll be difficult. He may have come down in an unlighted spot.”
It is always night in the underground world of Mars, There is no daylight.
A world of darkness lit by lamps and searchlights. That is one reason why man-eating snakes and criminals are such problems there. As the Police Chief said, if the parachute-jumper landed in a dark place he would probably get away.
The idea that the criminal might get away infuriated Usulor.
“Did nobody see him jump? What were the air-observers doing with their telescopes? Operator! Give me the Observers!”
In a moment he was talking to the Observer Chief.
“Yes, Your Majesty! Directly news was received of the premature launching of the ship, our telescopes began at once to search for it. The fact that existence of this ship had been kept so secret made things difficult. No precautions had been devised. The great speed attained—”
“No doubt, no doubt. Did you see anybody jump out?”
“Yes we did. We are developing the photographic plates now. We are waiting confirmation of some rather unusual details.”
An assistant brought the Chief Observer some plates. He bent over them.
“Your Majesty, your ship was shot out of Mars into space by a creature with the body of a horse and the wings of an eagle.”
CHAPTER III
Space Birds
AS HE spoke, the Chief Observer held up to the screen a picture. Silhouetted against a searchlight glare, we saw this creature. Mild gravity has produced on Mars an extraordinary variety of giant birds. It is so easy, you see, to fly. But this being shown launching itself upon the air after its attempt to murder us was an impossibly weird being even for Mars. No words, nothing but a picture, could possibly convey any idea of how strange it was. The Observer’s words, “the body of a horse and the wings of an eagle” was a very rough description. Even when one remembers that he was speaking of Martian horses and Martian eagles.
Wimpolo broke our amazed silence with an abrupt laugh.
“Well dad, you would fill Mars with these Evolution Machine products. And most of them were criminals from the jails before you changed them.”
Her father looked at her.
“You think that thing is one of my freaks?”
“Sure of it.”
“And those things retain enough intelligence to be dangerous?”
“Of course they do. We tried to warn you. You had examples in front of you.” She pointed to the sea-lion and the flamingo, who were now bending over diagrams and space-navigation charts.
“Yes, they seem intelligent enough,” Usulor muttered.
“Intelligent enough! Why, they are more intelligent than humans! What humans could have saved us all when the ship started on its own, the way they did? No human beings in Mars could have done it. And you have liberated thousands of creatures like them, with superhuman intelligence and unknown possibilities for good or evil. Now who’s the madcap? Now who’s wild? Now who’s uncontrollable?”
“You can’t talk to me like that! I’ll have you know that I am Emperor and Overlord of Mars, and have to be treated with proper respect, even by my daughter,” Usulor shouted, purple at the gills.
But what Princess Wimpolo had said startled me. I had not thought of it like that. The Evolution Machine produced such amazing physical results that I had not thought of the effects it might be having on the brains of the subjects. No doubt these effects might be equally remarkable. And it was an Evolution Advancing-Machine. Queer how many of us had overlooked that.
I looked at the flamingo. The bird was studying diagrams and charts intently. The feather-brained and irresponsible Olla, wife of Vans Holors, would never have had the brains or the patience to understand them. They were too technical and difficult for me too, for that matter. But now neither the flamingo nor the sea-lion seemed to have the least difficulty with them.
I looked out of a window. We were in space all right. One glance at the dazzling blue sun set in an intensely black sky that was studded with innumerable fiercely glittering stars told me that. Only in absolutely airless space could sun and stars look that way. Mars was now thousands of miles away behind but still filling the sky in one direction.
Gosh, it was good to see the sun and the stars again, even though they looked so unfamiliar. The windows of the space-ship, by the way, were all of a special glass designed to protect sensitive Martian eyes from the dangerous short rays of sunlight. Mars has been without natural ultra-violet for a long while.
As the distance to Mars increased the television slowly faded out, but we could still talk.
VANS found a dissolving ray and went down the zig-zag stairs carrying it. Presently the curious smell of metals turned into dust and gas told us that he was cutting open the locked door.
“Think you can operate this ship?” I asked the sea-lion, anxiously.
He nodded shortly, not turning from his diagrams.
“I am glad of that,” I said. “I’m sure neither the King, Wimpolo, Vans nor I could pilot it back to safety. Unless you can we are sunk.”
A flipper turned pages. On a diagram he pointed to a disc representing Deimos, one of the tiny moons of Mars. Underneath he indicated a Martian word meaning “damage,” or “sabotage.” Leaving me to make what I could of this cryptic message, “Deimos-damage,” he slipped and slithered out of the room in the ungainly fashion usual to sea-lions, who seem unable to make up their minds whether the back ends of their bodies are really tails or two legs joined together. Down the stairs he went.
I came after him. Vans by now had the door looking pretty silly, and one bash with a massive shoulder crashed it open.
The machinery of the rocket compartment looked all right to me. The sea-lion went over it carefully.
“See any damage?” I asked him.
He nodded.
“Is it bad?”
He nodded again.
“Wuff, wuff, wuff!” he barked.
He was trying to talk to me, forgetting that he no longer had a human voice and could only bark unintelligently.
“Wuff, wuff!” he barked, sadly, realizing this, and led the way upstairs once more. Presently he was pointing out words on a printed page.
“Damage delicate machinery precise control impossible safe navigation Martian caverns impossible landing Deimos best plan effect repairs there return later.”
“You mean we shall have to land on Deimos?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Hrrrmph!” grunted old Usulor, startled.
The reason was quite clear. Landing a space-ship is a most delicate operation. To try to land on Mars with unreliable controls would be suicide. A temporary landing on Deimos would be easy and safe and the best way out of our present troubles.
I explained to Wimpolo.
“What a honeymoon!” was all she said.
We set out to “catch” Deimos, one of the two tiny worlds that circle Mars at such terrific speed.
SEVERAL days had gone by. We were now too far away from Mars for our feeble radio to reach that world. Vans, taking a turn at observation with the telescopes, set the alarm bell ringing. We all came to the control room to see what was wrong. Some new danger must be threatening us, or Vans would not call us like this.
“It’s impossible, impossible!” he was saying. “Look there! Do you see what I see?”
We all looked. Honest, of all the absurd, ridiculous things I’ve ever seen I’ve never seen anything more absolutely incredible than what I saw then. Winging their way towards us through airless space was a flock of extraordinary birds. Fantastic, nightmare creatures they were, no two alike. Birds and bats and flying dragons, feathery wings, leathery wings, transparent beetle-wings and soft, downy, dusty butterfly wings, every winged creature that the Evolution Machine had ever produced seemed to be out there coming to greet us.
The Complete Saga of Don Hargreaves Page 19