by Norman Crane
* * *
Upon returning home, Appleton’s life returned to normal—at least in all superficial respects: he smiled to his wife, he kept to himself, and, at Six O’clock each evening, he retreated to his customary chair to read his customary books. The magazine cover on which he’d written the message from Charles R—, he placed in a private drawer in the desk in his study, underneath unfinished essays and research into particle acceleration and magnet engine propulsion and other old academic bric-a-brac.
For weeks, whilst trying unsuccessfully to locate more information about Charles R—, he kept the drawer unlocked. But, once he’d given up hope, he turned the key and, with one click, banished all thought of Mars from his mind.
Or at least that’s what Appleton intended. For there are certain neurons that, once they start firing, are impossible to stop. At most, they can be slowed—their work delayed. They are not obtrusive neurons: they do not prevent, say, smiling to one’s wife or reading customary books. But they are persistent and every so often they make the results of their operation known. This happens most-of-all at unexpected times, as, for instance, when Appleton, having bent to retrieve a particularly large pine cone from the grass, stood up with the complete schematic for the Magna-IV Engine before his eyes, or, upon having been asked by the local lady grocer for his opinion about a recent stretch of fair weather, replied, “My God, Ruthenium!”
Once such ideas made themselves known to Appleton, he began putting them to paper. Once they were on paper, he tasked other, more compliant, neurons with dividing and conquering any problems that the papers made apparent; and, once those had been solved, what else was there to do but gather the necessary materials and construct the first prototypes?
Appleton kept mum about this, of course. To his physicist colleagues, he was still at work on the same book he’d been working on for the last decade. He was still irrelevant. The wife, as long he smiled to her, suspected nothing. It was only his books that could have given him away—lying unopened on their shelves, their regular Six O’clock appointments long forgotten, their yellowing pages gathering dust—but books by themselves cannot speak. Appleton’s secret was safe.
Even as the project approached completion, not one soul suspected.
When launch-day finally dawned and Appleton, having composed a note to his wife indicating that he would be away until Wednesday on a scholarly pursuit, packed the pieces and prototypes into the back of a rented truck and drove to an old farmer’s field, from where he would blast off that very noon, the whole world was still naïve to the history that would soon be made.
In the field, Appleton worked diligently. He filled the shell of the rocket with each of the separate machines he had designed and constructed. He had a life support system, a navigation system, a communications system. He had propulsion. He had fuel. He had everything that was necessary. Nothing had been overlooked. As the sun rose, it rose on years of endless effort that, today, had physically and for the first time come together in the middle of such a previously insignificant English spot on Earth.
By Ten O’clock, the rocket was nearly complete. All that was left was the installation of the final ingenious detail: the captain’s seat: Appleton’s own customary evening chair.
That done, Appleton looked for one last time at the earthly sky, its thin clouds moving slightly across an orange sun, then climbed into the rocket and closed the hatch. The pneumatics sighed. The inside air was warm. As he set the navigation, every click and beep audible as if within his own skull, Appleton wondered what became of Mary Simpson. But just as it had come, the wonder passed. He confirmed his intended destination on the small liquid crystal display and took a deep breath.
The destination was unbelievable: Appleton felt feverish. He maneuvered into his chair and strapped himself in. Space was tight but he was not uncomfortable. Besides—he thrust a needle into a vein in his arm—he would be asleep for most of the journey. The sedative began to flow. He activated the countdown sequence. When he awoke, he would already be in Saturn’s orbit.
* * *
“Hello? Can you hear me?”
The communications equipment produced only a monotonous hiss punctuated by crackles. Appleton scratched his head. He’d programmed the system to link directly to the telephone in his home. The signal was strong enough. It should be working. He tried another connection.
This time, there was a faint click and the echo of a voice.
“Darling! It’s me. Please say something,” Appleton spoke into the receiver.
The voice wobbled.
“I hope you can hear me. I hope you haven’t been worrying. I hope I haven’t caused you harm. Please, darling, say something so that I know there isn’t a malfunction.”
The echoing voice suddenly came into rather clear focus. “Who is this? And do you want to speak with my mum?”
Appleton knew right away that it wasn’t the voice of the wife. In fact, it wasn’t even a female voice. It was the voice of a boy.
“My name is Appleton,” said Appleton. “I am attempting to contact the wife. Unfortunately, I may have miscalculated. Nonetheless, if you’d be a good lad and please make a note of the following: I am calling from Titan, which is the largest moon of the plane—
“Saturn, I know. I’m not stupid.”
Appleton cleared his throat and adjusted his headset. “Yes, that’s mighty good of you. As I was saying, I am on Titan, having only just arrived, you see. But the situation thus far appears manageable. I predict I shall make a fair go of living here.” He remembered his reason for calling. “Right, then, if you could tell as much to the wife, whom you will find living at 11 Golden Pheasant Lane in Beaconsfield, I would be much obliged. Her name is—“
The connection went dead. The communications system went offline. Try as Appleton might, no amount of banging, prodding and reprogramming ever brought it back.
* * *
Phil Jones replaced the telephone receiver.
“Who was that?” his mother asked.
Then disappeared down the hall without waiting for an answer.
Phil went back to the homework spread out on his bedroom floor, whose doing Appleton had interrupted. Geography lay beside history, which bordered an island of English. Phil tried all three subjects—cross his innocent heart, he did—but all at once the history was too boring, the English too imprecise and the geography too much pointless memorisation. He rubbed his eyes. Next year he’d be in high school. The homework would only get harder.
T-I-T-A-N
He typed the letters almost absent-mindedly into a Google image search.
The moon stared at him.
Somewhere inside his head, certain neurons were beginning to fire.
About the Author
Norman Crane lives in Canada. He writes books. When he's not writing, he reads. He's also a historian, a coffee drinker and a cinephile.
His first novel, A Paunch Full of Pesos, is a spaghetti western.
On the internet, he keeps a blog, has Facebook and tweets (@TheNormanCrane).