by Eric Brown
Grulvax-Xenxa-Goran led the way to another elevator plate, and this one lofted us to a gallery that ran around the equatorial circumference of the ship. We proceeded along a narrow curving passageway until we came to a series of rectilinear portholes set into the outer skin. Straps hung on either side of these viewing portals, and our Martian guide advised us that we should take a firm grip on these when the ship took off.
In due course a thunderous rumble shook the vessel, and a motion like an earthquake almost knocked me from my feet. “Whoa!” I cried, and gripped the straps not a second too soon. The ferocious roar increased. I pressed my nose to the glass and beheld, in wonder, the grid-like streets of London growing ever more distant. Never before had I flown – not trusting the new-fangled air-cars with my life – but the sensation I experienced now was not what I might have expected flight to be. Rather, it was like being carried into the heavens by some vast, slow-moving elevator. As I stared out, all of London became visible beneath me, and I spotted familiar landmarks down below like an architect’s scale models: there was Buckingham Palace, and here St Paul’s; tiny cars whizzed back and forth, and citizens crowded the thoroughfares of the Strand and Pall Mall, overlooked here and there by Martian tripods.
Soon all detail was lost to sight, other than the pattern of the capital’s streets, shot through by the great silver squiggle of the Thames. Fifteen minutes later we were at such an elevation that the coastline came into view, the bright blue of the Channel contrasting with the verdant hop fields and orchards of Kent.
A little later, as we sailed into the heavens high above Europe, Grulvax-Xenxa-Goran suggested that he show us to our berths. These were small cabins, barely larger than water-closets, and each contained a metal tank a little larger than a coffin. Our alien guide explained that we should undress, stow our clothing in the locker provided, and climb into the ‘suspension pod’, as he called it. He counselled us not to be alarmed when we were submerged, up to our necks, in an enveloping gel. This was necessary, he said, in order to reduce the risk of interstellar radiation. Presently a human steward would come along to administer a sedative.
The Martian departed, taking Holmes to his own cabin, and I closed the outer door and regarded the suspension pod with some scepticism. Taking a breath, I undressed, lifted the lid of the pod, and stepped gingerly into its confines. The pod was canted at a thirty-five-degree angle, at its upper end a wooden support for one’s neck and head, and a feeding tube which hooked into one’s mouth. No sooner had I settled myself into its length and pulled down the door, which covered my body but left my head free, than I felt a viscous fluid rise around my legs and torso. Cold at first, the fluid gel soon warmed, and the sensation, as it submerged me up to the neck, was not unpleasant.
An alarm pinged, no doubt alerting a steward to my readiness, and seconds later a uniformed young woman entered the cubicle bearing a small cup.
“Now drink this straight down, Dr Watson, and the next thing you know you’ll be waking up high above Mars.”
I took the cup and swallowed the milky sedative, and only then looked more closely at the stewardess.
“But…” I said as the sedative quickly took effect, a dozen questions on my lips.
For she was none other than Miss Freya Hamilton-Bell.
Chapter Five
A Most Curious Note
Her last words were prescient: it seemed that no sooner had my eyes fluttered shut than I was struggling feebly awake, the gel draining from the pod. As I sat up and pushed open the lid, I found it incredible to believe that a full seven days had elapsed. We were now more than sixty million miles from Earth, and in orbit around the red planet.
These thoughts were pushed aside by the vision that entered my head of Freya Hamilton-Bell, followed by a slew of questions. Had our ‘meeting’ in Hyde Park been as accidental as it had seemed at the time? What was Miss Hamilton-Bell, a self-confessed opponent of the Martian presence on Earth, doing here, working for the very Martians she considered her enemies? Had she purposefully manufactured our meeting aboard the Valorkian, and if so… why?
The alarm bell sounded, and I hurried to the locker and donned my clothing lest the young woman enter and find me half-dressed.
I need not have worried, however, for when a tapping sounded at the door, it was not Miss Hamilton-Bell but the ambassador.
“If you are quite ready, Doctor, would you care to join us on the observation gallery as we come in to land?”
“I’ll be with you in a jiffy,” I said as I finished dressing. In due course I adjusted my collar and joined the Martian in the corridor.
As we took an elevator plate down to the observation gallery, I said, “I was surprised to find that you employ human stewards aboard your ships.”
“For the convenience of our human passengers,” said Grulvax-Xenxa-Goran.
“And are these human employees resident on Mars?”
“For brief periods only,” the ambassador replied. “They have what is known as a ‘stopover’, until they board the next returning ship for Earth.”
The elevator plate reached its destination, and with an out-thrust tentacle my guide indicated that I should alight before him. I found Holmes a little further along the curving gallery, and beside him Professor Challenger. They were gripping leather straps on either side of a porthole, Challenger bellowing his appreciation of the view.
I grasped the strap next to Holmes, while Grulvax-Xenxa-Goran positioned himself before a porthole some way along the gallery.
“Developments!” I hissed as I peered out. We were passing high above a rust-coloured desert, with wind-sculpted dunes running off towards the horizon. Here and there I made out what I thought were vast silver lakes – though time and experience were to put me right on that score – and die-straight canals that carried precious water from the poles to the equatorial regions.
“This is astounding!” Challenger bellowed. “Why, look up to your right, Holmes! Now, is that great tumbling spud Phobos or Deimos?”
“The former, Professor. Deimos, which is smaller, you will observe in the heavens to our left.”
To me he whispered, “What is it, Watson?”
I peered along the corridor to ensure that Grulvax-Xenxa-Goran was out of earshot: the Martian seemed absorbed in the view of his home world. “Freya Hamilton-Bell – or whoever she might be – is aboard this ship and working as a stewardess!”
“Not only beautiful, if your description is to be believed, but enterprising.” He cogitated for a time. “It would appear, upon reflection, that your meeting in Hyde Park was not as accidental as you assumed at the time.”
“That had occurred to me,” I said.
“Did she have time to speak to you?”
I shook my head. “No, other than to tell me to drink the sedative, and that soon I would awake above Mars. But…”
“Go on.”
“But it can’t be just a coincidence, can it? I mean, if she did arrange our meeting in the park—”
“Then,” Holmes interjected, “she must therefore have had intelligence that we had been invited to Mars, and ensured her presence aboard the Valorkian accordingly. My admiration for the woman increases by the second.”
“But what can she want?”
“That remains to be seen, Watson. We must be vigilant.”
I told him that the human stewards enjoyed stopovers before boarding the next scheduled ship to Earth, and Holmes digested this. “In that case we must ascertain when the next ship leaves for home, so that we know how long we have in which to expect word from her.”
“You think she’ll contact us?”
“Indubitably,” said he.
My heart skipped at the thought, my excitation caused not merely by the idea of derring-do inherent in the situation.
“By Jove!” Professor Challenger ejaculated. “Just feast your eyes on that, my friends!”
I returned my attention to the scene far below, an endless expanse of sand that st
retched to the far, curving horizon. Immediately ahead I made out a smudge or blemish that I took for a city, towards which we were hurtling. Directly beneath us was a huge grey circle in the sand, with a single silver filament connecting it to the city on the horizon.
Challenger called out to Grulvax-Xenxa-Goran and asked what the disc might be, and the Martian joined us and peered out.
“That, sir, is Hakoah-Malan,” said he. “I suppose you would call it the planet’s nerve centre.”
“And the metal rail running from it?” Holmes enquired.
“A monorail connecting Hakoah-Malan to the capital of our world,” the ambassador said, “the city of Glench-Arkana, directly ahead.”
As the ship approached the city, I made out a veritable web of such monorails converging on the metropolis – and upon them, or rather depending from them, were carriages like bullets shooting back and forth. Enmeshed in this webwork was an agglomeration of black, carbuncle-like domes, soaring towers and other buildings, which extended for mile upon mile in every direction. In the centre of the city, like the bullseye on a dartboard, stood a great docking station occupied by a phalanx of mammoth interplanetary ships like our own.
“Behold the greatest metropolis in the solar system,” Grulvax-Xenxa-Goran proudly informed us, “home to fifty million of my kind.”
“Imagine,” Challenger muttered. “Fifty million… That’s more than the entire population of Great Britain – and all in one vast city!”
The ship decelerated, swung about, and came in low over the metropolis. I stared down at the boulevards thronged with Martian pedestrians and trilobite vehicles, and lined with buildings that emerged from the ground at odd angles, like daggers thrust into the earth. Several of these buildings were festooned with swatches of the red weed – Hedera helix rubrum Martiannica, as botanists labelled it – that had overrun London for a month after the first Martian invasion.
We approached the central docking station and came down slowly upon a vast metal flange, grapples like claws closing around the base of the vessel. The superstructure clanged and the roar of the engines gradually diminished into silence.
“Welcome to Mars!” Grulvax-Xenxa-Goran declared. “Now, if you would care to follow me.”
We stepped aboard an elevator plate and descended to the vast arched atrium, where our fellow passengers, Martian and human, were gathered prior to disembarkation. I searched the crowd for the blonde-haired figure of Miss Hamilton-Bell, but in vain.
“You will find the gravity of my planet much lighter than that of Earth,” Grulvax-Xenxa-Goran explained. “Also, the oxygen content of our atmosphere is not as great as that to which you are accustomed. I recommend you do not unduly exert yourselves, for fear of becoming light-headed.”
Already the hatch of the ship was sliding open. I took a deep breath and was reminded of the rarefied air I had last breathed while serving my country in the Hindu Kush.
A flexible umbilical tunnel was manoeuvred up to the exit, and presently we followed our guide from the ship.
“It is mid-afternoon at this longitude,” said Grulvax-Xenxa-Goran. “I will take you to a hotel, where you can rest and refresh yourselves. For the rest of the day you will be free to wander our great city. I will come for you at first light tomorrow and show you one or two of our great institutions. Then we will proceed north to the foothills of Olympus Mons, where our esteemed philosopher Delph-Aran-Arapna made his home before his untimely demise.”
We emerged from the tunnel into a great terminus, busy with hordes of Martians. The chamber was undecorated, the walls a uniform shade of taupe, and I was reminded rather of the adobe interior of a shattered termite mound I had observed in Afghanistan.
We retrieved our baggage, whereupon Grulvax-Xenxa-Goran escorted us from the building onto a metal deck from which domed air-cars arrived and departed like bumblebees at a hive.
At this juncture we took our leave of Professor Challenger, arranging to meet him at our hotel – the Smerza-Jaran – in two hours for drinks.
An air-car carried us from the docking station, and I stared down at the teeming boulevards of Glench-Arkana. Crowds thronged the thoroughfares, and I beheld a teeming marketplace far below. A strange scent reached my nostrils, which I would forever associate with the red planet – an odour of indefinable spices mixed with an acrid tang that reminded me of hot, lathe-turned metal.
The air-car banked and approached a jet-black ziggurat, a stark silhouette against the mustard-coloured sky, which turned out to be our hotel. The vehicle came down gently and we alighted.
Grulvax-Xenxa-Goran remained in the passenger seat and lifted a tentacle in farewell. “I will collect you here at first light,” said he.
I reached into my pocket, out of habit, in search of small change for the cab driver – but came instead upon a square of folded paper as the air-car powered up and flew off.
“Hello,” I said. “What on earth…?”
I pulled out the paper, unfolded it, and stared in disbelief at what was written there.
“Well, Watson?” Holmes enquired, studying me.
Not a little startled, I read the note for a second time.
My Dear Dr Watson,
You and Mr Holmes are in extreme danger. Please follow the instructions set down here, and then destroy this note. You must meet me at the Patava-Hutava eating-house, which is situated on a street called Gathra-Hakal to the north of your hotel, at eight o’clock this evening. You will undoubtedly be followed, but my comrades will ensure that this will be dealt with. You might not recognise me, therefore I will carry a green valise. When I have ensured that we are not observed, I will explain everything, and together we can decide what further action should be taken.
Yours sincerely,
Freya Hamilton-Bell.
Chapter Six
Rendezvous on the Red Planet
At half-past seven we left the hotel and hurried through the bustling streets of Glench-Arkana. The day was drawing to a close, and beyond the horizon of domes and towers the sun was setting in a gorgeous laminate of lacquered orange and rose tints. We were the only humans abroad, and our passage down the alleys of the ancient city caused not a little commotion among the crowds. Martians turned and stared at us with their great inky eyes, and the air was filled with the twitter of their commentary. I glanced behind us once or twice – but if we were being followed, I saw no sign.
“But what on earth did she mean, Holmes, when she wrote that we might not recognise her? Of course we will – she’s a rather striking specimen of womankind, mark my word. She’d stick out among the Martians like a veritable sore thumb.”
“I rather think she was suggesting she would be in disguise,” Holmes said.
“Disguise?” I laughed at this. “She would be hard pressed to disguise herself so that she wasn’t obvious in a crowd of Martians!”
“We shall see,” Holmes said, and indicated a narrow alley.
As planned, we were taking a circuitous route to the Patava-Hutava eating-house, the better to give Miss Hamilton-Bell’s comrades an opportunity to delay anyone who might be following us. Holmes had studied a map of the area back at the hotel, and committed the tortuous route to memory. We passed down a thoroughfare given over to the sale of heaped spices and exotic fruit and vegetables. The street was packed with Martian pedestrians and domed bubble-vehicles: it reminded me, in its hustle and hubbub, of a Kabul marketplace.
At one point we heard a screech of brakes and turned to witness, a hundred yards in our wake, an altercation between the driver of a three-wheeled bubble-car and a pedestrian. Holmes gripped my arm. “Likely the work of Miss Hamilton-Bell’s comrades,” he said. “Hurry – this way.”
We darted down a narrow passageway, emerged onto another busy thoroughfare, turned right and then crossed the street and dived down yet another alley. Holmes led the way at a brisk trot, and I followed, confident in my friend’s sense of direction. By this time I was utterly lost.
Minu
tes later we came to a boulevard that I thought I recognised: in the distance was the stepped ziggurat of our hotel. Holmes ushered me down a side street and paused before an open-fronted restaurant above which was a legend in flowing Martian script.
“Here we are,” said Holmes, consulting his pocket watch. “And just in time. I make it eight o’clock on the dot.”
The eating area comprised a series of low metal tables surrounded not by chairs but by cushions. Perhaps half the tables were occupied by seated Martians taking liquids from silver fluted vessels and eating what looked like flaked fish from huge bowls. An aroma of spicy cooked meat filled the air. I scanned the restaurant, but of Miss Hamilton-Bell there was no sign.
Holmes led the way to a vacant table and we seated ourselves upon the cushions with our backs to the wall, the better to observe the entrance. He perused a drinks menu on the tabletop.
A Martian approached our table and spoke its gargling gobbledegook, to which Holmes replied in kind. The waiter scuttled away. “I ordered two hot spiced drinks which sound not too dissimilar to Kashmiri chai,” he informed me.
Another alien approached, and I assumed that this one would take our food order. I was about to tell Holmes that I had little appetite when I noticed that the Martian was carrying a small green valise.
I gripped my friend’s arm and hissed, “The game is up, Holmes. Miss Hamilton-Bell has been rumbled – the brute has taken her valise! Should we beat a hasty retreat?”
Holmes leaned forward and addressed the alien in his own language, to which the Martian replied and lowered himself to the cushions on the far side of the table.
“What did he say, Holmes?” I was frantic to know. “What has the accursed beast done to Miss Hamilton-Bell?”
“Lower your voice,” Holmes ordered. “You are attracting unnecessary attention.”