The Angry Planet

by John Keir Cross

  I was just getting ready to swarm up one of the other trees myself, when Jacky, who was standing a little distance away, came running over to me to say that she could see through the trees that Doctor Mac and Uncle Steve had come out of the laboratory and were strolling back towards the study across the lawn, very deep in conversation.

  “And it just struck me,” she added, “that this thing, whatever it is, must be pretty secret, or they wouldn’t have shoved the wall round it. I think we’d better not be found looking in at it—I vote we go and join the two of them, and we can come back some other time and explore this whole place properly.”

  I agreed that this was a good idea and we whistled to Mike to come down. Uncle Steve and the Doctor had gone into the study through the French windows by the time we emerged from the wood. On our way across the lawn, Mike explained to us in an excited low voice what he had seen from the tree-top.

  “It’s immense,” he said. “You never saw anything like it—honest you didn’t. It goes very tapery and pointed to one end—the end low down on the ramp—and it bulges up to a big round sort of head at the other end—it’s exactly like an enormous pear. And there are all sorts of little nozzles, like guns, sticking out all over it—a great mass of them at the pointed end, one or two along the sides, and then some more at the blunt end, though not so many as at the pointed end. There’s a ladder goes up to a big doorway in the side near the bulgy end—if you two hadn’t called me down I’d have thought out some way of getting over the wall to find out what it’s like inside.”

  By this time we had reached the study. Uncle Steve and Doctor Mac were talking very earnestly and quietly together. They broke off when we went in through the French windows, and after a few moments of chatting, Uncle Steve said that it was time we were thinking of getting back home. So we said cheerio to Doctor Mac and set off.

  As we walked through the fields to the cottage, I said to Uncle Steve in an innocent voice:

  “By the way, Uncle Steve, we were walking about in the woods up at Doctor Mac’s house, and we came across a big sort of wooden enclosure thing. What’s it for?”

  Uncle Steve looked a bit uncomfortable.

  “Oh, that,” he said. “Yes. . . . Well, you see, that’s really a secret, you know. The Doctor is carrying out some very special scientific experiments that nobody’s supposed to know anything about, and that’s one of the places where he works at them.”

  “What sort of experiments?” asked Mike. “They must be very odd if he needs a great big place like that for them.”

  “Oh, just experiments, you know,” said Uncle Steve, getting more and more embarrassed. “As a matter of fact, you’re not really supposed to have gone into the wood at all—I should have told you it’s out of bounds. Next time you see the Doctor you had better not mention you were there—he’s very touchy about his work.”

  And he suddenly changed the subject to talk about our holiday plans for the next day. So we knew we were on to something. We all three of us looked at each other and gave a secret smile, and Mike winked.

  For the next few days nothing much happened. We had a good enough time among the hills and so on, but there was nothing spectacular. I thought a lot about what we had seen in the enclosure, and wondered often what Doctor Mac’s experiments could be. And I knew that Mike was doing the same.

  One thing that added to the mystery of it all was the behavior of Uncle Steve. He seemed to have something on his mind. He went very often to see Doctor Mac, then when he came home he would sit for hours just thinking—sitting in the evenings at the window simply staring at the sky. One night it rained very badly and we had to stay indoors. We half-expected he would read or tell us some of his stories, or at least do something to entertain us. But no—he sat in a corner all the time, brooding and chewing at his pipe-stem, and Mike and I were forced to play draughts, while Jacky got on with a bit of sewing.

  Then suddenly, one evening, while Jacky and I were sitting reading in a little summer-house sort of place right at the foot of Uncle Steve’s garden, Mike came rushing up to us with his face all red with excitement.

  “I’ve got it!” he yelled, slapping his brow like a little lunatic. “Oh boy, I know what that thing up at the Doc’s place is! It’s a rocket!”

  “A rocket?” I said. Mike nodded, and Jacky stared at him as if he’d gone off his nut.

  (Insert note by Jacqueline Adam: I’m putting a note in here because Paul keeps on thinking he can do his big brother stuff and make me out as if I were stupid. Well, I’m not. I didn’t say anything when Mike told us about Doctor Mac’s rocket, because I had suspected it was a rocket all along, so there—and that’s more than Paul ever did!—J. A.)

  “Yes, a rocket,” went on Mike. “The old Doctor’s been experimenting with them a long time. It was Mr. McIntosh, the gamekeeper, that told me,” he continued. “Some of the Doctor’s laboratory assistants are in lodgings with his sister in Pitlochry, and they let him into the secret. They’ve been building experimental rockets for the Doctor for years—though this is the biggest one ever. They think he’s a little bit dotty, as a matter of fact.”

  By this time I had realized the full weight of what it was that Mike was telling us.

  “Phew!” I gasped, “a rocket! Well, my hat, if he’s building a rocket as big as that, he must be hoping to reach the moon at the very least! I say, Mike—what an idea! Do you suppose maybe he is thinking of trying to reach the moon?”

  “He couldn’t,” said Jacky. “Don’t be silly!”

  “You never know,” muttered Mike (who was on my side the moment he saw that Jacky wasn’t—that’s always the way with us three). “Scientists are experimenting in some mighty queer things these days.”

  He stood for a moment with his arms akimbo, then suddenly he slapped his brow again.

  “Anyway,” he cried, “I’m going to have a closer look at that thing. And I’ll tell you when—to-morrow!”

  “To-morrow?”

  “Yes—to-morrow.”

  “But we’re going for a picnic to-morrow,” said Jacky. “Don’t you remember? It’s Mrs. Duthie’s day off, but she’s making us some sandwiches before she goes to Crieff to see her sister, and we’re going into the hills at about 11 o’clock.”

  “I know,” nodded Mike. “And I for one am coming back from the hills early in the afternoon. And I’m going round by the Doctor’s house. And I’m going to sneak in through the back way to the little wood. And I’m going to have a long rope with me, with a big hook at one end—a sort of grappling iron, see. And if it’s the last thing I do I’m going over that wall to have a look at that rocket.”

  “Don’t be silly, Mike,” said Jacky. “You’ll get into trouble. Uncle Steve told us that Doctor Mac is very touchy about his work. Besides, the laboratory men will be there tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Not them,” said Mike triumphantly. “That’s another thing Mr. McIntosh told me. The laboratory men were paid off to-day—they’ve finished working for the Doctor altogether.”

  “Well then, the Doctor will be there himself—probably with Uncle Steve, too.”

  “Not if we go about 4 o’clock. That’s why I’m suggesting the afternoon instead of the morning—it’s the one time we are likely to be undisturbed. Don’t you remember what the Doc said last Sunday?—that he wouldn’t miss his tea at 4 o’clock for anything. He and Uncle Steve will be in the house at that time. . . . Anyway, I’m jolly well going to have a shot at it—and if you two aren’t with me, well that’s just too bad—I’ll have to go by myself, that’s all.”

  He shut up then, as close as an oyster. And Jacky and I just knew from experience that as far as Mike was concerned there was simply nothing more to be said.

  To cut a long story short, as they say in books (but after all, I’ve turned into a writer myself, so why shouldn’t I say it too?), the next afternoon, at about 3:45, the three of us crawled through the wood at the Doctor’s house, very stealthily and silently. We had been u
p in the hills since 11 o’clock, but all through the picnic there had been a kind of suspense in us, and an impatience to get on with our plan. That plan was to sneak in over the wall, have a close look at the rocket to satisfy our curiosity, then get out again, hang about for a bit, and finally turn up at Uncle Steve’s cottage at about 6 o’clock—the time we had said we’d be back from the picnic—as if nothing had happened.

  When we got to the wall, Mike went up to the little knot-hole we knew of. First of all he peered through it, then he listened at it.

  “I was right,” he said in a gleeful whisper. “Not a soul about. I’m going up.”

  He unwrapped a long thin rope from about his waist. Then he took an ugly big hook out of his haversack (it was an outsize salmon gaff that he had borrowed from old Mr. McIntosh) and tied it to one end of the rope with—as he explained—a real unslippable sailor’s knot.

  He slung the hook up into the air, and after a couple of tries it caught firmly on the wood at the top of the enclosure wall. Then, after spitting on his hands, Mike clambered up, using his feet on the wall and pulling on the rope—the way natives go up coconut palms, as I expect you’ve seen in the movies.

  When he got up, he sat straddle-wise on top and whispered down:

  “All clear. Come on, Paul—you next. And hurry up about it.”

  I went up. Then Jacky followed, Mike and I hauling on the rope to give her a hand. Then we lowered Jacky down the other side, and then I went down, and finally Mike. There we were, in the enclosure, with Doctor Mac’s rocket in front of us!

  “I say,” said Mike, in an awed whisper. “What a monster!”

  “It’s beautiful,” sighed Jacky, “it’s simply beautiful!”

  It certainly was. It was huge, like a great shining silver fish, all sparkling in the sun. As Mike had said, it was pear-shaped. All down the back of it there was a long slender fin. Judging from what we knew to be the length of the enclosure, it was a good 150 feet long.

  We stared and stared. Then Mike said, in a puzzled voice:

  “I say—it’s facing a different way from what it was last Sunday—and it’s much more tilted up into the air. That ramp it’s on must be adjustable—probably there’s a little donkey engine or something to work it. That means the door is on the other side now—come on, I’m going round.”

  We went round by the bulging end, which soared high into the air above us—almost perpendicularly, it seemed. As we got to the front we saw two enormous windows (like the ones all along the sides I have already mentioned, only much bigger). They seemed like huge shining eyes. Painted in a semi-circle between them, in silver, were the words: THE ALBATROSS.

  “Lovely,” said Jacky softly. “What a perfect name for it! It’s the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen. I don’t know whether it’s meant to go to the moon or not, but it certainly deserves to go to the moon!”

  When we got round to the other side we saw that in that part of the enclosure there were a great many sheds and lean-to shelters against the wall. Inside them we could see some machinery—lathes and so on—so we took these to be the workshops. Also on this side of the enclosure there was an immense gate in the wall, but this, of course, was closed.

  High up in the rocket on this side, near the huge blunt nose, there was a big metal door, wide open. Suspended from it was a slender ladder of flexible steel. Before we could say a word, Mike was half-way up it.

  “Mike!” called Jacky. “There’ll be trouble! You can’t do it!”

  “Oh, can’t I!” he yelled back, and gave one of his guffaws of triumph. “Come on, the two of you, while you have the chance. Don’t be a couple of sissies!”

  By this time he had reached the top and had disappeared inside the rocket. I looked at Jacky and she looked at me.

  “Oh well!” she said. “We might as well be hanged for sheep as lambs.”

  And she started to climb, too. And when she was almost at the top, I followed her.

  We found ourselves, when we got through the outer door, confronted, over a gap of about two feet, by another door, which was also open, though this one opened inwards. I saw, immediately, looking along to my left and right from the little bridge or gangway, why this was: the outside of the rocket was a huge casing-shell—a sort of skin, or envelope: the whole thing was like a gigantic thermos flask, with an inner chamber—the two parts separated, as I saw, with massive springs.

  Inside the inner door we were in a huge cabin. It must have been pivoted in some way to the inner shell, for in spite of the angle at which the rocket lay, the floor of it was level, and parallel to the ground.

  I can’t begin to describe what this cabin was like at a first glance. There was, at one end of it, a huge panel of controls—wheels, levers, dials covered with figures, switches, resistance coils, valves, and so on. Two small windows were let into this panel, and through them we could see across the space between the inner and outer shells and so through the two huge eyes in the front of the Albatross. There were small windows in the side walls of the cabin, too, that gave on the portholes down the side of the rocket. In the back wall of the cabin were several steel doors—we opened one of them and found a small cupboard full of cardboard boxes. These boxes, when we had a look inside them, proved to our surprise to contain thousands and thousands of tubes of toothpaste! Mike and I were puzzling what on earth anyone could want so much tooth-paste on a rocket for, when suddenly there came an excited yelp from Jacky, who was over by the cabin door.

  “Mike—Paul,” she said, “we’re trapped! They’re coming—Uncle Steve and the Doctor are coming in!”

  We rushed over beside her. Far below, the big gate in the palisade had been swung open, and Uncle Steve and Doctor Mac were walking from it across to the ladder of the rocket!

  “Good Lord!” I gasped. “Now there’s going to be trouble! What on earth can we say?”

  “We needn’t say anything,” said Mike in a whisper. “Ten to one they’re only coming for a look over. They can’t stay all night—Uncle Steve is expecting us at the cottage at 6, don’t forget. I vote we get into that toothpaste cupboard and hide—it’s big enough for the three of us—and with luck we’ll get away with it. Come on!”

  We rushed across the cabin and crowded into the cupboard. We got the door shut in the nick of time—as I pulled it to behind us, I heard Uncle Steve and the Doctor at the top of the ladder.

  We huddled together, hardly daring to breathe. It was pitch dark. Through the steel door we could hear, in a muffled way, the movements of Uncle Steve and the Doctor. First there were two loud clanging noises, then a sound of hissing, quite strong at first, but getting fainter. I pressed my ear to the door and could just hear the Doctor and Uncle Steve speaking.

  There were only two short speeches. After a long pause, Doctor Mac said (and even through the steel door I could hear an awful sort of excitement in his voice):

  “Well, Steve, this is it—this is it at last!”

  And Uncle Steve said:

  “Yes, this is it, Mac.” Then he added, in a queer, half-choking voice: “Good-bye, old earth—Good-bye! . . .”

  Then there was another pause. Then a slight whirring noise. And then—

  An immense, explosive, rushing sound! And I felt, suddenly, as if my ears would burst. And there was a terrible, terrible pressure on my chest—it was as if, suddenly, I weighed hundreds and thousands of pounds!

  And then everything went black. I—all three of us, as I learned later—lost consciousness. . . .

  CHAPTER III. ON ROCKETS AND SPACE-SHIPS by Andrew McGillivray

  Some parenthetical remarks by Andrew McGillivray, PH.D., F.R.S.,

  on rockets and space-ships in general, and the Albatross in particular

  MY FRIEND, Mr. Stephen MacFarlane, has asked me to contribute an occasional paper to this volume, an obligation which I hasten to fulfill with the greatest of pleasure. He has also asked me to keep my remarks short, and to couch them in a language that will be quite comprehensible to t
he most completely lay mind. This part of the commitment I view with some dismay. I am, after all, a scientist, and a scientist who has specialized in a particularly complex subject. It is almost impossible, I feel compelled to say, for me to write comfortably about this subject in what I might call an elementary way. In one sense, anything of value I might say would necessarily be completely unintelligible to the lay mind that Mr. MacFarlane talks of! However, on the understanding that these remarks are to be regarded as doing no more than skim the surface of a vast subject, I hasten to perform what my friend has asked of me. Any who wish to pursue the topic further—to delve into the finer technicalities—are referred to the numerous contributions I have made to the better-known scientific journals since the return of the Albatross to earth.

  With this preamble, then, let me begin by saying that I was first attracted to serious experimentation with rockets some fourteen or fifteen years ago. Before that, I knew what the normally well-educated man might be expected to know on the subject—that rockets were more than mere Guy Fawkes toys: that the principle behind them was possible of application to the aeroplane—the flying machine: that there were even in the world some wild and daring souls who dreamed of traveling, by means of rockets, not only into and through the stratosphere, but to the moon—and even beyond the moon. One day, however, I met, on a train journey, a young man who told me that he had just come back from a tour of Germany, where he had seen some truly remarkable experiments with small mail-carrying rockets, and even one that had transported, it was alleged, an intrepid human traveler some six miles into the stratosphere. I was so impressed by what he told me that I read all the available literature on the subject, and in a very short space of time I became so enthralled by it that I could barely think of anything else. The more I studied, the more convinced I became that rocket flights of greater and greater distances would be possible in the future. I grew to believe that journeys through space to the moon and the planets were not such illusory dreams after all—in short, I joined the band of “wild and daring souls” I have just referred to.