The Angry Planet

by John Keir Cross

  And his voice came back, cheerful and reassuring:

  “Steve—Steve—don’t worry. Don’t you realize, man—it’s only night—we’re landing in the night-time!”

  “I’ll put on the emergency light,” I called to him. “The switch is just above my head here.”

  “No, don’t do that,” his voice came. “I can see quite well—I didn’t go completely unconscious—only hazy, and my eyes are used to it—it isn’t fully dark, it’s only twilight. If you put on the light you’ll dazzle me. Are the children all right?”

  There came two faint reassuring voices from the other mattress—Jacky, like the Doctor, had taken off her mask before the rest of us had fully regained consciousness. Mike, beside me, grunted and said: “Yes—sure we are.”

  “Splendid. We’re almost there. You can unstrap yourselves and stand up—you’ll be able to do it without boots. We’re coasting quite slowly—the atmosphere must be fairly dense.”

  We stood up. Our eyes were accustomed to the gloom by this time, and we stared at each other’s vague shapes. I raised my arm. It seemed curiously heavy for a moment, after the long, long spell of weightlessness we had gone through. I had unstrapped my boots before lying down, and now I made a few tentative steps across the cabin. To my joy I found I was walking normally—clumsily, but normally. I saw the children moving, too—we were ourselves again.

  And now the Doctor said:

  “Are you ready? I’m going to land her. As far as I can see it’s flat beneath—I’ve been coasting round in a circle to make sure, and there aren’t any obstacles—trees or anything. There’ll probably be a slight bump, so look out.”

  He was as happy as a king. This was his moment—all that he had worked and waited for.

  We stood perfectly still, clinging to the handrails. For a moment there was silence, then suddenly a chuckle from Mac. And simultaneously a heavy jar and a shudder along the whole ship. We pitched forward involuntarily—I heard a little yelp of pain from Mike as his head bumped the wall.

  And then all was still. We had arrived!

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” cried Mac, “or rather, lady and gentlemen—our grand tour of the universe is at an end! Allow me to present to you the new British holiday resort—the planet Mars! Tickets, please!”

  He roared with laughter. Then, like a schoolboy, he waltzed lightly over to the door of the cabin. He opened it. Before he opened the outer door he looked round at us—we could just see him in the dim light.

  “I’ll test the atmosphere first,” he said, “to see if it’s breathable.”

  He put on his oxygen mask again. Then he closed the inner door. We all stood silent in a little group in the center of the cabin. We heard the outer door open. There was a moment’s suspense, then the inner door opened again and Mac once more confronted us—without his mask!

  “Perfect!” he cried, “the veriest ozone!”

  With whoops of joy, all our excitement released at last in one glorious burst, we rushed to the cabin door. A breeze—a wonderful, soft, cool breeze of real air, thin and sharp, like a perfect poem of a wine—an actual breeze blew in our faces!

  We crowded the doorway, staring out. All round us was the twilight. Through it, and immediately in front of us, was the dim outline of what seemed to be a small hill. And above it, streaking the sky, was a brightening tinge of luminous pink.

  The Doctor whistled suddenly through his teeth. And when he spoke his voice was different—was quiet and awesome.

  “Oh my heavens,” he said. “Steve—children—do you realize what it is? It’s the dawn! It’s the Martian dawn! We have arrived at dawn—could anything be more magnificently significant! We’re on Mars—and it’s the dawn!”

  We stared at each other. And I felt my heart swelling inside me, and a lump in my throat from sheer pride and thankfulness after all we had gone through.

  “It’s the dawn,” I repeated softly. “We’re on Mars, and it’s the dawn! . . .”

  CHAPTER V. A MARTIAN LANDSCAPE by Jacqueline Adam

  JACQUELINE ADAM ON “A MARTIAN LANDSCAPE—FIRST IMPRESSIONS”

  (Editor’s Note: This contribution was originally written as a free-subject school essay by J.A. when she returned to normal life on earth. It was later, as an interesting curiosity, printed in the annual school magazine.

  It is inserted here in the present volume because this seems the natural place for it—it fills very appropriately a gap in the various papers that Stephen MacFarlane left for me to edit (I should say, incidentally, that there are several such gaps in MacFarlane’s collection; the papers were passed to me before they were properly completed and annotated, though the children’s contributions had all been corrected for spelling and punctuation).

  The essay, may I add, is reprinted from “The Wellingborough Magazine,” No. 23, Vol. 5, by kind permission of the Headmistress of the Wellingborough Hill High School for Girls, Dorset.—J.K.C.)

  MY COMPANIONS and I effected our landing on the planet Mars in the early morning. It was, indeed, dawn when we first set eyes on our “brave new world,” to quote the Immortal Bard of Avon.

  There were five of us: myself, my brother P—, our cousin M—, Mr. McF—, and the leader of the party, Dr. McG—.

  We were naturally curious to see what our new home looked like, but from our position in the doorway of our space-ship, we could at first see little. We were, as far as we could judge in the dim morning twilight, lying in a small depression, or saucer, surrounded by a high ridge. (I hesitate to call it a hill—it was only slightly taller than our rocket).

  Our first impulse was to lower the ladder and rush to explore, but Dr. McG— gave it as his opinion that it would be better to wait till full daylight before venturing out. We had no idea of what we might find on Mars, and he felt it safer for us to be able at least to see any danger that might assail us.

  We were constrained, therefore, to remain in the rocket till, if I may quote the late Poet of Empire, “the dawn came up like thunder.” I must confess that the simile in this instance is not a very suitable one. The dawn, as it came, was somewhat mild and gentle. There was a deep pinkening of the sky first, which presently spread all round our small horizon. This changed soon to a deep orange color, and then, to our joy, we saw the thin smoky edge of the disc of the sun rise slowly above the ridge confronting us. The twilight dispersed, and in about half-an-hour the sun—a smaller sun than any I have ever seen on earth—was riding in a clear blue sky.

  Our first Martian day had begun!

  We perceived now, on examining the ground beneath us, that we were in a dry hollow, the floor and sides of which seemed to consist of a dark brown, reddish earth, or sand. There was no sign of any vegetation—the ground seemed curiously barren and dead to our eyes. Dr. McG— ventured the opinion that it was probably volcanic.

  We prepared to leave the rocket. Dr. McG— opened a locker and took out some firearms. He handed Mr. McF— a large rifle and took another such for himself. He also strapped a pistol round his own wrist and handed a second small pistol to my brother. P—, I may say, greeted this gesture with no small pleasure.

  The flexible steel ladder was now lowered, and one by one we descended it. Our joy at standing once more on terra firma can better be imagined than described. The terra in question was, we could perceive on closer examination, a reddish, coarse-grained species of sand, very dry and loose; it was on the question of its being firma that we received our first Martian surprise.

  We were standing in a group at the foot of the ladder. I may say, that in descending, I had experienced a strange lightness—a sensation of buoyancy. I attributed this at the time to excitement and pleasure combining to fill me with elation. It seemed, however, that the cause was altogether more physical.

  M— was the first of the party to move. He gave a cry and jumped forward, intending to rush to the top of the declivity facing us. In a moment, however, and after one step, he was rolling on the ground a good ten feet away from us, h
is face a perfect study of dismay and bewilderment!

  P— rushed to his aid, and he, too, seemed to stumble, and go rolling and bouncing over the sand. Before either of them could rise, Dr. McG— burst into hearty laughter.

  “Of course,” he cried, “I forgot! The force of gravity—it is not so powerful on Mars as it is on earth. I should have warned you!”

  And he went on to explain something of the mechanics of our situation. I regret I cannot reproduce his statement with any real technical exactitude. But as far as I understood things, this was the position. (I am able to quote some actual figures since I made notes of them in my diary):

  The planet Mars is considerably smaller than our own earth—its diameter, indeed, is very little more than half that of our mother planet. Nor is it so dense—if the density of earth be represented by the unit 1, then the density of Mars is about .72. For these reasons, the gravitational pull on the surface of Mars is not so strong as the gravitational pull on the surface of the earth—the actual ratio is something like .38. This means that a man weighing say 150 lb. on earth would, on Mars, weigh only 57 lb.

  Reflect now that our muscular development is such as to provide us with the means of moving ourselves on earth in what is to us a normal way. On Mars, where we weighed little more than one third of what we did on earth, our muscles seemed abnormally developed.

  While Dr. McG— was engaged in this explanation, the two boys had succeeded in raising themselves to their feet. M—, full of excitement, now exclaimed that he proposed doing a “high jump.” We knew him, on earth, for a reasonably good jumper. Judge now of our surprise when we saw him soar into the air, high above our heads! P— immediately also indulged in a short “flight,” and soon we were all at it— yes, even the two more sedate members of the party! The sensation was quite indescribable. I myself, at the school sports last year, cleared the four foot bar; with the same effort here on Mars, I found myself soaring into the empyrean a good ten feet! It was like pole vaulting without the pole—and the landing was soft and pleasant. There was no heavy jolt—a gentle bump on the yielding red sand and that was all.

  It was exhilarating in the extreme. After the long period of confinement in the cabin of our space-ship, the exercise in the rare thin atmosphere did us all the good in the world. Even running was an excitement—an ordinary earth-pace covered eight or nine feet. It was like walking in seven-league boots, as Tom Thumb did in the fairy tale. We hopped about in our little hollow like kangaroos, shouting merrily in the sunshine and generally behaving like lunatics.

  Presently, however, the first novelty wore off. We set about trying to control our muscular movements so that we might be able to walk as we were accustomed. And we found that, just as we had been able to adjust ourselves in space, when we had no weight at all, so we could, after a little practice, adjust ourselves to moving about comfortably on Mars. We could still, of course, if we wanted to, make prodigious leaps, but for the most part we contented ourselves with the more ordinary mode of progression to which we were used.

  The time had now come for us to widen our field of exploration. The sun was high and the air was clear. So Dr. McG—assembled us at the foot of the ridge and we set about mounting to the top of it (an easy task this, because of our reduced weight, although the slope was quite steep—indeed, almost vertical).

  We reached the summit. And now, indeed, we felt like “stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes,” etc. (Keats). Only our peak was on Mars, and not in Darien. However, what we saw was just as awe-inspiring and strange to us as the glimpse of the far Pacific was to the intrepid Spaniard.

  What we saw was awe-inspiring and strange

  Before us, bright and silent in the sun, was a huge plain. It stretched, as far as we could immediately judge, some eight or ten miles before it was terminated by a line of high bare mountains. They—as indeed was the whole plain—were of the same reddish color as the soil in our hollow. Every now and again, in the surface of the plain, as we could see from the incline on which we stood, there were similar deep hollows to the one in which our spaceship lay, behind us.

  But what gave the scene its character, what caused us the real wonder, was the vegetation. Dotted all over the plain were immense clumps of huge, dark green, leathery plants. It is impossible to describe them other than very generally, since each individual plant varied in shape from its neighbor. Some of them were tall—as tall as good-sized church steeples—others were small and squat, mere bulbous masses clinging to the ground.

  The nearest large clump of these plants was about five hundred yards away in front of us, and since it was quite clear to Dr. McG— that there was no immediate danger threatening, we set off at once to conduct a closer examination, using our leaping ability to cover the ground quickly.

  I have said that the plants were dark green in color. That is the effect a clump of them created at a distance. But seeing them at close hand, we observed that many of the individual plants—particularly the smaller ones—were mottled with large irregular patches of yellow, and even (in some of the very small bulbous ones) dark red—a somewhat evil coloration, this, without brilliance; somber and heavy, like coagulating blood.

  I have said that the shape of the plants varied individually, and this was indeed so. But one feature they all had in common: they were composed of short squat stalks with huge finger-like leaves on them. These leaves were convoluted into fantastic shapes—like twisted vast fingers sometimes, with rheumatic joints, seeming to grope up into the air as if stretching and grasping after the sun.

  The nearest I have seen on earth to these strange and evil-looking Martian plants are the cacti in the Botanical Gardens at Kew. But the Martian species was smooth and more leathery—and presented, moreover, a much richer variety of shapes, besides a wider range of color.

  Dr. McG— was considerably excited as we stood surveying the plants.

  “It means,” he said, “that there is water somewhere—or at least moisture of a sort. When we were standing on the knoll back there, I looked all over the plain for some sign of a stream or a lake, but there was nothing. Yet moisture there must be, or these huge things simply could not exist.”

  As he spoke, he took out a long sharp knife he carried in a sheath at his waist. He advanced to one of the plants that was about man-size and stabbed the knife into it, at the point where the short stalk branched out into the leaves. There was a soft, unpleasant squelching sound, and simultaneously it was as if I heard in my head—hardly in my ears—a high-pitched wail or scream, as if from an immense distance.

  I looked at my companions. Their faces wore a puzzled, listening expression.

  “Did you hear anything?” asked Mr. McF—.

  “Yes,” I vouchsafed. “It was a kind of scream. Yet I can hardly say that I heard it. It was rather as if I . . . well . . . thought it!”

  “That is what it seemed to me too,” nodded P—. “It must have been imagination—there is nothing within miles that could possibly have made that sort of noise. But it’s strange we all heard it at the same time, though.”

  While we spoke Dr. McG— was stooping forward examining the deep triangular gash he had made in the leathery flesh of the plant. A milky, viscid fluid was oozing out of it, and simultaneously an acrid but not unpleasant odor assailed our nostrils. Dr. McG—touched the sticky-looking gum with his finger and conveyed some of it to the tip of his tongue. For a moment he frowned, as if trying to assess the taste, then he nodded his head.

  “M’m, quite nice,” he said. “Like sweet butter-milk, almost. Rather sickly, I should fancy, if you took a lot of it. Well, moisture there undoubtedly is, as I have said before. To judge from the dryness of the soil, it must be very far down. I should guess that these things have immensely long tubular roots. I propose to come back with an axe and a spade to cut down one of the bigger ones to make a thorough examination. Meantime, I must confess that I am getting very hungry—this keen air has whetted my appetite considerably, and in all the exciteme
nt of the landing we have quite forgotten to eat. I have some food in the refrigerator back in the rocket—we may find, later on, that these plants are edible, but meantime some real earth-quality bacon and eggs would not come at all amiss after so many weeks of tooth-paste food, eh?”

  We greeted this suggestion with great acclaim, and immediately set off back to the hollow where we had left the rocket. On top of the ridge we turned and looked once more at the strange and desolate landscape spread out before us. There are no words to describe the extraordinary bare silence and stillness of it—yet I had the impression, as I looked again across the enormous poisonous-looking dark green clumps to the mountains, that there was something, something disturbing the silence. No sound—nothing as definite as a sound, although it seemed a sort of sound: again it was as if I were thinking it, rather than hearing it. A vague rustling disturbance—a sensation of disquiet vibrating all about us.

  I dismissed the feeling as mere fancy and descended the ridge with the others. Soon all else was forgotten in our excited arrangements for what was to be our first real cooked meal since leaving earth.

  That, then, was our first glimpse of a Martian scene. I conclude by saying in all humility that I am only too aware of the inadequacy of my poor pen to describe the strangeness of it. I console myself with the reflection that the intention has been there even if the performance has been weak—“a poor thing, but mine own,” to draw once more in quotation from the teeming works of that great figure who towers as a mountain above the plain of literature: William Shakespeare.

  (Note: The rest of this chapter consists of disjointed comments by Stephen MacFarlane. It is evident, I think, that he originally intended writing a long chapter here on the reactions of the party on first landing on Mars—he has even, as you will see, completed some parts of it, particularly the closing paragraphs. But for some reason he left this part of the book to the last—at no other point in the whole collection of papers is there such a gap.