The Angry Planet

by John Keir Cross

  We plunged into a thickish forest of these trees and started to climb. During this part of the journey we were aware of a sort of tension among the Martians—a curious vague sense of danger, and of being on the alert against it. The flank members of the group raised their long crystal lances and kept them pointed outwards.

  However, nothing happened. And presently we burst clear of the trees. We had, during our ascent through them, rounded the shoulder of one of the hills, and now we were on a kind of plateau, looking down on a wide shallow valley. And in it—well, here is where I’ve got to make a shot at a bit of description, and as I’ve said I don’t consider myself very good at it. However, here goes.

  Below us, spread out on the floor of the valley, were about forty or fifty huge domes of what looked like glass—at any rate, a transparent substance of that nature. They were huge—gigantic oval humps, or bubbles, sparkling in the sun. They were of varying sizes. The smallest, I should say, was about the size of the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral: the largest—which was right in the middle of the valley, towering above all the rest—covered an area easily as large as Olympia in London. In color the glass was a mild sea-green, though in one or two of the smaller domes there were long streaks of milky blue.

  Inside these domes, and also moving about on the ground all round and between them, we could see hundreds and thousands of the Beautiful People. As we descended from the plateau and moved towards the domes, scores of them formed in lines to stare at us with those queer fishy eyes of theirs. And at closer quarters like this we saw that many of them were smaller than Malu and Co., and of a different color, being a very light and pleasant yellow, merging to a gentle pink at the top. In these smaller ones, too, the crown on the top of the head was much larger—sometimes quite six inches tall—and much more brilliant in color. We even saw one or two that were a flaming, very lovely scarlet. These smaller Martians, we found out later on, were the females. Malu and Co. were males, though, being apparently the picked warriors of this particular group of the B.P., they were taller even than most of the males.

  Malu led us through the crowds and past several of the great glass domes until we reached the big dome in the center. Here we stopped for a moment while Malu went into a sort of tunnel entrance just outside the wall of the dome. Through the glass we could see him reappear from a similar tunnel entrance inside and move forward among the crowds of B.P. inside the dome.

  We put down our various bundles and waited.

  “How do you feel, you children?” asked Uncle Steve.

  “I feel fine, personally,” said Mike. “Boy, this is wizard! I never expected anything like this!”

  “Nor did I,” chuckled Uncle Steve. “I remember back on earth, before we set out, saying something about life on Mars, if there was any at all, being different from life as we knew it. But I never thought it would be different in quite this way.”

  “Do they know we come from earth?” asked Jacky. “Were you able to explain, Doctor Mac?”

  “Partly,” said Doctor Mac. “I think our friend Malu understands roughly what it’s all about—the Martians do have some sort of knowledge of the universe, apparently, and I was able to get one or two general ideas over to him. But he’s a soldier, as he said. He’s going to take me to their Wiser Ones, as he calls them—I expect that means their scientists.”

  “Is that where he’s off to now?” I asked.

  “No. He’s gone in to what he calls The Center—we’ve to meet The Center first, whatever that is. And then the rest—these Wiser Ones—have to be summoned by what he calls The Voice.”

  “It’s these houses I can’t get over,” said Jacky. “At least, I suppose they are houses. They’re huge! How could they ever make them?”

  “That’s just one of the many things we’ll learn as time goes on,” said Uncle Steve. “I must admit they are a bit of a mystery—there aren’t any frameworks to them, as far as I can see—just huge bubbles. It must have been the sun shining on one of these that I saw through my binoculars this morning.”

  We were still talking along these lines, surrounded by a big staring crowd of the Martians, when Malu came back through the tunnel entrance.

  “You are to come,” he said. “You are to follow me to The Center.”

  So now it was our turn to go through the tunnel. It was quite short—a slight slope down and a slight slope up. And then we were inside the glass dome.

  Seen from the inside, it was enormous—a huge huge tent all over us. The glass was not so transparent as it seemed, for there was quite a twilight inside—not dark, but at least the bright sunlight was diffused. But the odd thing was that it was so warm inside the dome—there was a kind of oppressive clammy heat, rather damp and steamy; it was like one of the milder hot-air chambers in a Turkish Bath my father once took me to in London.

  There were crowds of the Beautiful People inside the dome, most of them males, though this lot were quite considerably smaller and rather paler in color than the Malu bunch—they were sickly-looking and somehow a little repulsive. They were standing in lines converging on the center of the huge dome, and we advanced, led by Malu, through a lane of them.

  Presently we stopped before a closely-packed wall of the B.P.—bigger ones again, of the Malu type.

  Malu turned to face us. Then he said:

  “The Center.”

  —and stood to one side.

  Immediately the wall of Martians parted, and we saw, before us, on a heaped-up mound of the red sand, the biggest Martian we had yet encountered. He was not particularly tall—only very slightly taller than Malu; but somehow there was an impression of a sort of vastness about him. His trunk, shorter than Malu’s, was very thick—as thick as an oak-tree on earth. It was his head that gave the real impression of size, though—it was an enormous pinkish bulb. And it was surmounted by a crown rather like Malu’s round the edges—yellowish and tufty—but mounting towards the center to a huge cockscomb—a brilliant waving plume of deep poppy-red. The little bunches of tendrils on each side of the “face” were longer than usual, and they seemed all the time to be wavering slightly in the air. The “face” itself was very strange. It was somehow almost transparent, and its substance did not seem as fleshy as on the other Martians. It was kind of soft and jellyish, and it too seemed all the time to be quivering slightly—a sort of pulsation, it was, just under the surface.

  This being—The Center—lay at an angle on the little mound I have mentioned. For a time he stared at us with his bulbous, luminous eyes (there were four of them), and then he said:

  “Which one is the leader—McGillivray?”

  The Doc stepped forward. There was a long long silence while The Center looked at him. The Doc stood perfectly still and straight. At length The Center said:

  “You and your friends are welcome among us. What you are, we do not know. You are different from us—much different. We have never seen creatures like you. You will explain what you are and where you come from, to me and to the Wiser Ones when The Voice has summoned them. We know you do not mean evil, and that you have interesting things to say. So you will be cared for and protected. You will let us know of anything you require, and it shall be provided if it is in our power to provide it.”

  Doctor Mac bowed. Before he could say anything, the solid wall of Martians had closed up again in front of The Center. Malu moved forward, and we realized that our interview was at an end. We followed Malu to the tunnel, and so found ourselves out in the open air again—which seemed, by the bye, very pleasant and refreshing after the stuffiness of the dome.

  Well now, where do I go from here? There’s so much to write about—that first day was so crowded—that I hardly know where to begin. Besides, I don’t want to poach on Doctor Mac’s territory—I know he’s got a lot to say about the Martians (he has a most interesting theory about them, by the way), and he has a chapter coming along soon. I think I’ll just leave it to him—he’ll be able to make a much better job of it all than I ever
could. I’ll just deal very sketchily with one or two of the main things that happened, and then jump straight on to when the excitement began (that doesn’t mean to say we didn’t find it all exciting—it sure was; but a different kind of excitement came along early the second morning, when Mike got himself mixed up with—however, that’s anticipating, and all the books on writing say that that isn’t allowed).

  When we came out of the dome we found a little group of the Martians—including Mike’s pal Nuna—gathered round our baggage examining the various things. Nuna had picked up a movie-camera in his front tendrils, and was poking about at the various controls. Two females—Malu introduced them (if that’s the expression for being made to know names in that queer thinking way) as Lalla and Dilli—they were feeling over a blanket. As best as we could we explained what the things were for, but it really was surprisingly difficult. The idea of “blanket” they just managed to get, but the camera was quite beyond them, and so were the tins of food and the guns. We decided that we would have to wait a bit, till we got to know the Martians better and what (to quote the Doc) their “ideological background” was, before we could hope to get over the more complicated sort of ideas.

  The next thing that happened, after we had got our stuff together again and packed on our backs, was that Malu and Nuna led us through the city to one of the domes on the edge of the valley. They told us that we could make this our headquarters. We went in through a small tunnel and dumped our stuff in a clear space that Malu indicated not far from the inner entrance. (The dome, by the way, was quite full of Martians, standing quietly in little groups—it was really an amazing sight; all they did when we went in was to turn and stare at us with those queer eyes of theirs—they didn’t seem to show any surprise—they weren’t half as curious as a bunch of earth-folk would have been, say, if some Martians had suddenly appeared among them. We found out later on that everybody in the city had been told about us, by means of all this quick thought transference business, from the first moment we arrived; and we also found out later, as we got to know them, that the Martians were not terribly curious about things—they liked to have things explained, certainly, but they never pressed for an explanation; and if they never got one at all, well, it didn’t seem to worry them in the slightest—they just accepted things in the most curious indifferent sort of way.)

  The first thing we wanted to know about was food—it would be awkward if we could not find anything edible on Mars. Besides, we wanted to know how the Martians ate and drank, not having any mouths, you know. We managed to convey this idea to Malu, and he led us out of the dome and across to a part of the city where there was an immense clearing. Here we saw a most curious sight.

  In this clearing, or field, there were, growing in orderly lines, hundreds and thousands of the cactus-type plants. They were much smaller than the ones we had seen on the plain, and lighter in color altogether. The leaves, too, were not so leathery. Moving among these plants were some hundreds of Martians. Every now and then, one of them would stop before a plant and lean his head down towards it; then he would stay quite motionless for about four or five minutes. When we moved closer we saw what was happening. Uncle Steve has described the little pendulous feelers, or tendrils, on each side of the Martian “face.” Well, the Martians were pressing these things against the leaves of the plants. They were, we discovered, feeding through them!—sucking the sap into themselves through the little tentacles! Somehow it wasn’t a very pleasant sight at first, although we soon got used to it. (This incidentally, is one of the things Doctor Mac will be writing about later—I only mention it here because it was one of the interesting sights we saw that first day.)

  The problem was, what were we going to eat? There was the chance, of course, that we might find the flesh of the plants quite edible, but somehow we didn’t like the idea of trying it. We knew that the Martians had a sort of thought transference thing working between themselves and the plants, and the notion of our cutting off leaves and so on—well, it was all a bit nasty—particularly when we remembered how we had heard the scream of pain from the plant on the plain. Strange that on earth we had never thought it might actually be painful for a plant to be cut—grass, for instance. Well, I don’t suppose for a moment it can hurt earth plants—come to think of it, they haven’t any nerve cells. But here on Mars it was altogether a different matter.

  Finally the Doctor had a brainwave. He asked Malu about the trees—did they have any communication with them? Malu said no, so the Doc said that later on we would go up to the forest and gather some of the big spikes and leaves. He would analyze them—he had some equipment for doing so—and then he’d be able to let us know whether we’d be able to eat them or not, and just how nourishing they would be. Meantime, we had enough food in tins not to have to worry for a day or two.

  Well, on we went, exploring one thing after another through the city. We took endless photographs, and the Doc, as far as I could see, filled up several notebooks with jottings about this and that. So did Uncle Steve—I expect that as this book goes on you’ll get to know, from one or other of them, some of the hundreds of interesting things we saw. I can’t hope to cover even a hundredth of the ground.

  Insert by Michael Malone: I was keen to get to know about this children business I’d asked old Nuna about before. But all he did was to say the same as he’d said on the plain—that they weren’t able to move, and all that. So I said, what about seeing them sort of thing? But he said, well later on sort of—they actually weren’t in the city at all. He said we’d go tomorrow into the hills to see them. So I had to leave it at that. Anyway, there were so many things to have a look at that first day that it went out of my mind after a bit. There was one thing that was pretty exciting, I must say. We saw some Martians playing a kind of game at one place, and it was actually a sort of football! Yes—really—no kidding. The ball was a roundish block of wood from one of the trees. They made a big sort of circle in the sand, and there was a shallow hole in the middle of it, see. Then there were some Martians round the hole, and other Martians in a ring outside. And these outside ones had to get the ball through the inside ones and put it in the hole. The way they played was to get the ball caught up in their big sort of tendril things they had for feet, and then they’d scoot along, pushing it as they went. And the defenders would tackle them, see, and try to get the block of wood into their tendrils. Sometimes you’d see two of them standing absolutely still together, with their tendrils sort of interlocked. You thought they were just being matey, maybe, they were so quiet, but all the time they’d be pushing at each other’s tendrils with terrific strength—and as I say they were usually so evenly matched that you didn’t think they were moving at all. Then one of them would give in suddenly, and the other would career off with the ball until another of the B.P. tackled him in his turn. The real object of the game was this sort of all-in tendril wrestling, apparently—the block of wood was really just an excuse for them to try their strength this way. It was great fun—I’d have joined in, only, of course, I didn’t have any tendrils—ordinary dribbling wouldn’t have been much use.

  I just thought I’d put in this bit about the football here, while Paul is chewing the end of his pen wondering what to say next. I see he’s ready now, so I’ll pass over to him again and he can carry on.

  By this time the day was wearing on (Paul Adam writing). We went back to the dome where our kit was. Somehow we didn’t fancy the idea of spending the night in the dome—the atmosphere was too hot and stuffy. We were just wondering what to do about it when Malu, who had gone off for a moment, came back to say that the Wiser Ones were with The Center now, and would the Doctor go to see them.

  While he was gone we had a conference. We were beginning to feel peckish again, and rather sleepy (there must have been something in the air of Mars—we all felt very sleepy there). So we opened some tins and had a meal, while a group of the B.P., with Lalla and Dilli well to the fore, stood silently looking at us. The sun b
y now was nearing the horizon. Suddenly Mike did his famous brow-slapping act.

  “I’ve got it!” he yelled. “We’ll build a tent! We can easily rig up a lean-to with a couple of blankets and the rifles—we could borrow some of these glass spear things, too, for poles.”

  It was a great idea, and we set to with a will. Before very long we had quite a satisfactory little tent erected, and just as the sun was disappearing we crawled into it and made ourselves comfortable with the remainder of the blankets. We had taken a glance into the dome before settling down, to see how the Martians slept. It was very odd—they weren’t lying down or anything; they just stood in rows, with their feet-tendrils buried in the sand, absolutely motionless—they might have been so many posts.

  Mike was already asleep and snoring when the Doc came back.

  “This is a good idea,” he said, as he crawled into the tent beside us. “I don’t think I could have stood the heat in the dome—I’ve just been closeted with The Center for the past hour-and-a-half, and the atmosphere was really unbearable. Phew!”

  “Did you manage to get anywhere with the Wiser Ones?” asked Uncle Steve sleepily.

  “Yes—we got on famously together,” said the Doc. “It’s been a remarkable experience, Steve—quite remarkable. I’ll tell you all about it in the morning. The Wiser Ones are astonishing—really astonishing. I’ve never known anything like it. By heaven, what a tale it all is to tell when we get back! What a tale!”

  “If we ever do get back!” said Uncle Steve. Then he grunted and turned over, and in a few minutes I heard his breathing deepen as he went to sleep.

  For a time I heard the Doc crawling about getting ready for bed, but eventually he too settled down, with a long contented sigh, and all was quiet.