Although I was so tired, it was quite a time before I could get to sleep—the strangeness, I suppose, and all the excitement we had gone through. I lay on my back, with my head cupped in my hands, looking out under the edge of our tent. There had been a very short twilight—now it was quite dark (the Doc, by the way, had explained to us earlier that the Martian day and night were almost the same as ours—the cycle lasted about twenty-four-and-a-half hours and not twenty-four—that was really the only difference). The strangest thing to me, as I lay there, was to see two moons overhead—two small, shining moons, very pretty and brilliant against the blue-black velvety sky. The night was clear, and there were millions of stars, in constellations strange to me. One of those stars, I thought (which one I did not know—perhaps that small, slowly-winking one just above the horizon)—one of them was our earth—our home. All those millions and millions of miles away were the things we knew and the places we knew—yes, and the people we knew: old Mrs. Duthie, who had been so kind to us—Mr. McIntosh the gamekeeper, with the fish-hooks in his Sherlock Holmes hat—our own mother and father, and Mike’s mother and father. It was a strange thought—and a sad one too. They would be worrying about us—perhaps they would have given us up for lost altogether by this time. They might have had search parties out in the hills round Pitlochry. . . . I remember feeling a lump in my throat just before I dropped into sleep—and wishing too that there might be some way, some way by means of which we could communicate with them all, just to let them know that we were well and happy.
Well, there wasn’t a way. I fell asleep at last, with Jacky curled up beside me with her head resting on my shoulder. All was quiet—terribly quiet. I thought of the strange silent Martians all around us, standing so erect in their big bubble-like houses. The Beautiful People, they called themselves . . . and they were, I could see, a beautiful people: not to look at—we found them too strange to look at yet to be able to think of them as beautiful in that way—but somehow they were beautiful in themselves. They were sort of simple, somehow, and innocent. Oh, I don’t know. I don’t really know what I’m trying to say. This is only what Mrs. Duthie would call “havers”—“blethering.” And Mike would call it “sissy talk.” Well, perhaps it is; but it’s somehow what I honestly felt in my heart at the end of that first strange day of ours on Mars. . . .
I woke suddenly. The light was streaming into the tent. All round me there was excitement and activity. Uncle Steve and the Doctor were up already, completely dressed, and Malu was with them too, together with Nuna and all the Martians that had been with them when they found us—the warriors, the picked men.
“What’s the matter?” I cried. “Is anything wrong?”
“Nothing that need worry you,” called back Uncle Steve. “We’re going out on an expedition, that’s all. We won’t be long.”
“Where are you going?” (This from Mike, who had sprung to his feet and was rapidly buttoning the clothes he had loosened before going to sleep.)
“Nowhere in particular. Just out—into the forest.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Mike. “What are you checking up on the ammunition in that rifle for if it’s only into the forest? There’s something in the wind, Uncle Steve—you needn’t think you can kid us.”
Uncle Steve came nearer. His face, we could see, was very serious.
“Listen, children,” he said. “Malu has just brought us a message—from the plants outside, in the plain. There’s—well . . . there’s danger.”
“It’s the Albatross!” cried Jacky. “Uncle Steve—it’s the Albatross! Something’s happened to it!”
“Yes, Jacky, it’s the Albatross,” said Uncle Steve gravely. “Nothing’s happened to it yet, but it may do. That’s what we’re going out to prevent.”
“And we’re coming with you,” I cried.
“No, Paul—you can’t—you children must stay here. The danger is too great.”
“But what is the danger?” demanded Mike.
“Listen, Mike—I know very little more than you do. But apparently there are, here on Mars, other things besides the Beautiful People. The Doctor heard about them last night from The Center, and Malu has been telling me about them this morning. I don’t know what they look like. All I do know is that these things are evil and beastly—they’re the deadly enemies of everything in this city. Malu calls them the Terrible Ones—and at this minute a group of them—a small foraging party—is at the Albatross.”
There was silence for a moment. Then Mike said, in quite a different kind of voice, for him—very serious and slow:
“Uncle Steve—whatever you say, we’re coming with you. If there’s anything threatening the Albatross, we have as much right to fight it as you have. Paul has a gun—Doctor Mac gave him one. And as for me—well, I’ve got one of these!”
As he spoke, he snatched up one of the long crystal spears that we had been using as a tent-pole. Uncle Steve looked at him—at all of us—helplessly. Then he shrugged his shoulders and turned towards the Doctor, who was coming across to us, looking strained and excited.
“Steve, are you ready?” he asked breathlessly. “Man—we must hurry, we must hurry!”
“I’m ready, Mac,” said Uncle Steve. Five minutes later we were speeding through the forest, traveling in gigantic leaps as fast as we could go. Across the plain we went, silently, Malu and the warriors raising little red clouds with their flailing tendrils. We reached the hollow where the Albatross lay. We quietly, quietly mounted the ridge. We looked down into the hollow, our guns and spears grasped firmly, our hearts beating. And we saw—we saw—
What we saw—what happened—these things are beyond me to describe. I end my chapter here. I leave it to Uncle Steve to tell you about—
The Fight for the Albatross. . . .
CHAPTER VIII. THE FIGHT FOR THE “ALBATROSS,” by Stephen Macfarlane
AS I sit here quietly writing in Pitlochry, with the dark shapes of the hills before me, and above them the star-studded sky, I think of that first encounter of ours with the Terrible Ones on Mars as the one unreal episode in our entire fantastic adventure—unreal, I think, because it was so unutterably horrible—too horrible for one to want to remember it.
What caused the horror? Not altogether the appearance of the Terrible Ones, hideous though that was (the Beautiful People, after all, had accustomed us to strange appearances). No, it was the silence in which the battle was fought; there was no sound throughout the entire encounter—no actual sound, although our ears were full of a violent, edgy, ghostly screaming all the time. It was impossible to tell who was screaming—friend or foe; it was simply that all about us, through and through us, were running those deep and beastly thoughts of conflicts and pain and revenge and death. It was a nightmare—a nightmare in different terms from any nightmare I have ever known, or ever hope to know.
Paul has described how we heard the news that the Albatross was in danger early in the morning of our second Martian day, and how we armed ourselves and sped across the plain to the hollow where our space-ship lay. We had half-expected that the enemy, whatever it was, might come to meet us, or would at least be visible as we neared our destination. As it was, however, we crawled right to the top of the ridge without interruption, and were thus able for a few moments to gaze down on the Terrible Ones in the hollow before we were discovered—in much the same way as Malu and his companions had gazed down on us the morning before.
Our first impression was that the Albatross was surrounded by gigantic yellow-and-red spotted eggs—or that, in the night, some huge clammy toadstools—fungoids—had formed in the hollow. There was an odd score of the things, pulpy-seeming and glistening in the sunlight, each the size of a small ox. They were moving silently backwards and forwards along the tail part of the rocket (it lay, naturally, on a slope, with the nose high up in the air at an angle), and they seemed, as far as we could judge, to be feeling and nosing at it with long tube-like tentacle things that grew, writhing, out of their side
s. One of the creatures had twined his tentacles round the flexible steel ladder, and was swinging it backwards and forwards. They seemed somehow like octopuses—bulbous and jelly-like—with unusually long and slender suckers.
As we stared, two of the things—the two nearest us—turned round in our direction, and it was then that the full hideousness of their appearance broke over us. They had faces! In the front part of their yellow, shell-like coverings there were unmistakable features; two bright protruding eyes—seemingly on short stalks, like crabs’ eyes—hard and unblinking, and beneath them two small, nostril-like cavities. But it was the mouth that caused us to grip our rifles more tightly. It was a huge gash, vertical in the face, with great flabby jaws on each side—yellow on the outside, a raw damp red inside. These jaws were held wide open, and the strange thing was that we could not see anything in the nature of a throat-opening inside the mouth, although we were staring full into the great gaping cavity of it. Nor did there seem to be anything resembling teeth; only, lining the inner surface of the jaws, some layers of protuberant lumps that seemed to be, so to say, large taste-buds, as on the human tongue. To complete this brief description, I may say that the egg-like bodies of these monsters were mounted on forking tendrils of the same type as the feet of the Beautiful People.
We had no more than a few moments to take in the appearance of the enemy, for almost immediately after the two nearest us had turned round, there was a sudden cessation of movement at the rocket. One by one the hideous creatures veered slowly to face us—forty-eight hard and unblinking eyes stared up at us. And at the same time I became aware of a terrible sense of evil—there was an atmosphere of sheer malignancy all around us. I realized what it was that Malu had meant by saying earlier that the Beautiful People would have known if we had meant them any harm. By means of the strange Martian telepathy, we were made aware in our very souls that the things in front of us were deadly enemies—they were thinking ill to us as we clustered round the ridge-top staring down at them.
For perhaps half-a-minute there was no movement, and then the Doctor acted. He was standing beside me on the ridge, and I knew by looking at his face that he was an angry man. The Albatross was his all—and the Albatross was in danger from these terrible, evil-meaning things. Sweat stood in little shining drops on his brow as he raised his rifle to his shoulder and fired at the creature that stood at the foot of the steel ladder. What followed was nightmarish.
The Doctor, in his anxiety and excitement, had not paused to aim properly. He had meant to strike between the eyes of the creature. What happened, however, was that immediately on top of the explosion a long deep furrow appeared across the back of the thing by the ladder, as the bullet tore open the flesh of it. There was no blood—only the sudden mysterious gash. And simultaneously, in our heads, a long drawn-out scream of pain and fury. The Doctor fired again, and this time the bullet struck squarely home a little above the nostrils—we saw a sudden hole punched in the face, round and clean. But again no blood. And, to our horror, no seeming harm to the creature! Screaming even more hideously he started to advance across the hollow towards us—they all started to advance, slowly, and in some sort of formation.
“What in the devil’s name are they, Steve?” gasped Mac. “You saw me firing—you saw the shots go home! Why doesn’t it fall? The Center told me last night about these things, but I had no idea they were anything like this! What are they?”
“Lord knows,” I answered grimly. “We’re up against something this time, Mac—by heaven we are!”
I looked round wildly at Malu. He and his warriors stood perfectly still—but I saw that they held their long glass swords in readiness before them. Meantime the things below were almost at the foot of the ridge. I wished with all my heart that I had forbidden the three children to come with us. I looked at them as they stood in a little group between Mac and me.
“Paul,” I said, “you shouldn’t have come! Go back, for heaven’s sake—take Jacky back!”
Paul looked doubtfully at his sister—I could see he was a little unnerved, and that, as the eldest, he felt a sense of responsibility, and was inclined to do as I asked. But before he, or any of us, could do or say anything more, Malu and the warriors went into action.
How can I describe the fight that followed?—there is nothing, nothing at all on earth to which I can compare it. We, in our amazement, stayed on the top of the ridge, gazing down as if hypnotized, doing nothing—nothing, that is, until . . . but let me take it all in order.
Malu and the warriors rushed headlong down the slope, their tendrils flailing, their slender yellow bodies upright. About half-way down, twenty or so of the little army stopped suddenly and arranged themselves as a rearguard, as it were—spacing themselves out at intervals, just above the main conflict. Malu and the rest went on, and met the Terrible Ones just at the foot of the slope.
The creature who had been wounded—he seemed to be the leader—was a little in front of the big advancing semi-circle of the enemy. Malu and Nuna both seemed to poise themselves for a moment, and then, with a curious sideways flick of their powerful feet-tendrils, they leaped high into the air straight at him. Nuna came down sideways, close by his flank, and Malu landed barely a foot from his vast red jaws. And as they landed they swung down their crystal swords with terrible force.
Even at the top of the ridge we heard the beastly squelch the weapons made as they sheared through the flesh of the thing. Malu’s blow cut an immense gash right across the face—the whole side of the creature’s head seemed to fall away; one of the huge jaws and one eye. Nuna took a great slice out of the side—but still there was no blood, only, as the creature heeled over, with his long suckers writhing in agony, a slow oozing white moisture, seeping out over the sand from the two deep wounds. And all the time, growing thinner and more distant in our heads, were the monster’s dying screams.
Meantime the other Beautiful People had joined battle with the Terrible Ones, and now it was that the air seemed to be filled with screaming—a jumble and confusion of anger and pain. The attack of the Beautiful People was always the same—a quick upward leap and a deep slash with the sword in falling. Some of the Terrible Ones slithered sideways out of the way of the flashing weapons, and then it was their turn to attack, their long writhing side-tentacles would shoot out and whip round and round the slender trunk of one of Malu’s warriors. The warrior would struggle in the deadly grasp, but once he was caught in this way there seemed little hope for him. Slowly and inexorably his body would be bent back, till suddenly it would snap in two! Then, in an instant, the attacking monster would release his grasp and leave the two halves on the sand, oozing the same sort of milky fluid as the dying leader of the enemy had done, and with the little face tendrils twitching and quivering spasmodically.
All the time, the rearguard of the Beautiful People stood half-way down the slope. Now and again, as an opportunity presented itself, one of them would leap forward with the quick sideways lash of the tendrils I have mentioned, and deal a mighty blow at one of the enemy momentarily off guard. But for the most part they stayed motionless, their long swords outstretched, waiting for one of the enemy to try to climb the ridge. Then they struck, shearing into the pulpy flesh, so that either another monster heeled over in the sand, or staggered back into the melee below, horribly gashed—minus an entire jaw perhaps. There was one startling incident when one of the Terrible Ones rushed precipitately up the slope and impaled himself on a spear before the warrior holding it had time to raise it for a blow. A good two feet of the weapon slid into the monster’s soft flesh. For a moment the two antagonists faced each other, motionless, the warrior still clinging to the handle end of the sword with his tendrils. Then the Terrible One made a sudden jerking movement with his whole body. The warrior rose from the ground, hurled into the air in a long arc; and as he fell, further down the slope, the great beastly thing, with the sword still sticking out of his shell, leaped on top of him with a sickening thud. . . .
The battle lasted some ten to fifteen minutes. All the time, we humans stared down, fascinated, longing to help but not knowing how to. Our guns were all we had, and our guns, after the Doctor’s experience, seemed useless. Jacky, after the first few minutes, moved back from the ridge, her face pale and drawn. Paul and Mike crouched beside the Doctor and me, Mike, as the fight went on, letting out an occasional yell of encouragement to Malu and the warriors.
Eventually it became obvious that the Terrible Ones were losing ground. Slowly they were being pushed across the floor of the hollow, under the nose of the Albatross, the rearguard warriors now joining the Malu group in routing them. As the contestants retreated, the screaming in our heads grew fainter and thinner. Looking down into the part of the hollow immediately beneath us, we saw that eight of the monsters were lying dead under the great gashes that had been dealt them. Five of Malu’s warriors had been broken in two, and one of them—the one who had been tossed in the air—had been crushed to death: he was a mere pulpy mass pressed into the sand.
We descended the ridge, Jacky following us timidly. With the cool detachment of the man of science, Mac went down on his hands and knees to examine the remains of one of the great yellow-and-red spotted monsters. He was turning over in his hands one of its huge flabby jaws, when suddenly there was a yell from Mike, and immediately on top of that; the disaster happened.
The way it came about was this: While we were descending the ridge, the battle was still going on on the other side of the hollow. The monsters, realizing they were defeated, were trying to form themselves in some sort of order for a retreat. They were slowly climbing the ridge, hard pressed by Malu and the warriors. One particularly large creature was lingering a little behind, laying about him with his huge suckers to give his companions a chance to get over the top. Malu and Nuna both gathered themselves for one of their deadly leaps—Nuna jumping sideways, Malu towards the jaws. They moved like lightning, but in this instance the monster was too quick for them. He slewed sideways, and in doing so overthrew Nuna. The little Martian’s sword bit into the creature’s flank, but Nuna himself toppled over and went rolling a little way down the slope. He was able to arrest his progress by digging his tendrils into the sand, but he was plainly a little dazed and could not, for the moment, rise upright. We saw that the huge repulsive creature was gathering himself to throw his vast bulk on top of Nuna to crush him. Malu’s sword had carried away part of his jaw, and now the gallant leader of the Beautiful People, realizing, as we did, the plight that Nuna was in, was desperately trying to maneuver himself for the death leap before the monster could act. But some of the creature’s side tentacles shot out and coiled round his waist, keeping him from moving.
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