The Angry Planet

by John Keir Cross

  Yes, we waited—fretfully and impatiently. The only one among us who did not seem to feel the boredom of inactivity creeping over him was the Doctor. After he had seen the Albatross settled, he moved about among the Beautiful People, making enquiries, examining them, photographing them. He had innumerable conferences with The Center, he filled notebook after notebook with views and comments. In the interest of exploring a new field of scientific discovery, he grew more and more excited, and in the end he announced to me that he had formed a theory as to what the Martians were—“the only theory that fits all the facts, Steve—an astonishing theory, but a terrifyingly logical one—by heavens, but it will give them something to think about back on earth!—and it’s so simple!—it’s a wonder I didn’t get it straight away—it would have explained so much! . . .”

  Because it “explains so much” I am, as I have already said, setting out the Doctor’s theory here, in the second part of this interval chapter before the final dramatic scenes of our too-brief visit to Mars. It is, as you will appreciate, extremely difficult for a man of science to set forth a complicated thesis in a very few pages, but in the interests of the lay reader I have, as before, asked the Doctor to keep his remarks as simple and concise as possible. This means that inevitably he will not be able to expand much, or set out many proofs in support of his opinions; but, as he himself said earlier, in reference to his paper on space flight, recourse can always be made to his numerous articles in the scientific journals by anyone wanting more detail.

  Here, then, are the Doctor’s notes. Anyone interested only in the actual story of our adventures on Mars can skip from here to the last few paragraphs of the chapter; if you do do this, however, I recommend that you come back later and read this paper of the Doctor’s. My strong advice is that you will not skip at all: it seems to me absolutely essential for a reader to know what the Martians are at this stage of the story.

  Part 2. A THEORY OF MARTIAN LIFE by Andrew McGillivray, F.R.S., Ph.D.

  1. General Introduction. I wish it clearly understood at the outset that this paper is to be regarded as no more than a digest of the extensive writings on this subject I have already contributed to various journals since our return from Mars. Limitations of space demand that I be brief, almost to the point of baldness. I shall be unable to set forth in any detail the processes of observation and deduction that led me to form the theory I now propose to outline—I shall do no more than make a series of statements, which you are at liberty, in the absence of proof, to accept or reject as you see fit. Rest assured, however, that I do not make these statements in any mere spirit of caprice or whimsy: I am, after all, a scientific man, with a considerable reputation to lose.

  The only thing I regret is that circumstances beyond our control rendered it imperative for us to leave Mars rather earlier than I personally had intended, as you will find as you proceed with the reading of this book. This means that my findings are not as fully documented as I might have wished. However, I propose, as soon as it may be arranged, to remedy this by returning to the haunts and homes of the Beautiful People (if, indeed, any such exist after the terrible disaster that befell those innocent and charming friends of ours!) so that I can indulge in more research.

  With this brief preamble, I now set forth my views. I shall begin by discussing the planet itself—for, after all, as sociologists well know, environment is an immensely important factor in determining the shape of the evolution of any sort of life.

  2. The Planet. I came to the conclusion, after certain geological researches, and many conversations with the Martian scientists (who are, incidentally, very well-informed on the universe in general and their own home world in particular), that Mars is a dying planet. The atmosphere is rare, and seems to be slowly—very slowly—dispersing altogether. Even more important than this, however, is the question of moisture. I did not have any chance to embark on personal exploration, but according to what I was told by the Martian scientists, and what we saw ourselves as we approached the planet and so could view it as a map, so to say, the main water courses run towards and round the poles. These seas, vast as they are at the moment, are drying up. The process, of course, will take many thousands of years, but nevertheless it is going on. The land masses, in consequence of this, are arid—vast deserts of dry sand and no more. The only vegetation is in or near the mountain ranges, and for the most part this consists of the vast cactus-like plants already described in these pages. The roots of the plants are prodigiously long, and are tuberous: by capillary action they bring moisture from deep down in the soil, and this moisture is stored in the great leathery leaves. Now and again, among the hills, there are slow-oozing wells—like the one we ourselves so fortunately discovered near the city—but these are freakish and vestigial. The plants provide the only real irrigation system on the surface of Mars.

  There are two seasons on Mars, a summer and a winter, quite clearly defined, each lasting some eight or nine months of our time. We were fortunate enough to land in the middle of summer in the district inhabited by the Beautiful People. Summer is a mild, pleasant season, very dry. Winter is much bitterer than our British winter. This fact has, as you will see, a profound sociological significance in the life of the Martians.

  The mountain ranges—there are not many of them—are honeycombed with caves and tunnels, running far and tortuously into the soil. Most of the mountains are volcanic—actively so.

  3. The Inhabitants. I come now to the point of setting forth the startling theory that has been referred to several times in this volume, by myself, by Mr. MacFarlane, and by Mr. Adam. I wish you, the reader, to bear in mind all that you have been told about the appearance and general characteristics of the Martians—particularly the Beautiful People. You will recall their tendrils—the thick, root-like ones that function as feet, the fibrous hand-tentacles, the short, sensitive, feeding-tubes. Recall the heated, steamy atmosphere of the domes—the “houses.” Recall the one thing that baffled us at the beginning of our acquaintanceship with the Beautiful People—the fact that they seemed to have some form of telepathic communication with the cacti on the plain.

  The answer to all these things is simple—bafflingly simple: the Martians are plants themselves.

  Just as, on our planet, the animal form of life has evolved as the highest, so on Mars it was the plants that developed to the eventual exclusion of any other type of life. The Beautiful People are plants—flowering plants: even the Terrible Ones are plants—of a different genus, but still plants.

  On the surface there would seem to be many objections to the theory. And, as I have said, I have not the space to adduce a series of proofs for my contention. It will suffice for me to say that I make this statement in all good faith, satisfied in my own mind that it is a true interpretation of the facts. Here are some general observations.

  First, there is the question of the individuality and mobility of the Martians. Plants, as we know them, are static—they have their roots in the soil, and, for feeding purposes, the roots must remain there. Yet each Martian can move at will from place to place—and at considerable speed, as we have seen. The answer is that the Martians did begin as static plants many thousands, even millions of years ago—probably as a species allied to the cacti of the plain. In the long, long course of evolution they gradually, as they acquired perceptiveness, developed the power of moving—probably this was made necessary as the planet slowly dried up and they had to seek the moister districts. The movement at first was of an elementary kind—the development of certain root-tendrils as creepers, I fancy. I need hardly add that this creeping propensity is evident in a great many of our earth plants—without mentioning any of the numerous exotic varieties, I may cite the homely strawberry, the even more homely vegetable marrow (which has even been known to climb over garden walls!) and, among flowers, the iris and the convolvulus. In course of time the plants were able to move on their creepers without having to drop roots into the soil—they became detached. And from
here it is an easy step to the Martians as we knew them—with vestigial creeper tendrils actually functioning as feet. The “hands” are also vestigial creeper tendrils. Of the small mouth tendrils—which still function as roots—I shall have occasion to speak separately in a few moments.

  In this general connection of the evolution of the Martians, I may say that I had an occasion to see the whole process at work when Malu took me to see the young—the “children,” so to say—of the Beautiful People. These were housed in caves in the hills near the city—huge deep caverns with a warm, humid atmosphere. The floors of the caves were, so to say, gigantic forcing beds—layers of decaying leaves from the trees, the “bodies” of dead cacti and so on (the atmospheric heat came partly from the decaying processes of this matter and partly from volcanic fires beneath the mountains). The seed of a new Martian is sown in one of these beds. It grows as a plant—the very new ones I saw were mere little greenish shoots, like almost any sprouting plant on earth. Gradually the roots through which these “children” are gaining moisture and nourishment from the soil, throw out creepers—the little Martians begin to move, literally to move, of their own volition, as they develop, to other beds nearer the entrance to the caves. Finally, one day, they become complete individuals—entirely separate: smaller editions of Malu, as it were. Then they come out of the caves and descend to the city to take up life as individual Beautiful People. This whole process of growth, of microcosmic evolution, takes some four to five years of our time, as far as I could reckon it.

  It will not be inappropriate here to say a few words about the generative principle of the Martians. This is the same as among plants on earth—the same process of the transference of pollen from flower to flower takes place (without the intervention of insects, of course). The mossy tuft on the top of the trunk of a Martian is literally his “flower.” We have seen that there are male and female Martians—in the female, the flower is larger and more beautiful. It will be possible now to visualize the whole process, to the point where the seed is inserted in the hot beds I have mentioned. Thus the great and marvelous universal principle of life is observed in operation in all its beauty and grandeur, on Mars as on earth—as, most probably, in each and every corner of the cosmos.

  I shall deal briefly now with some other aspects of the Martians: their power of vision, for example. I assume that the “eyes” are certain cellular areas near the flower that began by developing a general sensitivity to light (our earth plants are sensitive to light in very broad terms—vide the sunflower). In the course of evolution these areas developed into recognizable eyes. As far as hearing is concerned, we found that the Martians sensed noise only if it were loud enough to provide a really concussive vibration of the atmosphere—they “felt” pistol or rifle shots, for example, or volcanic explosions—and they felt them with their whole bodies. But that was the only sense in which they could be said to hear—sound, to them, had not the significance it has for us.

  Their feeding principle is simplicity itself. When their own roots began to function as creepers and then feet, they had to develop parasitic tendencies. Their own small feeding suckers, or roots, had to be attached to static plants so that they could draw nourishment from the soil through them. The principle can be observed on earth in the case of the mistletoe, for example, feeding on the oak. The feeding of the Martians, as we saw it in the cultivated cactus fields in the city, is, so to say, a temporary grafting process.

  I close this part of my paper with a reference to the domes in which the Beautiful People lived. As time passed, and the planet on which they flourished began to die, so that the winters grew intenser, the Martians had to adjust themselves or perish. One miraculous day in their history they discovered a remarkable natural phenomenon among the hills—the event can only be compared in significance to the discovery of fire in the course of our own human history. The surface of Mars consists of sand, as we have seen. At certain points among the volcanic hills, the enormous heat of the subterranean fires instituted a fusion process of the silica in this loose crystalline soil. In this way a species of glass, hard and vitreous, was formed (the process of the manufacture of glass on earth will be familiar enough to most readers for them to perceive how this vast chemical process operated). In most cases the glass, as it cooled, hardened into lumps—sometimes, as it overflowed a rocky ridge, into long stalactites—icicles, so to say (these, sharpened by chipping, as were the old flint weapons of our cave-men, became the swords and spears of the Beautiful People). In certain places, however, an interesting thing happened. While the glass was still in a molten condition, the subterranean fires would burst through the surface in a minor volcanic eruption. The sudden release of gases blew the molten glass into gigantic bubbles. And when the gases had spent themselves, and the fires died, there, shining in the sun, were the huge crystal domes the Martians came to use as houses—literally as glass-houses—hot-houses.

  In building a city, what they did was to choose a valley or hollow among the hills where some large domes already existed (in the case of the city we saw, the huge central dome had been blown on the spot). They then transported, by means of the large trolleys we have described, as many other smaller domes as they required from the various molding grounds. Once a dome was in position, they dug, somewhere inside it, a deep shaft or well. This brought heat from the subterranean fires of Mars into the domes, and thus they were provided with the means of combating the altering weather conditions of the planet.

  In winter, the Martians stayed almost all the time inside the domes, emerging only occasionally to feed (although they had cactus plants for most of the feeding necessary in the domes already), and to tend the “children” in the warm hill caves. In summer they moved about quite freely in the open air, as we have seen, retreating into the domes at night and when they wanted to rest.

  4. Concluding Remarks and Final Observations. I am aware of an immense amount of ground still to be covered. Having talked about the general physical characteristics of the Martians, I ought to say something of their social and political arrangements. Alas, there is no space—and, I may also say, I did not have enough time among the Martians to be able to acquaint myself thoroughly with this immense subject. As soon as it may be arranged I hope to return to Mars to investigate fully the many, many aspects of a mode of life so vastly different from our own.

  For the moment it will suffice to say that the motivating force in a Martian community is The Center, a highly developed and sensitive creature, seemingly ageless, capable of propagating himself (vide Mr. Adam’s description of him as having, on top of his stem, male and female flowers together). He is, as it were, a kind of Social Conscience—I cannot be more specific than this; as I say, I did not have time to go into this fascinating question thoroughly. He communicates with his people by means of The Voice—some sort of telepathic force I am unable properly to define. He has, as advisers, a group of hermaphroditic individuals similar to himself, who are known as the Wiser Ones. These are, at the same time, the scientists and the priesthood, so to say. They do all the real thinking for the people—they control them and keep them informed on all they need to know. The ordinary Martian can think, but he cannot think really creatively. The Wiser Ones do this for him—as I have said, they are singularly well-informed about Mars itself and about the universe in general; that is why we were accepted quite simply among the Beautiful People as beings from another planet—it did not seem to them strange that there were such things, and that they had arrived among them. All they wanted to know was how the journey had been achieved, and something of the world from which we came. I endeavored to answer these questions to the best of my ability in the short space of time available to me during our conferences in the big central dome of the city.

  As I say, I would wish to investigate further among all these things before writing more fully on the subject—the superstitions and folk-lore of the Martians, if any; their morals; their religion; their philosophy; their art forms�
��music (if such a thing is possible to them) and the visual arts. If I am spared I shall be returning soon to the scene of our recent adventures, and then I should be in a position to provide at least some information on these subjects, as far as my limited abilities will allow.

  I conclude with a few remarks about the other life-species we saw on Mars—the creatures known as the Terrible Ones. They, too, were plants—they had solved the problem of combating the elements by living in the vast underground heated caves among the mountains. I did not have a chance to explore their methods of feeding at first hand, though I gathered from the Wiser Ones that they were parasitical, like those of the Beautiful People. My own view is that these creatures, the Terrible Ones, are descendants of a different species of plant altogether—probably something akin to our own insect-digesting plants: the Venus Fly Trap and the Upas Tree. This would account for the huge jaw-like petals which give them the appearance of having mouths. This would seem to indicate that there was, at one time, some sort of animal life on Mars. That it no longer exists I am convinced—the jaws are merely vestigial.

  What really interested me about the Terrible Ones, however, was their wanton enmity to the Beautiful People. There was no obvious reason why they should wish to destroy them—they did not require them for food, for example. It was simply that they were full of an unreasoning malignance—that was as surely a function of their lives as an equally unreasoning benevolence was a function of the lives of the Beautiful People. It was an illustration of yet another great principle permeating the entire universe—a principle impossible to understand other than mystically: the principle of Good and Evil.