The Red Planet

by Charles Chilton

  The Red Planet

  Charles Chilton

  From the second BBC radio series of ‘Journey into Space’.

  First published 1956 by Herbert Jenkins Ltd.

  All the characters in this book are purely imaginary and have no relation whatsoever to any living person

  Chapter One

  As everybody knows, there is no air on the Moon and temperature there varies between great extremes of heat and cold; in fact, the only comfortable time for men to be abroad on the Moon’s surface, even in heated or cooled space suits, is during the hours of the lunar morning and evening.

  Yet today, in the Bay of Rainbows, stands Luna Colony --a vast monument to man’s engineering skill. There all air has to be manufactured and every article of food, clothing and equipment still has to be brought from Earth, for the Moon, being a barren globe, can supply us with nothing but a few raw materials which have to be ferried back to Earth before they can be put to any kind of use.

  That men are on the Moon at all is due to the now historic trip of the first atomic-powered space ship Luna, captained by Jet Morgan and manned by his crew of three; Lemmy Barnet, radio engineer, Stephen Mitchell, the Australian astronautics engineer who designed the ship, and myself, Dr Matthews, known to the rest of the crew simply as ‘Doc’.

  But why bother to establish a Colony at all, you may ask? There are a number of reasons, but the most important is that from the time Luna first landed on the Moon it was realised that at last man had a jumping-off ground from which to reach the more distant planets--in particular, Mars. And it was to this end that the work of Luna Colony was principally directed, for there was a time limit on the project, as I will now explain.

  Mars is the nearest planet to the sun outside the Earth. In other words, the orbit of the Earth lies inside the Martian one. Neither orbit is circular, but elliptical. However, the Martian orbit is more elongated than the Earth’s and the direction of the elongation is not the same. In consequence, the paths of the Earth and Mars lie closer together in some places than in others. Earth and Mars travel round the sun in the same direction, but do not, as it were, travel hand in hand. Not only does Mars travel more slowly than the Earth, it also, because it is farther from the sun than our own planet, has much farther to go. Consequently the Earth is constantly overtaking and passing Mars.

  When the Earth lies in a direct line between the sun and Mars, it is said to be in ‘opposition’ to the Red Planet. Oppositions occur about every 780 days and it is then that the distance between the two planets is at its minimum; this minimum distance varying, of course, according to whether the opposition takes place at points along the orbits which are close or not so close to each other. The smallest possible distance during an opposition is 35,000,000 miles and the greatest 63,000,000.

  ‘Close’ oppositions occur approximately every fifteen years and since 1900 there have been five. The opposition of 1924 was one of the closest of the century and, although nobody on Earth could have had the remotest idea of it at the time, not even the astronomers, it was one of the most important Martian oppositions in history. But just as important, perhaps, was the last which took place in 1971. In that year, using the Moon as a jumping-off ground, the attempt to reach Mars was made.

  You may wonder why we should go to the trouble of assembling a fleet on the Moon when we could take off from the Earth direct. It is because the lower gravitational pull enables us to take off with larger ships and propel them with far less fuel expenditure.

  The construction of Luna had been child’s play compared with the present project. Now, instead of just one ship, we were to take a whole fleet. It was estimated that the quickest possible time in which a space ship could reach Mars was approximately six months. But, perhaps, before I go into any details of the type of ship necessary for this great journey to the Red Planet, I had better remind you of a few more facts about the planet itself.

  Mars is, of course, with the exception of Venus, the nearest planet to our own and, as planets go, it is quite small. Its diameter is approximately 4200 miles, nearly half that of our globe; its mass is little more than one-tenth that of the Earth and, in consequence, its gravitational pull is also far less. A man weighing fourteen stone on Earth would weigh nearer five on Mars.

  But, in many other respects, Mars is very similar to Earth and has been called by some astronomers ‘Earth’s little brother’. Mars rotates on its axis in almost the same time as the Earth and its day is 24 hours 37 minutes in length. (The Moon’s day, you will remember, is 14 Earth days in length.) The Martian axis tilts at an angle of 25 degrees to its orbit; the Earth’s at 23 1/2. Seasonal conditions, therefore, are very similar to those we know on Earth except that, because of its longer journey round the sun, the Martian year is nearly twice as long.

  Like the Earth, the poles of the Red Planet are ice-covered and, as summer approaches, these ice caps are seen to melt, and then to expand again during winter. The existence of these changing climatic conditions and the fact that Mars has an atmosphere made it almost certain that some kind of plant life existed there.

  The sharp contrasts of colour that characterise the Martian surface--greens, blues, purples and reds, have been closely studied from the observatory established at Luna Colony, and what is believed to be vegetation has been observed to change colour with the seasons, just as vegetation does down on Earth. But what this vegetation is, whether it is forest, grass, fern or just moss, could never be established until man set foot on his little neighbour in space.

  And then there was the vexed question of the ‘canals’ (or ‘canali’, to give them their correct name). For years after they were first discovered by Schiaparelli in 1877 these elusive features were the subject of fierce controversy. Many astronomers declared the canals did not exist at all. The argument was not settled until the establishment of the lunar observatory where, with no atmosphere to blanket out or distort the physical features on the Red Planet, the canals were indisputably proved to exist and were photographed hundreds of times. But it no longer seemed that the canals could have been made by any intelligent beings and it was almost certain that they did not contain water (which was a popular belief of the nineteenth century).

  The problem of the ‘canals’ was one of many mysteries which we hoped to solve by our journey to Mars. But first we had to get there. Although we planned to land on Mars when it was close to the Earth, it was necessary to travel 355 million miles through space to reach the planet, for our ships could not travel in a straight line as the Moon ships virtually did. The reason for this is not hard to see. As I have already explained, the Earth, revolving in its orbit inside the Martian one, is constantly overtaking the planet. We travel round the sun at an average speed of 18 1/2 miles per second. Mars, on the other hand, travels at an average speed of only 15 miles a second.

  If it were possible for the Earth to move over from its orbit into that of Mars, it would overtake it at a rate of 3 1/2 miles a second and eventually the two globes would collide. The Earth cannot, of course, deviate from its orbit but a space ship, leaving the Earth-Moon system at a carefully calculated speed and on an equally carefully calculated course, can. It can ‘drift’ outwards from the sun on a spiral path until the orbit of the Red Planet is reached. Once in the Martian orbit the speed of the ship can be adjusted until it matches that of the planet and, provided, of course, that the planet has already reached the same point, a landing can be made.

  Such a journey takes six months or more and in that time the Earth will have travelled halfway round the sun and reached a position directly between the sun and Mars.

  You can see that the slightest miscalculation could mean disaster to such a project and almost certain death for every man connected with it. B
ut this was the least consideration in the minds of those chosen to take part in the great adventure.

  We would be away from Earth for two years in all; six months’ travel each way and a year on the planet itself. Consequently, nearly all our ships were freighters, carrying equal amounts of fuel, food, water, oxygen and scientific equipment. Our supplies were estimated to be enough to last for three years--after our experience on the Moon we intended to leave a wide safety margin.

  Of the ships we were taking--and we were taking eight in all--only three could actually make a landing on the Martian surface. In the interests of economy the others were constructed to travel only in airless space. Because of this, only ten men would be able actually to touch down on Mars. The remaining crews would have to stay within the freighters in free orbit about a thousand miles above the planet’s surface.

  We would land on the southern ice cap. We realised that the temperature would be extremely low in those regions and that it was almost certain we would be unable to venture out of the ships at night. But it was only at the ice caps that we could be sure to find a surface smooth enough to land on. Once we had established a Polar Base, we intended to unload tractors and make our way towards the Martian equator, exploring the planet as we went.

  The flagship of the fleet, the Discovery, was to be manned by the same men who had made the first journey to the Moon. We were to take off on April 1st, 1971.

  By March the Mars Fleet was ready to leave but, looking back over the project now, I realise that from the very start it was ill-fated for, even before takeoff, things were against us--ominous portents, had we then known it, of what was to come.

  The floor of the Bay of Rainbows is as flat as any surface you can find on the Moon, and measured from cape to cape (Laplace to Heraclides) the bay is 143 miles in width. In the north-east are the Jura mountains; a magnificent sight when the low sun lights up their peaks, many of which rise to twenty thousand feet or more.

  The bay was chosen as the site of Luna Colony for various reasons. Being situated in a high altitude (only 450 from the lunar pole) the day temperature does not rise to the heights it reaches at the equator. The bay also offers a flat and fairly solid surface (the depth of dust there being far less than in all other ‘seas’ so far explored) on which to construct the launching ground and, at the same time, a cliff face into which the Colony is built.

  Why is it necessary to live underground? For protection; against the extreme heat, intense cold and meteor showers. On the Moon, meteors take the place of weather as a subject of conversation. Sometimes days go by (Earth days, that is) without a meteor fall being recorded anywhere near the Colony. At other times, fortunately rare, they fall so thick and fast that it is not safe to go outside until the shower has passed.

  Ninety-nine per cent of the meteors which travel Earthwards never reach its surface; they have burned themselves out long before. But every meteor that approaches the Moon is vaporised, not by an atmosphere, but by striking the lunar surface. And whenever a meteor strikes, an explosion, large or small according to the size of the missile, takes place and another scar is added to the Moon’s face.

  These small pits, or craters, looking rather like small shell holes, dot the lunar surface everywhere. However, the northern hemisphere of the Moon is less affected by meteor bombardment than the southern and, in particular, that part of the Sea of Rains in which the Bay of Rainbows lies.

  The Colony extends into the mountains for a depth of two miles. The only outbuildings are the Colony entrance, the observatory domes and the ‘rest rooms’ where men off duty can sit and gaze through a thick, transparent roof at the stars or the Earth, a huge, brilliant globe which waxes and wanes just as the Moon does when seen from home.

  And it was in one of the observation domes that the first disaster occurred.

  The chances of a meteor hitting Luna Colony, protected as it is by the mountain range, are very remote. The chances of a meteor actually hitting the dome, the most vulnerable part of Luna City, are incalculable--and yet it happened. One moment the four men who were in there had been enjoying their view of the universe, the next the precious artificial atmosphere had rushed out of a gaping hole, leaving the men in a vacuum. It happened so suddenly that none of them could have realised it.

  Fortunately the rest of the Colony suffered no harm. The airtight door leading into the observation room stood up to the pressure and did not give way. Soon the damaged section was permanently and hermetically sealed off from the rest of our underground city.

  Two freightermen were killed in that accident. For two years they had been training as crew members of the Mars Fleet and then, only a few days before takeoff, their lives had suddenly come to an end. Of course, we were prepared for such an emergency and had replacements standing by for every man in the expedition. But it was a sad business and something we could well have done without.

  However, the next few days were a fever of activity. Not far from the entrance to the Colony stands a shallow crater. It is about a mile in diameter and almost spherical in shape; in fact, it could hardly be called a crater at all, though it obviously had been once. But over the aeons of time its walls had been worn down and are now no more than a few feet high at their summit. It was in this crater that the Mars Fleet had been erected.

  The ships were huge; nearly three hundred feet tall and ninety feet in diameter. Only one of them, the Flagship Discovery, was of conventional rocket shape; the rest were quite out of line with the popular conception of what a space ship should look like. As they would never have to travel through any atmosphere they were not streamlined. They consisted of only the barest essentials; solar reflectors, radio antennae, fuel tanks and other equipment held together by what appeared to be a tangle of girders. The whole was topped by a large sphere which, besides carrying most of the cargo, also housed the tiny cabin which served as living quarters for the two men needed to man each vessel. The freight ships, numbered one to eight in huge, red letters on their spheres, stood in a large circle about three-quarters of a mile in diameter. And, in the centre of that circle, stood the Discovery, painted a bright blue for identification.

  Twelve hours before takeoff, every man not on duty was looking towards the lunar horizon, waiting for the sun to rise. Behind us, hanging motionless in the void, itself like a great moon, was the Earth.

  Then suddenly there appeared behind the rugged skyline a spearpoint of red light; one of the sun’s prominences, a herald of its approach. Instantly, as though some giant hand had turned a switch, the whole area was bathed in the sun’s hard glow, the mountains, rocks and crater rims throwing long, black, pointed shadows across the Moon’s surface.

  The lunar day had begun--the space fleet to Mars could now leave.

  Chapter Two

  Three hours before takeoff, all crew members assembled in the briefing room for last-minute instructions. Then we put on our space suits and gathered in the huge airlock that constituted the entrance to the Colony. It was ‘zero, minus two hours’.

  Once we had passed into the airlock and the great, oval-shaped door had closed behind us I put on my helmet which until then I had carried under my arm. Its rim slid comfortably into position in the groove of the suit’s collar. I fastened the catch and tested its security. Then I switched on the radio, listened for the faint ‘mush’ in my headphones that told me the receiver was alive and waited for further orders.

  There were twenty of us in the lock, all similarly dressed in reinforced rubber-like, white, plastic suits. They were, except for the helmet, of one piece. The knees, elbows and shoulders were fuller than the rest of the suit and were ridged for flexibility. The soles of the feet were thick and hard and over them we had pulled our boots; tough, snugly fitting articles that were expected to last (even with almost continuous wear) for longer than our expedition was estimated to take.

  Every man carried a back-pack containing his oxygen and battery power units. A small panel in the front of the suit just below c
hest height held a set of switches by which each man could control his radio, regulate the temperature of his suit, and increase or decrease the oxygen supply.

  Standing in a tight little bunch, we all faced the door on the other side of which lay the Bay and the space’ ships. A white light gleamed above our heads. It was the signal that the air in the lock was about to be extracted.

  A cold, flat voice sounded in my ear. “Zero, minus one hour fifty minutes.”

  As the pressure went down and my suit inflated, I could feel the flexible joints tightening. Soon I was a stiff, rounded figure, like a knight of old in a shapely suit of armour.

  Now a blue light glowed, indicating that air pressure was down to zero and that the door to the outer Moon was opening.

  An intense glare greeted us from outside. It was so brilliant I instinctively closed my eyes against it. Quickly I felt for my control panel and dropped a neutral-tinted light filter into place. When I opened my eyes again it was to see the floor of the Bay, indented and rock strewn, stretching clear to the horizon.

  The scene was a study in black and white; night and day at the same time. The sun lit up the rocks and mountains with a dazzling light. Where the sun could not reach all was black--blacker than the deepest Earth night--and it was impossible to see any detail where the shadows lay.

  The sky, black as pitch, was studded with millions of multi-coloured stars in numbers far greater than can ever be seen from Earth. The Milky Way shone out as though a giant hand had dipped a huge whitewash brush into a bucket of shining Stardust and swept it in a mighty arc across the heavens.

  Owing to the sharp curvature of the Moon’s surface, the horizon was no great distance away and we could just see the tops of the space ships rising above it. The sun, lighting up the spherical cabins of the freighters, gave them the appearance of huge beacons.