The Red Planet

by Charles Chilton

  “Oh,” came Lemmy’s sympathetic voice. “Well, I’ll get the main door open, Jet. Be all ready for whoever comes across.”

  It was decided to send Mitch back. After he had gone, Jet and I settled down to watch over Whitaker, but he had relapsed into a deep coma and said nothing more. So Jet set about clearing up the mess in the cabin. It took him about four hours before things looked shipshape again. Then he carried out the routine inspection of Number Six and passed the report over to Lemmy. Finally he prepared a meal and, with both of us sitting by Whitaker’s bed, we ate it in silence.

  After Jet had cleared the containers away I realised how tired he was looking. “You must be completely exhausted,” I told him, “why don’t you get some sleep?”

  “I am a little tired, Doc,” he admitted. “But how about you? You’ve had no more sleep than I.”

  “But I haven’t been doing any physical work, Jet. Just sitting here and watching Whitaker.”

  “I wonder what did happen between him and Peterson, Doc. If only he’d come out of that coma he might be able to tell us.”

  “I wouldn’t bank on that just yet,” I warned him. “He’s been too quiet for my liking for a long time. Now go to bed. I’ll wake you in four hours.’“

  “OK, but if Mitch or Lemmy call, wake me up, will you?”

  “If it’s anything important, I will,” I assured him.

  “OK,” said Jet. “Goodnight then,” and with that he climbed the little ladder which led to the bunk above Whitaker’s. He was asleep almost before I had got his safety straps into position.

  I had hardly settled down by Whitaker’s side before he began to speak again. First he announced his name; his full name. “James Edward Whitaker,” he said. He repeated this a couple of times and then added the year in which he was born. Not 1940 as we had all been led to believe; but 1893.

  Then, to my great concern, he began to rave. He shouted, he twisted and turned and he threw his arms about. Try as I would I could not quieten him. If he had not been strapped into his bunk his contortions would have sent him floating round the cabin to crash against one of the walls and, perhaps, injure himself even further.

  I felt sure that Whitaker’s yelling and screaming must waken Jet before long and then, to my surprise, I realised that Jet was making almost as much noise as Whitaker. Like him, he was tossing and turning on his bunk and, although his eyes were tightly closed, the perspiration stood out in little beads on his brow. He twisted and turned as though trying to free himself from the straps that bound him to his bed.

  I tried to waken him but to no avail. Then, once more, I tried to waken Whitaker, with no more success. I began to sweat a little myself. It was as though Jet, by some inexplicable means, was suffering in sympathy with Whitaker; as though he, too, were bearing the pain and delirium of the injured man.

  I have heard of such cases before; of husbands who suffered from toothache or even abdominal pains while their wives were in labour; of twins who felt an injury sustained by their brothers or sisters even though they were far apart; but this was the first time I had had first-hand experience of such a thing.

  There was absolutely no doubt that there was a strong connection between the ravings of the two men for, besides acting in much the same way, they often seemed to be talking to each other. Most of the words they spoke were incoherent but occasionally they became crystal clear, as when Whitaker was announcing his date of birth and Jet suddenly said: “But that’s ridiculous. That would make you seventy-eight years old and you don’t look a day older than thirty.”

  Then came snatches of conversation, some connected, some disconnected, such as:

  “Have you been to the Exhibition? They’re running special trains from Baker Street. Look at that star. That’s Mars. Isn’t she beautiful? It’s not red really, you know. It’s pink and olive green. If only we had a telescope powerful enough we could see the cities on her.”

  “Cities?” It was Jet now.

  “Didn’t you know?” Then Whitaker began to sing--a song I’d never heard before. Some nonsense about it being night-time in Italy and Wednesday in some other place. He sang it heartily and laughed when he finished.

  “Are we going to this Exhibition, Whitaker, or aren’t we?”

  “Yes. That’s why we’ve come here. In you get, Mr Morgan. We’ll show you an Exhibition such as you never realised existed.”

  At this point Jet’s voice took on a tone of fear. “Where are you taking me?” he yelled. “Take your hands off, do you hear? Let go of me!”

  Jet’s ‘delirium’ was increasing. He shouted louder than ever, at times he even screamed. I climbed up the ladder and tried to calm him. I took hold of his shoulders but he immediately began to struggle with me and I received a heavy clump on the side of the head. I quickly retreated down the ladder again, feeling sick and dizzy. With his eyes still closed Jet went raving on--like a lunatic.

  It was then I realised that Whitaker had quietened down. He lay on his bunk, motionless. He had stopped breathing. I felt for his pulse: there was none. I put my ear to Whitaker’s chest but could not hear his heart beating. Whitaker was dead.

  Jet’s screams of protest were louder than ever now. I decided to make yet another effort to rouse him. I climbed the ladder, took him by the shoulders and shook him. I slapped his face and then called his name in his ear.

  “Jet!” I yelled. “Wake up. Wake up, do you hear?”

  That seemed to do the trick. His eyes opened and although for a few seconds he still struggled to loose himself from my grip, he soon realised who I was and where he was. But his face was ashen grey and he was trembling violently.

  “What on earth were you yelling like that for?” “A dream, Doc,” he said breathlessly. “I had such a fantastic dream.”

  “A dream? “ I asked him.

  “Yes,” he said. “I dreamt I was back in London but not a London I knew. A London of the past. The buses were open-decked at the top and everybody was going to an exhibition somewhere. Some buildings I recognised and in other places were older buildings where new ones now stand. And Whitaker was there. Seems he was taking me to catch a train at Baker Street, but he took me to Regent’s Park instead where there were about a dozen other men---all with faces and voices exactly like Whitaker’s. And then they began to attack me--and then you woke me.”

  “You were yelling your head off,” I told him.

  “I’m sorry, Doc,” he said. “Did I disturb him?”

  “Whitaker, you mean? Nothing will ever disturb him again.”

  “He’s dead?”

  “Yes, Jet.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Perhaps you’d like to look for yourself.”

  Jet undid his safety straps, put on his magnetised boots and descended to the floor. When he was down I switched on the reading light above the lower bunk then stood to one side as Jet leaned over to stare down into Whitaker’s face. Jet gave a violent start and a cry of horror. “Good heavens, Doc, you might have warned me.”

  “Of what?” I asked him in surprise.

  I moved closer to the bunk to get a better view of the still form lying there. Then I, too, let out an involuntary exclamation and my heart gave a sudden jump.

  “Is that him?” Jet asked.

  I stared at Whitaker’s face for a few moments before trusting myself to reply. It was so altered, and the shock of seeing it so, so great, that it took me some time to regain control of my senses.

  “It’s him all right,” I said finally and in a shaky voice I hardly recognised as my own. “Can’t you see the likeness?” “Yes,” said Jet, “but he’s--he’s so old.” And, indeed, there on the bunk before us was the body of a frail old man. His face was lined, his form withered, his hands boney and the veins standing out. Yet the face was unmistakably that of Whitaker. In death he had reverted to his true age and his body showed it in every physical way.

  “Control was right,” I said slowly, still greatly shaken. “Whitaker was
seventy-eight years old, but it took his death to prove it.”

  Chapter Nine

  The death of Whitaker and the subsequent change of his physical form was the most severe shock we had received since leaving the Moon. What did this strange, fantastic transformation mean? How had Whitaker managed to retain his youth for so long. And where had he been between 1924 and the time he joined the expedition as a reserve crew member?

  Had there been some strange power in control of Whitaker that compelled him to do things against his will? A power that prolonged his life until the intervention of sudden death cut off the controlling medium, allowing the wear and tear of forty-seven years to overtake him in a matter of minutes? If there was an answer to all these questions, neither Jet nor I were able to supply it. The fact remained, Whitaker was dead. There was no longer any point in lagging behind the rest of the Fleet.

  So the two ships, the Discovery and Number Six, were turned over and their speeds increased. Twelve hours later we overhauled the remaining freighters and took up our places in formation. Whitaker we left behind, having ‘buried’ him in space.

  One of the first things Jet did when he got back to the Flagship was to play over the recording tape that I had salvaged. It consisted mainly of routine calls from Control to the Discovery. Whitaker had obviously taken them down during his radio watches, probably while Peterson was asleep. Clearly these were the tapes he had played in the hope of fooling us that he was Control before giving the order to turn back. But why he had done it, we still hadn’t the least idea.

  Nothing we found gave us any indication as to why Peterson had abandoned ship, for we could only assume that he, too, was dead. Somewhere, in between the orbits of Earth and Mars, his body, still enclosed in his suit, must even now be drifting on a course that will take him forever round the Sun. If not for ever, then for thousands of years, until he comes close enough to some heavenly body to be drawn to it by gravitational attraction, finally to crash upon its surface.

  I wondered what the next tragedy would be, for, up to now, our trip seemed, as Lemmy put it, to have the ‘mockers’ on it and to be cursed with one unfortunate occurrence after another. Happily for us, however, the next event was a very welcome one; Lemmy made contact with Control. The cloud of ionised gas through which we had passed must have moved out of line with us and Earth and once more our signals were able to reach home.

  Lemmy called up Mitch and me in Number Six and told us the good news. No doubt about its being Control this time for reception wasn’t very good and the time-lag between call and reply amounted to more than half a minute.

  So elated was Jet at being able to talk to home once more that he allowed all ships to tune in to Control’s frequency and listen to Base’s transmissions. After the normal routine calls and reports had been made, Jet asked Control for the news bulletin. This was an item to which we all looked forward and, before we lost contact with home, it was relayed to the Fleet every twenty-four hours. Not only did we hear the latest international news but also the results of recent sporting events which made us all feel very much less cut off than we had been hitherto. We began to look forward again to the time when we would reach the Red Planet.

  Mitch and I now made up the crew of Number Six, but there were occasions when one or other of us had to go over to the Discovery to help out Jet and Lemmy with some of the major duties which were peculiar to the Flagship. We were getting very close to Mars when I received one such summons from Jet.

  I arrived in the Discovery to find Jet sitting at the Control table on watch while Lemmy examined the surface of Mars through the navigational telescope. The radio operator turned to greet me as I entered and asked if I would like to take a close look at the planet. Not knowing as yet what Jet wanted me for, I declined.

  “It’s beautiful, Doc,” said Lemmy, “really beautiful. To call it the Red Planet is a mistake, if you ask me; there’s as much green as red--and so bright.”

  “Now don’t go getting too ecstatic, Lemmy,” I said jokingly, “or the crews of every freighter will be wanting to come over here and take a look as well.”

  “Two weeks from now,” said Jet, “every ship will be less than a thousand miles above the Martian surface. We’ll be able to see it much clearer then than we do now--even with the telescope.”

  “I can hardly believe we’re that close,” I said, almost to myself.

  “And the nearer we get, Doc,” Jet said, “the stranger I feel.”

  “You, Jet?” I exclaimed. “After twenty-seven trips to the Moon?”

  “I can’t explain it, Doc. That’s why I’ve asked you to come over here. Let’s go to my bunk and sit down.”

  I gathered from this that Jet was not too happy about Lemmy’s hearing what we were saying. I followed him over to the bunk, but Lemmy didn’t seem to be particularly interested in us and kept his eye glued to the telescope.

  Once we had settled ourselves, Jet said: “When we set out on this journey, Doc, I was looking forward to six months of uneventful, perhaps even dull, routine while we were coasting here, but this trip has been anything but that and I have a feeling that our exploration of Mars is not going to be quite what we expect, either.”

  “In what way?” I asked him.

  “I wish I could tell you. I can hardly wait to set foot on Mars and yet, at the same time, I’m full of apprehension about it.”

  “Oh? Why?”

  “I’ve been checking up. You remember I told you that in my dream Whitaker kept talking about an exhibition?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, from the impression I got of the London I was dreaming about I guessed the period to be some time in the 1920s. So I asked Control to find out if an Exhibition had taken place during that decade and, if so, whether it was possible to reach it by train from Baker Street.”

  “And had there been an Exhibition then?”

  “Yes. The Empire Exhibition of 1924--at Wembley.”

  “Good grief!” I exclaimed.

  “I had no idea such an Exhibition had ever been held.”

  “Well, it was a little before your time,” I reminded him.

  “After that, I asked them to check up on the song--the one that Whitaker sang. Apparently it was a popular song of the same year, 1924--the year in which he disappeared.”

  “But that’s fantastic, Jet. What did Control say about it? Weren’t they curious to know why you wanted the information?”

  “I told them I needed it to settle an argument.”

  “Do you think it was wise not to tell them everything?”

  “Yes, I do. Suppose I did tell them. About Whitaker making that phoney call and trying to get us to turn back, isn’t there a chance that Control might tell us the same thing? On the face of it, somebody, something--using Whitaker as a go-between, maybe--seems to have been trying to do exactly that, and somebody on Earth might consider that the risk of carrying on is too great and order us to return.”

  “They’d be more likely to scoff at the whole thing and put it down to imagination.”

  “That, Doc,” said Jet with a laugh, “is a polite way of saying I’m unstable, mentally unbalanced.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t go that far,” I began, but Jet cut me off.

  “I’m not so sure that Control wouldn’t. Nor the rest of the Fleet.”

  “Surely, Jet,” I argued, “you don’t think the crews imagine that you . . .”

  “Why shouldn’t they? Only three of us have been really seriously affected by Whitaker; Frank Rogers in Number Two, Lemmy and myself--and both Lemmy and Rogers seem to have got over it long since.”

  “And you haven’t?”

  “I’d have thought no more about it, Doc, but for the information I got from Earth less than an hour ago.”

  Our discussion was brought to a close by Lemmy’s leaving the telescope and walking over to where Jet and I were sitting. “Well,” he said as he approached, “it won’t be long now, and I won’t be sorry.”

  “What
won’t be long, Lemmy?” I asked.

  “The landing on Mars. I can’t wait to get my feet on terra firma again. Pity about the atmosphere down there, Doc. I’d give anything to have a good, deep breath of fresh air.”

  “You’ll have to do without that, Lemmy,” I told him with a laugh. “The oxygen content of the Martian atmosphere is far too low. One breath of it would probably kill you.”

  “Too low to support life, do you think, Doc?”

  “Almost certainly.”

  “I wonder I I’ll lay you six to four that there’s a couple of Martians sitting down there at this very moment looking up at the Earth and telling each other that there couldn’t possibly be any life on our planet because the oxygen content of its atmosphere is too high.”

  Lemmy chuckled at his own joke but his merriment was cut short by Jet’s saying: “Would you mind seeing Doc safely across to his ship, Lemmy? In a couple of hours we’ll be refuelling Two and Six and I want everybody at their posts.”

  I left the Discovery and returned to the freighter, quite disturbed, I must confess, by what Jet had told me. I racked my brains to see how it could possibly all tie together, but eventually had to give up, first because, try as I might, I could find no answer to the enigma and second because, less than half an hour after reaching my own freighter, the order came from Jet to get Number Six ready for the fuelling squads.

  Two weeks later we ‘met up’ with the Red Planet absolutely on schedule, increased our speed and went into free orbit round the globe about a thousand miles above its surface. At this height we were above the planet’s atmosphere and could therefore have gone on encircling indefinitely had we chose. In fact, that is what most of the Fleet would be doing until we started back to Earth. But three of the ships, namely the Discovery, and Freighters Number One and Two, were to attempt a landing.

  The Discovery was, of course, constructed especially for this purpose. Its two large wings would enable it to glide down through the Martian atmosphere. But the freighters had to be modified. First the massive girders were taken apart and the spherical cabins removed. The main bodies of the ships had been carried in the girders, together with the wings. Now the construction engineers, encased in their suits and attached to their job by their long safety lines, were floating around the ships and reassembling them. They were to act as tenders and carry stores and materials down to the Martian base for the use of the crew of the Discovery and the other men selected to make the landing.