The Red Planet

by Charles Chilton

  Suddenly I heard Jet’s voice in my ear. “Good heavens!” he said.

  “What is it, Jet?” I asked. “What can you see?” “The other side of this hill leads down into a valley, a great, wide valley, and it’s full of plants like giant rhubarb.”

  “Rhubarb plants?” I exclaimed incredulously.

  “This must be one of the canals,” said Jet excitedly.

  “Did you hear that, Doc?” he called.

  “Yes, Jet. I heard it.”

  “It must be at least fifteen miles wide and . . . oh, my goodness!”

  “What is it, Jet?”

  “Right in the centre of that valley is a great, colossal, pyramid!”

  Chapter Thirteen

  My first impulse was to go running up the dune to make sure that Jet wasn’t seeing things. But he announced that he was already on his way back. When he and Lemmy reached us Jet was so excited he could hardly speak. “A great pyramid?” I asked.

  “Yes, Doc, and just as soon as Mitch has got that motor repaired we’ll all go up there and look.”

  It wasn’t long before we were on the move once more. I must admit my heart was pounding as we climbed to the top of the dune where we came to a halt. Below us, as Jet had said, was one of the ‘canals’ of Mars. So far as I could estimate it was some fifteen miles in width and it stretched from east to west in a straight line. In the middle of the canal, almost directly in front of us, was the pyramid. It was about a mile square and rose in a series of huge steps or terraces each about fifty feet high.

  The valley was filled with curious red and blue plants which were, as Jet had said, rather like sticks of rhubarb with a huge single leaf at the top of each stem. They were about six feet in height and the leaves were as big as umbrellas. The plants grew quite close together, not more than two feet separating one from another and the sticks were, I should think, about four inches in diameter.

  The leaves of the plants overlapped and, looking down on them, as we were from the sand dune, they seemed to form a solid blue carpet on which one could have walked.

  “How tough do you think those plants are, Doc?” Jet asked me. “If we drove the trucks at them, do you think we could plough a way through?”

  “I don’t see why not,” I said. “We could try, anyway.”

  “How about the soil?” asked Lemmy anxiously. “Is it firm, boggy or what?”

  “We’ll soon find out,” said Jet. “Come on, switch on the motors, and let’s go.”

  Slowly and cautiously we descended towards the rhubarb jungle. When we were nearly up to the plants we reduced speed to two miles an hour. I held my breath as we got closer. I saw Jet grit his teeth and compress his lips as we drove straight into the jungle. We didn’t feel a thing. There was no bump, no resistance. We sailed smoothly on, the rhubarb bending downwards before us like aspens before a bulldozer.

  Jet breathed a sigh of relief. “Well, it looks as though we’re going to get through, Doc,” he said. “We’ll increase speed to five miles an hour maximum.”

  The pitch of the motor rose as Jet accelerated.

  It took us an hour to reach the base of the pyramid and, once there, we halted the trucks alongside its lower wall and Mitch and Jet put on their suits and went outside. Pushing their way through the ‘rhubarb’ was apparently an easy matter. AH they had to do was to bend them to one side. In fact, if they bent them too hard the stems snapped. Of course, it was difficult for Lemmy and I to see what was going on, but we had a running commentary on the exploration.

  “Well, this wall is solid enough, Doc,” I heard Jet say.

  “What’s it made of?” I asked him.

  “It’s difficult to tell.”

  “Is it of a brick formation?”

  “If it is, then it must be covered with some kind of plaster. The surface is quite smooth.”

  “Is there a way into it or through it?”

  “Not that we can see, Doc. But we’ll walk right round the base. There may be an entrance at one of the other sides.”

  “You don’t intend to leave Doc and me sitting here alone in the trucks, do you, Jet?” came Lemmy’s voice.

  “No, Lemmy. You and Doc follow us round. Drive at a walking pace.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better if you rode in the trucks? You can’t go hacking your way through rhubarb all round this city.”

  “We don’t have to,” said Jet. “There’s a path some three feet wide runs the whole length of the wall.”

  “All right, Lemmy,” I said, “get going. I’ll fall in behind you.” And off we went.

  It was quite easy to keep level with Jet and Mitch because occasionally we got glimpses of them through the vegetation. It took them nearly twelve minutes to walk the length of one wall.

  We were just about to turn the corner and start up the next side when Mitch gave an excited cry and shouted: “Hey, Jet. Look at this--on the ground.”

  I heard Jet exclaim: “You sure it’s not yours?”

  “No, Jet. Look--mine’s still attached to my belt.”

  I couldn’t stand to wait until they chose to tell me what they had found and so I asked them.

  “A safety line, Doc,” replied Jet. “Exactly the same as we wear.”

  “It must have been dropped by one of the crew of Number Two,” said Mitch; “either accidentally or as a sign to us.”

  “They must be here, then,” I observed. “If they are,” said Lemmy, “why don’t they show themselves?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jet. “Perhaps they can’t. We must find a way into this place. Let’s keep going. If there’s no kind of opening to be found when we’ve walked right round it, we’ll think up some way of scaling the wall.”

  We had hardly gone a farther fifty yards when Jet called a halt. “All right, Lemmy and Doc,” he said. “Stop the trucks, put on your suits and come out.”

  “Have you found something else, Jet?” I asked him.

  “I’ll say we have; right here, near the corner of the wall. A flight of steps, leading up to the bottom terrace.”

  It took me next to no time to put on my suit and join Lemmy, Mitch and Jet outside. The stairway was very narrow, very straight and sloped at an angle of about 45 degrees. The steps were worn, as though they had been used by countless generations of people.

  “Whoever they were,” said Lemmy, when I mentioned the fact, “they must have got fed up with this place and left. Otherwise we would have seen some sign of them by now, wouldn’t we?”

  “Maybe,” said Jet, “or maybe they’re keeping out of sight purposely.”

  We reached the top of the terrace and walked the whole length of it. It was at least a hundred feet wide and through the cracks in its floor a few rather stunted plants were growing. To one side was the drop down into the jungle, to the other was another wall similar to the one we now walked along. But there was no entrance into it as far as we could see. We walked to the spot above where Jet and Mitch had found the safety line but could see nothing that gave us any clue as to why it had been dropped or by whom.

  “Well, there’s nothing here,” said Jet at last; “but maybe there’s another flight of steps that will lead up to the next level.”

  “And what about our trucks?” asked Lemmy. “Are we going to leave them down there in that rhubarb jungle with nobody to look after them?”

  “That’s a point,” said Mitch thoughtfully. “Maybe we haven’t seen anybody around but that doesn’t mean that there is nobody.”

  Jet agreed. “One of us had better keep an eye on them while the rest of us continue the exploration. Lemmy, you’d better stay.”

  “Me?” protested Lemmy, a tone of apprehension in his voice.

  “If anything happens or if you see anything, just call us up. And, if necessary, we’ll come back.” “You going to walk right round the terrace then?” “Yes.”

  “All right, if you say so. I’ll start heading back to the trucks.”

  “No need to go right down to them,” said Je
t as we separated. “Wait at the head of the steps and we’ll pick you up there or give you directions on how to reach us if I want you to join us.”

  “Yes, mate,” said Lemmy miserably. He didn’t like the idea at all.

  We walked along the next terrace which lay, of course, at right angles to the one on which we had left Lemmy. We had just turned on to the third wall when we heard Frank Rogers calling.

  “We’re now approaching the position Jet gave us and should be passing over you in a few minutes from now,” Frank was saying.

  “Right, Frank boy,” replied the radio operator. He seemed much more cheerful now he had something to do. “The place we call the city is right smack in the middle of the canal. Have a good look round. You might see something that we can’t.”

  “We’ll do our best,” came back the pilot’s voice. “We’ll be travelling pretty fast. But we’ll take some photographs, too.”

  “I’ll remember to smile when you come by.”

  Frank laughed and signed off. Lemmy called us and asked where we were. We told him. Soon we would be halfway round the pyramid and then every step we took would bring us closer to him.

  He seemed quite cheered at the prospect. “But don’t leave it too long, Jet boy,” he said. “I get lonely standing here with nothing but a flight of steps and thousands of sticks of rhubarb for company. And another thing . . .”

  He stopped and we all looked up into the sky. We could hear Frank’s ship approaching. A few seconds later it had flashed over our heads, like a great dark bird.

  “Well, that was Frank,” said Lemmy, “and what a racket he kicked up, too. Let’s hope he got some good pictures.”

  “I had no idea, Jet,” I said, “that the ships could make such a noise in this thin atmosphere.”

  “Noise? Yes, I can hear the noise, Doc.” It was Lemmy’s voice. He sounded a little scared.

  “Hullo, Lemmy,” I said, “what was that?”

  “That noise. Can’t you hear it?”

  “Lemmy,” said Jet, “we were talking about the noise of the ship. What other noise can you hear?”

  “I tell you, Jet,” Lemmy’s voice was quite panicky now, “I can hear a noise. It sounds like it’s right in my head. Aw-h.” He gave what sounded like a long yawn.

  “Lemmy,” said Jet firmly, “do you hear me?”

  If he did, Lemmy ignored him. Instead he said: “Oh, what wouldn’t I give to have forty winks right now? I’m so tired.”

  “Lemmy, what’s the matter with you? Answer me,” demanded Jet. “You’re supposed to be on watch, you can’t go to sleep.”

  “Of course I can sleep,” said Lemmy. “Didn’t you hear that fellow just tell me so?”

  “Lemmy, for heaven’s sake, pull yourself together. Hullo—hullo--“

  But Lemmy wasn’t answering. We all called him in turn but no reply came.

  We half-walked and half-ran back towards where we had left Lemmy. I don’t think we could have gone any faster, for running in a space suit is virtually impossible.

  As we ran we occasionally heard Lemmy speak, as though he were holding a conversation with somebody

  It was fully twenty minutes before we reached the top of the flight of steps where we had left the radio operator. And all that time we were calling Lemmy’s name, for we could still hear him talking.

  But he appeared not to hear us. “All right,” he was saying, “but it’s only because I’m tired. I wouldn’t do a thing like this normally.”

  Lemmy’s present behaviour reminded me of how Jet had been the night Whitaker died. I had often wondered what would have happened to Jet if I hadn’t woken him when I did. I was convinced then that it was the proximity of Whitaker that had affected Jet. Was there someone near Lemmy now who was making him behave in the same way?

  As though in answer to my thoughts we suddenly heard Lemmy calling for help, his voice rising almost to a scream.

  “Hold on, Lemmy. We’re coming!” I cried.

  But no reply came from the operator, not even the nonsensical chatter of what had sounded so like a one-sided conversation.

  After what seemed an eternity we arrived back at the steps but there was no sign of the radio operator. We ran along the terrace on which we had left him and then, realising the futility of that, returned to the steps. While Jet descended them in case Lemmy had, after all, returned to the trucks, Mitch and I peered through the leaves of the jungle below us in the hope of detecting some movement which might show us that Lemmy was passing through it. But there was nothing. Not a breath of wind disturbed the atmosphere and the leaves lay silent and still as though made of wax.

  “He’s not down here,” came Jet’s voice. “He’s not in either of the trucks. He must still be up on the pyramid somewhere. Wait for me,” and a few minutes later Jet came hurrying up the narrow stairway to where we were standing.

  “Where on earth has he got to?” I asked. “He couldn’t have gone very far away in the short time that we left him.”

  “And what was happening that made him carry on like that?” asked Jet. “We’ve got to find him.”

  “Sure we have,” said Mitch, “but where do we start looking? If he’s still walking about, we might go chasing each other round and round this terrace all night.“

  “You go back the way we came, Mitch,” said Jet. “Doc and I will go round the other way. Then if Lemmy is anywhere on this level we’re bound to meet him.”

  “Right,” said Mitch, and with that he turned his back on us and began to retrace his steps the way we had come, while Jet and I started off along the top of one of the walls we had not yet explored.

  “He must be up here somewhere,” said Jet anxiously as we hurried along.

  “Or even higher up, Jet,” I suggested.

  “But how could he get up there?”

  “There was a way up from ground level to this far. I suppose we can reasonably expect a way to lead up higher.”

  We reached the far corner without seeing any sort of opening. Before turning we looked back the way we had come in case Lemmy should have reappeared, but the terrace was empty. We turned the corner on to the one terrace we had not yet seen. We hadn’t gone fifty yards along it before we came across another flight of stairs, identical to the ones which led up from the ground.

  “There, what did I tell you?” I said almost triumphantly. “He must have come up this way.”

  “But why?” asked Jet. “He was ordered to keep an eye on the trucks, and Lemmy’s not one to leave his post.” “I don’t think he was disobeying orders, Jet,” I said.

  “What? How do you mean?”

  “I believe he was obeying somebody else’s orders. Just as Whitaker was.”

  “Oh, nonsense, Doc. If anybody was giving him orders they must have done it by radio and we would have heard them, too, wouldn’t we?”

  “Yes, that is a point,” I agreed.

  We began the ascent of the narrow stairway. When we reached the upper terrace we found it hardly any different from the one we had just left. We looked to the right and then to the left, but could see only the ubiquitous rhubarb plants.

  “Well,” said Jet, “there’s certainly nothing along here. Let’s go back and look along the other one.”

  Some presentiment of danger made us hurry to the corner. Jet was slightly in the lead and as he turned it he gave a cry. When I reached his side I could see why. About fifty yards ahead of us, lying close to the wall, was Lemmy. He was flat on his back and bending over him was a man, loosening the catch of Lemmy’s helmet and about to take it off.

  “Hey, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” cried Jet, oblivious of the fact that as the man was wearing no space suit and therefore was not in radio contact with us, he could not possibly hear what Jet was saying. And yet, at his cry, the man looked up, saw us running towards him and took to his heels. “Get after him, Doc, for heaven’s sake,” yelled Jet. “I’ll attend to Lemmy.”

  I did my best, but in my clumsy clot
hing I was no match for the man who was wearing nothing but what appeared to me to be a crew suit. I soon gave up the chase and, as I did so, the man turned and looked at me.

  My heart gave a jump. I recognised him at once as McLean, missing pilot of Number Two. But it wasn’t the fact that I knew him that filled me with horror--it was the realisation that McLean, although a human being like myself, was walking and breathing in the Martian atmosphere, without breathing apparatus of any kind.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Fortunately we had arrived in time to prevent Lemmy’s helmet from actually being removed and, so far as breathing was concerned, he was quite safe. Jet snapped the catch back into place and between us we lifted the radio operator, who was unconscious, and carried him along the terrace and back down the steps towards the truck. On the way Jet called Mitch and told him to meet us back at the Land Fleet.

  As it turned out, Jet and I were first to arrive. We let ourselves into the truck by the remote control buttons and, after passing through the airlock, removed our and Lemmy’s helmets and suits.

  “Mitch must have been a lot farther away than we thought,” I said, as we laid the still unconscious form of Lemmy on the bunk.

  “Yes,” said Jet thoughtfully, and he went across to the radio and called up the engineer.

  Mitch replied immediately. “Hullo, Jet,” he said, “I’m still on the terrace, but I’ll be with you in a couple of shakes.”

  “OK. You can let yourself in, can’t you?”

  “Sure I can. Don’t worry about me.”

  I made a thorough examination of Lemmy. He was unconscious, his breathing was very shallow and his temperature sub-normal; symptoms by now, all too familiar to me, although I could still find no explanation for them.

  “What has happened to him, Doc?” asked Jet when I gave him my report.