The Red Planet

by Charles Chilton

  He stopped and picked up the weapon from the ground as he spoke.

  Mitch, now more than half convinced that he was mad, was immediately subdued. “No,” he said softly, “there’s no need for that. Maybe I am the crazy one.”

  “The swag bag’s unrolled,” said the stranger. “Lie down on it.”

  Mitch obeyed him without a murmur.

  “That’s it,” said the stranger. “Now go to sleep--and don’t give me any more trouble.”

  Once again the weird, compelling music started up in Mitch’s head. But this time he made no attempt to resist it. He felt it was beyond his power to do so. He let it take hold of him and lull him into a deep sleep. As he gradually lapsed into unconsciousness he could hear the stranger still talking, his voice seeming to come from a long way off and mixing with the eerie howls of the dingoes.

  “Tell yourself you’re not going to give me any more trouble,” he was saying. “Understand?”

  “Yeah,” said Mitch wearily.

  “And that you’ll do exactly as I tell you from now on.” “Yeah, yeah--anything you say,” said the engineer. “Good on yer.”

  “I feel so tired--awful tired.”

  “Then go to sleep. And remember, tomorrow everything will be all right.”

  The dingoes howled even louder. It seemed to Mitch that they completely encircled the camp; hundreds of them, each calling his blood-curdling wail to the moonless sky.

  And through it all came the voice of the dingo-hunter saying: “Tomorrow everything will be all right, tomorrow everything will be all . . .”

  And Mitch knew no more. Everything went black.

  Chapter Fifteen

  In the meantime, unaware of what had befallen Mitch, Jet and I searched every wall of both terraces but there was no sign of our engineer. We were getting desperately worried when we received a call from Lemmy, back in the truck, to say that Mitch had at last been sighted. “Where is he?” asked Jet eagerly.

  “Just walking along the path that runs along the lowest wall,” replied Lemmy.

  “Have you spoken to him yet?”

  “No, mate,” said Lemmy, “but if his radio’s working he must have heard me call you. Half a mo, I’ll try him now. Hullo, Mitch,” we heard Lemmy say, “are you receiving me? Hullo . . .” He went on calling for a little while then finally gave it up and said: “It’s no good, Jet. He doesn’t seem to hear me.”

  “Oh. How far away is he?”

  “Only about a couple of hundred yards. Hey--wait a minute. . . .”

  “What is it, Lemmy?”

  “He’s waving his arms about, like he was a tick-tack man at the dogs. Oh, blimey--and no wonder.” The tone of Lemmy’s voice changed to one of relief. “He’s trying to tell me his radio is out of action. I’d better go back to the main cabin, Jet, and get ready to let him in.”

  “Very well,” replied the Captain. “Doc and I will get back as quickly as we can.”

  Lemmy had left the truck’s transmitter on and, as we made our way along the terrace, we could hear him muttering to himself as he moved about the cabin. Quite suddenly we heard a hard, metallic knocking.

  “What’s all that banging?” Jet asked.

  “That’s Mitch knocking at the door,” replied Lemmy. “He doesn’t realise he can let himself in--he must think the circuit’s still broken. I’d better open up for him, and then . . .” Lemmy’s speech was interrupted by the sound of the main door circuit coming alive. “Oh, he’s doing it himself after all,” went on the radio operator.

  Then we heard the airlock mechanism working.

  “Well, he’s about in,” said Lemmy cheerfully. “Just coming through the airlock. And here he is.” Lemmy’s voice was warm and sympathetic. “Hullo, Mitch,” we heard him say, “where have you been all this time? You’ve had us worried.”

  “Hullo, Lemmy,” came the reply.

  Jet and I both stopped dead in our tracks. The voice that answered Lemmy did not belong to Mitch.

  There was a pause and then we heard the same, flat voice say: “What’s the matter, Lemmy? Surprised to see me?”

  And Lemmy’s frightened reply: “You? Oh, no!” Then there was a click as though somebody had turned off the truck’s transmitter.

  “That wasn’t Mitch,” said Jet in alarm; “that was the voice of McLean! Come on, Doc.”

  We reached the steps in about ten minutes and quickly descended them to the rhubarb jungle below. We crashed our way through the plants and reached the door of the truck to find, as we had feared, that it was tightly closed. We called Lemmy two or three times but got no reply.

  Under normal circumstances, it was possible to open the truck by the remote control set in the outer hull. However, it would not operate if the inner airlock door was not closed and the chamber exhausted. This must have been the case now for, no matter how many times Jet and I tried the outer control, we could not get the mechanism to function. We were absolutely helpless.

  While Jet remained at the door, still trying to get the control to open it, I ran round the truck two or three times and banged on it in odd places, futilely calling to Lemmy to let us in.

  Then came an excited cry from Jet. “Doc,” he called. “I can hear the airlock exhausting. Somebody’s coming out.”

  I hurried round to where Jet was waiting and arrived just in time to see the main door opening. But nobody came out, so we stepped inside, quickly closed the door after us and waited impatiently until the air pressure within the lock equalled that inside the truck. Then we opened the inner door.

  The cabin looked as though a tornado had hit it. Lying on the floor, face down, was the suited figure of McLean. His helmet had been removed and was alongside him. Near the control panel, apparently unconscious, was Lemmy, his face all bloody. We ran over to him immediately and Jet called his name.

  Lemmy opened his eyes and looked up into the Captain’s face. “Oh, hello, Jet,” he said weakly. “You made it. Thank goodness for that.”

  “What happened, Lemmy?” Jet asked. “You’re in a terrible mess.’

  “I’ve been in a bit of a rough house, mate. With McLean. I hit him over the head. I had to. He would have killed me otherwise.”

  By now I had gone over to the unconscious figure and turned him over on his back. “It’s McLean all right,” I announced, “and you certainly gave him a pasting, Lemmy.”

  “Have I hurt him much, Doc?” asked Lemmy, clambering to his feet and coming to where I was bending over the still form on the floor.

  “I don’t know yet,” I said. “Let me get my suit off and I’ll take a look at him.”

  “And how about you, Lemmy?” asked Jet. “How do you feel?”

  “Just a bit dizzy, mate, that’s all.”

  “All right. Go and He down on one of the beds. As soon as I’m free of this diving suit I’ll clean up your face.”

  While Jet tended Lemmy’s wounds and I attended to McLean, we learned the full story of what had happened.

  When Lemmy saw the suited figure walking along the path, he immediately concluded that it must be Mitch. This was understandable as it is not easy to recognise anybody from a distance when he is in a space suit. However, he soon learned who it really was when McLean let himself through the air lock, removed his helmet and, standing between the door and Lemmy, faced the radio operator.

  At first Lemmy was almost pleased to see him and asked where the rest of the crew of Number Two were.

  “Evans was killed in the crash, Lemmy,” said McLean in a curiously flat voice, not unlike Whitaker’s.

  “And the others?”

  “They are quite safe.”

  “But where are they?”

  “I will take you to them,” said McLean. “Put on your suit, Lemmy, and come with me.”

  But Lemmy, as he put it, wasn’t having any. “Oh no,” he said, “we’ll see what Jet has to say first. He gives the orders around here.”

  “Orders must be obeyed without question at all times,” said
McLean. “Put on your suit and come with me.”

  “You take off your suit,” said Lemmy, “and wait till Jet gets here. Now stand away from that radio, I want to talk to him.”

  But McLean made no move.

  “Get away from that radio, McLean,” ordered Lemmy. “If you are McLean. Because, although you look like him, you certainly don’t sound like him.”

  “None of us are ourselves anymore.”

  “Well, I don’t feel like anybody but myself. Now, are you going to move out of the way or do I have to move you?”

  McLean did not reply; merely stood watching Lemmy, his arms folded.

  “And where’s Mitch?” demanded Lemmy. “What have you done with him?”

  “Mitch is quite safe, but he will not be returning. Neither to you, to the Fleet, nor to Earth. Now put your suit on and come with me.”

  “Not only am I not coming,” said Lemmy grimly, “but now you’re here, McLean, you’re staying. Nobody is leaving this truck unless Jet says so. Here! What are you trying to do?”

  Lemmy broke off and stopped dead in his tracks as McLean, staring at him fixedly, moved slowly towards him.

  Lemmy brought up his right fist in an uppercut that caught McLean squarely on the jaw. McLean went down, but was soon on his feet again and then the two men locked together in a struggle that almost wrecked the cabin. Lemmy knew that Jet and I must be hurrying towards the truck and that we couldn’t get in unless the inner door of the airlock was closed, so he struggled desperately to get to the control. Time after time McLean prevented him till, at last, Lemmy made a supreme effort, broke from McLean’s grasp, and snatched a large spanner from where it hung on the wall. McLean rushed at the radio operator but, as he did so, Lemmy brought the spanner down. McLean dropped in his tracks.

  McLean lay on the bunk on which I had placed him for nearly an hour. Strangely, in all that time his eyes were open, fixed to a point on the ceiling. He appeared not to be conscious, yet when I called his name, he stirred slightly. I called him a second time and again he stirred. “McLean,” I said, “can you hear me?”

  His voice came back at once, flat and dull. “I can hear you.”

  “Then why do you lie there?”

  “What are your orders?”

  “He’s not unconscious at all,” said Jet.

  “I’m darned sure he isn’t,” I replied. “But he seems to be in some kind of deep hypnotic state.”

  “And what does he mean--what are your orders?”

  “I don’t know, unless whoever sent him to us gave him orders--orders that he has now forgotten. And he just lies there, waiting for new ones.”

  “Then give him some and see what happens,” suggested Jet.

  “McLean,” I said, “sit up.” He sat up without hesitation. “Now lie down.”

  He lay back on the bunk again and stared at the ceiling. I looked at McLean thoughtfully. “It seems to me,” I said slowly, “that whoever it was that tried to hypnotise Lemmy has hypnotised McLean.”

  “And wherever Mitch is,” asked Jet, “is he in the same state--and able to walk around in the Martian atmosphere and breathe as easily as though he were down on Earth?”

  “Almost certainly,” I told him. “We can no longer doubt that there is some power in this planet that is able to control our bodies almost as completely as our own minds can. But, before they can condition us to survive out there in the Martian atmosphere, they must first of all get us into a deep hypnotic state. But it is a well-known fact that no matter how deeply a subject may be hypnotised, it is extremely difficult to get him to do things he would not normally do. Hence the fight Lemmy put up in his dream.”

  “But McLean, Doc--and Whitaker--they . . .”

  “They must have been easy meat mentally,” I interrupted before Jet could get the question out, “once they were caught. It seems they put up no fight at all. They merely obeyed orders.”

  “It seems, then,” said Jet, “that whoever induces this hypnosis can get our men to do anything they want without even seeing them?”

  “I don’t know,” I protested.

  “But, if it’s true, they can keep us or whoever they have in their control for years.”

  “In the case of Whitaker,” I reminded him, “forty-seven years.”

  “And how many people are there on this planet, I wonder, living in a dream and not knowing about it?”

  “I hate to think but, unless we are very careful, there’ll be a few more soon.”

  “Us, you mean?”

  “Yes, Jet. Unless we can find some way of combating it.” “But how can we? We don’t even know what we’re fighting.”

  “This much I do know,” I told him, “there is nobody more difficult to hypnotise than an unwilling subject. If we are all determined to fight this thing, maybe we can render ourselves immune to it. Up to now, everyone who has come under the influence of this telepathic, hypnotic power has had prior warning. In your case, when you blacked out just before we landed here, there was that strange, sleep-inducing sound. McLean heard the same sound just before Number Two crashed. And now look at him. Three days ago he was a normal man--a member of our expedition working for us and with us. Now he isn’t in control of his mind. Does nothing unless ordered to.”

  “Then what we must find out is who gives him his orders. Who sent him here to get Lemmy to leave this truck and go with him? Where would he have taken Lemmy? And, above all, where’s Mitch?”

  “Lying there on the bed, Jet, is the only man who might know.”

  Jet looked thoughtfully towards where McLean still lay on his back, staring at the ceiling.

  “I suggest,” I went on, “that we keep McLean here until morning at any rate. Then, if he’s sufficiently recovered to walk out of this truck, we’ll let him--and follow. He may lead us to Mitch.”

  Jet agreed and then suggested it was about time we got some sleep--one of us always to remain on watch. But the night was uneventful. By the time the sun was rising we were all awake. While Jet prepared a hasty breakfast, Lemmy took his second turn at watch in the driving cabin and I took another look at McLean.

  He seemed in much the same state as the previous night. I watched him for fully five minutes but he didn’t move a muscle. Then suddenly he sat up, giving a little groan as he did so. I thought at first that perhaps he was coming out of his hypnotic trance and returning to normal, but when he climbed down from the bunk and began to make his way towards the airlock with the steady, even, almost ghostly tread of a sleep-walker, I realised he was still as much conditioned as ever.

  “Where are you going, McLean?” I asked.

  He continued walking and did not even look in my direction as he replied: “My orders are to return to the ship.”

  “The orders have been changed,” I told him. “You are to remain here. Do you understand? You are to remain here.”

  He stopped, half-turned towards his bunk and then stopped again.

  “Sit down at the table and eat,” I commanded. He did so, and mechanically began to consume the food Jet placed before him.

  “Well, that seems to have done the trick,” said Jet. “If it lasts,” I told him. “How do you mean?”

  “There must be a great conflict going on in his mind. Somehow, from somewhere, he’s been receiving orders to go back to where he came from--to ‘the ship’--wherever that is.”

  “Well, it can’t be far away,” said Jet, “or he wouldn’t have attempted to walk to it.”

  We had decided that, as soon as we had all eaten, we would follow wherever McLean might lead us, when, a few minutes later, an excited yell from Lemmy sent Jet and I running to him.

  “That ship,” said Lemmy, pointing excitedly to the top of the pyramid, “it’s been up there all the time. And now it’s pulling out.”

  Jet and I followed Lemmy’s gaze and, sure enough, poised motionless at the top of the pyramid was the sphere. A few seconds later it was heading, at incredible speed, in a south-westerly direction.


  “Now why should it take off just now,” I asked, “when, in all probability, McLean was about to lead us up there?”

  “I should think that’s all too clear,” said Jet. “They’ve given up waiting for McLean.”

  “Well, Jet, what do we do now?” I asked.

  “Go after that ship, of course. I’d stake my life on the rest of the crew of Number Two, and Mitch, being in it. Lemmy can drive this truck while you stay here, Doc, and keep an eye on McLean. I’ll go into the other one.”

  I ordered McLean to his bunk and an hour later we set out, the two lines of trucks crashing their way through the jungle of curious plants. Soon we had climbed out of the valley and were again making our way across the south-western half of the Argyre desert, the pink miniature dust storms kicked up by the treads of our tractors marking our passage. Before long the strange pyramid city was lost to our sight below the horizon, leaving us completely surrounded by gently undulating sand dunes topped by a huge inverted mauve bowl that was the Martian sky.

  We knew our chances of catching up with the spherical ship were slim and our chances of releasing its captives, if Jet was right, even slimmer, but we pressed on, spurred by the realisation that unless we recovered our comrades soon, we might well find them all in the same state as McLean.

  Indeed, as I looked down at the inert, unresponsive form in the bunk below me, I could not help wondering if it were not already too late.

  Chapter Sixteen

  We had been travelling steadily for ten hours and had covered nearly two hundred miles. The terrain was getting slightly more hilly and the sand even pinker but now, instead of the barren desert, small, sparse, prickly plants were growing among the dunes. They were rather like cactus--miniature saguaro. Occasionally, at the foot of some of the dunes, we passed clumps of bushes looking very like that species of cacti known in the south-west of America as brittle bush. In fact, the whole terrain was rather like that of the more barren regions of Arizona. We travelled in a straight line towards the south-west. It might have been quicker for us, on occasions, to have gone round the little hills but we purposely climbed them because of the view we obtained from their summits.