The Red Planet

by Charles Chilton

  Dobson at once operated the controls on his panel. A whine and gentle vibration filled the ship and, slowly at first, then very rapidly, we left the top of the pyramid, climbed into the air and moved off in a straight line back in the direction we had come.

  “So far so good,” said Lemmy with relief, and added: “whatever happens I must not go to sleep.” He gave a deep yawn. Harassed, I turned again to Frank: “Hullo, Frank. Hullo,” I called. There was no answer.

  “Blimey,” came Lemmy’s voice. “Mitch is out. Asleep on the floor.”

  “Hullo, Frank,” I said again.

  Frank replied this time, in a very sleepy voice: “Hullo--hullo, Doc—Jet--“

  “What is it, Frank?” I heard Jet say, alarm in his voice. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know,” was the reply. “There’s that peculiar noise and I feel--so--sleepy.”

  “Frank,” I yelled, “you must fight it, you must stay awake.”

  “I’m trying, Doc, but the ship, she ...”

  “What about the ship?”

  “She doesn’t seem to respond. I can’t control her.”

  “Oh no,” said Lemmy, much more alert now. “Not that again.”

  “Frank, you’ve got to listen! Take hold of yourself,” I commanded. “Will yourself not to go to sleep.”

  “Do as Doc says,” I heard Jet call, “you must stay awake.”

  I glanced aside to notice that Dobson and Harding had now also slumped to the floor and, as we were rising all the time, I told Lemmy to go over to the control panels and see if he could handle the ship. “Me?” he said. “What a hope!”

  “Go on, Lemmy,” I told him impatiently. “Have a try. We can’t keep climbing forever.”

  “No, mate,” he said as he took his place at the control table.

  “It’s no good,” came Frank’s voice suddenly. “We’re losing height, Doc. I can’t--control--her . . .”

  “You must, Frank,” I cried. “We’re almost on the deck now. And--here we go. . . .”

  I heard Jet’s urgent call: “Frank!” There was no reply.

  “Frank,” he called again, “answer me!” There was still no reply.

  “Hullo, Number One,” I said. “Hullo ...”

  “What’s happened now, Doc,” Lemmy demanded.

  “Frank,” I said, “he must have crashed.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Several futile attempts to raise Jet confirmed my fear that Freighter Number One had crashed for, of course, it was only via Frank’s transmitter that my tiny personal radio had been able to reach Jet.

  Lemmy and I were now on our own--in a strange craft of which we knew next to nothing.

  Lemmy’s preliminary experiments to control the ship resulted in little more than the sphere’s travelling haphazardly through the atmosphere in all directions. This greatly alarmed him, particularly when, without intent, he turned very rapidly or took the ship into a vertical climb. We had just learned how to keep it either stationary or in level flight when Dobson began to stir.

  Lemmy and I watched in silence as he got slowly to his feet and looked around the cabin vaguely.

  “Dobson, can you hear me talking to you?” I asked. He hardly looked at me as he replied, almost mechanically: “What are your orders?”

  “He doesn’t seem any different from when he went to sleep,” observed Lemmy.

  “My orders are,” I said to Dobson, “that you return to your control panel.”

  Dobson did not hesitate; he went back to his seat.

  “Keep your eye on him, Lemmy,” I said. “See that he touches no control until we tell him to.”

  “Right, Doc,” said Lemmy, moving over to the conditioned Earthman.

  By this time Harding was also recovering and, on my orders, he, too, took his place at his control table.

  “Gives you a funny feeling, seeing them do exactly as you tell them, Doc,” said Lemmy. “Well, what do we do now?”

  “Try to find Frank, of course.”

  “But what about Jet?” protested Lemmy. “He must be going up the wall wondering what’s happened to us. Here,” he went on, “you don’t think, after what we told him, that he’s still heading this way, do you?”

  “Knowing Jet,” I said, “he probably is.”

  “But he mustn’t,” said Lemmy anxiously. “We must get out there and stop him.”

  “We will, at the first opportunity, but we must find Number One first. Harding, Dobson,” I went on, “here are your orders. The ship will proceed at a moderate speed in a south-easterly direction.”

  Dobson pressed two of the buttons in front of him and pulled one of the levers. We immediately felt the ship change direction.

  “He’s doing it,” said Lemmy, with satisfaction.

  “Then watch him closely and see if you can find out how he does it.”

  “Yes, Doc.”

  I moved over to the observation window and looked below. We were just passing over the city at a height of some five thousand feet. I could see no sign of Freighter Number One. Within a few minutes the city had been left behind and we were passing over the cultivated area again. There was no sign of the ship there either.

  We made a complete circuit of the area surrounding the Lacus Solis but without result. Finally, after we had been searching for an hour or more, I directed Dobson to take the sphere back to the city again for, in our short flight across it, we had not, of course, seen every part of it.

  This time we approached it from the north and almost immediately saw the wreck of Frank’s ship lying at the base of one of the huge pyramids which comprised the city.

  I at once ordered Dobson to stop the ship. We remained hovering directly above where the freighter lay and I called Lemmy over to the window to look at the scene below. The wreck was surrounded by dozens of the little ‘ladybird’ cars. There were dozens of men, too. Ordinary men, just like ourselves. Some were just standing around, some were clambering over the wreckage while others were moving in and out of the cargo hatch which, even from this height, we could see was open.

  “Are we going down there, Doc?” asked Lemmy quietly.

  “If we did,” I told him, “we’d be delivering ourselves right into the enemy’s hands.”

  “But we can’t just leave Frank there,” Lemmy protested.

  “We have no choice,” I said. “What we must do now is to pick up Jet--if we can ever find him.”

  Feeling rather sick, I walked back to the centre of the cabin and gave Dobson and Harding orders to make for the Argyre desert with all speed. We felt the ship change course, accelerate again and, in a matter of minutes, the city had been left behind.

  Meanwhile, as I learned later, Jet was, as I had suspected, still heading towards the Lacus Solis in one of the land trucks with McLean, apparently completely under his control, driving the other.

  Failing to contact either Frank or Lemmy and me, he finally called up Polar Base and asked them to keep a listening watch on Number One’s frequency in the hope that they would hear from at least one of us. But Polar Base informed Jet that they had been keeping a constant watch, and so had the freighters still in free orbit round the planet, but with no result. The operator appealed to Jet to make for the comparative safety of Polar Base while he was still able. But Jet declared that he had no intention of returning to the ice cap until he was absolutely sure that all hope of recovering Lemmy, Mitch and myself, or even Dobson and Harding for that matter, had gone.

  “Well, take care of yourself, sir,” said Polar Base. “We’d hate to lose you as well.”

  “Thank you,” Jet replied. “I’ll do my best to see that you don’t.”

  And then Jet heard a different voice in his earpiece: “Hullo, Land Fleet. Are you receiving me?”

  “Yes, who are you?” demanded Jet.

  “You are in great danger, Mr Morgan.”

  “Who are you?” persisted Jet. “Come to the point.”

  “There’s no need to raise your voice.
I want to help you.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. But how can you help me?”

  “Unless somebody does, you haven’t a hope of getting back to Earth, not even to your Polar Base.”

  “That hardly answers my question,” said Jet angrily. “How can you help me?”

  “I cannot tell you now, in case I should be overheard. I’ve already brought my transmitter down to its lowest possible power, so that it will reach you and no farther. But every word you say is listened to.”

  “Then, if they can’t hear you, they--whoever they are--must think I’m talking to myself.”

  “It won’t take them long to realise what’s happening, and then they’ll come flying out here. Not only to pick you up but to get me as well. And that wouldn’t be difficult. I’m only a hundred yards or so away from you.”

  “Oh? Where?” Jet glanced keenly around but saw nobody.

  “Out of sight at the moment. I didn’t want to scare you by suddenly appearing from nowhere.”

  “How do I know this isn’t another of their tricks? A ruse to get me away from the truck?”

  “You must believe me, Mr Morgan. My aim is to help you. And for you to help me in return. If you do get away, take me with you.”

  “Back to Earth?”

  “Why not? That’s where I came from. I have a right to get back if I can, haven’t I? We all have, but there wouldn’t be room for us all.”

  Jet now realised that he was talking to an Earthman and it struck him that, for a conditioned type, he seemed very normal.

  “Do you know anything about Doc or Lemmy or Frank?” he asked.

  “I picked up their calls to you just before the freighter crashed. If they’re not dead, then they’ll be prisoners in the city and if you think you can storm that place alone, you’d better think again. Now, how about it? Is it a deal?”

  “How do I know I can trust you?” asked Jet.

  “You don’t. You have to take the chance. You must believe me,” said the voice emphatically. “At least let me show myself to you so we can talk face to face.”

  “Very well,” said Jet.

  A few moments later a transport very like one of the ‘ladybirds’ we had seen in the city emerged from behind a sand dune, drove up to Jet’s truck and halted. At the controls was a middle-aged man. There was nothing very striking about him. He was of medium build and had lost most of his hair. The thing that struck Jet most forcibly about the stranger was the pathetically dismal look on his face. He looked as though he had never laughed in his life.

  “Well, I’m here,” the man said at last.

  “So I can see,” replied Jet cautiously.

  “Now do you believe I’m from Earth?”

  “All the people we meet on this planet seem to be.”

  “But I know where I am and what I’m doing. Most of the others don’t. They still think they are back on Earth in the year they left it,”

  “What year is it on Earth?” asked Jet.

  “1971. You see, they failed to condition me. I was the wrong type.”

  “Then why did they bother to pick you up at all?”

  “They have no way of telling good subjects from bad until they have got them. But it makes little difference once we’re here. They put us to work just the same.”

  “But if you’re not conditioned,” said Jet, “how do you breathe?”

  “In the same way as you. I carry an oxygen supply.”

  “A space suit?”

  “No. A space suit is quite unnecessary if you have the right kind of equipment. Mine is so ingeniously designed that the conditioned people never even suspect--any more than they suspect they’re on Mars.”

  “Are there any more of you who know the truth?”

  “Dozens--scattered all over the planet. Some, like me, with roving commissions, others working in the factories.”

  “What at?”

  “All manner of things. But the main objective is the completion of the invasion fleet.”

  “Then Doc was right,” said Jet. “They do intend to invade the Earth.”

  “Yes, they do.”

  “I must get a message back home. Give me full details of how and when the invasion will be made and I’ll pass them on to Polar Base.”

  “You’d never do it,” said the man. “The moment you began to give your base any information of that kind your transmission would be jammed.”

  “Oh.”

  “Your only hope is to get up to the Fleet and tell Earth yourself.”

  “And what hope is there of that?”

  “A fifty-fifty chance--provided you do all I tell you, without question.”

  “That very phrase makes me suspicious.”

  “Very well, if you doubt my sincerity I’ll get on my way.”

  The stranger was already backing his truck when Jet called to him: “No, wait. What do you want me to do?”

  “Come with me--now. It’s fairly certain that your side of the conversation has been heard anyway, so we haven’t much time.”

  “Very well. You lead the way, I’ll follow.”

  “That’s no good,” said the stranger. “You’ll have to come into this truck. Your own is too slow.”

  “But what about McLean in the other?” asked Jet.

  “What state is he in?”

  “He seems to be in a state of deep hypnosis. Does everything I tell him.”

  “Does he indulge in any kind of conversation?”

  “No.”

  “Then leave him. He’s too far gone.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Of all people brought here his type is the most unfortunate. They have no recollection of anything previous to the time they were hypnotised. They do nothing unless told and have no control over their actions.”

  “But they could be revived,” suggested Jet, “couldn’t they? Once we got them away from here.”

  “No. They may appear to revive but they don’t. Not even when they are sent back to Earth.”

  “What? You mean they are sent back?”

  “Of course. Some are there now, to all appearances normal people except for an odd way of speaking and a few eccentricities that nobody on Earth would regard with any seriousness. Whitaker was one of those. Didn’t you find him a little odd?”

  “We certainly did.”

  “There are plenty of others like him, already down on Earth. The Martian fifth column, as you might say.”

  Jet said nothing.

  “Well,” continued the stranger, “time’s running out. Do you join me or do you propose to fight it out alone?”

  “What chance have I with Doc, Lemmy and Mitch missing; half the fleet’s crew already in the hands of the--Martians?” said Jet dejectedly.

  “Alone,” said the man, “none at all. But if you come with me there is just a chance of your getting Mitch, Doc and Lemmy back. Even Frank, maybe.”

  “And what if you are one of them?” asked Jet. “Like the Flying Doctor?”

  “That’s for you to decide.”

  “Very well, I’ll take the chance.”

  Jet then called the other land truck. “McLean,” he said, “can you hear me?”

  The dull, flat voice of McLean came back almost at once.

  “Yes,” he said, “I can hear you.”

  “You are to leave that truck and enter the vehicle in front of this one.”

  “Orders were,” replied McLean, “to proceed to the Lacus Solis.”

  “I have changed those orders,” said Jet firmly.

  “The orders were not yours to change. And orders must be obeyed without question at all times.”

  “Now do you believe me?” asked the stranger.

  “McLean,” Jet persisted, “I order you to leave that truck and come over here.”

  There was no reply. And, to Jet’s great surprise, the truck in which McLean was began to move off. “McLean,” demanded Jet angrily, “what are you doing?”

  “He’s pulling out,” said the stran
ger.

  “But where’s he going?”

  “Only he knows that.”

  Jet immediately switched on the motor of his own truck and, swinging it round, began to pursue McLean.

  The stranger called after him. “There’s nothing you can do, Mr Morgan, believe me.”

  “But I can’t leave him,” protested Jet.

  “You’re not leaving him. He is leaving you. Follow him and your chance of getting back to the Fleet is gone completely.”

  Jet reluctantly switched off his motor. A few minutes later he was sitting alongside the stranger who immediately started up his machine and set off, at an incredibly fast rate, in an easterly direction.

  They travelled steadily for about two hours and, according to the stranger, had about another three hours to go before they reached their destination.

  In the next hour Jet learned quite a lot about his companion whose name was Webster. Apparently he was a Sussex man who had been picked up from England fifteen years before, and his one desire was to get back to Earth as soon as he could. He was, of course, very miserable on Mars, doing what the Martians told him. But not to do so, he said, would mean being condemned to one of the underground factories, to live away from the light and work at the dull, monotonous task of building the space fleet. Being a farmer he had been offered agricultural work and had had the good sense to take it. At least he saw the sunlight, and the stars at night.

  Quite suddenly Webster interrupted the conversation to say: “Well, there she is. If we can make that, our chances are good.”

  Jet followed the direction in which Webster pointed and saw, on the horizon, what appeared to be a great glass dome.

  “But the men working beneath it,” said Webster, “are like you and me. They need a good supply of oxygen to breathe. And. . . oh.”

  “What’s the matter?” demanded Jet.

  Webster didn’t reply but brought the truck to a standstill and switched off the motor.

  “What are we stopping for?”

  “They’re here,” said Webster.

  “What? Who--who’s here?”

  “Look up there,” said Webster, pointing to the sky. “Hovering above us--a sphere. They’ve found us. It’s all over. I’m afraid we’ll never make it now.”