Journey Into Space

by Charles Chilton

  “What?” I asked incredulously.

  “It’s true, Doc, and there’s a river in front of us, running at right angles to our line of flight.”

  “Can you see a place to land?” said Mitch impatiently.

  “And now it’s raining,” Jet went on cheerfully, “absolutely teeming down.”

  “Oh, blimey!” said Lemmy.

  Mitch repeated his question. “Yes, there are plenty of places,” said Jet, “but we’re going too fast at the moment. I’ll have to circle and keep circling until we’ve slowed down.”

  Slowly but surely we descended. Soon our speed was only 70 mph and Jet was straightening up ready for the run in.

  By now it was raining bucketfuls and visibility was almost down to zero.

  “Take it easy,” advised Mitch. “We don’t want to hit anything, not at this stage.”

  “Running in now,” came back the pilot’s reply. Height was 500 ft.

  “You’d better brace yourselves,” Jet warned. “Get into your chairs.” Jet now began to read off his altimeter to us. “300--200--100--nearly there. Stand by.” A pause, then: “Here it comes.” Jet put the nose of the gliding rocket down to increase speed a little, then pulled back the stick, and eased her up slightly in the hope of making a pancake landing. But the undercarriage which had been put out when we first began to descend struck the ground too hard. There was a crump, a lurch, and we bounced off again. Jet apologised and told us to get ready for the second try.

  “Touching down--now.”

  There was a jolt as we hit the ground, the ship rolled for a few yards, then jolted again as the fore-wheel made contact with the surface. At the point of impact, we must have been travelling at only 50 mph, but in spite of this I was thrown forward in my .chair, the safety straps cutting into my stomach rather painfully. Then the ship shuddered to a standstill and we were down, safe and in one piece.

  “Well, we’ve made it,” said Lemmy. “We’re here.”

  “Yes,” I told him. “Heaven knows where we are, but we’re here.”

  Chapter 10 - JOURNEY THROUGH TIME

  “You all right back there?” came Jet’s voice. “Sorry for the bump but it was no concrete runway we landed on.”

  “We’re fine, Jet,” said Mitch, who was undoing his safety strap, “and I’m coming up to the cabin to take a look out.”

  “Come on then,” said Jet, “not that you can see much in all this rain.”

  To get to the pilot’s cabin now we had to go forward, for what had been one wall of our cabin was now the roof, and the roof a wall. It was certainly raining, raining as heavily as in a tropical monsoon.

  “ ‘Strewth,” said Lemmy, “d’you suppose it always rains like this here?”

  “How should I know?” said Jet, “I’m a stranger in these parts.”

  “Well,” I said, “it only goes to prove that life on other planets must be fundamentally the same as on Earth--green vegetation, the river, clouds, rain.”

  “Just like home, isn’t it?” said Lemmy with forced cheerfulness, “only much wetter.”

  “I wonder if there’s any kind of animal life?” asked Jet.

  “There must be,” said Mitch. “Those plots of vegetation are too regular, too uniform to grow that way naturally.”

  “Are you suggesting some kind of animal planted them?” queried Jet.

  “Well, if they did,” I said, “where are they? Where are their houses--their cities, if they have any?”

  “Maybe,” conjectured Lemmy, “their homes are miles from here and they travel by boat along the river.”

  “A good guess,” said Jet, “but wide of the mark I’m sure.”

  “Only trying to help.”

  “Do you think that stuff out there is good to eat?” I asked. “Our food isn’t going to last forever.”

  “Nor our drink,” said Lemmy. “Can we drink that water or will it poison us?”

  “Can we breathe the air?” said Mitch. “Is it air?”

  “It may not even be safe to step outside the ship,” said Lemmy slowly.

  “Gentleman,” said Jet, “I don’t know where we are, what planet this we’ve landed on, or in what part of the Universe it is located, but the fact remains it looks as though we’re to be here till the end of our days, and if we remain in the ship, our days are numbered at less than five.”

  “And if we step outside,” said Lemmy, “we may not live five minutes.”

  “But if there is air out there,” I suggested, “and food and water . . .”

  Mitch interrupted me. “Someone will have to go out there and try it,” he said.

  “Go out?” said Lemmy. “Isn’t there some other way?”

  “What?”

  “But whoever goes . . .” Lemmy paused, thought for a moment and then went on: “No, there’s no other way that I can think of.”

  “We’ll draw lots for it,” said Jet.

  “And how will we get out?” I asked.

  “Through the airlock.”

  “But the moment we open the main door, whatever atmosphere is out there will rush in and fill up the vacuum. And the next time we use the airlock it will enter the ship and, if it’s poisonous . . .”

  “If it is poisonous,” broke in Mitch, “we won’t be using the airlock again anyway. Whoever’s left in won’t be wanting to go out.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” said Lemmy. “I think I’d rather be poisoned out there and get it over with than die of suffocation in here.”

  “All right,” said Jet. “Let’s get back into the main cabin. We’ll draw lots.”

  The task fell to Lemmy. “First time I’ve won a draw in my life,” he said, “and it has to be this.” Immediately Jet volunteered to take his place but the radio operator wouldn’t hear of it.

  Lemmy put on his space suit, we opened up the hatch and he descended into the airlock below. The hatch was then closed and the air exhausted. “All right, Doc,” said Lemmy, “open the door and let’s get out of here.”

  “Take it easy,” said Jet to me. “Just ease the main door enough to break the vacuum. Let that air or whatever it is out there come in as slowly as possible.”

  “Yes, Jet,” I said. “Main door opening.”

  “Standing by,” said Lemmy.

  “How do you feel?” asked Jet anxiously.

  “Lonely,” came the small, metallic voice.

  The pressure reached maximum.

  “Hey!” said Lemmy. “My suit--it’s gone all flabby.”

  “It will,” said Jet. “As the air or whatever it is comes in from outside, it will equalise the pressure.”

  “It’ll be a lot easier to move anyway,” said the Cockney.

  “She must be full now,” said Mitch.

  Lemmy heard him. “Then open the door properly,” he said. “Let me get out there and get this over with.”

  I opened it, then pressed the button which operated the small ladder leading from the main door down to the ground. We couldn’t see Lemmy now, of course, but we heard him describing his progress. “Here I go,” he said. “I’ll go round to the front so you can all see me through the pilot’s window.”

  Soon he was making his way through the wet grass. “How is it to walk?” asked Mitch.

  “It’s not walking that worries me, it’s how long I’m going to be able to. Now going round to the nose of the ship.”

  We moved over to the pilot’s cabin and crowded into the tiny compartment. “Hello, Lemmy,” Jet told him, “we can see you now. You all right?”

  “I’ll tell you in just a few minutes,” he said, as he took up a position about fifty yards in front of us. “I know one thing.”

  “What?” asked Jet.

  “I should have brought an umbrella. I’m going to get my hair wet when I take my helmet off.”

  “Never mind that,” said Jet. “Remember what we told you. Loosen your helmet first. If you feel no ill effects, lift it slightly, take a shallow breath and, if that’s OK, take a
bigger one.”

  “And if it isn’t?”

  “Then fasten your helmet, increase your oxygen supply and breathe deeply.”

  “Right,” said Lemmy, “here I go. Unfastening helmet.” He raised his hands and began to unloosen the screws at the neck. “Helmet loose,” he reported. There was a pause.

  “Well, Lemmy,” said Jet, “can you breathe?”

  There was another pause while we waited for Lemmy’s answer. Finally, after what seemed an age, it came. “Sorry, Jet, I wasn’t trying; I was holding my breath. But I’ll do it this time. Lifting helmet--now.”

  We heard him take a short breath and expel it rapidly.

  “Now,” said Jet, “lower your helmet, quick.”

  “Too late,” came the retort, “it’s lowered.”

  “Then how do you feel?”

  “All right, up to now anyway.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “It’s air,” broke in Mitch, “it must be air.”

  “The effects might be delayed,” I cautioned him.

  “I’ll have another go now,” said Lemmy. “Take a deeper breath this time.”

  We saw him lift his helmet from the front, heard him breathe in. “Ha,” he said, relief in his voice, “it feels all right.”

  “Thank God for that,” said Jet. “No peculiar sensations, Lemmy?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure. In fact I think I’ll take my helmet right off.”

  “No, don’t,” warned Jet, but it was too late. Lemmy had already removed it and was holding it in his hand. We heard him breathing in and out deeply, then he began to laugh, hysterically. “I can breathe,” he said, “without a helmet. I can breathe--the first good, clean breath of fresh air for nearly a month.” He began to laugh louder. “Air,” he said, “air--beautiful air.”

  “Strewth,” said Mitch, “what’s come over him? He’s dancing.” And sure enough he was.

  “The oxygen content must be too high,” I suggested. “It’s making him feel lively.”

  “Lemmy,” called Jet, “put your helmet on. Do you hear?” But Lemmy ignored Jet’s pleas and went on laughing and dancing. Then he began to take his suit off. Jet was now getting desperate. “It must be air,” he said; “but what on earth is Lemmy doing?”

  Lemmy, his ear-piece still attached to his head, replied for himself. “I’m going to take a shower,” he said, “that’s what.”

  “A shower?” I doubted my ears.

  “Yes, in the rain. Don’t you realise it’s nearly a month since we had a proper bath?”

  “But isn’t it cold out there, Lemmy?” I asked him.

  “I wouldn’t know. To me it feels like a warm spring day on Earth, and now I’m here I’m going to make the best of it. Why don’t you come in? The water’s lovely.”

  We looked at each other in amazement.

  “Yes, Jet,” I said finally, “why don’t we? Either it’s all right or it isn’t and I wouldn’t mind standing in that rain myself. In fact, the idea appeals to me very much.”

  “Yeah,” said Mitch, just as enthusiastically. “Let’s get out there, all of us. We’re probably going to be here the rest of our lives anyway--we might as well get used to it Come on.”

  “All right,” said Jet. “Open up the hatch, Doc, and let’s go.”

  “Do we take the suits?” I asked him.

  “Suits? What do we need suits for? There’s life on this planet, life very much as we know it, so let’s go out and say hello to it, just as we are.”

  It is now nearly a week since we landed on this planet and Lemmy left the ship and found the atmosphere breathable. Since then we have discovered many other things; that the water is drinkable, the temperature mild, and the rain unceasing. In many respects this planet is very much like Earth and the days are very nearly the same length, almost to the second. The cultivated area along the river banks contains a variety of crops, principally a kind of wheat or barley. But, whatever it is, it is in the early stages of its growth, which leads us to believe that we have arrived here during the late spring or early summer. Who or what it is that has cultivated the soil we have no idea, for, with the exception of flights of birds across the dark, cloudy sky, we have seen no living thing since -we arrived here. At night the forest resounds with weird cries of some creature or other; the voices come echoing across the clearing and, carried by the wind, sound as though they are just outside the ship. Perhaps there is food to be had in the forest but, until we can be sure what kind of creatures live there, we dare not risk entering it.

  With our rations almost used up, we had to find food from somewhere. We found it in the river. On the fifth day after landing, Jet and Mitch, armed with home-made nets and hooks, tried their luck at fishing. Much to the surprise and relief of us all, they were successful. They caught a fish that was not unlike salmon trout. It made a good meal, particularly as we had not consumed any hot food since leaving home. We have no galley on our ship so we had no opportunity of cooking anything fancy. We built a fire on the ground underneath the ship’s belly to shelter it from the rain, and boiled our fish, after cutting it up into small pieces, in one of the metal ration boxes. We ate it, without the luxury of bread, potatoes or any kind of vegetable, with our fingers.

  We spent the nights within the ship and, for our own safety, always closed the hatch before sleeping. We would have closed the main door, too, except that it used up so much power, and we were conserving all we could to keep at least one light burning at night.

  “What do we do when the juice gives out?” said Mitch one day. “Go out and buy some candles?” There were many problems we’d have to solve before long, a great many.

  While three of us slept, one always kept watch. He went into the pilot’s cabin where, seated in its chair, he had a fairly good view of the surrounding countryside through the transparent canopy. Most nights, with the clouds so low and the rain so heavy, there was very little for him to see.

  Right now it was Jet’s turn to take watch while the remainder of us turned in. “Who follows me?” Jet asked.

  “I do,” I told him.

  “All right, Doc,” he said, “I’ll wake you in a couple of hours.”

  Mitch and Lemmy climbed on to their bunks. I sat on mine until I had finished filling in my journal, then I, too settled down to sleep.

  I was awakened by Jet calling Mitch. “Hey, wake up,” he was saying; but Mitch, who was always a heavy sleeper, wasn’t to be roused so easily.

  “What is it, Jet?” I asked, sitting up in my bunk.

  “The rain--it’s stopped.”

  “You didn’t wake us up just to tell us that, did you?” grumbled Lemmy.

  “No, I didn’t,” said Jet. “But the sky has cleared and can see the stars.”

  “Well, what else did you expect?” asked Mitch, sleepily.

  “But the constellations . . .”

  “What about them, Jet?” I asked.

  “They’re the same as we would see from Earth.”

  “What?” Mitch sat up in his bunk, wide awake now. “They can’t be.”

  “They are, I tell you. Come and look for yourselves.”

  “You bet we will,” said Mitch.

  We followed Jet to the pilot’s cabin. But for a few scudding clouds, the sky was completely clear and out of its deep blue shone the familiar groups of stars we would normally recognise from the northern hemisphere of the Earth.

  “They are the same,” I said.

  “Not quite the same,” said Jet.

  “How do you mean?” I asked him.

  “Look at Lyra,” he said.

  I did, but the constellation looked exactly the same as the last time I had seen it. Vega, the arc lamp of the sky, shone in all its brilliance. Sulafat, Sheleak and Epsilon, the famous double double, all stood out clearly.

  “I’ve been watching it for an hour or more,” said Jet, “and in all that time Vega hasn’t moved from that position, we
ll, hardly; but the other stars have moved quite a distance. They’re circling round her.”

  “You mean,” I asked incredulously, “that Vega is the Pole Star?”

  “That’s just what I mean.”

  As everybody knows, the Pole Star is the one ‘fixed’ star in the heavens and marks the point where the north pole of the Earth points towards the sky. But Vega is not the Pole Star, at least, it wasn’t the last time I saw it.

  “I don’t understand it,” I told Jet.

  “Well, I do,” he replied, “at least, I think I do. Vega has been the Pole Star before and it will be again. Every 26,000 years or so it occupies the place we normally see occupied by Polaris.”

  “But,” said Mitch, “apart from the displacement of Vega, the shapes of the constellations are exactly as we know them.”

  “Yes,” conceded Jet, “but don’t you see, only from the Earth, or maybe from some other part of the solar system, would the constellations assume the shapes they do.”

  “You mean we must be somewhere within the solar system?” queried Mitch.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that’s a comfort,” broke in Lemmy.

  “And that’s not all,” said Jet slowly. “We know that within the solar system there is only one planet with air, trees, water, rain and clouds--the Earth. In other words, this can only be the Earth--it is the Earth.”

  “What?” I exclaimed.

  “And I went through all that performance testing the air,” said Lemmy in disgust.

  “But if we are on the Earth,” reasoned Mitch, “how do you account for the constellations being out of position? Why is Vega the Pole Star?”

  “There is only one possible explanation,” Jet considered his words carefully. “We’ve landed on the Earth all right, but at a different time from when we left it.”

  What Jet told us was so fantastic, so incomprehensible, that for a full minute none of us spoke. I was the first to break the silence. “How different?”

  “Heaven knows,” said Jet, “but my guess is at least 13,000 years.”

  “Which way?” said Lemmy. “Forward or back?”