The talk then drifted from planet to planet, until Gibson suddenly remembered that he was wasting a magnificent chance of seeing Mars at first hand. Obtaining permission to occupy the pilot’s seat—after promising not to touch anything—he went forward and settled himself comfortably behind the controls.
Five kilometres below, the coloured desert was streaking past him to the west. They were flying at what, on Earth, would have been a very low altitude, for the thinness of the Martian air made it essential to keep as near the surface as safety allowed. Gibson had never before received such an impression of sheer speed, for though he had flown in much faster machines on Earth, that had always been at heights where the ground was invisible. The nearness of the horizon added to the effect, for an object which appeared over the edge of the planet would be passing beneath a few minutes later.
From time to time the pilot came forward to check the course, though it was a pure formality, as there was nothing he need do until the voyage was nearly over. At mid-point some coffee and light refreshments were produced, and Gibson rejoined his companions in the cabin. Hilton and the pilot were now arguing briskly about Venus—quite a sore point with the Martian colonists, who regarded that peculiar planet as a complete waste of time.
The sun was now very low in the west and even the stunted Martian hills threw long shadows across the desert. Down there the temperature was already below freezing point, and falling fast. The few hardy plants that had survived in this almost barren waste would have folded their leaves tightly together, conserving warmth and energy against the rigors of the night.
Gibson yawned and stretched himself. The swiftly unfolding landscape had an almost hypnotic effect and it was difficult to keep awake. He decided to catch some sleep in the ninety or so minutes that were left of the voyage.
Some change in the failing light must have woken him. For a moment it was impossible to believe that he was not still dreaming; he could only sit and stare, paralyzed with sheer astonishment. No longer was he looking out across a flat, almost featureless landscape meeting the deep blue of the sky at the far horizon. Desert and horizon had both vanished; in their place towered a range of crimson mountains, reaching north and south as far as the eye could follow. The last rays of the setting sun caught their peaks and bequeathed to them its dying glory; already the foothills were lost in the night that was sweeping onwards to the west.
For long seconds the splendour of the scene robbed it of all reality and hence all menace. Then Gibson awoke from his trance, realizing in one dreadful instant that they were flying far too low to clear those Himalayan peaks.
The sense of utter panic lasted only a moment—to be followed at once by a far deeper terror. Gibson had remembered now what the first shock had banished from his mind—the simple fact he should have thought of from the beginning.
There were no mountains on Mars.
Hadfield was dictating an urgent memorandum to the Interplanetary Development Board when the news came through. Port Schiaparelli had waited the regulation fifteen minutes after the aircraft’s expected time of arrival, and Port Lowell Control had stood by for another ten before sending out the “Overdue” signal. One precious aircraft from the tiny Martian fleet was already standing by to search the line of flight as soon as dawn came. The high speed and low altitude essential for flight would make such a search very difficult, but when Phobos rose the telescopes up there could join in with far greater prospects of success.
The news reached Earth an hour later, at a time when there was nothing much else to occupy press or radio. Gibson would have been well satisfied by the resultant publicity: everywhere people began reading his last articles with a morbid interest. Ruth Goldstein knew nothing about it until an editor she was dealing with arrived waving the evening paper. She immediately sold the second reprint rights of Gibson’s latest series for half as much again as her victim had intended to pay, then retired to her private room and wept copiously for a full minute. Both these events would have pleased Gibson enormously.
In a score of newspaper offices, the copy culled from the morgue began to be set up in type so that no time would be wasted. And in London a publisher who had paid Gibson a rather large advance began to feel very unhappy indeed.
Gibson’s shout was still echoing through the cabin when the pilot reached the controls. Then he was flung to the floor as the machine turned over in an almost vertical bank in a desperate attempt to swing round to the north. When Gibson could climb to his feet again, he caught a glimpse of a strangely blurred orange cliff sweeping down upon them from only kilometres away. Even in that moment of panic, he could see that there was something very curious about that swiftly approaching barrier, and suddenly the truth dawned upon him at last. This was no mountain range, but something that might be no less deadly. They were running into a wind-borne wall of sand reaching from the desert almost to the edge of the stratosphere.
The hurricane hit them a second later. Something slapped the machine violently from side to side, and through the insulation of the hull came an angry whistling roar that was the most terrifying sound Gibson had ever heard in his life. Night had come instantly upon them and they were flying helplessly through a howling darkness.
It was all over in five minutes, but it seemed a lifetime. Their sheer speed had saved them, for the ship had cut through the heart of the hurricane like a projectile. There was a sudden burst of deep ruby twilight, the ship ceased to be pounded by a million sledge-hammers, and a ringing silence seemed to fill the little cabin. Through the rear observation port Gibson caught a last glimpse of the storm as it moved westwards, tearing up the desert in its wake.
His legs feeling like jellies, Gibson tottered thankfully into his seat and breathed an enormous sigh of relief. For a moment he wondered if they had been thrown badly off course, then realized that this scarcely mattered considering the navigational aids they carried.
It was only then, when his ears had ceased to be deafened by the storm, that Gibson had his second shock. The motors had stopped.
The little cabin was very tense and still. Then the pilot called out over his shoulder: “Get your masks on! The hull may crack when we come down.” His fingers feeling very clumsy, Gibson dragged his breathing equipment from under the seat and adjusted it over his head. When he had finished, the ground already seemed very close, though it was hard to judge distances in the failing twilight.
A low hill swept by and was gone into the darkness. The ship banked violently to avoid another, then gave a sudden spasmodic jerk as it touched ground and bounced. A moment later it made contact again and Gibson tensed himself for the inevitable crash.
It was an age before he dared relax, still unable to believe that they were safely down. Then Hilton stretched himself in his seat, removed his mask, and called out to the pilot: “That was a very nice landing, Skipper. Now how far have we got to walk?”
For a moment there was no reply. Then the pilot called, in a rather strained voice: “Can anyone light me a cigarette? I’ve got the twitch.”
“Here you are,” said Hilton, going forward. “Let’s have the cabin lights on now, shall we?”
The warm, comfortable glow did much to raise their spirits by banishing the Martian night, which now lay all around. Everyone began to feel ridiculously cheerful and there was much laughing at quite feeble jokes. The reaction had set in: they were so delighted at still being alive that the thousand kilometres separating them from the nearest base scarcely seemed to matter.
“That was quite a storm,” said Gibson. “Does this sort of thing happen very often on Mars? And why didn’t we get any warnings?”
The pilot, now that he had got over his initial shock, was doing some quick thinking, the inevitable court of enquiry obviously looming large in his mind. Even on autopilot, he should have gone forward more often…
“I’ve never seen one like it before,” he said, “though I’ve done at least fifty trips between Lowell and Skia. The trouble is that
we don’t know anything about Martian meteorology, even now. And there are only half a dozen met stations on the planet—not enough to give us an accurate picture.”
“What about Phobos? Couldn’t they have seen what was happening and warned us?”
The pilot grabbed his almanac and ruffled rapidly through the pages.
“Phobos hasn’t risen yet,” he said after a brief calculation. “I guess the storm blew up suddenly out of Hades—appropriate name, isn’t it?—and has probably collapsed again now. I don’t suppose it went anywhere near Charontis, so they couldn’t have warned us either. It was just one of those accidents that’s nobody’s fault.”
This thought seemed to cheer him considerably, but Gibson found it hard to be so philosophical.
“Meanwhile,” he retorted, “we’re stuck in the middle of nowhere. How long will it take them to find us? Or is there any chance of repairing the ship?”
“Not a hope of that; the jets are ruined. They were made to work on air, not sand, you know!”
“Well, can we radio Skia?”
“Not now we’re on the ground. But when Phobos rises in—let’s see—an hour’s time, we’ll be able to call the observatory and they can relay us on. That’s the way we’ve got to do all our long-distance stuff here, you know. The ionosphere’s too feeble to bounce signals round the way you do on Earth. Anyway, I’ll go and check that the radio is OK.”
He went forward and started tinkering with the ship’s transmitter, while Hilton busied himself checking the heaters and cabin air pressure, leaving the two remaining passengers looking at each other a little thoughtfully.
“This is a fine kettle of fish!” exploded Gibson, half in anger and half in amusement. “I’ve come safely from Earth to Mars—more than fifty million kilometres—and as soon as I set foot inside a miserable aeroplane this is what happens! I’ll stick to spaceships in future.”
Jimmy grinned. “It’ll give us something to tell the others when we get back, won’t it? Maybe we’ll be able to do some real exploring at last.” He peered through the windows, cupping his hands over his eyes to keep out the cabin light. The surrounding landscape was now in complete darkness, apart from the illumination from the ship.
“There seem to be hills all round us; we were lucky to get down in one piece. Good Lord—there’s a cliff here on this side—another few meters and we’d have gone smack into it!”
“Any idea where we are?” Gibson called to the pilot.
This tactless remark earned him a very stony stare.
“About 120 east, 20 north. The storm can’t have thrown us very far off course.”
“Then we’re somewhere in the Aetheria,” said Gibson, bending over the maps. “Yes—there’s a hilly region marked here. Not much information about it.”
“It’s the first time anyone’s ever landed here—that’s why. This part of Mars is almost unexplored; it’s been thoroughly mapped from the air, but that’s all.”
Gibson was amused to see how Jimmy brightened at this news. There was certainly something exciting about being in a region where no human foot had ever trodden before.
“I hate to cast a gloom over the proceedings,” remarked Hilton, in a tone of voice hinting that this was exactly what he was going to do, “but I’m not at all sure you’ll be able to radio Phobos even when it does rise.”
“What!” yelped the pilot. “The set’s OK—I’ve just tested it.”
“Yes—but have you noticed where we are? We can’t even see Phobos. That cliff’s due south of us and blocks the view completely. That means that they won’t be able to pick up our microwave signals. What’s even worse, they won’t be able to locate us in their telescopes.”
There was a shocked silence.
“Now what do we do?” asked Gibson. He had a horrible vision of a thousand-kilometre trek across the desert to Charontis, but dismissed it from his mind at once. They couldn’t possibly carry the oxygen for the trip, still less the food and equipment necessary. And no one could spend the night unprotected on the surface of Mars, even here near the Equator.
“We’ll just have to signal in some other way,” said Hilton calmly. “In the morning we’ll climb those hills and have a look round. Meanwhile I suggest we take it easy.” He yawned and stretched himself, filling the cabin from ceiling to floor. “We’ve got no immediate worries; there’s air for several days, and power in the batteries to keep us warm almost indefinitely. We may get a bit hungry if we’re here more than a week, but I don’t think that’s at all likely to happen.”
By a kind of unspoken mutual consent, Hilton had taken control. Perhaps he was not even consciously aware of the fact, but he was now the leader of the little party. The pilot had delegated his own authority without a second thought.
“Phobos rises in an hour, you said?” asked Hilton.
“Yes.”
“When does it transit? I can never remember what this crazy little moon of yours gets up to.”
“Well, it rises in the west and sets in the east about four hours later.”
“So it’ll be due south around midnight?”
“That’s right. Oh Lord—that means we won’t be able to see it anyway. It’ll be eclipsed for at least an hour!”
“What a moon!” snorted Gibson. “When you want it most badly, you can’t even see the blasted thing!”
“That doesn’t matter,” said Hilton calmly. “We’ll know just where it is, and it won’t do any harm to try the radio then. That’s all we can do tonight. Has anyone got a pack of cards? No? Then what about entertaining us, Martin, with some of your stories?”
It was a rash remark, and Gibson seized his chance immediately.
“I wouldn’t dream of doing that,” he said. “You’re the one who has the stories to tell.”
Hilton stiffened, and for a moment Gibson wondered if he had offended him. He knew that Hilton seldom talked about the Saturnian expedition, but this was too good an opportunity to miss. The chance would never come again, and, as is true of all great adventures, its telling would do their morale good. Perhaps Hilton realized this too, for presently he relaxed and smiled.
“You’ve got me nicely cornered, haven’t you, Martin? Well, I’ll talk—but on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“No direct quotes, please!”
“As if I would!”
“And when you do write it up, let me see the manuscript first.”
“Of course.”
This was better than Gibson had dared to hope. He had no immediate intention of writing about Hilton’s adventures, but it was nice to know that he could do so if he wished. The possibility that he might never have the chance simply did not cross his mind.
Outside the walls of the ship, the fierce Martian night reigned supreme—a night studded with needle-sharp, unwinking stars. The pale light of Deimos made the surrounding landscape dimly visible, as if lit with a cold phosphorescence. Out of the east Jupiter, the brightest object in the sky, was rising in his glory. But the thoughts of the four men in the crashed aircraft were six hundred million kilometres still farther from the sun.
It still puzzled many people—the curious fact that man had visited Saturn but not Jupiter, so much closer at hand. But in space-travel, sheer distance is of no importance, and Saturn had been reached because of a single astonishing stroke of luck that still seemed too good to be true. Orbiting Saturn was Titan, the largest satellite in the Solar System—about twice the size of Earth’s moon. As far back as 1944 it had been discovered that Titan possessed an atmosphere. It was not an atmosphere one could breathe: it was immensely more valuable than that. For it was an atmosphere of methane, one of the ideal propellants for atomic rockets.
This had given rise to a situation unique in the history of spaceflight. For the first time, an expedition could be sent to a strange world with the virtual certainty that refuelling would be possible on arrival.
The Arcturus and her crew of six had been launched in spac
e from the orbit of Mars. She had reached the Saturnian systems only nine months later, with just enough fuel to land safely on Titan. Then the pumps had been started, and the great tanks replenished from the countless trillions of tons of methane that were there for the taking. Refuelling on Titan whenever necessary, the Arcturus had visited every one of Saturn’s fifteen known moons, and had even skirted the great ring system itself. In a few months, more was learned about Saturn than in all the previous centuries of telescopic examination.
There had been a price to pay. Two of the crew had died of radiation sickness after emergency repairs to one of the atomic motors. They had been buried on Dione, the fourth moon. And the leader of the expedition, Captain Envers, had been killed by an avalanche of frozen air on Titan; his body had never been found. Hilton had assumed command, and had brought the Arcturus safely back to Mars a year later, with only two men to help him.
All these bare facts Gibson knew well enough. He could still remember listening to those radio messages that had come trickling back through space, relayed from world to world. But it was a different thing altogether to hear Hilton telling the story in his quiet, curiously impersonal manner, as if he had been a spectator rather than a participant.
He spoke of Titan and its smaller brethren, the little moons which, circling Saturn, made the planet almost a scale model of the Solar System. He described how at last they had landed on the innermost moon of all, Mimas, only half as far from Saturn as the Moon is from the Earth.
“We came down in a wide valley between a couple of mountains, where we were sure the ground would be pretty solid. We weren’t going to make the mistake we did on Rhea! It was a good landing, and we climbed into our suits to go outside. It’s funny how impatient you always are to do that, no matter how many times you’ve set down on a new world.
“Of course, Mimas hasn’t much gravity—only a hundredth of Earth’s. That was enough to keep us from jumping off into space. I liked it that way; you knew you’d always come down safely again if you waited long enough.
The Space Trilogy Page 31