The Red Journey Back

by John Keir Cross

  THE RED JOURNEY BACK

  THE RED JOURNEY BACK

  A FIRST-HAND ACCOUNT OF THE SECOND AND THIRD

  MARTIAN EXPEDITIONS, BY THE SPACE-SHIPS

  Albatross ANDComet,

  COMPILED FROM NOTES AND RECORDS BY

  VARIOUS MEMBERS OF THE EXPLORING PARTIES,

  THE WHOLE REVISED BY STEPHEN MACFARLANE

  AND NOW FULLY ASSEMBLED AND EDITED BY

  JOHN KEIR CROSS

  THE ILLUSTRATIONS ARE BY

  Robin Jacques

  COWARD-MCCANN INC

  NEW YORK

  COPYRIGHT, 1954, BY JOHN KEIR CROSS

  Eight lines on page 145 are reprinted fromHassan by James Elroy

  Flecker by permission of the publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copy-

  right, 1922, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Renewal copyright, 1950, by

  Mrs. Helle Flecker.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 54-6320

  MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  a collaborative eBook

  also known as SOS from Mars

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  The Red Journey Back is a companion-story to the famous book The Angry Planet, published some few years ago in the United States of America, Great Britain, and Europe, and also broadcast as a radio serial play in the BBC Light Programme from London.

  But although some of the original characters reappear, and the adventures on Mars of the Albatross explorers are continued in the old “authentic vein,” this present tale is quite self-contained and can be read whether or not you have ever come across its predecessor.

  When sending us the manuscript from his home in Devon, England, the author-editor said in his covering letter: “As to a dedication, I feel I can do no better than to inscribe this new account of life and adventure in the Martian wastes to those friendly readers in all countries who not only wrote saying that they had enjoyed The Angry Planet, but were flattering enough to a humble author to ask for more. There were far too many, alas, for me to have been able to send individual replies, as I should certainly have wished to do; and so this whole book is in the nature of a communal ‘open letter’ to those friends: I hope most sincerely that they will enjoy it too.”

  CONTENTS

  THE RED JOURNEY BACK

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  AN INTRODUCTION by the Editor, With a Footnote by Michael Malone

  CHAPTER I. THE AIRSTRIP: a Personal Contribution by John Keir Cross

  CHAPTER II. MacFARLANE’S NARRATIVE: The Broken Radio Messages Received On Twenty-Seven Consecutive Nights as Built To a Continuous Chronicle by Catherine W. Hogarth

  CHAPTER III. MacFARLANE’S NARRATIVE CONTINUED

  CHAPTER IV. IN THE MEANTIME . . . A Contribution by Various Hands

  1. Michael Malone

  2. Jacqueline Adam

  3. Paul Adam

  4. Michael Malone

  5. The Editor

  CHAPTER V. THE CANALS: Macfarlane’s Narrative Concluded

  CHAPTER VI. THE COMET: A Contribution by Paul Adam

  CHAPTER VII. THE THIRD MARTIAN EXPEDITION

  1. A Personal Impression by Catherine W. Hogarth

  2. A Technical Note by Dr. Marius B. Kalkenbrenner

  3. A Final Editorial Interlude

  CHAPTER VIII. LOOMINGS, by A. Keith Borrowdale*

  CHAPTER IX. THE GOLDEN JOURNEY, by A. Keith Borrowdale

  CHAPTER X. “DR. LIVINGSTONE, I PRESUME by A. Keith Borrowdale

  CHAPTER XI. SIR GALAHAD, by A. Keith Borrowdale

  CHAPTER XII. DISCOPHORA, by A. Keith Borrowdale being a transcription of a new theory, by Dr. Andrew McGillivray

  CHAPTER XIII. FLASHBACK, by A. Keith Borrowdale, with an inserted contribution by Margaret K. Sherwood

  CHAPTER XIV. THE LAST JOURNEY, by A. Keith Borrowdale

  AN EPILOGUE by The Editor; With Some Concluding Remarks and a Final Salutation by Stephen Macfarlane

  The End

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  It was as if he too had been snatched by giant hands.

  The terrible ones were in confusion and rout.

  The Comet rose higher and higher into the pale sky.

  Two friends—who smiled and beckoned us on.

  The monster was within my range.

  And I was suddenly flying through the air.

  AN INTRODUCTION by the Editor, With a Footnote by Michael Malone

  THIS IS THE STORY of the second and last great flight of the little spaceship Albatross to the planet Mars—the Angry Planet, as it has been called, from its ferocious red color, and also from all that happened on it during the first visit of the Albatross travelers.

  Now, I have no wish to embark on any complicated “summing-up” of everything that befell during that first adventure, which involved my friend and cousin Stephen MacFarlane, his colleague Dr. Andrew McGillivray, and the two young people Paul and Jacqueline Adam—to say nothing of their cousin, the irrepressible Mike Malone. But perhaps a few editorial comments right at the outset won’t do any harm: hence this brief preface (which, Mike asks me to add, “You can easily skip if you want to push on to the real meat”).

  So:

  At least most readers—old and new—should remember the immense excitement when it was announced in the late 1940’s that a small spaceship had succeeded in making interplanetary contact:

  MAN’S FIRST FLIGHT TO MARS

  Scots Professor and Well-

  known Writer Accomplish

  Spaceship Journey in Two

  Months!

  THREE TEEN-AGE STOWAWAYS ON BOARD!

  Following the first wild outcry—the newspaper interviews, the radio and television appearances, the scientific and popular articles—a secondary reaction set in. The story was doubted, was eventually ridiculed: Dr. McGillivray’s obviously workable rocket might indeed have set off from the small Scottish town of Pitlochry, as he had claimed; but it surely achieved no more than a brief flight into the stratosphere, landing uselessly at Azay in North France . . . and for some unaccountable reason the five travelers in it had chosen to invent a tale of a visit to a planet 35,000,000 miles away at its very nearest—to embroider that tale with descriptions, fantastic beyond all measure yet curiously probable too, of mobile plant people living in gigantic glass bubble houses, of “thinking” trees and telepathic communication.

  Set out thus, in its barest bones, the tale does seem, at the least, highly colored—perhaps it is no great marvel that the world turned against the explorers. But two of them were profoundly hurt by the popular reception: the sensitive Dr. McGillivray himself, of Aberdeen University, distinguished alike in his achievements and his appearance, and Stephen MacFarlane, the “well-known writer” of the newspaper headlines, a man of thirty-six when last I saw him, thin, wiry, adventurous. And so these two, alone, went back across the skies, set off once more to meet the “Beautiful People,” to explore the further mysteries of the dying red sphere which is our nearest true planetary neighbor in space.

  “I leave and maybe lose the world,” MacFarlane wrote to me before his second departure, “—and somehow, from all the enmity we have encountered in it, I consider it well lost. I can be assumed dead. By the time you read these words I shall be once more in outer space—I shall be, my dear John, on my way back to Mars!—and for the very good reason, among many others, that I prefer an Angry Planet to a Mean, Envious, Uncharitable Planet. . . .”

  So they went back, then; and we who did believe—myself and the young people left behind—mourned the loss of two fine men. We looked longingly across the vast velvet spaces and speculated, dreamed, wondered. . . . The Red Journey Back, as we came to think of it in Jacqueline’s brief poetic phrase: what had been its natur
e?—what had McGillivray and MacFarlane found?—in what unimaginable adventures were they even now engaged?

  The months, almost a year, went by; and it was as if, indeed, our friends had perished.

  And then, out of the blue—literally out of the blue—came a coincidence so vast that I almost hesitate to use it as this book’s true starting-off point; for authors are naturally chary of using coincidences in their works. “It could never happen that way,” the reader cries. “It is too much, too much of a coincidence!”

  Yet coincidences do occur—the newspapers every day are full of them. And so I must, in this factual account of all that happened, attempt to describe this single great coincidence of my own life. I do so in the only full chapter which I personally propose to contribute to this book—the chapter entitled The Airstrip. To it—the beginning of the adventure proper, however irrelevant it may at first seem—I now proceed without further delay.

  A Footnote by Michael Malone. All I want to say right now is, thank heaven old J.K.C. has got on with it at last! I was all for starting straight away, you know—bang into Chap One and a bit of action—Steve MacFarlane and Doctor Mac and the new kind of Martians they met, called the Vivores—all that kind of thing. But you know what editors are, particularly fussy ones, and old J.K.C. said, “No go,” we had to have something to tie up the threads from that other book of ours, which was all about how we accidentally stowed away in the Albatross first time it went to Mars, etc.—that is, Paul and Jacky and me, the “three young people” old J.K.C. keeps referring to. (By the way, I just ought to emphasize that it doesn’t matter in the least if you never read that previous book, which we called The Angry Planet—this one will still make sense in its own right, I hope!)

  Anyway, the real reason why I wanted to add this postscript to old J.K.C.’s preface is just this: I reckon that one or two of you will maybe wonder as you go on reading just when we three “young people” are going to turn up in this adventure. I know we had bags of letters saying: jolly good show! How did you feel on Mars first time you went?—all that kind of thing; to say nothing of people wanting to know what happened to Malu after the eruption of the Martian volcano (Malu was the Prince of the Beautiful People we got so friendly with on the good old Angry Planet).

  So you might say, “Here—when are Mike and the chaps coming in?”

  O.K. Don’t worry. We’ll be there—even Malu, although he doesn’t have much to do in this adventure—maybe not quite so much as in the last one, although what he does do sure is important. Oh, we’ll be there all right—back on Mars!—only not for a little while yet. You’ll see why as you go on. Hold your horses, that’s all I say. There’s all the stuff about Steve and Doctor Mac first—what happened to them when they popped off so suddenly without telling any of the rest of us; that’s enough to be going on with, I reckon. What about the Yellow Cloud?—and the Canal Zone?—and Old Jellybags, eh? Have a sniff around Old Jellybags before you start worrying about us—Old Jellybags is something, I can tell you! Of course, that wasn’t his real name—he didn’t have anything as simple and decent as a Name—oh no! Poor old Dr. McGillivray called him Discophora, and said he was “a hydromedusan or some similar coelenterate” (!)—all of which was fine and dandy (and I’ve copied the spelling out of one of Steve MacFarlane’s notebooks), but it didn’t alter the fact that . . . ugh! I prefer Old Jellybags for a name myself: it makes him sound a bit more comfortable at least—and he was one kind of Martian who was far from comfortable . . . !

  Anyway, on with the washing: jolly old Chap One. We crop up in Chap Four or so—I mean Jacky and Paul and me. So we’ll be seeing you then. All the best!

  Yours,

  Mike

  P.S. What price Malone’s Conducted Cosmic Tours Inc.?—Founder and President Michael Malone Esq., the Only Boy to have made the Interplanetary Martian Flight Twice before he was Fourteen! Join the Malone Stardusters, the Old Original Galactic Sports Club: Football, Baseball, Cricket Matches, etc., arranged between Planets: Founder and Captain, Michael Malone Esq., etc., etc., etc. Ah well . . . Better let old J.K.C. push on to Chap One before I get carried away!—M.M.

  CHAPTER I. THE AIRSTRIP: a Personal Contribution by John Keir Cross

  THE FIRST MARTIAN MESSAGE reached me late on a hot summer afternoon in the year 19—; and the impact of it was so fantastic as to make me indeed doubt my senses—to suspect at the least, and until I had proof positive, a miserable hoax by some misguided practical joker.

  In the year in question my friend R—, of the Scottish Office of the British Broadcasting Corporation, had telephoned to my apartment in London asking if I could travel to the small village of Larkwell, near Prestwick Airport in Ayrshire, to attend and afterward report on the trials being held there of the revolutionary new Mackellar airstrip.

  Roderick Mackellar himself was an old friend. He was a man of some eccentricity but remarkable ability. I had in the past, as a radio commentator, reported at some length on his activities, which were always—partly because of the intriguing personality of the man, partly because of their own true worth—full of news value. Hence the invitation from R—to visit the site of the airstrip on which the inventor had been working for some time.

  With Government backing Roderick had been experimenting with a new kind of surface for airplane landing fields. Not only was it of an almost adamantine hardness, thus requiring virtually no upkeep once it had been laid, but the metallic alloy of which it was constructed had certain remarkable properties: the whole surface was variably reactive to transmitted impulses from the planes themselves, so that, in darkness or fog, it was possible for a pilot to guide himself to a safe landing without recourse to any of the old unsatisfactory flare or chemical methods. There were many other virtues too in the Mackellar Compound—I have mentioned only these two as examples of its extreme usefulness.

  The preliminary demonstrations had been totally successful. Now, near Larkwell, a full-length experimental strip had been built—a gigantic stretch of it measuring about a mile and a quarter by some 450 yards; and large-scale trials were to take place there.

  I reached the village in the early morning. In this factual account I do not propose to say anything of the excitement and color of the scene. Some two dozen publicists beside myself were present—a host of officials from the various Ministries—groups of hard-faced security men—a sprinkling of society notables and a Very Distinguished Personage Indeed, whose own interest in anything pertaining to aircraft development is well-known.

  Mackellar was in a haze of delight, his round, smooth face beaming continuously, his whole person, it seemed, enveloped throughout the speeches and ceremonies with a perpetual brown cloud of the snuff to which he was a confirmed addict.

  The trials themselves were spectacularly successful—so much so, indeed, that the whole occasion finished much earlier than had been anticipated. The gigantic silver ribbon of the airstrip sparkled in the sun as the planes zoomed, soared and looped above it; beyond, also sparkled the huge rolling sweep of the Atlantic; in the foreground were the groups of excited spectators, clustering around the inventor, applauding almost hysterically as test after test went through with triumphant rapidity. It was as if nothing could go wrong—the whole event was enshrouded in that rare magic of entirely successful achievement: our good, innocent Roderick was for a moment as glamorous, as popular, as idealized as the most romantic of movie stars!

  In the early afternoon, after a brief picnic lunch on the sand dunes beside the control hut, the speech-making began. The Important Personage paid glowing tribute to the snuff-covered eccentric and the snuff-covered eccentric himself stammered a few engaging words of thanks and gratification. One by one the limousines rolled northward as the distinguished visitors took their departures, until at last the only persons still at the airstrip were Roderick and me, with young Archie Borrowdale, his close companion and fellow-worker, and the celebrated Katey Hogarth, Archie’s fiancée.

  An air of unbelievable p
eace hung over the scene after the piling excitement of the day. The hot, sea-laden air was suddenly full of a great silence. We felt rested and languid, full of a lingering quiet glory—talked desultorily, and in low voices, of trivialities.

  We had strolled out from the laboratory to the grassy edge of the great, lonely, shining airstrip itself. Archie, his young, thin face flushed and happy, had brought some drinks from the marquee which had housed the refreshments earlier. Katey, prettily contented, her gay summer frock a last lovely touch of color against the silver of the runway surface, sat close to the beaming inventor, her arm tucked in his.

  “Let’s have some music, K.C.,” she said to me dreamily. “Don’t let’s talk any more—we’ve had enough talk to last us all our lives. Let’s just sit here and think a bit, not very seriously, and listen to something quiet. There’s bound to be something somewhere.”

  I unslung from my shoulder the small portable receiver I always carried with me on such outings. In itself it was a remarkable device, made for me by an amateur radio-fan friend. I am not competent to enter into technicalities, but briefly he had contrived a method whereby the casing, of a specialized material, acted as an aerial; and so reception was improved beyond all belief for a set so small. I placed this delicate instrument among us on the ground—found it difficult to balance on the tufty grass and finally established it evenly on the surface of the airstrip itself, some two feet from the edge.

  “That’s it,” murmured Katey as I tuned. “Some Mozart—something quiet and nice. No—Schubert, isn’t it?”

  I had indeed, after rambling through some jazz and a quiz program, discovered a small Continental orchestra playing the Rosamunda overture and ballet music. The curious thing was that however delicately I tuned, and despite the perfection of the set, there was considerable distortion—and some irritating interference.