The Red Journey Back

by John Keir Cross

  And she soared past me again, with the others beyond, like so many figures in a presentation of Peter Pan. . . .

  On all sides of us as we worked and played, stretched the vast reddish plain, extending to the high-upthrusting mountains for which we had roughly aimed in our descent. And although I was seeing a Martian landscape for the first time, there was something truly familiar in it all, from the descriptions I had heard from the others during the journey: the loose sandy soil, the clustering groups of the “cactus plants” with their great fleshy fingers thrust up into the unbelievable bluish-mauve sky.

  And I was particularly interested, indeed, in these plants, remembering all I had heard of their primitive thinking faculties: I wondered, as I looked out from the working cradle, if even at that moment strange messages were rustling among them toward the distant hills—messages telling of the arrival of yet another uncanny shape from the skies; and the thought for a moment was even a little eerie, for all I knew of the fundamental friendliness of the creatures.

  I saw at one moment that Jacky, the most serious of the young people, had crossed toward one small cluster of cacti, colored with bright spots of red and orange on the darker green, and was standing solemnly before it with a most intent expression on her face; and I had the notion that she was, as it were, trying to . . . send a message, almost—perhaps to that old friend of hers, Prince Malu.

  And one strange thing was that, as I gazed down from my perch at the alien scene, I had, myself, for the first time, a sudden picture of the physical appearance of the Beautiful People. Of course, we had talked about them endlessly too—about Malu himself, and the Center: these creatures—and the squat-shaped Terrible Ones—had been described a hundred times to Maggie and Katey and the Doctor and me. Jacky—who was good at drawing—had made sketches of them, so that, from all that had been said and seen, we had an excellent idea of what they looked like. But quite apart from this, there was an added awareness, almost, that first day of our Martian landing: I had a clear kind of vision inside my head of Prince Malu—of his slender trunk, a little more than five feet high perhaps, with its gentle colorings of pale green and patchy yellow and the flaming “flower” surmounting the bulbous upper end . . . and the thought came into me that for the first time I was experiencing—in a broad and general way as yet—true Martian telepathy. It was as if, as Jacqueline thought toward the plants, they thought back toward her, and the whole concentrated image from those myriads of primitive “minds” came strangely into my mind. . . .

  I saw too, in the same way, a vision of the other species of Martian encountered by the previous expedition: the creatures known (in the “language” of the Beautiful People) as the Terrible Ones: great egg shapes, each the size of a small ox, spotted yellow and red, moving also on detached root tendrils but, unlike the Beautiful People, with the appearance at least of faces, caused by the two huge “jaw petals.”

  I saw it all indeed before Jacky moved back from the plant cluster in front of which she had been standing. And I saw, fleetingly, something else—but less perfectly: a confused image of something white and yielding—a great vibrant, pulsating something, against a thick background of dark, dark green. . . .

  The vision lasted for only a moment—but it was a moment charged with a sense of intolerable menace. I saw from Jacky’s face that she too had seen the vision—it was why she had moved away from the friendly cluster of the cacti.

  I returned more soberly now to my work. It was almost complete—the unexpected lightness of the materials I handled made it possible to assemble the booster much more quickly than we had reckoned. With the Doctor I descended at last to the ground to complete the work on our other equipment; and then my spirits were restored by the sight of the excellent meal which Katey had prepared after her exuberant jumping game.

  Bacon and eggs!—brought all the way from distant Earth. Dehydrated eggs and salt bacon—but bacon and eggs!—and our first solid meal for almost three months. And coffee—fresh coffee, its fragrance rising strangely in the brisk evening air. . . .

  We sat back when the meal was over, sighing contentedly, and suddenly weary from the concentrated bout of exercise. Above us the little moons revolved—almost comically in their unusual haste, to our Earth eyes. All was still—unutterably still. And in the mood of the moment, in our relaxed weariness—the anticlimax to all our weeks of tense endeavor and strain in the spaceship—there came over us a strange melancholy; and—in me at least—a sudden misery of doubt and apprehension: would we survive the nightmare lying perhaps ahead?

  And what was the nightmare? What were the creatures we knew only as the Vivores? How did they differ, as Martians, from the Beautiful People—even from the Terrible Ones? I recalled the thin chattering we had heard—so long before, it seemed—from Roddy Mackellar’s airstrip; the despairing voice from great space: “The Creeping Canals—Discophora—the Vivores—in heaven’s name try to save us from them . . . !”

  We had, throughout our approach to Mars, made many attempts to contact MacFarlane, wherever he was. We knew, from our calculations, his rough position—we knew the general nature of his transmission equipment. Message after hopeful message we sent as we speeded toward the Angry Planet. But silence—always silence. Only once, as we journeyed in the rocket, was there anything distantly resembling one of the old Morse messages. On this occasion, after we had been tuned for some hours—at a distance of barely three hundred thousand miles from the Martian surface—we had received, imperfectly, desperately imperfectly, a few broken impulses—so faintly and confusedly as indeed to be uncertain as impulses at all. If they spelled anything they spelled the irrelevant and impossible words—Guinea pigs; and so we dismissed them as freaks—as illusions.[4]

  The Yellow Cloud . . . As we sat there so quietly, on our own first peaceful Martian evening, I remembered the bitterness of Dr. McGillivray’s experience—his landing so different from our own. From the first, as we had come in to landfall, we had watched for any sign of the mysterious Yellow Cloud. As Dr. Kalkenbrenner and I had worked, while the others played, we both, I know, had turned anxious eyes across the whole wide plain, ready for instant action if, even for a moment, we should see anything presaging trouble. But the blue-mauve, cloudless sky was empty—all was clear.

  Now, as the mauve tint deepened to pink and then to smoky red with the fall of evening, we gazed again along the vast horizon, in particular toward the south, where, if our guess was accurate, the Albatross lay—if indeed she still existed.

  Was it only imagination? Was there, hovering above a low outjutting line of foothills, a thick ochreous . . . mist, almost? A mere coloration of the evening sky?

  I glanced uneasily toward the Doctor. He too remained with his gaze fixed in the same direction. He turned to me and shook his head a little. And a moment later, before the others had a chance to see anything, he gave, as captain of our expedition, the word to retire.

  We mounted the long ladder one by one, ready indeed to rest after the unaccustomed excitement, the sheer physical weariness of our first few hours on the Angry Planet.

  The Doctor and I lingered by the thick plastic windows of the Comet long after the others had drifted to sleep. We stared apprehensively southward, until, with a swiftness comparable to the swiftness of tropical nightfall upon Earth, the whole sky darkened. The little moons shone forth with an intense silvery light across the immensity below us, and all was still.

  When we woke in the bright morning, after a night no shorter- or longer-seeming than a night on Earth (the Martian day is very nearly equal to our own, being 24 hr. 37 min. 22.6 sec. in duration, compared with Earth’s 23 hr. 56 min. 4.1 sec.), it was to find that the sky was empty once more of any tinge of yellow.

  We breakfasted substantially and in a mood of mounting tension; for immediately afterward we proposed to embark on our mission of rescue—to face, with what courage we could muster, whatever horror it was that threatened our gallant colleagues.

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

  I HAVE little enough space, alas, to describe in full detail the extent of our preparations for combating the mysterious menace of the Vivores. Much will emerge as my tale proceeds; for the moment, I touch broadly on the general appearance of our “caravan” as it set out across the Martian wastes—as it might have been observed, perhaps, by some alien eye scanning the sandy desert from the distant mountains.

  All of us (needless to say) wore heavy suits of protective “armor”—heavy, that is to say, upon Earth, although on Mars we hardly noticed the weight—certainly welcomed the warmth of the strange garments against the undoubted chill of the long bright Martian autumn. The suits resembled diving suits, tunic and trousers (for both sexes) in one piece, the material a compound of asbestos and flexible plastic—water-, gas- and fire-proof. The helmets were large transparent globes of unbreakable “kalspex,” a variant on perspex patented by our leader some years before. When not in position they could be folded back over the shoulders to admit of free breathing. Pulled into place, they automatically locked on an aluminum rim at the neck, and this process also automatically brought into operation the oxygen-breathing apparatus carried partly on the wearer’s back, partly on his chest. It was possible, for air-conservation purposes, to switch off this apparatus, in which case breathing the free external atmosphere was achieved through a valve.

  With the helmets in position, the members of the party could communicate with each other by means of small microphones and short-wave radio receivers mounted close to the mouth and ears. It was a matter simply of speaking quite normally within the globes. Additional microphones and loudspeakers, mounted externally, made it possible to communicate with any outside parties not wearing the garments.

  Thus we garbed ourselves then—and must have seemed a group of strange, amorphous creatures, indeed, as we clustered around the rocket ready to depart. Both the entrance hatches had been closed, of course, and locked by a special method also devised by Dr. Kalkenbrenner. In addition, an ingenious invisible barrier—an arrangement of photo-electric cells—had been contrived to encircle the whole ship. Any unauthorized approach to it was made known by an immediate radio danger signal, transmissible into the helmets of the rescue expedition up to a distance of some eighty miles.

  As to transport: we had carried with us in the Comet, and assembled in readiness the afternoon before, the component parts of a small but extremely powerful caterpillar tractor—virtually a light tank. It was large enough to carry three—even more if necessary; for the rest (and for MacFarlane and McGillivray once we had rescued them—even Malu) there was ample room in the trailer attached—space also for our necessary concentrated food supplies, first-aid gear and (in some instances considerably bulky) weapons.

  The tractor was equipped with a complete cabin, again of kalspex, which could be levered into position in a matter of seconds, thus affording a double protection to the asbestos-suited occupants. And the trailer could also very rapidly be shrouded in a complete “tent” of treated canvas with kalspex windows—this also to serve for sleeping quarters, together with another small collapsible tent carried in the tractor’s spacious boot.

  So then we departed, in solemn array. Behind us the immense silvery spire of the Comet receded, its outlines wavering delicately in the bright, the almost intolerably bright, sunshine. The sound of our engine—an alien sound indeed across the Martian wastes—dispersed, died flatly over the soft yielding sand of the plain and in the rare ozone-charged atmosphere. And fabulously, even ridiculously, as our caravan advanced across that arid desert, Katey declaimed, half-seriously, remembering the verses as she had learned them years before at the start of her career—when, as a child actress, she had appeared in a revival of the old play of Hassan . . . she declaimed:

  We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go

  Always a little further; it may be

  Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow

  Across that angry or that glimmering sea,

  White on a throne or guarded in a cave

  There lives a prophet who can understand

  Why men were born: but surely we are brave,

  Who take the Golden Road to Samarkand.

  Then Michael began to whistle raucously: “Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching,” with Maggie pompomming solemnly at an imaginary tuba, and the tension in us broke at once, and out across the plain went the sound of our laughter—as alien on silent Mars, in its different way, as the throb of our engine.

  We pushed constantly southward, weaving among the groups of the cactus plants. Was it once more only fancy, or was there, occasionally, a kind of shrinking, as it seemed, from those strange sentient growths?—a shrinking away from us, not fully expressed in actual movement but somehow in attitude. They “reared,” as it were, as startled horses might have done, but not physically—in thought only.

  The mountains—on our right as we advanced—loomed ever closer. Jacky and Paul scanned their slopes and valleys with powerful binoculars for some sign, perhaps, of Martian habitation. Once Jacky cried out, pointing excitedly; and when I leveled my own binoculars it was to see, in a small hollow, a bright shining from a brilliant reflecting surface of some kind. As my eyes grew accustomed to the glare, I could make out a group of immense dome shapes—huge bubbles, inverted bowls, the largest of them seeming veritably as grand in outline as the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

  “The bubble houses,” called Jacky from the trailer.

  “There’s no sign of life near them,” I said, still scanning the hillside.

  “There wouldn’t be, if they’re the ones I think they are,” said our captain briefly. “If it’s the settlement MacFarlane mentioned in his messages, it was deserted, you’ll remember, as the Vivores danger increased.”

  “And if it is that settlement,” murmured Katey, “it means that the Albatross is near at hand—they dragged her across the plain, near to the village.”

  “Beyond those very foothills, my dear,” said Kalkenbrenner grimly. “If my bearings are accurate—if the ridge we saw in landing was the Ridge—MacFarlane and McGillivray are barely two Earth miles ahead of us!”

  As he spoke, he brought the little tractor to a halt. We had been traveling now for some time—the sun was high in the almost white sky. The nature of the terrain had changed: the clustering cactus plants had grown sparser on the first slopes of the foothills—had eventually disappeared altogether, their place being taken first by small leathery shrubs, then, among the hills proper, by occasional trees, slender-trunked and with heavy, fleshy leaves.

  “You can eat them, you know,” cried Michael, jumping up for a handful as we halted. “I lived on nothing else that time I was captured by the Terrible Ones on the last trip. They’re like melon flesh, but with a kind of salty taste about them too. Very good—try some.”

  We set to nibbling—tentatively at first, but in truth the leaves did have a strangely attractive flavor.

  “Don’t anyone move any distance away from the tractor,” said Dr. Kalkenbrenner. “In fact, we had better stay aboard together, Michael—no more leaves, if you please. I have stopped so that we can prepare ourselves. As far as my reckoning goes, we shall be face to face with MacFarlane’s ‘Canals,’ whatever they may be, the moment we mount that hill immediately ahead there. We had best have something to eat—some of the biscuits and cheese Miss Hogarth prepared for us; it may be long enough before we can eat again. And when we go forward afterward, I want you to wear your helmets, with the air valves open, but be ready to switch over to oxygen the moment I may give the word.”

  The very brusqueness of his manner sent a chill through us. In the interest of the journey we had forgotten momentarily how closely danger loomed. I saw that Jacky had gone white—that even Mike trembled a little as he held out his hand for the eatables Katey had unpacked and was handing around.

  For my own part, I switched my gaze to the sky above the line of the small
hillock facing us. I sought for the faintest tinge of possible yellow—the least shadow. But I sought in vain. From the journey’s start we all had scanned the southern sky for an appearance, however sparsely, of the Cloud. But from first to last there had been not even a far hint of it.

  So we ate in silence. I will confess to little appetite. A slight sense of empty sickness afflicted me. I was, in truth, afraid.

  I watched Dr. Kalkenbrenner as, with white set face, he made a few final adjustments to the small cannon and machine gun mounted on the front superstructure of the tractor. I myself checked over the powerful flame thrower ready to my hand—saw that Paul, Katey and Michael were looking to their own hand weapons, rifles and revolvers. Maggie furtively polished a small automatic she had somehow smuggled with her from the rocket—for it had been agreed that the two girls should be unarmed, and no arrangements had been made by the Doctor to equip them.

  Then, at a word from our leader, we set our helmets in position and switched on the communication apparatus within them. Through the exterior microphones we heard the powerful revving of our engine as, once more, we went forward, climbing the gentle slope which separated us from . . . what?

  The tension mounted as we proceeded. My hand, I realized, was trembling on the control of the flame thrower, and in fear of accident I withdrew it. Close in my ears was a low strange whispering moan; I saw Katey’s lips moving through the transparency of the kalspex and understood that her excited, apprehensive breathing was being transmitted through the little microphone so close to her lips.

  Higher and still higher we climbed. Ahead, the sky was still clear. And a moment later we were over the top and descending; and saw, and saw, and saw—