01 Kings Of Space

by Captain W E Johns

  Half an hour later he was in the Spacemaster, passing through space at a velocity which, a month earlier, he would have held to be impossible, but which he now accepted as nothing extraordinary.

  There was this about it, he reflected, as the day wore on. In space travel one day was as another. One place was as another. There was no weather to change. One became as much part of the firmament as the other celestial bodies, just another atom in the mighty Universe. The only things that changed were the relative positions of the stars and planets as they rolled round their eternal orbits, as they had always rolled, and would, presumably, continue to roll for countless ages to come. There were plenty of them. He had forgotten how many millions the Professor had said there were in the Milky Way alone, in the galaxy of which they were a minute speck. It was all too much for the human brain to grasp. The brain boggled when one tried to contemplate it. If there was one word to describe interplanetary travel, he pondered, it was monotony.

  By evening the Earth had become a great gleaming disc, a mighty Moon with a slightly tarnished face, dwarfing its own satellite, the true Moon, held prisoner in the unbreakable grip of gravity. Venus, a bright star even from Earth, was no longer a pretty spangle stuck on the dome of the sky. It was a broad, brilliant, blue-white crescent, without a mark on it, hanging like a giant sickle in the vast emptiness. She, too, was a prisoner, a prisoner of the Sun, like the rest of them — even colossal Jupiter, larger than all the other planets put together.

  At what speed, in earthly measurements, the Spacemaster was travelling, Rex did not know. There was no sensation of movement. Distance, in ordinary terms, had ceased to exist. The only factor that meant anything was Time, and that, as far as he was concerned, did not mean very much.

  The Professor was busy with his instruments and caramels. Rex watched him for a time, then had his dinner of sandwiches, biscuits and cheese. The jets droned on, so presently he lay down on his mattress and after a time fell asleep.

  The four following days did no more than accentuate the relative positions of the solar bodies. Venus, partly in shadow, was a magnificent gleaming crescent. She was, Rex knew, racing along her orbit at twenty-one miles a second, while they were hurtling towards the zone in space where she should be at the estimated time of their arrival. The Sun appeared larger.

  Earth, with its Moon in attendance, had become a beautiful double star —

  or rather, planet. They certainly looked an awful long way away, thought Rex, with a fresh pang of apprehension. Would he ever see them again? he wondered. He dismissed the thought quickly from his mind. Terror lay that way. He didn't know why it should. He had never feared an accident in an orthodox plane. Why should he fear one now? In each case the result could only be the same. Death was death. It could be neither better nor worse, he told himself. Yet, somehow, he could not entirely convince himself that this was so.

  There was something terrible about these vast, lonely spaces — possibly because they were strange.

  The calm voice of the Professor dismissed these morbid thoughts. 'We are getting near, my worthy colleagues,' he said. 'We are falling into the orbit of the luminous lady on our right hand, and she is coining to meet us at a velocity that should be evident in a few hours. I can hardly contain my impatience.'

  Rex smiled. Here was a man travelling at goodness only knew how many thousands of miles an hour, yet he was still not going fast enough.

  Rightly had Tiger said, the Professor was not to be judged by ordinary standards.

  It was soon apparent that he had spoken the truth, for Venus was now a mighty globe, one part dull, the rest blazing in the light of the Sun.

  She grew larger every hour, and the Space-master's jets, coming into action, turned slowly towards her to check their fall.

  This suited Rex, who had decided that any world was better than none.

  Very soon curiosity was master of all other emotions. He stared hard at the world they were approaching, the famous Evening Star, known and beloved by men — and sometimes worshipped by them — since men were able to write. The Ancients had called her Hesperus in the evening and Phosphorus in the morning. But no matter how hard Rex stared he could still see no feature, no mark of any sort. Evidently Venus was going to guard her secrets until the last moment.

  The Professor was using one instrument after another. 'I can still see nothing but cloud,'

  he reported.

  Rex's aeronautical training raised questions. How thick was this cloud?

  How were they going to get down through it without risk of collision with what was underneath? No doubt the Professor had asked himself these questions and found answers for them — at least he hoped so. There would obviously be little hope for an ordinary plane to get down without disaster. Only a helicopter could compete with such conditions, and, thank goodness, thought Rex, the Spacemaster with its rotors was a one hundred per cent efficient helicopter.

  Venus was no longer a complete globe. Only a great section of it now filled the portholes, part of an immense ball of cotton-wool, it seemed.

  But that there was something more than vapour became evident when gravity made itself felt and it became possible to move with less sensation of weightlessness. The Spacemaster might have been returning home, to find the Earth blanketed in an unbroken layer of cloud. Pressure under his feet told Rex that the Professor was now braking hard; which was as well for his peace of mind, for a few seconds later they were in mist, thin at first, but swiftly thickening in density to zero visibility. The Spacemaster's rotors began humming.

  The Professor, moving with the alacrity of a man trying to catch a train, took a sample of the fog and applied his tests. 'Harmless!' he cried delightedly. Good air, and a high humidity which means plenty of water below. There's some carbon dioxide, but not enough to affect us seriously. Isn't that capital? It's more than I dared to hope for.'

  'What's good about carbon dioxide?' asked Tiger.

  'It means there is life below — vegetable life at least. Vegetation needs heat and water.

  Plants breathe oxygen and produce carbon dioxide; but in sunlight the process is reversed; they consume carbon dioxide and release oxygen.

  These things are here so surely there must be life. Prepare yourselves for some shocks, my friends, for I believe these are the conditions that prevailed on Earth millions of years ago, in the age that produced the tremendous vegetable growths which we now use in the form of coal.'

  Rex found himself perspiring. 'It's getting warm,' he said.

  'Inevitable so near the Sun,' answered the Professor. Without this cloud we might be broiled. Bear it, my boy, for unless I am mistaken we are on the verge of such wonders that no living man ever saw. A little discomfort should be worth that. Ah!'

  The Professor's final exclamation needed no explanation. The Spacemaster, now descending slowly, had dropped below the overcast, and there, a thousand feet or so below, was the surface of Venus, dull, but clear, unveiled at last.

  'I'll stop a little while so that we may look,' decided the Professor, in a voice tremulous with emotion. What a spectacle we have been privileged to see! What does it matter what happens to us after this?'

  It was, Rex mentally admitted, a spectacle. It took his breath away, as the phrase goes.

  Spellbound, he could only stare.

  He knew from books he had read, and from what he had seen at the Natural History Museum in London, that he had flown back several million years and was now gazing at the Past — the Past in terms of life on Earth.

  There was ample proof that this was what the Earth had been like when it was young.

  Behind the thick pall of cloud that had hidden her for so long Venus was a world — and what a world! It was not a fair, pleasant, smiling land, with cool rivers sweeping into sparkling seas under clean, sun-washed air. For as far as he could see, through a dull, misty gloom, it was a flat, waterlogged swamp; a bog with pools of stagnant, weed-choked water, from which arose a miasma of steaming mist
to deepen the indigo curtain overhead, a blanket of vapour which no ray of sunlight pierced. No need to wonder any longer why the clouds were there, thought Rex.

  The trouble seemed to be, the ground was too flat, so that the water, having no fall in any direction, no sea in which to drain, could only be disposed of by evaporation. But still, there were areas of the Earth's surface where this occurred. It did not follow that the same conditions prevailed over the whole planet.

  From out of the primeval slime that bordered the pools sprang a jungle of vegetation that was obviously engaged in a desperate struggle for supremacy. Rising from great reeds and masses of moss, tall palms and giant tree ferns, bursting their fronds in the air like green rockets, appeared to be winning, although even they were often dragged down by the weight of creepers which clutched at them in their efforts to reach the air. All in all it was a scene of hopeless confusion, an emerald green nightmare. Here and there through it ran lanes where everything had been crushed flat as if by the passage of a steamroller.

  And as he stared, wondering what could have caused this, Rex saw the answer. Down one of them, crushing or pushing everything aside under its colossal weight, came a creature of such enormous size that he found it difficult to believe his eyes. Like the old lady on first sight of an elephant, he wanted to cry out; 'I don't believe it!'

  'A dinosaur! A living dinosaur, by all that's marvellous!' declared the Professor in a high-pitched voice that revealed his excitement. 'Isn't he magnificent? Herds of them once wallowed where London now stands, for they have left their teeth and bones in the clay to prove it. There were several sorts, some vegetable eaters and some carnivorous. My friends, Regent Street was once such a track as you see below. It was the path the monsters made to reach the Thames, and primeval man could only move along the same trail. It's a far cry from those original tracks to tar macadam.

  I fancy the fellow below is Brontosaurus excelsus — a vegetarian.'

  Rex only heard dimly what the Professor said. He was too engrossed in the creature below. It was, in shape, a lizard, a lizard not less than sixty feet long. From the front end of its huge body sprang a long tapering neck ending in a snake-like head. From behind came a long diminishing tail of ordinary lizard form. The beast walked on four legs, although the hind ones were more powerful than the front.

  The Professor lowered the ship to about two hundred feet.

  Rex instinctively stepped back a pace as there flapped past a flock of leathery-winged monstrosities with beaks like the jaws of alligators.

  'Pterodactyls!' exclaimed the Professor. 'I have never studied paleontology* closely, but I feel sure these flying lizards have no right to be here, in this particular era. No doubt there are fish lizards in those pools. Gentlemen, I promised you a spectacle. I hope you're not disappointed. What have you to say, Judkins?'

  'A truly remarkable sight, sir,' was the emotionless reply. 'Venus has a queer population, if I may express an opinion.'

  'Queer is a nice word for it, Judkins,' put in Tiger. 'An emergency landing here should be an experience to remember.'

  'We'll move on a little way to see if we can find a spot dry enough to land on,' decided the professor.

  'Did you say land on?' cried Rex.

  'Why yes, my boy. We've come a long way and the ship needs tidying up.

  Apart from a little much needed exercise we might as well see what there is to see while we are here.'

  We can see quite a lot from here,' Tiger pointed out.

  The Professor threw him a reproachful glance. Tut-tut, my dear fellow.

  Never let it be said that you turned your back on adventure. If this isn't adventure, what is it?'

  Ìf you're asking me that question seriously, I'd say it's uncommonly like lunacy,'

  returned Tiger smiling. 'However, carry on. It merely struck me as being an awkward place to get our legs stuck in the mud.'

  *The study of the fossilized remains of animals and plants of former geological ages.

  'The mystery of Venus is a mystery no longer,' asserted the Professor triumphantly. 'All is plain to see. In due course I shall congratulate those astronomers who predicted just these conditions. Heat, unlimited water and air, were almost certain to produce extravagant forms of life.'

  'Air?' queried Tiger.

  'Of course there is air. Those who predicted an atmosphere unsuitable for life may have forgotten that they were looking only at the outer fringe, some hundreds of miles above the surface of the planet. True, there was no indication of what was below. That was a matter for surmise. Now we know. Apart from the fact that the air around us is obviously very warm, we shall, I think, be able to breathe it. We shall see. Have the goodness to oblige me by taking a photograph of that handsome beast below. He appears to be contemplating having a swim.'

  The Spacemaster, inclined at an angle and under gentle power, was drifting sideways.

  For some time there was no change in the scene below. Huge bodies could be observed wallowing in the ooze, which sometimes heaved and bubbled from the movements of unseen horrors.

  Rex had begun to fear that the whole planet was alike when just ahead appeared an area of slightly higher ground. There were some outcrops of rock, which suggested that it was hard. There were also some trees growing on it, trees with bristling, dark green foliage.

  Rex recognized them as types known at home as monkey puzzles.

  Àh! This is better,' said the Professor. 'We'll go down and have a rest.

  I hope we don't find it too oppressive.'

  Be careful what you're landing on, sir,' requested Rex nervously.

  I shall be very careful indeed, I assure you,' promised the Professor.

  'It would be a tragic thing to be devoured by a dinosaur so soon after making his acquaintance.'

  'Or at any other time,' murmured Tiger drily.

  The Professor chuckled. 'Your witty observations, my dear fellow, are in accord with my exuberant mood. The Moon was splendid, but this is the greatest day of my life.'

  Just try to see that it isn't the last,' requested Tiger. 'In view of what we know now, I suppose there isn't much chance of finding anything in the way of human beings down below?'

  'I should be very surprised indeed to find homo sapiens — that is, true man,' answered the Professor thoughtfully. 'But there's just a chance there might be the type from which he developed—in a very primitive form, of course. We're probably fifty or sixty million years too soon for people like ourselves.'

  'That's rather a long time to wait.'

  `Tut-tut. You will have your little joke. But I must watch what I am doing.'

  The Spacemaster drifted on, losing height, until it was over the higher ground, which now appeared to be almost entirely rock, sometimes flat but for the most part twisted into a curious pattern. The area was roughly round and about half a mile in diameter.

  'A not unpleasant little island,' remarked the Professor. Ìt should suit our purpose.'

  The ship sank lower, the rotors humming, until, with a gentle bump, it came to rest.

  The Professor saluted. Welcome to Venus, gentlemen!' He smiled. I don't think there will be any great rush to establish colonies on this new world.'

  You don't know what some men will do when they get bored,' returned Tiger.

  'True — true,' conceded the Professor. 'Now listen.' He gave the pressure valve half a turn. Another. It made no sound. He looked round. 'You realize what that means? The pressure outside is the same as inside. If the air is breathable we will open the door.

  Excuse me a moment.'

  Ten minutes were sufficient for his test. Safe,' he announced. 'Not entirely comfortable, but safe. What more could we hope for?' He strode to the door and opened it cautiously.

  His expression changed abruptly as from a distance there came through the sultry air the first sounds they had heard for days except those which they themselves had made. It was a mixture of barks and yelps, reminiscent of a pack of hounds in full cry. 'It
seems that we're not alone,' he said in a curious voice. But let us have something to eat.

  We'll also take the opportunity to empty the rubbish bins. We might then have a little walk to see if we can discover the authors of those strange sounds.'

  'We had better keep our eyes open in case they discover us,'

  opined Tiger seriously. I 1 Nature in the raw To Rex, for one reason alone, Venus was infinitely to be preferred to the Moon. It was not necessary to wear a cumbersome cosmosuit. No matter how efficient such a garment might be, he had decided, it would always be a nuisance and a handicap to easy movement. The relief of being able to step out of the Spacemaster at will, as if they might have been on Earth, was, therefore, a matter for congratulation. Another great advantage of having an atmosphere was that all sounds could be heard, not limited to radio conversation. They could eat in comfort. They could smell. Tiger could smoke his pipe, which he did at the first opportunity.

  This is not to say that the atmosphere in which Rex presently found himself was all that could be desired. It was dense; it was heavy and it was sultry, largely the result of the cloud mass pressing down on it and preventing anything in the way of a breeze. The cloud had been light enough on the sunny side, but underneath it was the colour of lead, so that everything was in perpetual gloom. The effect was an almost overpowering stuffiness, such as might be encountered in an overheated greenhouse. There was a queer, vitiated smell about it, too, which might have been due to the presence of carbonic acid gas. Even sitting still, as they did to have a picnic meal outside the ship, sweat triclded down their faces. But still, with all this, as Tiger remarked, things were no worse than in some tropical rain forests on Earth.

  From time to time noises reached their ears, reminding them that the planet had a population of its own. There were crashes as of trees being cast down, and, what was more disconcerting, roars and deep-throated growls. Once again they heard the medley of barks that had greeted them on arrival. The Professor admitted that he was puzzled by these, for although from what they had seen he was sure that the planet teemed with life, he could not visualize any forms other than the monsters which similar conditions had produced on Earth in the distant past. These, unable to adapt themselves to change, had become extinct in spite of their fantastic size, leaving the world to types less gross. As a student he was familiar with many of the early brutes, for they had left their story in bones in the primeval ooze, now hardened into slate or clay; so he could, he thought, give a fairly accurate picture of the probable poulation of Venus.