The Outward Urge

by John Wyndham

‘We’ll have to take a chance on that. The important thing for us is to get into touch with home, and see what they suggest. It seems to me possible, just possible, that we may be able to get the ship back to the vertical somehow - with the gravitation as low as it is. I can plot the course and time of take-off, and look after that side, but can we manage her without Raul? He was the one with experience and special training. I have a general idea of the controls, and I suppose you have, but it is only general. This ship isn’t build to stand up to the strains of ordinary take-offs - that’s why she had to have a special casing to get her from Earth to Primeira. She must have a specially calculated programme of safe velocities for take-off from here - and that will have to be amended on account of the atmosphere being denser than was reckoned. We don’t want to burn her up, or melt her tubes. As things are, I don’t begin to know about her acceleration schedule, her safety-factors. Damn it, I don’t even know off-hand the escape velocity of Mars.’

  ‘It should take you all of two minutes to work that out,’ Camilo interrupted.

  ‘I dare say, but there are a hell of a lot of things we can’t work out without the data. Some of it we’ll be able to get from Raul’s technical papers no doubt, but there are bound to be all kinds of questions arising that we shall need advice about.’

  ‘M’m,’ said Camilo, doubtfully. His eyes strayed towards one of the ports for a moment, and then came back to me, looking suspicious again. ‘You didn’t talk to them while you were out there?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh hell,’ I said impatiently, and unwisely. ‘Look, there’s nothing out there - nothing but sand. Come out with me, and see for yourself.’

  He shook his head slowly, and gave me the smile of a man who knows a trick worth two of that.

  I was at a loss to know what line to take next. After I had thought about it a bit, it seemed to me that we were not going to get far while he was worried by these Martian phantoms, and the sooner they could be laid, the better.

  Perhaps I was wrong there. Perhaps I ought simply to have waited, hoping that the effect of the concussion would wear off. After all, except for the anxiety that must be going on at the other end of our radio link, there was no pressing hurry. The sun-charger would keep our batteries up, even at this distance from the sun; water is on an almost closed circuit, with very little loss, air regeneration too; there was victualing enough to last two of us for eighteen months. I could have waited. But it is one thing to consider a situation retrospectively, and quite another to be at close quarters with a single companion who is slightly off his head, and wondering whether time is likely to make him better or worse....

  However, as the radio seemed to be in some way entangled in his mind with the intentions of his cunning Martians, I decided to lay aside that subject of the moment, and tried tackling him on his other speciality. I pulled out a lump of the caked sand that I had brought inside, and handed it to him.

  ‘What do you reckon that is?’ I asked.

  He gave it the briefest of glances.

  ‘Haematite - Fe203,’ he said, looking at me as if I had asked a pretty stupid question. ‘Mars,’ he said, patiently, ‘is practically all oxides of one kind or another. This’ll be the commonest.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ I said. ‘One of our main objects, after getting here at all, is to bring in a preliminary report on the geology of Mars.’

  ‘Areology,’ he corrected me. ‘You can’t possibly talk about the geology of Mars. Doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘All right, areology,’ I agreed, finding his lucidity encouraging and irritating at the same time. ‘Well, we can at least make a start on that. There is a dark line on the horizon, over that way, that wants looking into - might be vegetation of some kind. If we get the platform out, we could have a look at it, and at the topography in general, too.’

  I made the suggestion with a casual air, and awaited his answer with some anxiety, for I felt that if I could use his geological - or areological - interests to lure him outside, even a brief expedition might serve to dispel this notion of lurking Martians, and once that had been achieved, he would be willing to get on with the repair of the radio.

  He did not reply immediately, and I restrained myself from looking up for fear of seeming anxious enough to rouse his suspicions. At last, when I had started to consider the next step, he said:

  ‘They wouldn’t be able to reach us once the platform lifted, would they?’

  ‘Of course not - if they are there at all. I’ve not seen one yet,’ I said, trying not to give any encouraging support to his fancies.

  ‘I nearly saw one half a minute ago. But they’re always just too damned quick, blast them,’ he complained.

  ‘There’d be no hiding from overhead observation in this desert,’ I pointed out. ‘If they are there, we’ll be able to spot them easily from the platform.’

  ‘If - ‘ he began indignantly, and then stopped, apparently struck by an idea. After a pause he went on in a quite different tone:

  ‘All right. Yes, that’s a good idea. Let’s locate the platform, and start getting it out.’

  His change of front was sudden enough to make me look at him in astonishment. His expression now was enthusiastic, and he gave an encouraging nod. Apparently I had chosen the right line, though I hoped he would not back off the idea with the same unexpectedness that he had veered on to it. At the moment, however, he was certainly all for it, and pulled a file of papers out of a locker.

  ‘The loading plan ought to be here,’ he said. ‘I’m pretty sure the platform was stowed in Number Two hold- section....‘

  It was soon pretty clear that Camilo’s ‘let’s’ was a manner of speaking. What he meant was that I should get the platform out. I made one attempt at persuading him to put on a space-suit, and give me a hand, but he was so clearly averse to that that I gave up rather than risk having him turn against the whole idea. Once I had it assembled, and he could step straight on to it, I could lift it at once, and show him that nothing could be lurking in that desert. So presently I went out alone, and opened up Number Two hold-section to get the platform out.

  There had been something of a tussle over the provision of a jet-platform for us. The type that had proved itself on the moon over fifty years ago would not do: there, an object has only one-sixth of its earth-weight; on Mars, it weighs double its moon-weight, and therefore any carrier must be heavier and more powerful. A wheeled vehicle would have been much lighter, but we were opposed to that for use on an unknown terrain. A platform could skim safely above any kind of surface, and my father had supported us. In the end, he had designed a suitable platform in three sections which were dispatched to Primeira to be stowed aboard the Figurão when she called there. Thus, for the main lift we had been spared the weight of the biggest single piece of equipment that we carried, and could simply jettison it on Mars when we took off for the return.

  I found the three main sections, even at their Martian weight, quite as much as I wanted to handle, encumbered by my space-suit. Once I had them laid out side by side on the sand, however, the bolting together was comparatively easy.

  Camilo had switched on the helmet-radio belonging to one of the other space-suits. From time to time he inquired:

  ‘Have you seen any of them yet?’

  Each time I assured him that I had not but, somehow, whether he answered or remained silent, he managed to convey scepticism.

  When the main floor was assembled, I went ahead with fixing the control-pillar. Thoroughly absorbed in the job, I lost all sense of my surroundings, remembering the empty stillness only when Camilo spoke. But when, after some two and a half hours, I had the assembly complete and needing only a final check before the mounting of the fuel containers, my attention slackened and, with that, the bleakness and loneliness all about seemed to press closer and crowd me.

  I decided I had put in a long enough spell outside for one day, and would be wiser to get back to the familiarity of the ship and the comfort of a meal before t
he willies could encroach enough to trouble me badly. As I came through the airlock I found Camilo seated on the pull-out stool in front of my charting-board. He turned round and watched me attentively; when I took off the helmet he seemed to relax, and looked somewhat relieved. I glanced at the radio transmitter, hoping that he might have started to tackle that, but it was clear that it had not been touched.

  He asked how things were going, and nodded when I told him.

  ‘We’ll need the two-man dome, and gear for it, and of course the fuel containers - might as well unload the lot of them while you’re at it; just as well to have them stacked handy; no point in leaving them in the ship. And some cases of food, and bottles of water, and - ‘

  ‘Steady on,’ I protested. ‘We shan’t be going on a week’s expedition right away. All I expect to do tomorrow is to try the thing out, and perhaps have a short flip over to see what that dark line is. We can take the dome and some food against an emergency, but there’s no point in loading up useless extra weight.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’ he repeated. ‘I thought - I mean, there’s about five hours of light yet....‘

  ‘Possibly,’ I admitted, ‘but I’ve just done nearly three hours steady work in a space-suit. If you are so anxious to hurry it on, you try a shift on the job yourself.’

  I had scarcely expected him to rise to that, and he didn’t. Instead he watched me for a minute or two without speaking, while I collected some food. Then he went back to looking out of the window. He’d stand there, motionless, peering intently for a time, then he would suddenly turn his head quickly from side to side, like a spectator watching an unnaturally fast rally at a tennis match, and draw his breath in quickly. After that, there would be another motionless interlude for a bit. I was already edgy from the spell outside, and it soon began to get on my nerves.

  ‘You won’t see anything,’ I told him. ‘Come over here, and have some food.’

  Rather surprisingly, he came without demur.

  ‘I suppose you told them to keep out of sight,’ he said. ‘Well, they’re doing it, but they aren’t fooling me.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake - !’ I began, letting my temper slip a bit at last.

  ‘All right - all right,’ he said, hurriedly. ‘Perhaps they told you not to let on about them. It doesn’t matter, really. Comes to the same thing.’

  I gave up trying to follow that, and simply grunted.

  During the rest of the meal, and after it, we maintained a state of tactful truce, but when this had been disturbed some five times by his leaping to a port in an attempt to catch his Martians unaware, I was driven to suggesting a game of chess to keep our attention occupied. It worked pretty well, too. For a time he seemed to forget all about hostile Martians, played a well-considered game, and beat me by a better margin than usual. At the end of it, things felt much more normal until he remarked:

  ‘That’s just it, you see. You Martians are cunning, all right, but not quite cunning enough. We can beat you every time, if we put our minds to it.’

  The next morning I went outside and finished checking over the platform, then I got a couple of fuel containers out of the hold-section and mounted them. Camilo, watching through the port, repeated on the helmet-radio his suggestion of unloading them all. I appreciated that by lightening the ship there would be an advantage when it came to an attempt to raise her to the vertical, but they were heavy, and I did not see why I should do all the work - that part could wait until Camilo was in a state where he was willing to come out and help. I did add a case of food, a couple of bottles of water - and also the two-man Flandrys Dome, for it isn’t much good carrying rations against an emergency unless you also provide somewhere to take off your helmet so that you can eat them. And then there had to be the recompression gear to deflate the dome after use, and a matter of half a dozen small standby air-bottles for the suits. Altogether, it took me nearly an hour to stow and make fast that lot, but then, at last, I was ready to make a test.

  I stepped aboard, and told Camilo to stand by and observe. I tried the under-jets individually first, and they all responded satisfactorily. Then I put them in concert. The platform throbbed, and a large cloud of red dust blew out from beneath it. It lifted, slightly up by the near right-hand corner. I trimmed and levelled her off about eighteen inches above the ground; then, when she was stabilized, took her up to ten feet. At that height I slanted and slid her a bit in each direction, and she answered well. She felt more solid and steadier than a lunar-type platform; a little less sensitive, too - better that than the other way, I thought. I raised her to a hundred feet or so, with a smooth lift.

  From there I had a real view. The dark line was revealed as no longer just a line, but as a wide stretch of darker ground reaching away into the distance. To the north and to the south the desert was spread out in utter monotony, but on the eastern horizon there were hills - once mountains, perhaps, but now ground down and rounded off, like very old molars.

  I reported to Camilo, but he was not interested in the landscape. He demanded:

  ‘Can you see any of them?’

  ‘No,’ I told him. ‘There aren’t any.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Very well. Just put on a space-suit, and come up and see for yourself,’ I suggested.

  ‘Oh, no you don’t. I wasn’t born yesterday. That’s how you got Geoff.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about? I am Geoff,’ I protested.

  ‘It’s no good trying that on me. I know your game, and it’s not going to work this time.’

  ‘But look here, Camilo - ‘

  ‘I know what happened. When poor old Geoff went outside soon after we landed, you were waiting for him. You jumped him, invaded him, turned the real Geoff out, and you’ve been using his body as a disguise. But I spotted you right away. Now you want to get me outside so that another of you can do the same to me. Well, you aren’t going to bring that off. Poor old Geoff hadn’t been warned, but I have; so it won’t work.’

  I started to bring the platform down.

  ‘Camilo,’ I told him, ‘stop talking a lot of bloody nonsense, there’s a good fellow. If you don’t know me after being cooped up with me all these weeks, you damned well ought to. I never heard such a fantastic, rubbishy - ‘

  ‘Oh, you put up a very good show,’ said Camilo generously. ‘Very cunning you are - but it’s just because I do know Geoff so well that I could spot you.’

  I hovered at a foot or so, and let her down gently. She made a nice easy touch, though she blew a cart-load of dust about.

  ‘I’ve seen through your little idea, too,’ he went on. ‘You’ve spotted a chance to get away from this god-forsaken planet. And I don’t blame you; anybody in his senses would do his best to get off this ball of sand. So you want to take over this ship, and get to Earth on her. But you aren’t going to do it. Not this time, you’re not.’

  I tried my most authoritative voice.

  ‘Lieutenant Botoes,’ I ordered, ‘put on a suit, and come out here.’

  He laughed.

  ‘Think you’ve got me, don’t you? You toppled the ship over, killed Raul, then you pushed Geoff out of himself and took him over. I’m the only obstacle now, aren’t I? But you haven’t got me yet. I’ll soon show you.’

  Then there was a clang that hurt my ears. I guessed he had been holding the helmet to speak into its radio, and had now dropped it. Then I saw the outer door of the lock swing shut. I ran to it, and battered on it, telling him not to be a fool. I had the winding-key to open it from outside, but it would be no good trying that for a minute or more - to attempt it while the automatic mechanism was still securing it would simply have taken me round with the handle.

  I went to the port. It was just a little too high for me to see in, so I jumped, in order to get a glimpse of what he was up to. At the same moment the port went blank as the cover closed.

  I hurried back to the airlock door, put the key in, and began to wind the locking-bolts ba
ck. The tell-tale inside must have shown him what I was up to, for the key suddenly reversed in my hands as the mechanism started again. I swore, and snatched it out.

  ‘Camilo!’ I called, hoping my voice would reach him from the dropped helmet. ‘Camilo, you’ve got it all wrong. Don’t be a damned fool! Let me in! ‘

  His only reply was, very faintly, a jeering laugh.

  ‘Camilo - ‘ I was beginning again, when suddenly the ship trembled, and there was a huge spurt of dust and sand, forward. I hadn’t a moment’s doubt what that meant, and I ran for my life.

  Even encumbered with the suit, I covered the ground with great, leaping strides a dozen yards long, and was some eighty yards away in a few seconds, before I misjudged my step and fell.

  Still sprawling, I looked back at the Figurão. A cloud of dust and sand was spurting from beneath her forepart. Some of the grit was pattering on my helmet. As I watched, the forepart swayed, and then lifted clear of the ground. Most of the loose stuff had been blown away, and I could see the ship better now; well enough to guess what Camilo was trying to do. The three lowermost steering-jets were blasting fiercely as they lifted her nose. I could see the idea, but I doubted whether he would get enough thrust out of those small jets to push her back to the vertical.

  He turned up the power, and she lifted a little more on the two exposed legs of the tripod; no longer nose-down, but tilted a little above the horizontal.

  I judged he had the jets on full power. They were holding her up; making a third supporting leg, but they weren’t raising her nose any further. I suddenly understood why he had been so anxious to have the platform out of her, and the fuel, and the rest of the stuff, too. Freed of them, she might just have had power enough, but with most of the gear still aboard, she was still inclined only very slightly above the horizontal. The jets kept on roaring and gushing, but still they gave her no more lift. I wondered if it was the leg that had broken through the crust that was keeping her anchored. Clearly she was not going to be able to make it....