The Red Journey Back (13 page)

She
even had the nerve to wink at me now as she floated silently past my bunk and
drifted on to give a patronizing flying kiss to an utterly bewildered Dr.
Kalkenbrenner!

And
Mike, the scoundrel, was winking too!

A
Personal
Impression by Catherine
W. Hogarth,

with
a Technical Note by Dr.
M. B.
Kalkenbrenner

Up in a
balloon, boys,

Up in a
balloon
.
 . . 

HELLO,
FOLKS!

Don’t
pay any attention to the way I write—it’s just me, can’t help it after years
and years in show business.

I
think it was Eddie Wheeler put up the money for that old show I was in—sure it
was, for he’d just sold his new Roses number for a wad, so he and dear old
Freddie Salmon took the
Princess.
It was called
Stardust Follies of Whatever-it-was
(was it ’48 or
49?) —anyway it was a few years
ago. It was the year that Danny Kaye was playing the London Palladium—or was it
Sinatra? Anyway, it was sometime about then), and Billy Billiter and I were the
stars, and the whole show was all about space flight and so on, with the girls
all as Martians and Venusians and such. (Not the real thing, of course, just
Eddie’s idea—plenty of spangles all over their tights, and Iris Morley was a
Moon maiden in one number, all over silver.) Anyway, what I was really building
up to was that there was one spot that I had myself where we began way back in
Victorian times—huge cycling bloomers and straw hats and everything—and I sang
that old-time number:

Up
in a balloon, boys,

Up
in a balloon!

and
then there was a marvelous transformation scene, and the balloon changed into a
rocket, you see, and I did a quick change in the wings and came on again in the
cutest little space suit, and we changed the words to:

Who’ll
come up

In
a rocket to Venus

With
me, with me, with me?

and
the girls did a ballet all over the solar system, with everything whirling
around and around and around, you know, and the sun in the middle, and suddenly
the sun burst open and there was Iris again, this time as a
sun
maiden.
 . . .

What
a pity that show never ran! Came off after two weeks. Just lets you see. Public
never knows, does it? “All a bit too futuristic,” was what the press said, but
of course
they
don’t know much either, ’cos here I was in a real rocket after all, so it wasn’t
all that futuristic—in fact, that show must have been running, now I think of
it, just about the time when Stephen Mac Whatsit and the poor old Doctor were
off for the first time in the
Albatross
(or was that the year Bing Crosby was at the Palladium?).

Of
course, I don’t want you for a moment to think the real thing was anything
like
that show of dear old Eddie’s, I mean
it simply wasn’t in it, the show wasn’t—couldn’t hold a candle to the real
thing. What a set! What a back cloth! What lighting! You’ve got to hand it to
old Mother Nature when it comes to decor. It’s no use poor little me even
trying to tell you what it was like, for I’m no script writer, no sir—and
besides, it’s all been done already in this book. There was all the stuff I
took down in shorthand by the airstrip and then typed out (it just lets you see
again, doesn’t it?—I’m not really as dumb as you’d think, not from all this,
but it’s the way I go on when I’m just being myself, and it can’t be helped).

So
I won’t waste much time on
that
, for it really
was
much the same inside the
Comet
as it was in the
Albatross
,
even though we were so much bigger. Just take it for read and I’ll try to say
something instead about how we all got on together inside—and I won’t even
waste much time on that either (trust me! I’m the kind of authoress to have—no
padding), for we really ought to be pushing on to the way we landed and
everything that happened afterward and what that impossible boy Mike called Old
Jellybags and the way that—ugh! don’t let me think about it!

The
biggest scream was young Maggie Sherwood, of course. Really and truly! You
could have knocked us all down with a feather when she turned up, if you’d had
one handy—and you could too, for of course we didn’t have any weight. I must
say that right at the start there were the beginnings of a row—from our revered
captain Dr. M. Berkeley Kalkenetcetera. Well, can you blame him?—when he’d made
all his plans and so forth and suddenly, bang! there was Maggie to upset ’em
all? But on the other hand, can you blame her?—when you consider that M.
Berkeley K. was her O.L.R. (Only Living Relative), and there he was nosing off
into space without her?

Of
course, she and young Mike had cooked up the whole thing between them. He’d
told her all about the time when he and the others had stowed away on the
Albatross
, and nothing would do for Our Maggie
but that
she
should pull the same thing off on
this
trip,
so there was all the biz about not coming out to see us off that morning,
couldn’t bear it, etc. (what an act), so that we wouldn’t be surprised when she
wasn’t
there, and all the time she’d sneaked
out in the middle of the night and all aboard the lugger and the girl was ours
 . . . 
!

Mind
you, I must say that she’d checked to be absolutely sure there was enough spare
food and equipment for her, even allowing for Stephen MacF. and Dr. McG. on the
way back; and she also said she’d even
told
the bold M. B. Kalkenbrenner that she
was coming—given him due warning and such when he didn’t give her permish to
come openly; and I must say that when you look back on all she said that night
before we left, it
could
be read like that, if you stretch the point a bit.
 . . .

Anyway,
we just had to lump it. By the time M. Berkeley K. had done his duty as captain
and given her a mild spanking (in a manner of speaking), he beamed all over and
had to confess he was secretly delighted, for I know he’d been worried about
what would happen to her if he Never Came Back, whereas now we were all in it
up to the neck and if worse came to the worst we all sank or swam together, as
the bishop said to the actress when it started to rain the day she was opening
the garden party.

Heigh-ho!
It certainly added a bit to
my
troubles, for of course the reason I was in the
Comet
at all was supposed to be to look
after the whole impossible flock (ha-ha). So now I’d four of them instead of
three—and Maggie was the biggest handful of the lot, I can tell you. Anyway, we
managed somehow. You’d be surprised at all the strange chores there were to do.
There wasn’t any cooking or washing up or anything like that, of course, for we
had our “wittles,” as Eddie Wheeler used to call them, out of those itsy-bitsy
tube things (what wouldn’t I have given for just one two-inch steak all
smothered, but
smothered
,
in onions after months of spinach paste and vitamin juices—just
one!)
, but there were all kinds of other
things that needed doing, and mostly, believe it or not, it was a matter of
sheer
entertainment
! Oh yes sirree, if you can actually believe it, the
real trouble was, after a while, that we were pretty nearly bored stiff in the
dear old
Comet
,
even
with
the
solar system and all to look at night and day! We had practically no exercise,
you see, and there were seven of us all cooped up together, and four of us
natural healthy youngsters, so what could you expect but a fight or a quarrel
every now and then? And besides (and let’s drop all the nonsense for a minute,
darlings—off with the dear old motley for a change) you see, when it really
came to the pinch, there wasn’t one of us, not one, who didn’t remember way,
way deep down just what we were there for, and it wasn’t just a matter of
romping off through space, but somewhere at the other end of the journey there
were two decent men in some kind of terrible danger, and somehow we had to save
them, whether or not we saw much of Mars in the process. Somehow Mike and Co.
had to save them, and though I’d racked and racked my brains (the few I’ve got,
darlings—O.K., wait for the laugh) I couldn’t see
how
they could save them, except that that
was what the last message had said, and we had to take it on trust: “Bring the
children—ask no questions—
bring the
children
 . . .
” and
then silence, and those two in mortal trouble. And we
had
found a way—we were bringing the children.
But what were we bringing them to?

I
tell you, it was behind everything we thought and did, that nightmare. And it
wasn’t any wonder, surely, if it did get on our nerves a bit, and we had to
find ways and means to pass the time so that we wouldn’t think about it more
than we could help. Heigh-ho. Laugh Punchinello and all that. I think I went
through every song routine I’d ever learned—and all the scripts I’d had to
learn by heart since ever I started in rep in Walthamstow, before I even went
into Vaudeville at all!

Well,
never mind—it was all worth it, I suppose. Who’d ever have thought it all the
same? Katey Hogarth, Sparkling Star of Stage, Screen and Radio, the way the
credits used to put it, doing her poor little stuff in the middle of Space, in
magnetic boots and all! There were times
 . . .
well,
never mind, dears, never mind.

Soft
lights and sweet music—angel voices on the sound track. No sir. This isn’t what
I meant—not it at all. Best sign
off.
I’m no script writer. Now we’re
getting serious this is where I exit singing and dancing. I’ll be surprised if
they put this in the book at all—not what they’d counted on, I reckon; I was
supposed to be bright and cheerful when things were beginning to get tough—and
here I am, muffing my cue and making ’em more serious than ever.

Anyway,
we made it—there’s that much that must be said. We had almost three months of
it, but we did touch down at last. We got to Mars, darlings—we got to Mars!—but
when I think of some of the things that happened there I almost wish we hadn’t,
even though we did do what we set out to do—or at least part of it.

But
those Canals—those devilish
Canals
!

Well,
cue for exit—and I’m not going to muff this one. I hope they
don’t
print this.
It’s time someone else took over, and I’ve an idea that K.C. has contracted my fiancé
Archie for the job. Archie always did fancy himself as something of a writer as
well as a scientist—and I don’t mind admitting that he’s done not badly at it
in the past (he wrote some sketches for old Salmon once, under a different
name, and old S. thought the world of
them).
 . . .