The Red Journey Back (14 page)

So
we made it—that’s as good a line as any for me to end on. We made it. And it
was barely two days after we did make it that we found the
Albatross
and were right in the thick of things,
heaven help us all.

Oh
yes—we found them. Dr. Livingstone, I presume! But oh my suffering Sam, the
things, the things we saw!

Up
in a balloon, boys—

Up
in a balloon!!!

Cue
for Curtain. Bye, darlings. Love and kisses. Bye.

In
this, my only contribution to the present sketchy volume, I will be brief to
the very point, perhaps, of baldness.

I
am not, myself, concerned in any way with the narrative part of this anthology;
indeed, if anything, my own tendency (it must be said in all frankness) would
be to avoid putting upon the market any such romanticized account of the Third
Martian Expedition as this is in some danger of becoming; for although each
contributor is undoubtedly speaking the truth as he or she sees it, the over-all
effect is, surely, to give the impression of little more than an adventure
tale, and this ill accords, in all conscience, with the basic scientific nature
of the entire project.

It
seems, however, that my companions are intent upon the compilation of this
abstract, and while I will not connive at the solecism by contributing any
lengthy personal “piece,” I will go along with them so far as to inscribe these
few
purely factual notes at this juncture, so as to add some authority to their (if
I may say so) somewhat sentimental lucubrations.

The
facts, then, and
only
the facts, are:

The
duration of the Third Martian Expedition was precisely eleven weeks, four days,
twenty-three hours, thirty-one minutes, calculating from the specially prepared
chronometers with which I had equipped my ship.

Throughout
the journey there were no unexpected developments; I was more than pleased with
the performance of my craft.

The
“turning around” of the rocket (if I may indulge in lay language to suit the
occasion) took place some thirty hours before the moment of landfall; and, like
all else on the journey, went exactly according to plan.

Thus,
we approached the Martian surface without a jar—came quietly to rest almost
precisely on the spot I had already chosen for the event.

As
to the choice of that spot itself, I will say only this, in elucidation of a
matter which perhaps has exercised the more discriminating readers of this compilation:

When
my colleague Roderick Mackellar, in Scotland, succeeded in making contact with
the lost explorers on Mars, he had the foresight (being a scientific man) to
endeavor to discover from MacFarlane the exact whereabouts of his transmitting
station. Unfortunately, as is known, the more scientifically minded of the two
space travelers (Dr. McGillivray) was incapacitated, and MacFarlane himself was
not fully equipped to give Mr. Mackellar the information in as accurate a form
as might have been desirable. However, working from the data he was
intermittently able to supply, and from the observed facts compiled by
Mackellar himself (the times of transmission and reception, the known
opposition of the two planets during these periods, etc.), it had been possible
to form a fairly shrewd idea of the situation of the
Albatross.

It
was from this information I worked when plotting our own course; and I was
fairly confident that the spot I had chosen for landing was, if not the very
spot on which my predecessor’s ship rested, one sufficiently in the vicinity to
make discovery almost certain.

I
may add that as we landed we naturally “kept a lookout” for any signs on the
terrain below—particularly for something in the nature of a “dark-green ridge”
with, perhaps, the gleaming hull of the spaceship in close proximity to it (for
we landed, I should perhaps explain, in daylight).

We
saw no gleam—no sign of the
Albatross
itself.
But
—we
did see, even in the imperfect conditions of the landing (it was extremely
difficult to keep the
Comet
entirely steady as we approached the Martian surface, because of the different
nature of the gravity pull of which, despite my careful calculations, I had had
no previous practical experience)—we did see, may I repeat, a long, an interminably
long line or
ridge
of an unmistakable deep olive-green color stretching across the vast plain
beneath.

When
we came to rest, we were close to a range of mountains—as, indeed, I had
intended. From our ground-level viewpoint the ridge was no longer visible. But,
if it were indeed the mysterious ridge to which reference had been made in the
MacFarlane messages, we knew it lay some distance to the south.

Toward
it, making full use of the protective measures I had had the foresight to carry
with us, we proposed to travel, after the necessary attention to certain
details connected with preparing the
Comet
for
a return journey to Earth—perhaps even a hasty one.

In
the event, as will be discovered in due course, my calculations had been as
nearly accurate as one could hope for in such conditions.

What
had not been foreseen—what no reasonable man
could
have foreseen—was the terrible, the
truly terrible
nature
of the Ridge!

I
thank heaven that we did make all due preparations for a hasty departure in the
Comet
Alas that that departure befell so
soon after our arrival—far, far too soon for any satisfactory scientific
exploration of the planet Mars.

But—
I
shall return!
And when I do I will be equipped at
every point to deal with the unspeakable horrors of those Living Canals, as I
must, as I only
can
call them. It is a subject to which I have given
much thought; and when I feel myself ready to surmount the last intolerable
difficulties—

I SHALL
RETURN!

So,
then, we have followed out the story of that desperate
Red
Journey Back
. For my own part at this stage of the
adventure (J.K.C. now writing), I can only say that back once more in Britain,
I was in a continuous state of almost unbearable suspense. I fear that I made
myself extremely troublesome to the good Roderick Mackellar for, needless to
say, although he was engaged in his further work on the airstrip as an
airstrip, we still continued in our endeavors to use the vast metallic surface
as a means of contact with Mars. Every available moment that either of us could
spare was spent in the small wireless hut beside the main laboratory; and when
we were both engaged elsewhere we still kept the apparatus manned by
trustworthy assistants. Night and day the receiver was switched on in readiness
for possible messages from across the void; at periodic intervals we sent out a
call sign on the beamed transmitter—that ancient code signal which Stephen
MacFarlane and I had used in our boyhoods.

But
the void was empty. Only once—and then perhaps only illusorily—did I hear, or
fancy I heard, a thin remote chattering which might have been Morse. And the
message, if it was one, made little sense: it consisted of two words, received
very imperfectly, with some letters missing, thus:

GUI— —A P—GS

The
only thing I could make of it, after much bewildered thought, was the quite
impossible: “Guinea Pigs.” Plainly, I felt, we had been deceived—had picked up
somehow a cross message from a ship, or, even more probably, from one of the
many amateur radio stations operating all over the globe.

The
nerve-racking months went by—the suspense continued through all the summer. All
I knew—and the knowledge haunted me day and night—was that millions and
millions of miles away two separate groups of my friends were lost and
wandering—if indeed the rescue party had reached Mars at all through the
hazards of interplanetary flight. My friend and cousin MacFarlane, with his
blind, enfeebled companion, McGillivray, were at the mercy of the mysterious
creatures known as the Vivores; and toward them moved the little group of young
people who alone, in all the universe, could save them
 . . .
yet
how? How could only those three save them?

I
learned the truth at last—the fabulous truth, and also, alas, the tragic truth.
There came a day—the events of it to be related in due course—when, more than
six long months after its departure, I learned of the
Comet’s
return. With thankfulness—but also
sorrow—in my heart, I sped to greet my friends. And so, when all the first
flurry of welcome was over, I came to a knowledge of everything that had
befallen.

It
was plain to me, as the various contributions reached me, that in order to do
full justice to the last long part of the adventure, it would be necessary to
change somewhat the method of presentation. The narrative of the Rescue is so
continuous that it would lose much of its flavor and atmosphere split up into
successive viewpoints. I therefore set out to choose one member of the party to
set down, in as detached a manner as possible, the whole strange tale; and,
after some consideration, decided upon Mr. Archibald Keith Borrowdale as the
likeliest to accomplish the task. He had had some previous literary
experience—moreover was, as a scientist (yet perhaps not quite so “scientifically
minded” a scientist as Dr. Kalkenbrenner, if I may say so), more likely to be
able to take up the necessarily impartial point of view.

I
consequently asked Mr. Borrowdale to undertake almost single-handed the telling
of the last part of the story. I am happy to say that he consented. Until the
last chapter of all, therefore—the final summing up—the tale of the Living
Canals of Mars is told by Mr. A. Keith Borrowdale in a continuous narrative,
commencing upon the next page. The one interpolation from another pen has been
kept to a minimum.

For
purposes of dramatic convenience Mr. Borrowdale’s narrative has been split into
chapters: the first of them (Chapter Eight in the over-all pattern of the book,
of course) follows herewith, under the title—

OUR
FIRST STEP when we landed on Mars (as Dr. Kalkenbrenner has already said) was
to set about attaching the prefabricated booster rocket to the under part of
the
Comet
,
so as to be prepared for a departure at any moment. The work was comparatively
simple—every detail had been carefully worked out beforehand; and even allowing
for the extreme haste with which all our final preparations had to be made on
Earth, there were no undue complications.

As
the
Comet
stood on its gigantic tripod undercarriage, extending from the three great fins
at its tail, a secondary and wider entrance hatch was opened in its side,
giving access to what I may call the “hold,” beneath the main living cabin.
From this, a small but powerful derrick lowered the component parts of the
booster, then swung them into position and held them firm for assembly.

While
this work was going forward, the young folk, needless to say, were having the
time of their lives. After the long period of near-imprisonment in the small
cabin of the spaceship, they were like puppies—leaped, skipped and ran with a
complete happy abandon. Katey, I may add, was as delighted as any of them to be
free. Like Maggie, she was being introduced for the first time to the
extraordinary sensation of being almost three times as
strong
(or as light, rather) on Mars as upon
Earth. She went sailing twelve and thirteen feet in the air in huge jumps, and—

“Look—
look
,
Archie,” she cried, as she glided serenely above my head while I worked at the
booster assembly, “what wouldn’t I give to be able to do this back home! I’d
make my fortune as an act at the Palladium! And the
air
! It’s like
bubbly—dear old bubbly!”