Read The Red Journey Back Online

Authors: John Keir Cross

The Red Journey Back (27 page)

But
he was sustained by his own faith, his own great strength of will. They
conquered all things: he was inspired beyond all normal human ability by his
tremendous purpose. He was able, in his exaltation, to resist Discophora in a
way that neither of us had ever been able to resist before. I, who was with him
in the early days of our subjection, who know the full power of that single
creature in the Canal, I only have any conception of the gigantic effort it
must have cost to reach the spaceship.

He
did reach her—at last he did reach her; and set laboriously to mount within
her, again each step a battle and a conquest. Perhaps, who knows, Discophora
was able to send against him those few of the Terrible Ones who may have
survived our own attack with the flame guns on the plain. If so, he must
somehow have defeated them. Perhaps Malu, armed throughout with his deadly
silica sword, was able to help.

But
whatever befell, they won to the ship as she lay there in the great enclosure.
And so she too approached the moment of her last journey—she who had traveled
so far, accomplished so much: the first ship in all human history ever to reach
the Angry Planet.

She
lay on her underside, flat upon the floor of the extending forest. We had had
no time when, long, long before, we had dragged her across the plain, to erect
beneath her, as we had intended, such an improvised launching ramp as we had
built at the time of her first sojourn on Mars; and it will be recalled that,
unlike the
Comet
, the
Albatross
required a launching ramp from which to leap forward into space.

I
see my friend in the little cabin we both had known so well, had lived in for
so long; and it must have been, this moment, the very moment when we ourselves,
so many, many miles away, were setting forward in the tractor on our journey to
the
Comet
.

What
his thoughts were I have no far knowledge. He had little time, perhaps, for
thought at all, beyond the mighty thought of what he intended to do. Somehow,
through a last incalculable effort of will, he was able to achieve what he and
I had often talked of trying to achieve in our more lucid moments during
captivity—yet had always, in our thralldom, been prevented from achieving.

As
the
Albatross
lay on the forest floor, the forward
tuyère
nozzles
pointed straight toward the marshy lair of the great Brain. In a conflict of
intelligences far, far more bitter in such a moment than anything that we were
experiencing on the plain, my friend reached out his hand to the control lever
which would release a blasting of rocket fuel from those
tuyères
in
the great ship’s prow. He wrenched the lever down; and I hear the immense
explosive rush of sound there must have been as that deadly sword of pure flame
leaped out to scorch and annihilate our enemy. I hear, in nightmare, the shrill
but silent scream of agony which must have filled the minds of our two lost
friends as the monster before them shriveled and perished. I experience, with
them, the great wave of desperate relief which must have swept over them when
at last, after so long, so long, the thralldom ended and the whole vast Canal
before them veritably died at the moment of its mighty Brain’s own death.

And
now there still remained the last bright flaming voyage of the dying ship. They
knew, our two friends knew, as they lingered there before her control panel,
that she would never again plunge into open space: without a launching ramp she
could not. But, in the driving impulse from the great reserves of her fuel-tanks,
she could sear and scorch her way across the very surface of the plain, ripping
herself open in the intolerable friction, destroying herself utterly in a wild out
bursting of explosive effort.

With
Malu again to guide, and in the freedom—the temporary freedom only—from control
(for shortly he would again be subjected to the very concerted influence to
which we, so far away, were being subjected), the master of the spaceship set
to guiding her in a vast sweeping white-hot arc to where he knew the
Comet
lay. He guided her on the plain in
exactly the way in which he was accustomed to guide her in space: by
controlling the jetting force from the various
tuyères
in her
prow, her stern, along her silvery sides.

Within,
as they plunged and slithered forward at a speed beyond all imagining, the heat
must have been an insufferable agony. Such a journey could not last—could not,
could not; and none knew it better than he did. But it could last long
enough—just long enough—and upon that, at the end of all, he counted.

So
then, as I stood by the doorway of the
Comet,
my
eyes upon the vast extending scene below, I saw him at the end of all
indeed—and realized on the instant what his plan from the first had been; as I
have, in this brief final account, described it. My ears were filled with the
great rushing explosion of the
Albatross’
mighty engines in that last great death plunge. I saw her searing fiery track
across the plain—saw her plunge, plunge,
plunge
into the very heart below us of the
deadly intelligences holding us from our own leap into space. She circled in a
sparkling crescent through the growths beneath, ripped almost to pieces at the
last, her hulk incandescent, life within her no longer possible—shriveled and
destroyed as surely as she was shriveling and destroying the pulsing Brains
controlling us.

And
all, all burst at the end, burst up to the very sky in a gigantic rose of flame
mingling with the flame from our own hot blast as the influence broke that held
us back—as the great Brains, screaming, died beneath us and released us. All,
all perished as we soared above the final immense convulsion, as the
Albatross
,
and all within her, shattered to a million white-hot fragments.

My
friend, my friend! I have looked out through many silent nights to that small
dying star where you and your brave companion lie. I shall return—never fear.
Someday, some distant day I shall return; if only to mark, before I die, your
lonely gallant grave.

The End

[1]
Throughout,
I leave the various ambiguous comments from the younger contributors entirely untouched,
since they are inevitably part of their style. The discerning reader will, I
trust, take them with the proverbial pinch of salt.—Edito
r

[2]
Thanks,
pal! What about Jacky’s freckles? And your ears stick out, if I may say
so!—M.S.

[3]
As,
indeed, are all subsequent chapters until further notification.—Ed.

[5]
For
a description of the baffling “Yellow Cloud” phenomena as seen from Earth, see
the authoritative monograph
The Planet Mars
by the distinguished French
savant,
Gérard de Vaucouleurs, D.Sc., F.R.A.S., Attaché de
Recherches à l’Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris
. The
monograph was published by Faber and Faber Ltd., London, 1950, in a translation
by Patrick A. Moore, F.R.A.S., of the British Interplanetary Society.

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