The Red Journey Back (3 page)

The air—the
still quiet air of that desolate corner of our own revolving globe—
was
full of messages: from a man lost far in space, 35,000,000 miles away! The
thought was enormous—too enormous to be grasped in that first flash of half-instinctive
understanding: the coincidence was vast—too vast . . .

But—it had
happened!—the coincidence that I, of all Earth’s millions, should be there, at
that one spot where contact with Mars was freakishly possible. It had happened
indeed; and from its happening I came to a knowledge of what had befallen my
two lost friends on that “Red Journey Back” of theirs. . . .

The first
Martian message, as I have said, reached me on a hot summer afternoon in the
year 19—. The last came some two months later. And it was that final message
which spurred us all to desperate action—which took the three young people of
the Angry Planet adventure back across space. For the last message ran:

“Save us—in
heaven’s name try to save McGillivray and me from
them
—from . . .”
(message broken—an angry wave of bad reception—a pause—then finally:) “The
children . . . There is only one way in which you
can
save us. . . . Bring the children—somehow bring the children!
Paul and Jacqueline and Michael . . . Ask no questions—no time,
no time to answer; but
bring those three to Mars or we are lost
 . . . 
!”

So the new
adventure began, then; but before it did, another adventure had almost ended:
the adventure of MacFarlane and McGillivray on their own second flight to the
Angry Planet. It is described in the next few chapters—but I must first, I
think, in bringing this personal contribution to a close, sketch out as briefly
as possible the rapid sequence of events following that initial moment of
contact on the Ayrshire coast.

The excitement
among us, of course, was immense. With the utmost delicacy we tuned and retuned
the set—until long after dusk had fallen, when we worked on by the light of
flares. When we removed the receiver from the airstrip the messages ceased;
when we tried replacing the receiver on other parts of the runway, they came
back in varying degrees of strength. On that first occasion the best reception
was achieved on a spot some two yards to the west (nearer the sea) than the
original point of contact.

Even then it
must be said that the messages were desperately indistinct—a few isolated words
and phrases mingling with the music which still continued from the small
Continental station. We made out words like: “. . . establish
contact . . . find . . . try to communicate . . .”
Once, startlingly clear, there was the phrase: “. . . find John
Keir Cross . . . author . . . tell him, tell him . . .”
And at periodic intervals there was repeated the cryptic call-sign which I have
mentioned—the one index we had at this stage that the whole business was not a
hoax.

The messages
stopped abruptly just after eight o’clock; and from the few fragments coherently
received before the cessation, we were able to gather that the sender would
transmit again two days following at the same time and for the same period—from
“six until eight”—and the curious postscript phrase thereafter: “Earth time,
British Summer Time, as far as we are able to calculate it here.”

We
were stunned—utterly dazed indeed as we stood there regarding each other in the
yellow flare light. Both Archie and Mackellar were believers in the previous
history of McGillivray and MacFarlane; and it was the inventor who cried, “Depend
upon it—if it’s the last thing I do we explore the thing further! We can
research, Archie—you and I both. If it can work one way it can work the other!
We can improve the reception—we can let MacFarlane know that he has established
contact and find out how he is transmitting—and so perfect our own methods.
Whatever happens we’ll pursue this thing to the end!”

And
they did. When I returned from my broadcast in Edinburgh, I found that my two
technical friends had already devoted much time to the problem—were confident
that the reception the following night would be improved. Alas for our hopes!
On that occasion, although we placed and replaced the receiving apparatus on
various parts of the runway, results were poor: at only one moment was there
any definite sign that MacFarlane was transmitting as he had promised, and even
then the messages were broken repetitions of what we had heard on the first
occasion.

But
Mackellar and Archie continued their experiments. We enlisted the help of the
friend who had made the portable for me—found out from him something of the
composition of the metallic sub
stance of its casing. We established a
small secondary laboratory close to the runway, devoted only to research work
on the radio problem. We made contact with the Continental station using the
original wave band we had tuned to and persuaded them to stay off the air for
brief periods during the hours mentioned by MacFarlane in his messages as
forthcoming transmission hours.

And gradually,
as the days went on, we achieved success. It will be known, of course, even to
those of you not deeply versed in radio mechanics, that Katey’s original idea
was quite wrong: the reception we achieved had little to do with the actual
size of the airstrip aerial. It was not only because of its sheer
dimension
that we obtained results, but because of its particular composition in relation
to the composition of the smaller receiving aerial in the original portable
set—that, and the fact that it was an exposed and directional surface (moved by
the very rotation of the Earth) of some area, capable, therefore, of receiving
beam transmission with a greater likelihood of success, over such enormous
distances, than a smaller but equally powerful aerial. (I am sorry if this
seems muddled—it may even be scientifically inaccurate in my attempt to put it
all into lay language! The truth is that I must plead indulgence in being
lamentably inexpert at any kind of technical explanation. Readers who are
curious about this and other technical aspects of the experiments may find
enlightenment in the full scientific account of them now being prepared by
Mackellar himself, with Archie Borrowdale’s assistance.

In the end, we
succeeded in isolating the Martian messages. We built a transmitter with which
(through the airstrip again) we hoped to make reverse contact; and toward eight
o’clock one magic evening, almost three weeks after the first freak reception,
there came one excited chattering sentence in Morse across the vastnesses of
space to proclaim that MacFarlane knew, at last, that his own long patient
endeavor had met with success—that we could receive him, could converse with
him. . . .

In the next
few days we went from strength to strength. It was possible now to arrange more
convenient times for communication; and in periods ranging from an hour to two
hours at a stretch, and mostly in the early mornings, we “spoke” from world to
world. From first to last—and again for technical reasons which I am not
competent to describe—communication from MacFarlane to us was clearer than it
ever was from us to MacFarlane: he told us that he could hear us only
imperfectly, even at the best of times—enough only to comprehend that we were
listening and had understood his own communications.

Whatever all
the final scientific judgments and conclusions, I only know, myself, that we
established beyond every shadow of doubt that the Martian messages were
genuine—I was convinced of it myself from a hundred and one small evidences
long, long before our rescue expedition set out across space and found
confirmation in the shape of MacFarlane and McGillivray themselves.

I know only
that, indeed; and that as the weeks went by in the remote small hut beside the
airstrip, we gradually pieced together the narrative which follows in the next
chapter. Katey Hogarth, who once had studied shorthand-typing before embarking
on a stage career, sat solemnly by our sides through the hours, noting down and
transcribing every word and phrase which reached us—gave up all her
professional engagements to do so.

“I was in at
the birth,” she announced grimly, on one occasion when Archie commented on her
pale looks after many, many sleepless nights. “I was in at the birth, my boy,
and I’ll be in at the death or my name isn’t Katey Hogarth!”

She hardly
knew how right she was!

So, then, I
make my own bow, with apologies for having taken up so much time and space with
what is, after all, no more than a prelude to the main adventure, although
interesting enough, I hope, in its own right. Apart from an occasional
editorial comment and some words of final summing up when all the tale is told,
I pass the task of authorship to other hands.

May I say
only, as a concluding comment, that although in due course MacFarlane himself
worked over and even rewrote the chronicle built by Katey, I reproduce it here,
in Chapter Two, almost exactly as it was revealed to us in the little hut in
Ayrshire before there was any thought of a possible rescue expedition.

The
Red Journey Back,
then; how it was achieved and the strange creatures encountered at its end;
among them—

Old
Jellybags! I told you—just wait!—M.M.

Once more unto
the breach, dear friends, once more!—

—ONCE MORE
INDEED: once more unto the breach—the vast eternal breach of outer space
itself!

As we had
experienced it twice before (less powerfully on the return from Mars, because
of the smaller gravity pull), my companion and I felt the swift helpless plunge
into blacked-out unconsciousness as the powerful rocket jets—the
tuyères
—of the
improved
Albatross
screamed into action that day long ago, when we left earth for the second time.

And as the
intolerable pressure eased, as I instinctively adjusted myself to the violent
rush of speed which had forced the black-out, and swam back to life through a
red throbbing of pain, it was to find myself exulting in a wild triumph. We had
proved, again we had proved the splendor of Andrew McGillivray’s achievement in
designing the gleaming
Albatross
—we had demonstrated to a
doubting world that man could leave the very world, release himself forever
from its bonds. And if the world itself knew nothing of the occasion, that
somehow intensified the triumph’s savor!

To a casual
passer-by, a wanderer in the Pitlochry hills that day, it would have seemed as
if the shining fishlike shape of the great projectile had poised itself for a
moment above the launching ramp in the stockade near Dr. McGillivray’s
house—had lingered tremblingly, spouting fierce fire; and then had vanished
into the empyrean in a dispersing trail of white vapor raggedly drifting across
the bright summer scene. With no other trace than that thin cloud, we were
gone. Behind—already far, far behind—were all bitternesses, all jealousies, all
unworthy doubts; before us the deep blue-black immensity of the void where all
human weakness—all human strength and glory, even—dwindle to meaninglessness . . . !

As this great
thought smoothed away the unworthiness of my first sense of triumph, I lay
languidly on the soft mattress which had protected me from the immense first
shock of the start-off and watched McGillivray at work.