The Red Journey Back (4 page)

He had plainly
recovered consciousness a little before I had—had already pulled himself
forward to the instrument panel. Through the perspex of the automatic oxygen
mask which had been pumping life into our lungs during our period of
helplessness, I saw his eyes in a bright gleam of excitement—no doubt a
lingering triumph comparable to my own. He watched the instrument panel
closely—and suddenly, with a swift energy, threw over the small lever which
would release the secondary fuel . . . then fell back again
himself on the absorbent mattress.

I closed my
eyes—and steeled myself for the second bout of brief unconsciousness. A
powerful, dangerous-seeming shuddering ran through all the ship. You will know,
of course, the great principle on which the
Albatross
operated. To achieve the fabulous speed necessary to escape from Earth’s
gravity pull, so much power would be required as to strike dead in the very
moment of take-off any human travelers in the spaceship—to say nothing of
subjecting the outer envelope of the rocket itself to an intolerable friction
from the atmosphere belt. The Doctor had therefore designed two separate sets
of
tuyères
to come into
operation—two separate types of fuel were used. The first was a highly
concentrated essence of acetylene gas to effect the initial great “leap” at a
speed powerful enough to remove us from Earth, but not so powerful as to
destroy life in the travelers—only to render them unconscious, as I have
described it. Then, at some distance from the Earth’s surface, when
everything—including the human body—is very much lighter, a second fuel was
touched off, a fuel of the Doctor’s own development (an adaptation, as I
understand it, of the highly dangerous atomic hydrogen). By the time the Earth’s
atmosphere had been left behind, at a distance of some 200 miles from the
surface, the total desired speed could be reached without discomfort—a speed
well above the pull of gravity (seven miles per second). At this point the
motors could be shut off altogether, leaving the rocket to go on traveling for
as long as was necessary—until, in short, the
tuyères
had to be
brought into operation again either for steering or braking purposes.

The second
bout of black-out was shorter than the first—was hardly more than a momentary
swimming giddiness, coupled with a bewildering sense of utter lightness. By the
time it had passed it was possible for us both to rise from the sorbo
mattresses—indeed, it was almost impossible for us
not
to rise from
them!—For by this time we were virtually without weight—could float in the
little living cabin in any direction in which we cared to push ourselves—had to
contrive all movement by means of foot straps and magnetic boots.

And even as I
did float clear of the mattress—grabbed chucklingly at Doctor Mac to steady
myself, thence levering my way to the “floor” and a point of comparative
stability—even at that moment I saw (in my mind’s eye only, of course) the
floating, astonished shapes of the three young people who had accompanied us on
the first voyage. I glanced at the massive metal door of the food store in
which they had concealed themselves on that occasion—half expected it to waver
open as it had done then and the three young bodies come drifting, plunging,
soaring toward me! But on the second Martian flight of the good ship
Albatross
there were no stowaways—we had checked on that most
carefully before our departure. Paul, Jacqueline and Michael were already many
hundreds of miles away from us—somewhere beyond the milky mistiness we could
see through the portholes. And so the first amused thought was followed by the
wistful reaction: would we ever see our three first traveling companions
again?—would we ourselves ever return through the white milky mist?—would we
even reach the lost planet toward which we aimed . . . ?

I took off the
oxygen mask—suffered a moment’s sense of suffocation as my lungs adjusted
themselves to breathing in the synthetically air-filled cabin.

“We’ve done
it, Mac,” I gasped—articulating with difficulty at first as my “weightless”
tongue seemed to waver helplessly in my mouth. “We’ve done it, heaven be
praised!”

He nodded
brightly, maskless himself now; then turned his attention once more to the
control panel and pushed forward the lever to shut off all means of mechanical
propulsion.

And instantly
there was silence—a silence so intense as for a moment to seem nightmarish. We
traveled at a speed far, far beyond that of gravity; yet in the little close
cabin of the spaceship it was as if everything was still, more still and
tranquil than it is possible to describe. (I have always believed that we, on
Earth, even in our quietest moments, are strangely aware, deep within
ourselves, of the constant swift movement of the great globe which we inhabit.
Now, in the rocket, it was as if that very knowledge had gone, so that the
stillness and silence were beyond all comparison to you who have never left
your mother world. . . .)

Behind—there
are, of course, no directions in space, and so I use such terms as “before” and
“behind” only comparatively—behind, the milky mistiness had resolved and
seemingly dispersed. It was as if there hung in the sky above us a gigantic
relief map in brilliant color, in startling greens and blues, vivid
yellows
 . . . a map constantly
shrinking, elongating, flattening itself out as if reflected in a huge
distorting mirror: a map first—recognizably—of Scotland, the ragged West Coast
outflung into the green-blue sea, the Lion’s Head of the far north cut off from
the main body by the straight silver knife line of the Caledonian Canal . . .
then, later, as the whole curving surface seemed to wheel and steady itself, a
map of the whole of Britain, the whole of Europe as more and more recognizable
outlines came into view: then Norway, the white gleam of Greenland, the
brilliant sweep of northern Canada—the immense but shrinking bulk of the United
States (New York as a dark vague clustering at the start, growing smaller and
smaller to a veritable pin point and lost at last altogether in the whole
sparkling panorama of the curving globe) . . . all, all merged
and flowed to a blinding, moonlike phosphorescence, a great ball hung in the
dark luminous velvet of the void. . . .

I had seen it
all before—have attempted to describe it before; yet I was awed, moved to very
tears by the gigantic spectacle all over again.
What should such creatures as I
do, crawling between heaven and earth?
What signified now all
human pride and wretchedness?

Far, far
beyond, farther and still farther from the huge stark orb of the ever-burning
sun—one little star among the myriads clustering brilliantly against the
pall—lay the world we sought to revisit. As we went on into space, all thoughts
of Earth herself were gradually left behind—we thought only of the marvels that
perhaps were waiting for us, the old friends and enemies from our first brief
sojourn whom perhaps we would re-encounter, the new mysteries to be explored in
those remoter corners of the Angry Planet we had not had time to reach.

We remembered
the last great battle between the Beautiful People and the Terrible Ones—the
slim shapes of the delicate plant people overwhelmed under the brutish attack
of their subterranean enemies—who were also a species of plant, according to
Dr. McGillivray’s theory, but of a different nature: squat and
fungoid—descendants, he believed, of an earlier group of carnivorous plants
which had flourished in the long-dead days when Mars had supported animal as
well as vegetable life.

We remembered
the violence of the great volcanic eruption and earthquake which had forced us
to leave the battlefield ourselves on our first Martian visit, lest the
Albatross
be swamped by the seething lava, be shattered by the
falling red-hot boulders from the blazing mountain above us. . . .
We remembered it all indeed—the crumpling, melting domes of the immense glass
bubble houses in which the Beautiful People passed the cold Martian nights and
long bitter winters; the final mortal duel between the leaders of the two great
species—the creature we knew as the Center slicing with his long crystalline
sword at the vestigial jaws of the malignant chief of the Terrible Ones; above
all, the last heroic gesture of Malu, our first and last friend in all that
alien world, as he leaped to save Mike Malone from destruction at the very
moment of the take-off.

His “voice”
had come to us through the raging din of conflict—that thin strange “sound” we
heard within our very minds as a manifestation of the telepathic communication
we had formed with the Martians (so that creatures of all languages, or even
none, could understand each other on the dying planet—the very static plants on
the red sandy plains themselves, in some primitive measure).

“Farewell,
strangers!” So Malu’s thoughts had come into us in that last moment. “Farewell—and
good journey! Remember Malu the Warrior—Malu the Tall, Prince of the Beautiful
People. . . .”

His slender
shape had fallen back then—back to the edge of the saucer which seethed with
the lava. He had moved swiftly around on the long rootlike tendrils at the base
of his trunk by which the plant people achieved movement—had swung up in his
side tendrils the great silica sword which that day had wrought such havoc in
the ranks of the Terrible
Ones.
Our last glimpse of him had been of two more of the monsters advancing toward
him, their great white crouching shapes aglow from the flames surrounding.

Had
he survived? Would we see him again?—now?—at the end of our new journey?

So
we wondered as the days sped on—and yet there were no “days” only such
calculations of days as we were able to make from the revolutions of the
rapidly diminishing sphere which had been our world and on which, hard as it
was to believe, our friends, our enemies, our millions of human brothers and
sisters labored, fought, died, were happy or miserable—ate, drank and were
merry (at least we knew that that was what the indomitable young Mike Malone
was doing—eating and being merry!).

Throughout
the journey, as we came so closely into contact in the small cabin of the
Albatross, I
found myself nearer to Andrew
McGillivray as a person than I had ever been before. We had shared much
adventure in the past, it is true; but then we had been accompanied by Jacky
and the others. Now, in our joint sense of exile so many millions of miles away
from all we had ever counted as home, we came to know each other in a way that
few men do. He still was young, for one who had achieved so much. His
mind was swift
and alert, but gentle and with much wisdom in it. He was brave: a man of action
and decision when the occasion required, yet reserved and modest—a dreamer as
well as a warrior. And I choose the word quite deliberately: he was indeed a
warrior—a veritable crusader, his lofty ambitions realized as we sped across
the void. He was a leader indeed for such an enterprise as we were now engaged
in—the stuff of which great discoverers have always been made.

So we
traveled. The world receded—grew to as tiny a pin point of light as Mars had
been at the journey’s beginning. The smaller planet, in its turn, waxed as
Earth waned—grew to a diminutive red disc, then recognizably became a sphere.
As we drew closer, we saw the two small moons, Phobos and Deimos, each barely
more than ten miles in diameter, circling rapidly around it, Phobos in some
seven hours, Deimos in a little over thirty—and Phobos, the closer of the two,
busily engaged in its circuit in an opposite direction from its twin, so that
it rose in the west and set in the east.