The Angry Planet (19 page)

I close this part of my paper
with a reference to the domes in which the Beautiful People lived. As time
passed, and the planet on which they flourished began to die, so that the
winters grew intenser, the Martians had to adjust themselves or perish. One
miraculous day in their history they discovered a remarkable natural phenomenon
among the hills—the event can only be compared in significance to the discovery
of fire in the course of our own human history. The surface of Mars consists of
sand, as we have seen. At certain points among the volcanic hills, the enormous
heat of the subterranean fires instituted a fusion process of the silica in
this loose crystalline soil. In this way a species of glass, hard and vitreous,
was formed (the process of the manufacture of glass on earth will be familiar
enough to most readers for them to perceive how this vast chemical process
operated). In most cases the glass, as it cooled, hardened into lumps—sometimes,
as it overflowed a rocky ridge, into long stalactites—icicles, so to say
(these, sharpened by chipping, as were the old flint weapons of our cave-men,
became the swords and spears of the Beautiful People). In certain places,
however, an interesting thing happened. While the glass was still in a molten
condition, the subterranean fires would burst through the surface in a minor
volcanic eruption. The sudden release of gases blew the molten glass into
gigantic bubbles. And when the gases had spent themselves, and the fires died,
there, shining in the sun, were the huge crystal domes the Martians came to use
as houses—literally as glass-houses—hot-houses.

In building a city, what they
did was to choose a valley or hollow among the hills where some large domes
already existed (in the case of the city we saw, the huge central dome had been
blown on the spot). They then transported, by means of the large trolleys we
have described, as many other smaller domes as they required from the various molding
grounds. Once a dome was in position, they dug, somewhere inside it, a deep
shaft or well. This brought heat from the subterranean fires of Mars into the
domes, and thus they were provided with the means of combating the altering
weather conditions of the planet.

In winter, the Martians stayed
almost all the time inside the domes, emerging only occasionally to feed
(although they had cactus plants for most of the feeding necessary in the domes
already), and to tend the “children” in the warm hill caves. In summer they
moved about quite freely in the open air, as we have seen, retreating into the
domes at night and when they wanted to rest.

4.
Concluding Remarks and
Final Observations.
I am aware of an immense amount of ground still to be
covered. Having talked about the general physical characteristics of the
Martians, I ought to say something of their social and political arrangements.
Alas, there is no space—and, I may also say, I did not have enough time among
the Martians to be able to acquaint myself thoroughly with this immense
subject. As soon as it may be arranged I hope to return to Mars to investigate
fully the many, many aspects of a mode of life so vastly different from our
own.

For the moment it will suffice
to say that the motivating force in a Martian community is The Center, a highly
developed and sensitive creature, seemingly ageless, capable of propagating
himself (vide Mr. Adam’s description of him as having, on top of his stem, male
and female flowers together). He is, as it were, a kind of
Social Conscience
—I
cannot be more specific than this; as I say, I did not have time to go into
this fascinating question thoroughly. He communicates with his people by means
of The Voice—some sort of telepathic force I am unable properly to define. He
has, as advisers, a group of hermaphroditic individuals similar to himself, who
are known as the Wiser Ones. These are, at the same time, the scientists and
the priesthood, so to say. They do all the real thinking for the people—they
control them and keep them informed on all they need to know. The ordinary Martian
can think, but he cannot think really creatively. The Wiser Ones do this for
him—as I have said, they are singularly well-informed about Mars itself and
about the universe in general; that is why we were accepted quite simply among
the Beautiful People as beings from another planet—it did not seem to them
strange that there were such things, and that they had arrived among them. All
they wanted to know was how the journey had been achieved, and something of the
world from which we came. I endeavored to answer these questions to the best of
my ability in the short space of time available to me during our conferences in
the big central dome of the city.

As I say, I would wish to
investigate further among all these things before writing more fully on the
subject—the superstitions and folk-lore of the Martians, if any; their morals;
their religion; their philosophy; their art forms—music (if such a thing is
possible to them) and the visual arts. If I am spared I shall be returning soon
to the scene of our recent adventures, and then I should be in a position to
provide at least some information on these subjects, as far as my limited
abilities will allow.

I conclude with a few remarks
about the other life-species we saw on Mars—the creatures known as the Terrible
Ones. They, too, were plants—they had solved the problem of combating the
elements by living in the vast underground heated caves among the mountains. I
did not have a chance to explore their methods of feeding at first hand, though
I gathered from the Wiser Ones that they were parasitical, like those of the
Beautiful People. My own view is that these creatures, the Terrible Ones, are
descendants of a different species of plant altogether—probably something akin
to our own insect-digesting plants: the Venus Fly Trap and the Upas Tree. This
would account for the huge jaw-like petals which give them the appearance of
having mouths. This would seem to indicate that there was, at one time, some
sort of animal life on Mars. That it no longer exists I am convinced—the jaws
are merely vestigial.

What really interested me about
the Terrible Ones, however, was their wanton enmity to the Beautiful People.
There was no obvious reason why they should wish to destroy them—they did not
require them for food, for example. It was simply that they were full of an
unreasoning malignance—that was as surely a function of their lives as an
equally unreasoning benevolence was a function of the lives of the Beautiful
People. It was an illustration of yet another great principle permeating the
entire universe—a principle impossible to understand other than mystically: the
principle of Good and Evil.

About this, one could write
volumes. My own space, in this brief paper, has been used up—I have intruded on
your patience too long. I leave you now to those who will continue the actual
narrative part of our book—and I do so in the hope that these remarks, sketchy
as they are, will in some degree illuminate what they have to say concerning
the spectacular ending that fate gave our adventure on the Angry Planet.

A Tailpiece to Chapter 9 by
Stephen MacFarlane.
Our period of anxious and impatient waiting came to
an end very suddenly on the ninth evening after the capture of Mike.

We were sitting on the sand
just outside our tent, watching a group of warriors drilling. The Doctor was
writing up his notes, Jacky was mending a tear in one of Paul’s shirts (we had
brought needles and thread in the rocket with us), and Paul and I were
commenting on the military display in front of us. Presently the Doctor looked
up from his writing and called to me:

“I say, Steve, pass me over a
drink, will you—I’m thirsty.”

Lazily I reached over for the
cannikin we used for storing water.

“Hullo,” I said, “it’s empty.
Paul, you must have forgotten to go up to the well to fill it this afternoon.”

“I’m afraid I did,” said Paul. “I
was just going to go, I remember, and then I saw Malu carrying some new swords
over to the big dome, so I gave him a hand instead. I’ll go up now—it won’t
take a moment.”

“I’ll come with you,” I said. “I
could do with a brief stretch-leg before turning in.”

We set off through the city
towards the store cave. When we reached it we set about filling the cannikin—a
slow and complicated process this, since the well oozed so meagerly. We had
almost finished, when suddenly, from quite close at hand, there was a hoarse
shout:

“Paul—Uncle Steve!”

We looked up. Staggering
towards us down the hill-slope from the forest was a tattered and grimy figure.

“My heavens!” I cried, “it’s
Mike! Paul, do you see—it’s Mike!”

There was no doubt about
it—Mike it was; a Mike all scratched and rather pale and haggard-looking, but
still Mike. He staggered up to us, laughing and gasping a little hysterically,
and shook us by the hand.

“Boy, am I glad to see you
both!” he cried, over and over again. “How are the others—how’s Jacky?—and the
good old Doc?”

“They’ll be a lot better for
seeing you,” said Paul with a grin. “What in the name of Pete have you been
doing with yourself? We thought you’d have been killed off twenty times over by
this time!”

“I as good as was,” said Mike
grimly. “Gosh, those things! Listen Uncle Steve, we’ve got to do something, and
we’ve got to do it quickly.”

“We are doing something,” I
said. “We’re almost ready to set off to attack those monsters—there’s only one
more regiment of warriors to come in, and that’s due tomorrow morning.”

“To attack
them!
”
exclaimed Mike. “Uncle Steve—they’re going to attack us! They’re all set for
it—they’ll be on the city in no time—hordes of them!”

His eyes were wide and he
trembled excitedly. I could see he was suffering from strain—was even a little
feverish.

“Listen, Mike,” I said, “don’t
tell us any more just now. Wait till we get down to the city, among the others.
Come on—we’ll give you a hand. You can lean on me—I’ll give you a cuddy-back,
as old McIntosh calls it, if you like.”

He laughed.

“We needn’t go as far as that,”
he said, “but I wouldn’t mind leaning on you—I must say I’m a bit done in. And
if you’ve got anything solid to eat down there, I don’t mind giving it the once-over—I’m
famished.”

Supporting him, we got him down
to the city, where Jacky wept all over again—this time with relief at seeing
him safe. Mike repeated to the Doctor and Malu what he had told me about the
Terrible Ones being about to descend on the city, and those two went off
immediately to report the danger to The Center. Mike, looking better already,
after an immense meal that Jacky set out for him, started to tell us the story
of his adventures.

He talked far into the night,
while all about us the assembled warriors stood alert, waiting for the attack.
The twin moons came up and circled the sky above our heads, and in their light
we saw, on the plateau above the city, the shining, comfortable shape of the
Albatross.

Mike’s story was a strange and
exciting one. You can read it in the next chapter as he wrote it himself after
our return to earth.

(N.B. It says Michael up above
and
everybody knows I really
prefer Mike, but somehow Michael looks better than Mike when it comes to
putting it down on paper like that at the top of a bit of writing, you see. So
I don’t mind it for once.)

Well, now, here goes. I’m no
writer—as a matter of fact I always get low marks for composition at school—and
besides, it takes so long to write a great huge thing like a chapter in a book,
and it hurts your hand after the first three or four pages.

I’ll begin at the point where I
jumped across the hollow to have a whack at old What’s-his-name when he was
getting ready to squash Nuna and break Malu in two. Well, the next thing I knew
was being swung up into the air and then we were over the top of the ridge and
tearing across the plain like mad. There’s no doubt about it we moved at some
speed all right—the Doc and Uncle Steve and Co. just didn’t have a look-in,
even notwithstanding (I asked Jacky about this word and she says it’s all right
to use it here)—notwithstanding the way they could jump about on Mars. I saw
them left right behind as we went tearing over the sand, and then I lost sight
of them altogether, it was so joggly being carried away up in the air. Besides,
I was being held very tight. I felt my head swimming, and then in the end I
lost consciousness altogether.

When I came to, we were among
some hills and had slowed down our pace a bit. I was a bit groggy, I must say—I
was sickish from the joggling and so on. We went along through some trees, and
then we plunged into the mouth of a big cave. It was dark almost immediately,
and very, very warm—there was quite a draught of hot wind coming along in our
faces. We went down-hill for a longish time, and then suddenly it began to get
quite light again and the tunnel opened out into a great big cavern—oh, huge.
There was a sort of twilight in this cavern—I didn’t know where the light was
coming from at first, but I found out later that there were shafts run up from
the roof into the open air, and some light filtered through them. But oh the
heat in this place!—and even worse than the heat was the smell. This cavern was
full of great monsters like the ones that had been in the hollow, and I’m sure
the smell came from them—in fact, I know it did, for any time there were a lot
of the things together there was always this smell. It was a sort of flat,
horrid smell—it was like when you’re walking through damp woods and you stumble
on one of those big ugly yellow toadstool things and it breaks, and then there’s
a sudden nasty smell like this one I’m talking about.