The Angry Planet (2 page)

To cut a long story short, unexpected financial help
came in the form of a legacy left to Dr. McGillivray by an uncle of his in
America. We were overjoyed. The Doctor immediately gave up his job—he had been
engaged in research work at Aberdeen University—and took a big house near
Pitlochry, in Perthshire, as a workshop and experiment center. I, as it
happened, had a smallish house near Pitlochry myself, where I used to retire
when I had any writing to do. So I was able to see a great deal of the
Doctor—indeed, I spent most of my time with him, tinkering in the laboratory,
trying to understand the vast and endless formulas he worked at in his study,
talking and dreaming far into the night.

Eventually, a little more than a year ago, the Doctor
announced to me that he had solved the fuel problem. I shall never forget his
face as he confronted me over one of the immense retorts that crowded out the
laboratory. It was evening, I remember—an evening in late autumn. The mists
were over the high hills all round the house, but above the hills the sky was
clear and bright. The Doctor’s eyes were shining—it was almost as if there were
tears in them—tears of sheer triumph. He stood there in his laboratory
overalls, trembling a little from excitement, but very erect and dignified.

“I’ve done it, Steve,” he said, in a low voice. “By
heaven, man, I’ve done it! There’s nothing to stop us now—we can go anywhere,
anywhere!”

I thrilled to the depths. I listened to his breathless
explanation, understanding only in part what he was telling me about the fuel.
When he had finished I said:

“Mac—what are you going to do with it? How are you
going to give it to the world—and when are you going to give it to the world?”

“Not yet, Steve,” he said, after a pause, “not for a
little while yet. We’ve got to be sure. Oh, I know the world! It’s no use
presenting it with theories, however perfect. It’s got to be confronted with
the
fait accompli
—it’s got to see a thing done!”

“Mac—you mean—?”

“I mean, Steve, that you and I—only us two—are going
on a journey! As soon as we can get things ready, well set off into space—to
prove that this thing of mine works. I shall leave behind, when we go, a sealed
envelope containing all our plans and formula, both for the ship and the fuel,
with instructions that it is to be opened and the papers examined if we are not
back by a certain date—that will show the world what we have attempted, at any
rate.
 . . .
Are you willing to come, Steve? I can’t promise you
anything, you know—this may be no more than a particularly spectacular way of
committing suicide!
 . . .
”

I looked at him for a long time in silence. My heart
was beating strongly and I felt prickles—tremors—running over my spine. I
moistened my lips.

“Mac—where are we going? The moon?”

He shook his head and raised his arm to point through
the huge window of the laboratory to where, low down on the horizon, one star
twinkled unsteadily, its color an unmistakable red, even to the naked eye.

“Mars!” I gasped.

“Yes, Mars! It is the one planet above all others that
has excited and intrigued me since ever I first thought of this whole wild
idea. It’s the nearest of the planets, and it’s the one, as you know, most
likely to have life on it.”

“You know what they call it,” I said, “—the Angry
Planet.
 . . .
Mac, has it struck you that even if we do get there
safely—if we reach
it—we
 . . .
we mightn’t come back! We’ve no idea of what we may
find. The creatures on it—if there are any—might be monsters
—
might
tear us to pieces!
 . . .
”

“I’ve thought of all that,” he said quietly. “I’ve
thought of almost everything. I go because I wish to prove that my rocket will
work, and because I am curious, as a scientist, to know what sort of life there
may be on other planets besides the earth. I want you to come, Steve, because
you’re a writer—because you will be able to put down, in a way that I never
could, something of what we may see. And I want you to come, too, because you
are my friend, and have helped and encouraged me all along in my experiments.
What do you say? Do we go to Mars?”

I looked at him steadily, then held out my hand.

“We go to Mars;” I said.

We both turned and looked through the window again at
the small, winking red eye of the Angry Planet, so many millions of miles away.
 . . .

Well, there it was. That is what we decided that
autumn evening at Pitlochry. And thereafter began a period of intense activity.
Endless arrangements had to be made, the rocket had to be built and equipped,
every possible contingency had to be foreseen and accounted for.

Above all, we wanted the whole affair kept secret—publicity
would be uncomfortable, and a hindrance. The Doctor had a few skilled
laboratory assistants, and they helped us with the construction of the rocket
itself—the
Albatross
, as the Doctor decided to call it; because, as he
explained, it was a name full of the suggestion of voyages into strange and
uncharted seas—it was associated with the Ancient Mariner, and we, heaven
knows, were the most Modern of Mariners! The assistants worked to the Doctor’s
specifications, and had no idea that they were building anything as fantastic
as a real space-ship—to them, it was just another rocket—such a rocket as they
had made a hundred times for the Doctor, only bigger. They knew he was
experimenting with rockets, and, if truth be told, regarded him, I believe, as
not much more than an amiable crank. As long as their wages were paid—and they
were, most royally—that was all they cared about.

We had reckoned that the work would take about a year
to complete, but we toiled so hard, and were so inspired by our enthusiasm,
that everything was ready, except for a few last touches, at the end of nine
months—that is, at the beginning of this last summer. That was the position
when, unexpectedly, at my cottage at Pitlochry, I got a letter from my married
sister in London.

I will not take up space by quoting the letter in
full—my sister was a garrulous woman—indeed, as the mother of Mike Malone, how
could she have been otherwise? The main drift of it all was that her
husband—some sort of big business man—was off suddenly on a special mission to
South America—very important—and wanted her to go with him. Now, as it
happened, her sister-in-law, who lived in Dorset somewhere, had fallen ill, and
had asked my sister (her name was Marian, by the way) to look after her two
children for a time at her house in London. So there were the children—all
three of them—with nowhere to go. “And it struck me, darling Steve” (wrote
Marian), “that it would be a grand and glorious idea to send them up to you in
Pitlochry for a month or two. There you are, all alone in that house of yours,
doing nothing else but writing (or whatever it is you do—I never have really
known). It will be the very breath of life to you to have young people about
the place. They’re an absolutely delightful trio—Paul and Jacqueline (Margaret’s
children) are fourteen and twelve respectively, and my Mike—whom you haven’t
seen for two years, because you never deign to visit us, you old hermit—is
eleven. They will be no trouble at all—Jacqueline, in fact, will be able to
help your housekeeper with the chores—that is, if you’ve got a housekeeper at
all: I wouldn’t put it past you to do all your own catering, like the crank you
are, and live on kippers and bread and cheese and endless bottles of beer. Do
be a gem, Steve, and say you will have the children. I had planned to take them
all down to Bournemouth or somewhere, but that is out of the question now that
Arthur insists on my going out to South America with him—he says it’s very
important that I should, from the social point of view and all that sort of
thing—you know how it is, dining with the wife of the firm’s Chilean
representative, etc., etc. (or is Chile not in South America?—I never know).
The poor things—the children, not the Chilean representative and his wife—will
be very very disappointed if they don’t get a holiday, so do, do, do, Steve,
say you will have them—I know they’d adore running about in the heather up
there—it will make them very hardy and they’d simply
love
meeting the
quaint people and hearing bagpipes and climbing mountains, etc.
 . . .
” Thus Marian rambled on, for page after page. She finished with
something quite fantastically typical: “I have booked sleepers for the children
next Friday, so they should be with you on Saturday, i.e., a week to-day. I do
hope it will be all right. I shall send you some cards from the Argentine (if
that’s in South America as well as Chile). Your affectionate sister. Love and
kisses. Marian. P.S.—Remember to see that Mike changes his socks if he gets wet
in any of the bogs and things up there. P.P.S.—Never address him as Michael—he
thinks it’s girlish (I called him after Michael in Peter Pan, but he hates
Peter Pan). He just likes plain Mike.”

I simply did not know what to do about this letter. In
one sense—because of the rocket, and the secrecy with which we had surrounded
it—I did not want children running about the place. Yet there was no doubt I
liked children, and I could not but agree with Marian that it would be a great
pity for these three if they did not get a holiday after they had been promised
one. After all, although the
Albatross
was finished and ready for the
flight, the Doctor and I had not proposed setting off for some months. This
meant that I was in a generally impatient mood, with nothing very concrete to
do: I argued with myself that it would occupy my mind during the last weeks to
have young companions about me. With care, the secret of the rocket could be
kept from them, and they would be safely back in England and out of the way
before the Doctor and I made the flight in the
Albatross
.

To crown all, Marian had said that the children were
arriving on Saturday morning. It was Wednesday before her letter reached me at
Pitlochry. There was hardly enough time to put the whole thing off without
causing grievous disappointments. And so, in the end, on the Thursday, I wired
to Marian:

“O.K. for children to stay. Will meet them Pitlochry
station Saturday morning. Love to the Chilean representative and wife. Steve.”

The children came. They came not only to Perthshire,
but, as the world knows, with me and the Doctor to Mars!

This introductory chapter has turned out to be longer
than I had intended it to be. I would bring it to a quick end now, but there is
one thing it strikes me I must explain, and that is why the Doctor and I set
out on our adventure while the children were still in Scotland, thus making it
possible for them to stow away with us on the
Albatross
.

One evening, about a week after the arrival of the
children at Pitlochry, I went up to have a chat with the Doctor at his
laboratory. I found him greatly agitated, pacing backwards and forwards among
the apparatus with a scientific journal rolled up angrily in his hands.

“Why, Mac,” I cried, “what’s the matter? You look
furious.”

“I am furious,” he barked, stopping in his pacing and
confronting me. “Look at this, Steve—just look at it!”

He thrust the rolled-up journal into my hands. While I
glanced through the article he indicated in bewilderment, not understanding in
any detail the quaint farrago of symbols and algebraic signs it contained, he
stormed on:

“Do you realize what it means, Steve? Kalkenbrenner’s
on the track—Kalkenbrenner of Chicago, you’re bound to have heard of him. He’s
been doing some rocket experimenting for years—at one time I even had
correspondence with him about an improved design in
tuyères
he was
developing. And now, as you can see from that, he’s busy along the same lines
as I have been on the question of fuel—judging by that article he might even
hit on my own principle at any moment. It’s monstrous—monstrous!”

“My dear Mac,” I remonstrated, “what will it matter if
he does? It will only mean that you’ll have confirmation that your idea is a
good one.”

“What will it matter?” he cried. “What will it
matter
?
My dear Steve, where is your soul? Doesn’t it mean anything to you that we
should be first in the field? Haven’t you any sense of the prestige of being
one of the first men to leave the earth and go to another planet? If
Kalkenbrenner does find my fuel principle his next step is obvious—he’ll do
what we have done and build a rocket—and set off to make a flight in it.
 . . .
No, Steve, my boy, there’s only one thing that all this means—it means
that instead of waiting till our original date, you and I are setting off as
soon as we can—to-morrow if it can be arranged—in any case, no later than the
beginning of next week.”

“Mac,” I gasped, after a moment of dazed silence, “we
couldn’t—it’s impossible! I mean—think of all those calculations of ours. You
know as well as I do that we chose our original date because the orbits of
earth and Mars brought the two planets to a suitable relationship for the
flight at that time.”

“I know that,” he said. “But look here, Steve, I’ve
been revising the calculations.” He waved to an immense sheet of paper on the
laboratory table which was covered with diagrams and equational calculations. “If
we set out now, instead of three months hence, there’s very little difference in
the distance between us and Mars. As you know, Mars is 35 million miles away
from us at her nearest, and something like 265 million miles away from us when
her orbit takes her to the other side of the sun. She revolves in an orbit
outside
ours, don’t forget. In a quarter of a year the arc of her orbit in
relation to ours would place her the same distance from us, only on
the
other side of us!
It’s merely a matter of changing the direction of the
rocket and adjusting one or two of the instruments—we can do that in a couple
of hours. The only thing is—,” and he looked at me solemnly, “we daren’t wait
too long—as I say, we must be off sometime between now and the beginning of
next week.”