The Red Journey Back (18 page)

There
was a moment, an empty moment when something seemed to encircle us all—again
nothing tangible: a sense, a veritable breath of menace. The two men facing us
seemed to hesitate. The smiles for an instant left their strained faces—on Dr.
McGillivray’s face particularly there was a fleeting expression of
 . . .
what?—of suffering, perhaps, of intense concentration. But it passed, and both
were smiling again—smiling and smiling.

“It’s
nothing, Miss Hogarth,” said MacFarlane smoothly, “nothing at all. We can very
easily explain. You took us all rather too seriously, perhaps—”

“Too
seriously
?” (Katey again—and her voice now openly impatient, even
indignant.) “You mean it was a joke—it was all some kind of
joke
?”

“Well,
perhaps, perhaps. A kind of joke, perhaps.”

It
was too much indeed. It was absurd, impossible. MacFarlane still smiled,
shaking his head a little, his eyes round and bland. A joke—after all we had
experienced! A
joke
!

In
the immensity of my bewilderment I heard Dr. Kalkenbrenner’s voice—and it was
suddenly quiet, suddenly quiet and authoritative.

“Mr.
MacFarlane, you will forgive us if we seem a little strained and impatient at
this curious welcome. We have dared much, sir—from the moment your messages
were received, we have dared much. We have many questions to ask—many
explanations must indeed be made. Will you come with us now—back across the
plain to my own ship? Perhaps you are a little overwrought—a little distracted
after all you have gone through yourselves. If the danger you mentioned, has
passed, as it seems to have—”

McGillivray
interrupted, his voice now slow and somber, the expression of concentration
once more fleetingly across his face.

“No.
No—we
 . . .
we do
not want to come. Not yet. Not
 . . .
yet.”

He
struggled for a moment for words—struggled strangely.

“Come
 . . .
come
with us instead. Come into the rocket. Come in with us.” (This last with the
words out-spaced and ponderous.)

We
looked at each other in dismay. His tone was so charged with—with pleading,
almost. There was something desperately wrong indeed. I glanced at MacFarlane.
For a moment he seemed to hesitate again.

“No—no,”
he began. “Not after all—not into—” He broke off, his features working. Then he
added, with a sudden irrelevant brightness, “Yes, all right! But you haven’t,
over there—” with a wave of the hand to the tractor, “—you haven’t, I say, any
 . . .
chocolate, perhaps? —something like that—something from Earth? You see we haven’t
tasted anything of the kind for so long, so long
 . . .
”

His
voice trailed away forlornly—yet he still smiled. It was the final absurdity:
chocolate, at such a moment! Katey, with an expression of anger and even
contempt through the kalspex, strode rapidly across to the tractor for some
slabs of the candy which indeed we had stored there; and Maggie trotted along
to help her. Meanwhile, we others were going forward toward the short ladder
which led up to the entrance hatch in the side of the
Albatross
above. Dr. McGillivray groped
blindly, and it was Jacky who stepped forward and set his hand upon the metal
rail. One by one, in a daze of bewilderment, we mounted.

We
reached the top—we entered. I saw the little cabin, so familiar to me from
descriptions, in which the children and the two strange men now confronting us
had made the first Martian flight so long before.

As
we entered, it was to see Dr. McGillivray standing in an attitude of curious
abstraction. MacFarlane stood by the inner metal door of the entrance hatch—we
all filed past him into the cabin. Below, I was aware of Katey and Maggie
approaching from the tractor toward the ladder’s foot.

There
was a moment’s silence again. My eyes were on McGillivray. I saw a sudden sweat
upon his brow—I saw his face in a torment.

Once
more nightmare seemed to fill the atmosphere surrounding. I had an intense impression
of danger; at last, and overpoweringly, of real danger.

And
on the instant the nightmare seemed to mount to a climax and burst upon
us—menace and terror swirled all around. I heard, first, a sudden strange cry
from Jacqueline:

“Of
course! I knew, I
knew
there was something wrong! Malu—
where is
Malu
?”

It
was as if the words were some kind of signal. Looking back, I feel I can hardly
recollect the true sequence of events in that crowding, desperate moment. I was
aware of a swift movement behind me—a high gasp of effort from MacFarlane; and
with a cry he slammed shut the great metal door of the entrance hatch.

Simultaneously
Dr. McGillivray, still confronting us, contorted his whole frail body—seemed
gripped by an extreme biting agony. His voice rang out—differently now, clearly
and with a desperate conviction in it:

“In
God’s name believe nothing, nothing we have said! Bind us—restrain us!—do
nothing, nothing we tell you to do! It is false,
all false
!”

He
fell back, cowering against the wall of the cabin—yet still blindly raised his
hand and groped for the handle of a doorway above his head—the doorway, as we
subsequently discovered, of the small food store in which the young people had
once concealed themselves.

It
swung open—the doorway swung open as McGillivray, after the gigantic effort,
slithered sideways and collapsed. Within, swaying limply, but moving forward
toward us, was the unmistakable figure as so often described to us—as I
recognized it from my own “vision” on the plain—of Malu.

I
saw all this in one flashing moment. Then something made me turn, made me swing
rapidly around toward the door. MacFarlane, his face twisted in a mingled
expression of rage, grief and strange effort, was hurling himself forward
toward me, his arms outstretched to grapple. I heard Kalkenbrenner’s voice,
suddenly imperative:

“Hold
him—in heaven’s name, Borrowdale!
I understand
it all!
—hold him, hold him!”

MacFarlane
was upon me, struggling desperately. With all my strength I gripped him, fought
with him; and even in the instant saw something else in a wild confusion of
horror, my ears filled with the shrill terrified screaming of Jacqueline as she
too stared beyond MacFarlane through the great glass window in the cabin’s
wall.

Below,
Katey and Maggie Sherwood had almost reached the base of the ladder. But all
about them the scene was no longer quiet and peaceful. The great menacing Ridge
plants seemed convulsed with an unholy life—the swordlike leaves writhed away
from the inner stems. Those stems themselves were quivering—the coiling,
fernlike tips had unfolded; and out into the air from them poured a thick
yellowness, swirling toward our companions on the ground—the Yellow Cloud at
last.

Two
things more I saw before all was blotted away. In the thickest part of the forest,
straight ahead, in the direction of the gigantic “tail,” the Ridge plants were
swaying sideways in a more violent movement. In the depths beyond, in a coiling
of steamy vapor, was something vast and white and jellyish—a great shapeless
mass, tremulous, loathsome.

And
closer to us, in another parting of the fronds, I saw a group of gigantic egg
shapes, squat and hideous, shuffling forward on forked tendrils toward Katey
and Maggie. I recognized them also, even before I heard Jackey’s scream again:

“The
Terrible Ones!”

The
Cloud thickened. In a moment all outside was hidden in a thick ochreous
swirling. And still I fought with the fanatic figure of the man we had taken as
our friend, who was our friend, indeed, but possessed—quite literally
possessed—by demons.

I
OVERPOWERED HIM. It was comparatively easy, although I hesitate to imply any
undue superiority of strength. MacFarlane was in poor condition—in an unnatural
state of nervous exhaustion. His tackle was furious enough, but soon spent; and
although it went against the grain—for he was, after all, the man we had come
to save—I managed to twist his arm behind him in a judo hold I had learned long
before at school. He stayed for a moment perfectly still, his face, close to
mine, a mask of bewildered effort; then he slewed sideways with a little moan
and I saw that he had fallen insensible.

“Bind
him,” ordered Kalkenbrenner peremptorily. “You, Paul—somebody—find some cords,
wires—anything. Bind him, Borrowdale—it’s the only hope.”

I
saw that Kalkenbrenner himself had torn wire
from
some apparatus in the cabin and was rapidly binding the unconscious figure of
Dr. McGillivray. I did not understand—was still dazed and confused from the
rapid crowding of events. Besides, I was increasingly aware, bearing in on me,
of a curious pressure. Nothing physical—a mental pressure; it is the only way
in which I can describe it. A strange languor was in me—it was as if a voice
repeated, over and over again, within my mind: “Do nothing, nothing. Do
not
tie up this man—all is well. Do
noth
ing
 . . .
”

Our
leader was regarding me sharply.

“Borrowdale,”
he said, “pull yourself together, man! Trust me. I cannot explain now—there is
little time. But keep hold—keep hold! There are things out there—” and he waved
toward the swirling yellow mist outside the windows, “—there are
things
which can control—which will try
everything they can to possess you mentally, as they possessed these two poor
devils. There are things with
brains
out there! Whatever happens, use every ounce of your will power to defeat any
attempt they make to control
your
brain!”

I
saw on the instant what he meant—I felt the truth of what he was saying. A
thousand things became clear: why MacFarlane and McGillivray had acted as they
had—what, in fact, MacFarlane himself had already hinted at a thousand times in
the old Morse messages. My mind was suddenly filled with the image of the great
white jellyish shape I had seen in the parting of the Ridge plants, chiming
with all the nightmare visions I had had in the past of such a shape.
Discophora!
It was clear at last:
Discophora!

I
struggled to shake off the sense of oppression; and with a gigantic effort, by
concentrating all my powers, succeeded.

I
looked around. Kalkenbrenner had finished binding the still form of Dr.
McGillivray. Supported by Mike and Jacky—swaying a little, his slender trunk
limp and seemingly out of control of his own efforts—was Malu. I saw from Jacky’s
face that something was being conveyed to her mind from his—something which
she, more accustomed to conversing with the Beautiful People than I was, could
understand, for she nodded seriously. At the same moment Paul came toward me
with a coil of thin strong cord he had found, and helped me to bind tightly the
still unconscious MacFarlane.