The Red Journey Back (25 page)

It
was Michael who, at the thought of the flame throwers, suggested their possible
use against the Vivores. But a moment’s reflection showed us their uselessness.

“They
might suffice indeed.” said Dr. Kalkenbrenner drily. “They would destroy those
living Brains, shrivel them up, if once—if
once
—we could get close enough to use
them! A bullet from a revolver might at least incapacitate—but you know
yourself, Michael, that your own guns were useless when you confronted
Discophora. They were in your hands all the time—yet what could you do with
them?”

“The
cannon, then,” said Mike desperately, “the little cannon on the tractor—or even
the machine gun?”

“I
reckon,” our leader answered very quietly, “I reckon, my friends, that where we
stand now is as close as we can venture to the rocket without coming under the
influence of those gathered Discophora. A quarter of a mile. There are so many
of them—their orbit is immense, and their control will be less gradual than
from a single Vivore. Tell me if the cannon would be effective at that
distance, Michael, even if we knew where the Vivores are in those forests. Tell
me if the machine gun could help us from here. We need larger weapons—larger
than we have—larger than we could ever have carried.
 . . .
As we
approach to within firing range, so also do we approach within
their
range; and our fingers would refuse to obey us when we tried to fire!”

His
tone was detached and cool. Its very calmness sent a shiver through us all as
we realized fully, for the first time
fully
, exactly what we faced.

“It
might even be worse than that, much worse,” he added a moment later. “Our very
guns might be used against ourselves! Who knows, Jacqueline, but that as we go
through that forest there, a power beyond your control might make you snatch
your brother’s revolver and turn it against him? Miss Hogarth is her own fiancé’s
deadliest danger—my own niece might aim at me! No—no. Our first step of all is
to throw aside our weapons—to leave them here before we advance one further
step.”

We
heard him in horrified silence—and watched him as he unbuckled his revolver-
and cartridge-belt and sent it hurtling, with the weapons themselves, far, far
behind, till it fell with a little puff of red dust in the sands of the desert.
One by one, compelled by the nightmare image he had conjured, we followed suit.

His
next step was to move to the front of the tractor toward the cannon and machine-gun
mountings. We thought for a moment that he meant to disconnect them also, but
instead we saw him jam the mounting in such a way that the weapons could point
only forward—could not be swung backward to face into the vehicle. When he had
completed the work he threw away the adjustment mechanism: the guns now pointed
irrevocably away from the tractor, as also did the flame throwers when he had
treated them likewise.

“These,”
he said, when he saw our questioning glances, “might help a little. As we go
forward—and we must go forward—we shall have set them in action, jammed them so
that they stay in action. It might achieve something. One Brain may be put out
of action if it comes into the tractor’s path, and so lessen our burdens. At
least the flames will clear a pathway through the Ridge plants. For the same
general reasons I propose to set the tractor in motion when the time comes and
remove most of its controls, so that even if we have an impulse to change
direction or go more slowly, we shall be physically unable to do anything about
it. The only mechanisms I shall leave untouched are the brakes and the ignition
key. We must pray to heaven that I shall have sufficient will power to stop the
tractor when we reach the rocket itself.”

So
then, laboriously, our plans were made. We saw, with every moment that passed,
that our only hope lay, indeed, in ourselves—in our own ability to concentrate
all our efforts toward success. All the time, as we went forward, we would be
subject to an intolerable command
not
to go forward; our every instinct would be to defeat our own purposes.

We
jammed our oxygen breathing equipment, so that we would be unable to act on any
impulse to switch it off. We broke the latching mechanisms of our helmets,
knowing that once we were aboard the
Comet
—if
we ever reached the
Comet
—we
would be able to find tools to disconnect them again. We made other similar
preparations; and all the time, as we worked, the sun sank lower and lower: the
moment approached when the Martian night would fall with all its tropical
swiftness. Whatever happened, we had to start our last long Martian journey
before darkness enveloped us to add to our danger.

Swiftly,
Kalkenbrenner disconnected the trailer. It was essential that we should travel
through the forest at speed—the highest speed to which we could mount. Somehow,
somehow, we would all have to crowd into the tractor itself—packed close, but
with some measure of safety in that very closeness, since each of us could
watch the others for any signs of weakness.

Always,
as we worked, MacFarlane helped us with advice. He knew, more bitterly than any
of us, the power of the controlling Brains. Only once, toward the end of our
preparations, did he make mention of McGillivray and Malu. As the moment approached
for our journey, he shook his head sadly, looking back across the wastes we had
traveled toward the distant Ridge where lay the
Albatross.

“If
only,” he said, in hardly more than a whisper, “if only
they
were with us!”

“We
can do nothing,” said Kalkenbrenner quietly. “We cannot go back—he would not
even wish us to go back. Before heaven, MacFarlane, my own deepest desire is to
stay! We have done nothing here—achieved no single one of the scientific
purposes I had hoped for. But until we can combat those creatures—” and he
waved toward the silent forests ahead, “—we must only return to Earth. We have
the young people to think of—we have our own very lives to think of. We cannot
stay here, to be surrounded further by yet others of those monsters—to be
utterly destroyed by them—and worse than destroyed, if it is their intention to
use us as McGillivray once said: as living sacrifices toward their own need for
survival. We must go—and we will go. I do not know—I know no more than any of
you—what the end may be, what McGillivray intended in his effort to save us. He
may already be dead back there, he and Malu. There is nothing we can do for
them in the course they have chosen.
We must go on
.”

And
so, at the last, our moment came. We steeled ourselves toward it. Each one of
us knew his duty—each one of us knew the part to be played. We took our places
in the little tractor, our faces pale, determined, our hearts as calm as we
could make them.

Our
leader, upon whom so much depended, gave one last look around at us, sketched
over for confirmation the plan we had formed. Then he too mounted to his place.
The tractor pointed straight across the plain toward the rearing
Comet
, ready for its own dying journey, for
it too would have to be abandoned when we reached our destination.

Kalkenbrenner
revved the engine, nodded to me to be ready to set the guns and the flame
throwers into action at the moment when I first began to feel the influence of
the Vivores stealing over me.

We
went forward, gathering speed; and Providence alone knows the thoughts crowding
in upon us as we approached the silent menace lying between us and safety.

We
won through. You must know, you who read, that we did win through, or this
account of our last strange journey would never have been written. Here, at the
end, when all should mount to a final searing climax, I feel most my inadequacy
as a writer. It is not possible—not in any way possible—for me to convey even
the merest suggestion of the horror we encountered. I would face a thousand
physical dangers—I would undertake to write, in all fullness, an account of
them thereafter; but to describe the silent nightmare of our journey is beyond
me forever.

I
remember only, as we advanced, that I was filled at the first with an ineffable
sadness—a sense, somehow, in spite of all that had been achieved, of strange
failure. I thought of those we had abandoned—I thought of all that might have
been done in the alien world to which we had traveled so long before, as it
seemed.
I thought of our friends on distant Earth, toward which, with heaven’s help, we
might within the hour be speeding. I looked into the pale mauve sky—was
overwhelmed, yes, even at such a moment, by a sense of the unutterable beauty
of all the scene surrounding—yes, even of the dark green forest toward which we
sped: the great olive sheaths of the plant we would always think of as
alisma
, the wonders of the sentient cactus
creatures on all sides, the rearing distant line of the Martian hills, fretted
against the last
sky.
 . . .
I saw
all these things, felt all these things; and marveled at the infinite bounty of
nature.

I
felt Katey’s gloved hand in my own—looked around to see her pale quiet face
within the helmet, smiling a final salutation. Perhaps, perhaps we looked our
last upon each other. I made to whisper some few inadequate words to her—then
recollected, with a strange reserving foolishness, even then, even at such a
moment, that whatever I said would be heard by all our companions; and so said
nothing—only smiled, as she did.
 . . .

We
all were silent—all silent. We clustered together in the speeding tractor, our
eyes ahead. We waited, waited—as also waited the enemies before us. Never,
never before in all human history was so strange a battle joined—so silent, so
subtle a battle, with no other weapons than those of the mind, with no other
banner to carry us forward to the attack than simple human hope.

And
suddenly—unexpectedly almost, even although we were prepared for it—the battle
was joined, at the very moment when we were approaching the forest wall, the
tossing barrier of the Ridge plants now writhing at last with life. They must
have waited, the Vivores must have waited, until long, long after we had, in
fact, entered their orbit of control, so that their attack, when it concertedly
came, would be more powerful, more compelling than any gradual mounting of
control would have been. I remembered only to set our little weapons into
action—even then was assailed by a desperate wish
not
to touch and jam the controls; and the
silence was broken by a harshness of sound, nightmarish in its alien impact on
the silent battlefield.

And
I recall little else than that—in all the circumstances I recall indeed little
else than that. Not one of us is able to remember the detailed movement of the
conflict—how could we, when our own minds were the veritable battlefield after
all?—when our thoughts were a chaos, a confusion of conflicting impulses? We
longed, longed to stop the tractor—to destroy the very tractor. We longed to
defeat our own so careful plan—to surrender, to go forward quietly into the
great swamps before us, to submit to the gigantic intelligences commanding us.
Yet somehow, fighting desperately to retain control—somehow we did go forward.
The great soft tossing plants went down before us, crushed and blasted. Amid
all other horrors possessing us was a sense of unbearable primitive agony from
them as their tissue withered and died. Soft puffy wisps of the Yellow Cloud
encircled us, no longer ejected as a weapon, but expired, as it were, by the
dying plants as we fought our way through them. I saw Kalkenbrenner’s face at
one moment, twisted with an intolerable effort as he resisted the impulse to
switch off the ignition, to apply the brakes before we had reached our goal. I
saw the children huddled together, striving even physically, with desperate
movements of the hands, arms, shoulders, to keep from attempting to tear off
their jammed helmets, from leaping out from the tractor to what seemed, oh
seemed, like safety in the hidden heart of the morass
 . . . 
!