The Red Journey Back (26 page)

From
first to last there was no sign of any of the Vivores themselves: somewhere,
somewhere in the steamy depths, they remained hidden, their thoughts alone
encompassing us. But always and always, as we struggled, our minds were full of
the gigantic images of them—the white loose nightmares that they were.

And
now above us loomed at last the rocket—yet the bitterest stage of all was still
to be faced. In a contortion of endeavor, our leader brought the tractor to a
halt, the flame throwers still spouting, the guns ablaze. Like creatures
bewitched, our movements laborious and tormented, we left our places in the
prearranged order, fought forward across the last small intervening space. Once
Maggie turned—I heard a cry, a scream from her within my helmet; she made to
run toward the forest. It was Michael who gripped her and held her until she
had refound her strength and stumbled clumsily forward with the rest of us.

The
ladder now—but the power of the Vivores stronger, always stronger. As I
mounted, as I followed the children and Katey up the long, long extent of the
last barrier, I bit my lips to blood in resisting the temptation to throw
myself out and away—to fall into the soft lush comfort, as it seemed, of the
clustering forest below. Behind me, at one moment, there was a soft moan from
MacFarlane, who more than any of us was in torment from his own previous
experiences; but an instant later, and at heaven knows what cost, there came a
sharp, even brutal command from Dr. Kalkenbrenner to restrain him from the
biting impulse to let go.

Our
limbs half-paralyzed, our bodies scarcely obeying the last shreds of control
left to us, we fell one by one across the threshold of the rocket’s cabin. I
heard, I recall, a last spluttering from the now empty machine gun far below;
then I was crawling forward, crawling like an animal, one thought, one only in
me now:
to destroy the rocket launching
mechanism before Kalkenbrenner could reach it.
In an ecstasy of hatred against myself I set to clambering over the instrument
panel toward the master switch, to break, to shatter it utterly.

Our
leader knew—he saw my intention. It must have burned also in him, that impulse;
yet with a last gigantic effort he overcame it—and defeated me. In a gush of
thankfulness I felt myself pushed aside—felt myself roll and fall against the
wall. He had somehow, on entering the rocket, closed the great door of the
entrance hatch. Now he too, with everything in readiness if only he could reach
the master switch, he too went crawling and clambering toward the control panel
as I had done—but with different motives.

His
hand was outstretched. He fought. I saw from his white screwed face how hard he
fought. His eyes burned out toward the master switch as he reached for it—closer
and closer—his fingers trembling, quivering in the desire to touch it and yet
not to touch it. I fought his battle with him—we all did, crouching helplessly
in the cabin there: longed, longed for him to reach the switch—longed, longed
for him not to reach the switch.

He
failed. At the last he was defeated. I knew he was defeated. I saw his hand
fall back, fall back. I knew that a moment more and all would be lost—that we
would be compelled, each one of us, to crawl across the cabin floor once more,
this time to retreat from the rocket and eternal safety—to fall down into the
green horror surrounding us. I saw MacFarlane, his expression a mingling of
bitter shame and still more bitter relief, lift his own hand to release the
catch of the door. I saw Kalkenbrenner fall still farther back from the panel,
weak and helpless.
 . . .

And
then, almost beyond the last, in that one moment when our salvation hung in the
balance, my ears were filled with a strange far roaring sound. I thought for a
moment that Kalkenbrenner had reached the switch after all—that what I heard
was the sound of the booster-rocket in action; but I knew that he had not
touched the switch—that we were motionless still upon the Martian surface, that
our ship would never rise at all, never.

Yet
the sound I heard intensified—it filled my very being. I saw MacFarlane, his
hand now no more than an inch from the door catch, look down toward the plain
and his whole face transfigure in a moment, his whole expression change to one
almost of exultation.

I
knew nothing—nothing. Except that instantly, miraculously, the great burden
lightened. All, all that had oppressed me fell away—I was suddenly free and
myself again; at the very moment when, with a cry of triumph, a veritable
scream of triumph, Kalkenbrenner leaped forward, a free man also, and threw
over the switch.

The
great ship rocked, then steadied herself. The mighty blast of the booster
drowned all other sound. The others now were on their feet, their expressions
ecstatic. I saw, outside, from where I lay, the darkening sky light up with a
great outbursting of flame. We soared higher, still higher, the menace now far,
far behind us. I saw MacFarlane, still motionless by the doorway, looking down
through the little porthole in it; and his eyes were wet with tears. I rose and
moved toward him; yet before I could reach him to see what he so strangely saw,
the booster fell away, the great main engines of the rocket roared into life,
and our senses all swam into blackness as we hurtled farther and farther into
space, the Angry Planet, upon which we so nearly had met our deaths, already
many thousands of miles away.

Beyond
the velvet void, across the gigantic reaches confronting us, lay our own quiet
Earth—lay safety. As we traversed those incalculable miles we learned and
marveled at the truth—learned how it was, after all, that a desperate promise
made had been fulfilled; how much had been dared by the man we had left behind
and by his companion to bring us to safety; how, at that last moment, when all
hung in the balance, the deadly influence of the Vivores had been destroyed, so
that Kalkenbrenner’s hand could at last go forward to the master switch.

The
story ends. My part in it is played. I set aside my pen.

Three
months after that moment when the gallant action of Dr. McGillivray brought us
to safety, we reached our Earth indeed, so concluding in triumph, but also in
deepest sorrow, the Third Martian Expedition, the first full flight of the
spaceship
Comet.
Much,
much had been left undone—but also much had been achieved. We had at least
returned safely—had fulfilled our own promise to bring back the young people
and one, if only one, of the men we had gone to find.

The
story ends; but beyond it lies another story, still to be told and to which
also, with heaven’s help, I may be permitted to contribute: the story of the
projected Fourth Expedition to the Angry Planet, when, as it is hoped, once
more under the leadership of Dr. Kalkenbrenner, we shall set out yet again to
master the mysteries of our nearest true neighbor in space.

May
I, then, in concluding my own task, say only, both to those who may believe and
those who may not believe—the eternal doubters who see nothing more, perhaps,
than a pleasant fiction in these patient pages of ours—may I say only, with my
companions of the Third Expedition: Dr. Kalkenbrenner, Catherine Hogarth,
Michael Malone, Margaret Sherwood, Paul and Jacqueline Adam, Stephen
MacFarlane: only
au revoir!
and so sign myself, in all sincerity—

A. Keith
Borrowdale

THERE
IS LITTLE I need add in my own person (J.K.C. writing). The story has been told
and is ended: it ended on the day when I heard of the landing of the
Comet
in Scotland, and hurried by air, with
the young people’s parents (Mike’s mother and father were also back in Britain
by this time), from London to distant Pitlochry. It was a slight miscalculation
on Dr. Kalkenbrenner’s part, at the point of entering Earth’s atmosphere, which
guided the great vessel toward Britain rather than America, as had been his
first intention; and when it grew apparent that a landing in this island would
be preferable to an attempt to regain the original course, Dr. Kalkenbrenner
wisely chose the reaches of the kingdom least inhabited, so that the risk of
danger to our populace should be reduced to a minimum. Thus, then, the Scottish
Highlands; with, in the event, that happy coincidence of landfall in reasonable
proximity to Pitlochry, the site of Dr. McGillivray’s original experimental
laboratory.

It
will not be necessary, I fancy, to dwell upon the delight with which the young
explorers were greeted by their parents, nor to describe the scene of reunion
with Mr. Borrowdale and Miss Hogarth which was happily enacted when Roderick
Mackellar arrived in the Highlands from Glasgow, pursuant on the telegram I had
dispatched to him from London. It was a jovial party indeed which sat down to a
communal meal that evening in Pitlochry’s largest hotel. Will you believe me
when I tell you that before the night was out, Dr. Kalkenbrenner and Mackellar
were discussing the first tentative plans for a return journey to Mars?—in all
seriousness, I assure you, with us others joining in in like spirit.

What
shape that Fourth Expedition may take it is impossible as yet to foresee. It
will suffice that while this book has been in active preparation, the
distinguished American Scientist, back once more in his own country (with his
ebullient niece), has been engaged in much research, not only into improvements
on the design of his spaceship itself, but—as Mr. Borrowdale has already
said—on methods likely to be of service in countering the dangers from the new
types of Martian inhabitants met by the explorers. He is also, I am told,
working on a full technical account of the first great voyage of the
Comet.

Until
that volume appears—and these are my own concluding words—this brief book, for
all its sketchy imperfections, must remain as the only account extant of the
adventures encountered by the members of the Third Expedition. It is my own
profound regret, as editor of all the contributed papers, that there has not
been among these pages any true fragment from the pen of Dr. McGillivray
himself. All others have been represented. He, alas, has not. I voice, in
saying so, I think, only a fraction of the great sorrow with which, through all
the passing months, we have viewed—have been forced to view—the fact of his
tragic death. He went out indeed, that day, into the depths of the Yellow
Cloud, like Captain Oates: to sacrifice himself to save his friends. Both he
and the Martian Malu must have known from the start the fate awaiting them; but
both still went out “like very gallant gentlemen” to embark on the only course
possible to them to help their colleagues win back to Earth.

I
will say no more: there is only one man fit to add, as it were, an epitaph in
remembrance of a great adventurer. That man is the comrade who was closer to
him than any other. Mr. MacFarlane has already made contribution of a kind to
these pages, in the shape of the transcribed messages constituting the early
chapters of our book. Here, at the end, I have asked him to add some words
entirely his own; and so I retire to permit him to do so. In them it will be
disclosed how it was, after all, that Dr. McGillivray was able courageously to
go out that day with Malu and, at the last desperate moment, release the
travelers from the influence of the Vivores and so ensure their safety.

He
had no weapons—nothing. The travelers have told me that they found even his
pistol abandoned in the trailer, simultaneously with their discovery of his
final enigmatic note.

And
yet—and yet!—he did have a weapon: one single gigantic weapon. His use of it
will be described now by his friend and helper through all the tribulations of
his last sojourn upon distant Mars.

He
had one weapon indeed. He had invented it himself, long before. It was the
Albatross!

Mr.
MacFarlane:

What
I write first, in describing the last journey of my friend Andrew McGillivray,
is conjecture only. Yet in my heart I know it to be truth. I see all things
clearly from the moment when, blind as he was, with Malu, as gallant an
adventurer as himself, to help him, he set out from the trailer during the
confusion of our rescue of Miss Hogarth and the two young people.

I
see them both go forward into the Cloud; and he is sustained by an exaltation
arising out of his great sacrifice. It gives him strength—the inconceivable
strength he needs to combat the immense influence of the creature into whose
sphere he must advance.

How
long the journey took that day I do not know. Time mattered little—yet in
another sense time mattered much. Looking back, and in a calculation based on
the length of our own journey across the plain and all that subsequently
befell, I believe that his progress was slow. Physically, it must have been
slow, in his blindness—he required Malu’s assistance for every step of the way.
Mentally, it must have been slower still; for in another sense each step of the
way must have been fought for most bitterly against the compelling power of
Discophora as he neared the
Albatross
.