The Red Planet (13 page)

Half an hour later we had reached the base of the hills, and great, irregular patches of black began to appear in the ice-covered ground.

“The ice is giving out fast,” remarked Jet. “Shouldn’t be long before we leave it behind entirely.”

We continued on our course for two hours but no sign of the ship was seen. By now we estimated that we must have reached the point where we had first seen the light and that to go on -any farther might mean going too far. Jet ordered the trucks to halt while we swung our headlights in every direction, hoping to pick out the ship in the inky darkness. But there was still no sign of it.

“Well, it looks as though we’ve drawn a blank,” said Mitch. “What do we do now?”

“There’s nothing for it but to camp here for the night and wait until morning,” replied Jet despondently.

“If you ask me, we’d have done better to have stayed up in those hills,” said Lemmy. “Then at least we would have had the advantage of height when we make the search in the daylight.”

I was of the same opinion but, for Jet’s sake, did not say so.

It was agreed that Jet would take first watch so Mitch and Lemmy went back into their living quarters to get some sleep, leaving their radio on so that they might be called when their turn came.

It hardly seemed worth my going back into living quarters to sleep for only two hours, so I stayed up with Jet and snoozed in my driving seat. When Jet woke me, he had nothing to report, and neither had I when the time came to call Mitch.

I was woken in the morning by the excited voice of Lemmy coming through the intercom speaker and saying that he had sighted the wreck. Jet and I rushed out into the driving cabin to look for ourselves and there it was, about two miles ahead of us, tipped up on its nose. The port wing, which was badly crumpled, was touching the ground.

Jet ordered the trucks to be started up immediately and we drove to within a few yards of where the ship was standing. There seemed to be no sign of life aboard her and, even though we called many times, we could get no reply on the radio.

As soon as the sun was high enough in the sky to raise the temperature outside to a safe level, we donned our suits and let ourselves out. The first thing we did was to walk round the ship and inspect it for damage. With the exception of the crumpled wing she seemed to be quite intact but, much to our surprise, the cargo doors in the belly of the ship were open.

“She’s a bit of a mess, isn’t she?” said Mitch. “She must have hit the deck pretty hard.”

“Yes,” said Jet. “It’s a miracle that any of her crew were still alive and able to leave her.”

“What makes you so sure that they did?” asked the engineer. “There are no tracks of any land trucks round here that I can see, except our own.”

“Then how can you account for the cargo flaps being open?” asked Jet.

“The impact might have done it. Might have set the mechanism off and they just opened automatically.”

“I think we’d better go inside, Jet,” I suggested. “Her crew must be in there after all.”

The easiest way into the ship in its present position was through the open cargo hatch, but as this was some twelve feet above the ground, we could only reach it by standing on the roof of one of our trucks. From there, Jet led the way, taking a flashlight with him in case the ship’s lights didn’t function.

Before actually entering the hold, Jet shone his torch round. The beam fell upon the outer door of the airlock leading into the cabin. Jet gave an involuntary exclamation of surprise when he saw that the inner door was open, too.

“That means there can be no air in the cabin,” said Mitch.

“Oh, blimey,” said Lemmy. “No wonder they don’t answer our calls.”

“Come on,” said Jet, “keep close to me.” And with that he entered the freighter.

Within a few minutes we were all in the cabin. It was empty.

“Well,” said Jet, with finality, “they must have left the ship. What else could they have done? Probably the main airlock is out of action and, when they discovered that, they decided to go out through the cargo hatch. Though why they should leave the airlock open beats me. Now let’s make a thorough search. Doc and I will stay here. Lemmy and Mitch, you go back into the cargo hold and see what you can find there.”

We split up to do as Jet directed, but after only a few minutes Mitch came running back.

“Well,” he said, as he entered the cabin with Lemmy close on his heels, “it’s as I thought. The land truck is still in its stowage so wherever the crew of this ship went, they must have walked.”

“But they wouldn’t be crazy enough to go outside without a land truck,” said Jet. “Certainly not at night. They’d be frozen to death/”

“It was still daylight when they crashed,” Mitch reminded us, “and if they left then they could have walked quite a way before nightfall.”

“The ground outside would have been soft and wet from the melting ice,” I said. “Anybody walking out there would be bound to leave footprints. Let’s see if we can find any.”

“Yes, come on,” said Jet.

Once outside we searched the area round the cargo hatch, but the only footprints we could find were our own.

Our task was made more difficult by the fact that much of the ground had been churned up by our land trucks. It then occurred to me that, except for their size, all the boots worn by crew members were identical in construction.

“We’d better look over parts of the ground we’re sure
we
haven’t walked on,” I suggested, “and then if we find any prints we’ll know they aren’t ours.”

They all agreed that that made sense, so again we split up and began our search anew.

It was Lemmy who first found something. He called us over to his side of the ship in great excitement. “Come on,” he yelled, “I’ve found ‘em.”

We all hurried over to where the radio operator was standing, gazing down at some footprints that led away from below the cargo flaps towards where the ship’s tail would have been had the craft not been standing up on her nose.

We followed them, and about half a mile from the wreck they disappeared. In their place we found three deep circular impressions of some four feet in diameter. They marked out the corners of an equilateral triangle, the sides of which would be about twenty feet in length.

We all gazed in puzzled silence for a few minutes and then Jet said: “Well, gentlemen, I think we all know what this is--it’s the light.”

“The light?” asked Lemmy, in a hoarse whisper.

“Yes. Or whatever was carrying the light. It must have come here to investigate the ship after it had crashed. Maybe it even caused the crash.”

“You mean somebody’s been here, messing around with our ship?” asked the Cockney.

“Exactly.”

“But what about our crew? What’s happened to them?”

“It’s pretty certain that they, or their bodies if they were dead, have been taken and transferred to some other kind of machine.”

“But where have they been taken to?” asked Lemmy. “And who took them?”

“That’s what I intend to find out. That light, when we last saw it, was moving directly west from here.”

“Yes, Jet. And pretty fast, too,” I reminded him.

“Very well. From now on
we
travel westwards.”

“You mean you’re going after that thing?” asked Mitch.

“Yes.”

“But how are we going to find it? A flying machine doesn’t leave any trails.”

“If we don’t find it,” Jet replied, “we’ll come back here and continue our journey towards the equator as originally planned. Now come on.”

We ran back to the trucks and, once inside, took off our suits and settled down in the driving seats. Then, at top speed, we headed westward.

Neither Jet nor I spoke a word to each other, but we both thought very hard; at least, I know I did. Here was something quite unexpected; definite proof that life existed on this strange planet. An intelligent life; a life, apparently, very similar to our own.

The ground over which we travelled was a sea of purple mud. Portions of it clung to our tractor treads in thick clods but it must have been fairly hard underneath for we didn’t sink very far into it. There was not a hill or mound of any kind in sight now, and the purple soil stretched clear to the horizon, uninterrupted and undisturbed.

Towards the middle of the afternoon, I noticed that the land to the north-west had a pink tinge about it and Jet suggested it must be the south-eastern tip of the great Argyre Desert.

During our long trip since dawn neither Jet nor I had mentioned the flying machine which we were pursuing. We both realised that the chances of our overtaking it were so remote as to be virtually non-existent. We were like a car-- a very slow one at that--trying to overtake a fast aeroplane.

The silence was broken by the voice of Frank coming over the radio. “Hullo, Land Fleet,” it said, “Rogers calling.”

“Hullo, Frank,” replied Jet. “We can hear you.”

“This is to report that we have now topped the hill and are about to descend down the other side. We can see Number Two from up here--through the glasses at any rate.”

“When you get to her,” said Jet, “look her over straight away. Give me a report on the chances of salvaging her cargo and getting it back to Polar Base.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You can enter her by the cargo hatch. We left the ladder extended so you wouldn’t have any trouble getting up. We also left the air supply to build up so that you can spend the night inside if you wish.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Keep in regular contact, Frank, and be sure to be under cover with all hatches tightly closed at least an hour before sunset. And make no attempt to leave the ship or your trucks between then and sunrise, no matter what happens.”

“You’re darned right I won’t, skipper.”

“Now our position at the moment is approximately, longitude eleven degrees thirty-four minutes, latitude minus fifty-three degrees twenty-two minutes. We are heading directly westwards along the latitudinal line. Call again as soon as you reach the ship, Frank. And good luck.”

The afternoon wore on as we sped on our way through the purple mud. At last the sun sank below the horizon. Twilight descended and rapidly turned to a glorious, star-studded night. When it was completely dark, we made camp, but before going back into the living quarters, Jet called up the other truck.

“Now listen, Lemmy,” he said, “I want you to keep watch while we get something to eat. If you see any sign of that light, call us up immediately. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Jet.”

“As soon as Mitch has finished his meal he will relieve you, and then Doc and I will take over in this truck.”

My turn for watch came four hours later. Jet was asleep on his bunk as I made my way through the connecting airlock between the two trucks and into the driving cabin of the tractor. It was quite dark in there. We had decided not to put on any lights that could be seen from outside. Having eased myself into my seat, I let my eyes get used to the darkness until the stars in the sky seemed to hang like brilliant, multi-coloured lamps just above my head. Then I called up Mitch to tell him that he could go back to bed.

“How about it?” I asked. “Did you see anything?”

“No, Doc, not a thing.”

“Any word from Frank?”

“Yes, he decided to spend the night in Number Two. He and Grimshaw have kept a constant watch from there but they’ve seen nothing, either.”

“Well, get some shut-eye, Mitch. I’ll give you a call if I see anything.”

“Thanks, Doc.”

I could imagine Mitch crawling through the airlock into the living quarters truck, thankful that it would be another six hours before he would again be called upon to keep the lonely vigil. I scanned the sky from east to west and from north to south as far as the window of the cabin would allow. I saw nothing but the stars.

The time went by incredibly slowly. After what seemed an eternity I looked at my watch and saw that I had been keeping sentinel for only twenty minutes. I had to force myself to stay awake. Suddenly my attention was drawn to the horizon in the north-west, to a bright blue ‘star’ which had appeared above the black line that marked the spot where the purple plain met the sky. Slowly, very slowly, it rose and, as it rose, grew larger.

I switched on the microphone and spoke quietly into it. Jet could not have been sleeping very deeply, for he answered my call immediately.

“Hold on, Doc,” he said, “I’ll be right out.”

I had to call Mitch and Lemmy a second time before I received a reply from them.

I don’t think it took Jet above two minutes to reach me and by that time the light was very much bigger and heading in our direction. Soon it had grown from pinpoint size to something like three or four feet in diameter. It was now a bright orange colour and varied in strength.

Then, at colossal speed, the light passed over our heads and was behind us. Both Jet and I spun round in the tiny cabin and tried to follow its path, but the back of the cabin obstructed our view.

“If it stays on that course,” I heard Lemmy say, “it won’t be going anywhere near Number Two.”

But it wasn’t staying on that course. Quite suddenly it veered round, changed its line of flight and swept round in a huge arc. I thought at first that it was going to encircle us but it flew due east, in a direct line towards Freighter Number Two.

“Call up Frank, Lemmy,” Jet said urgently. “Warn him that the thing is coming.”

“Right, Jet. Hullo, Frank--Lemmy here.”

Frank, his voice distant, answered immediately. “Hullo, Lemmy--Rogers speaking.”

“We don’t want to put the wind up you, chum, but that light we told you about...”

“Well?”

“It passed over us a moment ago and it looks as though it’s heading straight for you.”

“Oh, is it?” said Frank, emphasising the verb.

“Yes, mate,” went on Lemmy. “Keep a sharp look out and if you hear anybody knocking at the door, pretend you’re out.”

“Don’t worry, Lemmy,” said Frank. “We’re sealed up tighter than sardines in a tin.”

“Good for you.”

“Did they see you, Lemmy?”