The Red Planet (14 page)

“We don’t see how they could have missed us. Passed right overhead, but they didn’t even hesitate.”

“OK, Lemmy. If it comes this way I’ll let you know the minute I sight it.”

“Thanks, mate--and don’t go doing anything hasty.”

The ship, or whatever it was, must have been travelling at about a thousand miles an hour, for approximately twelve minutes later Frank called up to say that he could see the light heading straight for him.

Jet immediately took over the radio and talked to Frank direct. “Hullo, Frank. Where are you keeping look-out-- from the pilot’s window?”

“No, Jet. Through the televiewer.”

“Where is the light now?”

“Directly in front of us. Elevation about forty-five degrees--no, now its descending very gently. It’s almost down. It’s touched the deck and--the light’s gone out.”

“Can you see a ship of any kind?”

“Not really, Jet. It’s so dark out there.”

“Have you got the lights on in the cabin?”

“Yes, Jet.”

“Then put them out.”

“But they can’t be seen from outside, sir.”

“I realise that, Frank. But the darker the cabin the better your chance of seeing things on the televiewer.”

“Very well, sir. Hold on a moment.”

“I wouldn’t like to be in Frank’s shoes right now,” said Lemmy quietly; “not with that thing sitting on his doorstep.”

Frank was now calling again, and he sounded very excited. “Hullo, Frank,” said Jet.

“Things are happening, sir. That thing out there is definitely circular, and a pale green, oval-shaped light has appeared in the lower part of it.”

“Some kind of door, you mean?”

“Possibly.”

There was another, shorter pause and then Frank, hoarsely whispering so that we could hardly hear him, said:

“Oh, Jet. . . somebody . . .
something is coining out!”

“What do they--it--look like?” asked Jet.

“It’s difficult to tell. All we can see are faint shadows. The green light is so pale--like luminous paint. It’s only because parts of it are being obscured occasionally that I know anything is there at all. There’s one, two, three--yes, three shadows passed across it. Apparently towards the ground.”

“Listen, Frank.”

“Yes, sir?”

“They must be going to approach the ship, but almost certainly they are not aware that you are in there. They probably expect to find the cargo flaps still down as they left them yesterday.”

“Then they have a big surprise coming, haven’t. . . oh-- what’s that? What the . ..?”

“What is it, Frank?”

“There’s a click coming from the control board. The cargo flap relays are working, sir--somebody outside is pressing the switch.”

“But they can’t get in, can they, Frank?”

“I hope not, sir. That switch won’t open the doors, that’s for certain--we’ve broken the remote control circuit. Oh, they’ve stopped now--they must have given up. Look, sir, it’s so dark outside that it’s impossible for the televiewer to show a bright picture, but if I went out into the pilot’s cabin and looked through the window I might see much more.”

“Very well, Frank. But be careful. Switch off the televiewer and the control board lights before you go, in case they should be seen when you open the pilot’s cabin door.”

“Yes, sir.” There was a pause. “About to enter the pilot’s‘ cabin. Now.”

We heard the hum of the motors over the radio as Grimshaw opened the door for Frank.

“I’m in the pilot’s cabin now, skipper,” came Frank’s voice.

“Can you see any better?” asked Jet.

“Yes, just a little. The green light
is
an opening into that sphere.”

“How big is it? Can you tell?”

“Not without knowing exactly how far away she is. At a rough guess I’d say between six and ten feet, but . . .” Frank stopped as though he had seen something that startled him.

“What is it, Frank?”

“It’s the crew,” Frank whispered. “I can just see them. Vague shapes. They just passed under the port wing and are heading back to the sphere.”

“Frank,” said Jet nervously, “what do they look like? How big are they?”

“It’s difficult to tell. They’re all bunched up together and their silhouettes seem to mingle. If only there was a little more light!”

“Keep watching them, Frank. When they reach the door they should show up clearly against it.”

“Yes.” There was a pause during which we all waited expectantly. But when Frank spoke again it was merely to say: “If they are heading for their ship, Jet, they couldn’t have reached it yet. It must be a lot farther away than I thought.”

“Can you still see them?”

“No, skipper. They’ve been completely swallowed up by the darkness. Oh, wait a minute. They’ve reached the light now. They stand out as clearly as . . . oh, one’s about to climb back in and I . . . oh, my . . .” There was a clatter in our headphones as though Frank had dropped his microphone.

Jet called him two or three times to ask what had happened. There was no reply for some seconds, and then at last Frank said: “It’s all right, skipper. The light--the big one--it came on again and I threw myself to the floor.”

“Oh, blimey,” said Lemmy. “Now we’ll never know what they look like.”

“But I saw them, skipper,” went on Frank. “For a split second I saw them.”

“Then what did they
look
like, Frank?” Jet asked urgently.

“Just like you and me, Jet. Just normal human beings.”

I heard Jet catch his breath. “Frank, are you sure? You were straining your eyes in the darkness. They could have played you tricks.”

“I’d stake my life on it,” went on Frank. “When the big light came on it showed them up so clearly. I couldn’t have made a mistake.”

“Did you see the ship take off again?”

“No. While the light was on I thought it best to lie low. A couple of minutes later she was gone. The last I saw of her was a diminishing light in the sky. It must be heading back your way.”

It was. It arrived in about ten minutes. But this time it kept a perfectly straight course and passed over our heads to disappear below the horizon in the direction of the Argyre Desert.

It wasn’t long before Jet was calling Frank again, asking every possible question about what Frank had seen. How were the men dressed? How tall were they? Was he sure that they
were
normal human beings?

Finally, Frank was allowed to get some sleep which, I felt sure, he needed --for on top of his disturbed night he faced an early start back to Polar Base with as much of the salvaged cargo as he and Grimshaw could carry in their land trucks.

The first rays of the morning sun had hardly lightened the sky when our two caravans set out. We travelled steadily in a straight line towards where the light of the strange ship had disappeared over the horizon the night before.

Three hours and sixty miles later the soft, damp, purple soil of the Mare Australis gave way to the pink dust of the Argyre. By noon the Mare had been left far behind. Now the two trains of vehicles ploughed through desert, each trailing a miniature dust storm behind it.

For the first time since landing on the planet, the sun’s rays shining through the windows of the driving cabins were hot enough to allow us to travel through the day without the need of heaters to keep us warm.

The desert scene was unbelievably beautiful. The sand was pink and, unlike the flat plain of the Mare Australis, gently undulating. Slowly, as the day wore on, a copper-coloured sun made its way across the mauve northern sky. At noon we rested, refreshed ourselves and stretched our legs by walking ankle-deep in the sand, for sand it certainly seemed to be. By then we were well into the desert, surrounded on every side by low, pink hills, without the tiniest living plant to relieve the monotonous, if colourful, scene.

In our first day across that great desert, we covered nearly two hundred and fifty miles and then, under a canopy of the blackest sky, studded with the brightest of stars, we settled down to sleep. We kept a constant watch but no sign of the mysterious ship was seen. Not long after we had made camp we had a call from Frank, telling us that he had now reached Polar Base again and had taken a considerable part of the cargo of the wrecked freighter with him. He reported, too, that all was well with the rest of the Fleet still travelling above the planet’s surface in free orbit.

Next morning we were on our way again, hoping to make the far side of the desert before nightfall. Jet didn’t allow us to let up for a moment. While one man drove the truck, his companion navigated and, in between times, scanned the horizon with the powerful binoculars in the hope of sighting the strange sphere or some sign that would lead us to its base. But there was none, nothing but the pink sand stretching on endlessly.

It was two hours before sunset and I was driving. Suddenly the motor began to vary and our speed with it.

“Maybe we had better stop,” said Jet reluctantly, “and let Mitch look her over. We can’t afford to have the trucks breaking down at this stage.”

Jet called up Mitch and told him to halt, and a few moments later we had drawn up alongside. We all got out of the trucks and Mitch immediately began to carry out an inspection of the motor. It didn’t take him long to find the trouble but, he said, it would take him at least an hour to put it right. Under the circumstances, there was nothing to do but wait.

I suggested that perhaps as the motor had gone ‘on the blink’ we should make camp here for the night anyway, but Jet was determined to press on so long as there was daylight left. We had halted at the bottom of a high sand dune and, while Mitch was tinkering with the inside of the tractor, Jet walked round in small circles and occasionally stopped and looked up to the ridge which lay ahead. At last he said: “Look, Mitch, while you’re tending to that, I’d like to climb to the top of this dune and see what’s on the other side. I won’t go out of sight.”

And with that, and calling to Lemmy to follow him, Jet started climbing up the slope. Fifteen minutes later I could see the minute figures of he and Lemmy silhouetted against the sky. We were, of course, still in radio contact and I could hear every word that Lemmy and Jet were saying. So could Mitch, but he was so busy tinkering with the tractor’s motor that I doubt if he even noticed.

Suddenly I heard Jet’s voice in my ear. “Good heavens!” he said.

“What is it, Jet?” I asked. “What can you see?” “The other side of this hill leads down into a valley, a great, wide valley, and it’s full of plants like giant rhubarb.”

“Rhubarb plants?” I exclaimed incredulously.

“This must be one of the canals,” said Jet excitedly.

“Did you hear that, Doc?” he called.

“Yes, Jet. I heard it.”

“It must be at least fifteen miles wide and . . . oh, my goodness!”

“What is it, Jet?”

“Right in the centre of that valley is a great, colossal, pyramid!”

My first impulse was to go running up the dune to make sure that Jet wasn’t seeing things. But he announced that he was already on his way back. When he and Lemmy reached us Jet was so excited he could hardly speak. “A great pyramid?” I asked.

“Yes, Doc, and just as soon as Mitch has got that motor repaired we’ll
all
go up there and look.”

It wasn’t long before we were on the move once more. I must admit my heart was pounding as we climbed to the top of the dune where we came to a halt. Below us, as Jet had said, was one of the ‘canals’ of Mars. So far as I could estimate it was some fifteen miles in width and it stretched from east to west in a straight line. In the middle of the canal, almost directly in front of us, was the pyramid. It was about a mile square and rose in a series of huge steps or terraces each about fifty feet high.

The valley was filled with curious red and blue plants which were, as Jet had said, rather like sticks of rhubarb with a huge single leaf at the top of each stem. They were about six feet in height and the leaves were as big as umbrellas. The plants grew quite close together, not more than two feet separating one from another and the sticks were, I should think, about four inches in diameter.

The leaves of the plants overlapped and, looking down on them, as we were from the sand dune, they seemed to form a solid blue carpet on which one could have walked.

“How tough do you think those plants are, Doc?” Jet asked me. “If we drove the trucks at them, do you think we could plough a way through?”

“I don’t see why not,” I said. “We could try, anyway.”

“How about the soil?” asked Lemmy anxiously. “Is it firm, boggy or what?”

“We’ll soon find out,” said Jet. “Come on, switch on the motors, and let’s go.”

Slowly and cautiously we descended towards the rhubarb jungle. When we were nearly up to the plants we reduced speed to two miles an hour. I held my breath as we got closer. I saw Jet grit his teeth and compress his lips as we drove straight into the jungle. We didn’t feel a thing. There was no bump, no resistance. We sailed smoothly on, the rhubarb bending downwards before us like aspens before a bulldozer.

Jet breathed a sigh of relief. “Well, it looks as though we’re going to get through, Doc,” he said. “We’ll increase speed to five miles an hour maximum.”

The pitch of the motor rose as Jet accelerated.

It took us an hour to reach the base of the pyramid and, once there, we halted the trucks alongside its lower wall and Mitch and Jet put on their suits and went outside. Pushing their way through the ‘rhubarb’ was apparently an easy matter. AH they had to do was to bend them to one side. In fact, if they bent them too hard the stems snapped. Of course, it was difficult for Lemmy and I to see what was going on, but we had a running commentary on the exploration.

“Well, this wall is solid enough, Doc,” I heard Jet say.

“What’s it made of?” I asked him.

“It’s difficult to tell.”

“Is it of a brick formation?”

“If it is, then it must be covered with some kind of plaster. The surface is quite smooth.”

“Is there a way into it or through it?”

“Not that we can see, Doc. But we’ll walk right round the base. There may be an entrance at one of the other sides.”