The Red Planet (23 page)

“Very well. You lead the way, I’ll follow.”

“That’s no good,” said the stranger. “You’ll have to come into this truck. Your own is too slow.”

“But what about McLean in the other?” asked Jet.

“What state is he in?”

“He seems to be in a state of deep hypnosis. Does everything I tell him.”

“Does he indulge in any kind of conversation?”

“No.”

“Then leave him. He’s too far gone.”

“How do you mean?”

“Of all people brought here his type is the most unfortunate. They have no recollection of anything previous to the time they were hypnotised. They do nothing unless told and have no control over their actions.”

“But they could be revived,” suggested Jet, “couldn’t they? Once we got them away from here.”

“No. They may appear to revive but they don’t. Not even when they are sent back to Earth.”

“What? You mean they are sent back?”

“Of course. Some are there now, to all appearances normal people except for an odd way of speaking and a few eccentricities that nobody on Earth would regard with any seriousness. Whitaker was one of those. Didn’t you find him a little odd?”

“We certainly did.”

“There are plenty of others like him, already down on Earth. The Martian fifth column, as you might say.”

Jet said nothing.

“Well,” continued the stranger, “time’s running out. Do you join me or do you propose to fight it out alone?”

“What chance have I with Doc, Lemmy and Mitch missing; half the fleet’s crew already in the hands of the--Martians?” said Jet dejectedly.

“Alone,” said the man, “none at all. But if you come with me there is just a chance of your getting Mitch, Doc and Lemmy back. Even Frank, maybe.”

“And what if you are one of them?” asked Jet. “Like the Flying Doctor?”

“That’s for you to decide.”

“Very well, I’ll take the chance.”

Jet then called the other land truck. “McLean,” he said, “can you hear me?”

The dull, flat voice of McLean came back almost at once.

“Yes,” he said, “I can hear you.”

“You are to leave that truck and enter the vehicle in front of this one.”

“Orders were,” replied McLean, “to proceed to the Lacus Solis.”

“I have changed those orders,” said Jet firmly.

“The orders were not yours to change. And orders must be obeyed without question at all times.”

“Now do you believe me?” asked the stranger.

“McLean,” Jet persisted, “I order you to leave that truck and come over here.”

There was no reply. And, to Jet’s great surprise, the truck in which McLean was began to move off. “McLean,” demanded Jet angrily, “what are you doing?”

“He’s pulling out,” said the stranger.

“But where’s he going?”

“Only he knows that.”

Jet immediately switched on the motor of his own truck and, swinging it round, began to pursue McLean.

The stranger called after him. “There’s nothing you can do, Mr Morgan, believe me.”

“But I can’t leave him,” protested Jet.

“You’re not leaving him. He is leaving you. Follow him and your chance of getting back to the Fleet is gone completely.”

Jet reluctantly switched off his motor. A few minutes later he was sitting alongside the stranger who immediately started up his machine and set off, at an incredibly fast rate, in an easterly direction.

They travelled steadily for about two hours and, according to the stranger, had about another three hours to go before they reached their destination.

In the next hour Jet learned quite a lot about his companion whose name was Webster. Apparently he was a Sussex man who had been picked up from England fifteen years before, and his one desire was to get back to Earth as soon as he could. He was, of course, very miserable on Mars, doing what the Martians told him. But not to do so, he said, would mean being condemned to one of the underground factories, to live away from the light and work at the dull, monotonous task of building the space fleet. Being a farmer he had been offered agricultural work and had had the good sense to take it. At least he saw the sunlight, and the stars at night.

Quite suddenly Webster interrupted the conversation to say: “Well, there she is. If we can make that, our chances are good.”

Jet followed the direction in which Webster pointed and saw, on the horizon, what appeared to be a great glass dome.

“But the men working beneath it,” said Webster, “are like you and me. They need a good supply of oxygen to breathe. And. . . oh.”

“What’s the matter?” demanded Jet.

Webster didn’t reply but brought the truck to a standstill and switched off the motor.

“What are we stopping for?”

“They’re here,” said Webster.

“What? Who--who’s here?”

“Look up there,” said Webster, pointing to the sky. “Hovering above us--a sphere. They’ve found us. It’s all over. I’m afraid we’ll never make it now.”

Unaware of Jet’s encounter with Mr Webster, Lemmy, Mitch and I were, of course, still crossing the Argyre Desert in the Martian sphere, hoping to locate Jet in the land truck.

We had been going for about half an hour when Mitch, who was lying on the floor, showed signs of waking up. He opened his eyes and looked into my face as I bent over him.

“Doc,” he complained, “what’s happened to the heating system in this ship?”

“So far as I know,” I said, taken aback, “it doesn’t carry one.”

“What are you talking about? All the ships carry heating systems. We’d better get one of the engineers over to look at it. And quick, before we all freeze to death.”

It dawned on me then that Mitch thought he was back in the Discovery and that we were still coasting towards Mars.

“There’s nothing wrong with the heating system, Mitch,” I told him. “It’s you that’s cold.”

“Cold,” he said, shivering, “that’s putting it mildly. My inside feels like it’s frozen solid.”

“Mitch,” I asked, “do you know who I am?”

“Why shouldn’t I?” he said. “What’s the matter? What are you wearing your suit for, Doc?”

“Lemmy and I have to, Mitch,” I replied evasively.

He looked at me strangely and began to climb to his feet. Obviously the effort it cost him was considerable. He breathed very heavily and moved incredibly slowly.

“Now don t attempt to walk,” I protested. “Lie down again.”

“I’ll get up if I want to,” said Mitch defiantly. “How do I come to be lying on the floor, anyway. And what’s happened to the bunks and the cabin? It looks all different. Where am I? What . . .” He began to breathe very heavily now.

“Doc--my chest,” he cried. “It feels all tight. I can’t breathe.”

“Lemmy,” I called urgently, “come over here--quick, Mitch is returning to normal but he can’t breathe the atmosphere in here.”

“Oh blimey,” said Lemmy, as he came over to my side, “and we’ve got no suit for him.”

“That oxygenised chamber upstairs. Harding,” I yelled, “open the door to the upper cabin.”

Almost immediately die door in the pillar swung open and, between us, Lemmy and I managed to get Mitch upstairs and lay him on the floor. It wasn’t long before the Australian began to breathe more easily and normally, but, before we could get him to the upper cabin he had virtually lost consciousness.

However, I felt that the immediate danger was past which was just as well, for Lemmy, who had gone back downstairs while I examined Mitch, called to me to say he had seen one of the land trucks just below us on the desert.

“Only one?” I asked him.

“That’s all I can see.”

“Halt the ship then, Lemmy. I’ll be right down.”

“Yes, mate.”

We were both extremely puzzled by the disappearance of the second land caravan and all attempts to raise the occupant of the vehicle over which we were hovering failed. I decided that the only way to find out whether it was Jet or McLean on the desert below was to go down and see.

The moment we landed, Lemmy and I, clad in our space suits, went outside. First we walked round to the front of the land truck and looked into the driving cabin but there was nobody in it.

“Whoever’s in that truck,” said Lemmy, “must be in the living quarters.”

“Then we’d better let ourselves in,” I decided.

A few minutes later we were in the airlock.

But, to our amazement, the cabin when we entered it was empty. There was no sign of anybody. There was nothing for it but to go back to the sphere and continue in the direction in which we had been travelling in the hope of overtaking the other truck which, we could now only conclude, must contain both Jet and McLean.

But, just as we were about to embark, I noticed the tracks of another machine leading from the front of the land truck in which we had expected to see Jet. Lemmy and I walked over and examined them carefully. The marks in the ground had not been made by tractors. They were much smoother, as though made by little spheres some foot or more in diameter.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get back. We’ll fly just a few hundred feet above the ground and follow these trails.”

Before long I noticed down below a strange vehicle, not unlike those we had seen in the city of Lacus Solis. And apparently, it must have seen us, too, for, as we approached it and hovered above, the thing came to a standstill.

Lemmy was not too happy about dropping down to investigate but I persuaded him that no more than two people could possibly be in the vehicle and, if one of them should turn out to be Jet, we would have, at most, only one Martian or conditioned Earthman to contend with.

But, as it turned out, we had hardly set foot on the ground when I heard the joyful voice of Jet in my radio earpiece. A few minutes later he and his companion had joined us inside the sphere.

After we had been introduced to Webster and all that had happened since we had lost contact with each other had been explained, I told Jet of Mitch’s partial recovery. Webster at once asked to see the engineer so I took him upstairs. After questioning Mitch for several minutes, Webster and I returned to the lower cabin.

“Well?” I asked as soon as we had gone downstairs.

“This isn’t a bad case. Nothing like as bad as those two fellows at the control panels there. He’s almost back to normal. Have you any recollection of his being influenced a second time?”

“By that noise, you mean?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Yes, I have. When we took this sphere from Lacus Solis that noise came on and Mitch and Dobson and Harding all fell asleep.”

“Then that was it. Had he been handled properly then he could have been completely normal by now.”

“I don’t understand.”

“While he is in that sleeping state, it is possible to penetrate deep down into a subject’s mind. Tell him he’s in Africa and when he wakes up he’ll believe it. That, Doctor Matthews, is the Martian method. On the other hand, put him to sleep now, tell him all that has happened to him since the time his memory failed him and, when he wakes up, he’ll remember everything.”

“Are you sure?”

“Try it, Doctor, and see.”

“Very well. I’ll have to hypnotise him first, of course.”

“Yes.”

Mitch was so drowsy when I did get to work on him that I found him a very easy subject. I told him of everything that had happened to him, and us, since we had landed on Mars and rescued him from the Flying Doctor. I then let him sleep. When he woke up he was perfectly normal but, of course, it was impossible for me to take him downstairs for he had no space suit.

So, telling him not to worry, I left him there and went below to tell Jet the good news.

“Very well,” said Jet, “he’ll just have to stay where he is until we can find some means of getting him some kind of breathing apparatus.”

“Breathing apparatus?” I queried.

“Yes, Doc. Apparently there are such things--used by the inhabitants of that dome we can see on the horizon. And Webster told me that if we proceeded as far as there we would definitely find out what has happened to Frank Rogers and the rest of the crew who are missing.”

“That is so, Captain Morgan,” said Webster, “but the principal reason for going there was to pick up a sphere. Now we have one we can go straight to your Polar Base.”

“But what about Frank--and the rest of the boys?” asked Jet. “If we don’t go to the dome, how do we know what’s happened to them?”

“I tell you, Captain,” said Webster, “it’s a hundred to one that they are captives of the Martians. You will never get them back now. And if you want to get back to Earth to warn them of the proposed invasion, you have no time to lose.”

“Look,” said Jet firmly, “back there on the desert we made a deal. I would take you back to Earth provided you helped me to find out the things I wanted.”

“Very well,” said Webster reluctantly. “I’ll do what I can. Make for the dome--but don’t blame me if you end up as the crew of Number One almost certainly have already.”

“That’s our lookout,” said Jet. “OK, Lemmy--take off.”

“And if you must go there,” continued Webster, “keep at low level. There’s less chance of our being detected.”

“Dobson, Harding,” called Lemmy, “take the ship up. Maximum height twenty feet, course due east.”

I felt the almost silent motors of the ship spring to life and slowly we rose to just above the ground and began to head towards the strange domed building on the horizon.

When we reached it we landed near what appeared to be its entrance. The dome was about half a mile in diameter and perhaps some two hundred feet tall at its highest point. It was made of some kind of thick, transparent substance.

“Well, now, Captain Morgan,” said Webster, “if you wait here, I’ll go and see what I can find out about Frank Rogers and the rest of his crew and, at the same time, I’ll try and bring back a breathing apparatus for Mitchell.”

“You’re going alone?” asked Jet suspiciously.

“You’d look rather conspicuous in that space suit.”

Jet thought for a moment. “I think it will be best if we come, too,” he said guardedly. “But first, you go into that dome and bring four sets of breathing apparatus back with you. Is that clear?”