by Earl
They attack and eat all in their way; but our clay house and space ship were indigestible, fortunately. Though they got Proosett and Cruishank, damn them!
When we were free from the insect menace, we found that our space ship was not as badly damaged as had seemed. More on that tomorrow. My batteries are low.
Can you give us some music? We haven’t heard any for two years, though Dordeaux plays his guitar well and we struck up a passable quartet—Swinerton, Greaves, Parletti and Captain Atwell.
SEVEN hundred and ninety-second day.
Thanks for the accurate check-up on Markers’ figures, though it has the doubtful virtue of confirming our belief that we cannot cross during this opposition. We are faced with the hard fact that we cannot possibly manufacture enough fuel for a return trip at any decent speed. But we’re hoping to scrape up enough to get us drifting toward Earth’s orbit, to be picked up a year later. That is, on the supposition that our ship will survive the trip, not to mention our supplies and ourselves.
About the ship. The fuel tanks, as you know, were distributed in circular form at the rear, adjacent to the hull. The explosion tore the rear end to shreds. Since that was the end visible to us from the clay house, our impression was that the entire ship had blown up. But when we looked it over, we saw that the forward part, including the fore-engine, was intact. Fortunately, all supplies had been removed earlier from the ship to our house.
Captain Atwell promptly announced that we would make repairs. It would be useless to detail just what we did over a period of three months, working with the few tools we had. Using a makeshift hydro-oxy torch devised by Alado—both gases from our electrolysis plant at the pool—the ruined back part of the ship was shorn away.
A bulwark of sirap metal was built over the unsealed end and welded as carefuly as possible. As a further precaution, an inch of tar was coated over all seams. The tar we made from partial combustion of native shrubbery in underground kilns.
There it stands, outside the window now, a half ship. Actually, though, it is two-thirds of its former length. The gyroscope was set up in the ship’s mathematical center of gravity, so the thing was ready to sail, except for one thing—fuel.
That, Captain Atwell said, we would see about. With characteristic foresight, he had planned for the future. And not until all that was done, and our camp had been thoroughly established, did he allow exploration, which was the main purpose of our expedition. We had been on Mars, then, fifteen weeks.
As I mentioned yesterday, we are at present making the fuel that we hope will take us back to Earth in our half ship. Yet, a few, long months ago, we despaired of ever having the fuel. For it was just two months back that Parletti, with his indefatigable pick and shovel and microscope, found a natural deposit of rich selenium ore, not fifty miles from our camp. But that, and other details about this all-important manufacturing of fuel, will come up later in my reports.
Thanks for the music. Our favorite number was the song dedicated to us, Moons Over Mars.
* * * * *
Seven hundred and ninety-third day.
After the repair of our ship, we had about a month left before the fall season set in. The seasons Here, of course, are just twice as long as Earth’s.
Captain Atwell picked an exploring party composed of Swinerton, Dordeaux and Parletti. Well-armed, carrying knapsacks of food and canteens of water sufficient for a week’s rations, they struck out westward, for the nearest canal. The large oxygen tanks strapped on their backs did not bring their total mass to even three-quarters of Earth-weight.
Markers, Greaves, Alado and myself remained behind to keep things going. There was always something to do at camp. The electrolysis plant must be run and tended six hours a day to maintain our oxygen supply. The seleno-cells must be periodically adjusted or they will overcharge. The sunpower mirror on the roof must be polished twice a day; this supplies us with the current to heat the clay house.
The rest of the time we amused ourselves playing cards and chess. Now and then we’d go hunting in the bush-wilds of our pool for small game. We have developed quite a taste for the lobsterlike steak they furnish, these semi-insectal creatures of Mars.
The party returned in due time, tired and frost-bitten. Captain Atwell was calm, but Dordeaux and Parletti were excited. They both poured out simultaneous explanations. Swinerton didn’t help by chiming in with the chorus. Atwell shook his head with an amused grin when we turned to him. Evidently he wanted them to tell about it.
It was a dozen minutes before their incoherent archeological, geological and biological jargon made any sense. In fact, it wasn’t until Markers took command, shut them up, and had them each speak in turn that the story came out with any degree of clarity.
One of my batteries just faded out. Will repair and continue tomorrow.
SEVEN hundred and ninety-fifth day.
The party had reached a canal about a hundred miles west, after two days of rapid hiking in the light Martian gravity. It looked like the shore of an empty lake at first. But the startling straightness of the shoreline indicated that it was really one of those remarkable canals that have puzzled Earthman’s eyes since the telescope was invented. The other bank was pot visible. As Earth’s astronomers have estimated, the canals must be at least fifty miles in width to be visible from Earth.
Starting down the slope, and growing ever thicker toward the bottom, was a jungle of dwarfed plant growth. Though they did not investigate, it was evident that an appreciable current of water must still be circulating in the center of the enormous canal, enough to give life to this oasis in the surrounding desert land.
They could only gasp at the thought of what a tremendous river must once have swept down that great waterway, ages and ages ago. Perhaps all the land which we have seen as desert, and which is ochre-red in our telescopes, was once irrigated by this amazing sluiceway.
They decided to follow the line of the canal southward for two days. Many forms of life were sighted among the bushes and trees they skirted. Swinerton swears he saw a creature with two heads, one at each end of its body. The others did not see it, but they did see a ten-legged monster a dozen feet across that was like a giant spider. Also, a creature that was nothing more than a huge wheel rolling along, with a head in the center.
In explanation, Swinerton reminds us that evolution has had many more ages to produce odd monsters here than on Earth. Yet he says they are just vanishing remnants of what Martian Zoology must have had in its flower, about a million years ago.
* * * * *
Seven hundred and ninety-fifth day.
Well, they had to drag Swinerton along by force to keep him from running into the jungle for closer looks, and tramped on.
The next day Parletti became excited when the shore changed into a cliff and exhibited striations which, to his scientific eye, meant much. He counted them, examined them with binoculars, and began to babble about Martian geology.
He declared that Mars had once had oceans as mighty as those of Earth, in proportion. Highly saline oceans that must have been rich in gold. This ties up with Greaves’ analysis of the desert sand, formerly ocean sediment, which is thick with red gold. Gold is what gives the Red Planet its ruddy color in Earth’s telescopes.
Greaves seriously maintains that every time we take a step on Mars we are walking over a dollar’s worth of gold! Swinerton subsequently established that even the life of Mars is impregnated with gold. He coagulated a sample of blood with a tin salt from his biological kit and obtained the characteristic iridescent purple of colloidal gold.
To get back to the canal, Parletti estimated the beginnings of life on Mars as three billion years ago! The planet, he says, passed its prime over a billion years ago, when Earth was still a hot, restless globe of steaming rocks.
But the man that was most astounded and really stirred with interest was Dordeaux. This happened late that day when they saw something come up over the horizon. It was a broken line of walls and tower
s glinting in the sharp sunlight. The ruins of an ancient city!
As he told this, the four of us who had not been along hung on every syllable. There was nothing so intriguing, so compelling, on this strange, new world as the thought of former civilizations.
“Huh!” grunted Dordeaux, eyes snapping, “You fellows wouldn’t believe me when I said I had seen those ruins from our space ship while we were landing. Now who’s right?”
As a matter of fact, we had kidded him an awful lot about it, taking nothing for granted, but were just as thrilled as he was to hear the news. For it was the first definite proof of another intelligent race in the Solar System besides Earth’s.
The party reached the city-ruin the next morning and investigated its hoary, lichen-covered remnants. Not much remained beyond broken, eroded walls of stone and a general debris of rock and heavy dust. However, they could make out the general plan of the huge city, built much like an Earthly city in squares. Numerous bas-reliefs showed clearly that physically, the Martians had been more insect than animal, with wide wings. The early heavy atmosphere, coupled with the light gravity, had made flying a natural equipment of life.
Captain Atwell had had to keep a sharp eye on Dordeaux. His archeological instincts had been fully aroused and all others submerged. He was liable to dart off any second to examine some new thing that had caught his eye. No wonder; here he was in a complete new world of archeology, uncatalogued, mysterious, alien. His enthusiasm was so contagious that it fired us all as we listened to him.
At any rate, the grandest thing of all was discovered later that day, as the four stood at the canal bank’s edge. Broken edges of a smooth, wide sheet of metal speared up from the canal’s bottom, caked with ages of rust. At once it was apparent that it was a section of what had been a tremendous pipe fitted into the canal, and as wide! The Martians had undoubtedly used a pump of some kind to move the water from the poles along that pipe. The water itself would never have flowed uphill in the canals from the depressed poles.
Dordeaux pictured for us the colossal engineering achievement of a network of canals all over Mars. Giant pumping stations such as this one every few hundred miles. Millions of square miles of parched land irrigated. A dying world made fit for life long after its prime. A heroic struggle against the inevitable. And now this, the shards of civilization!
Dordeaux, from careful microscopic examination of rocks and bones, has since come to the conclusion that that city, and perhaps all the others, had been flourishing not more than fifty thousand years ago!
SEVEN hundred and ninety-sixth day.
Those were the results of the first exploration away from our immediate vicinity. Dordeaux maintains that it is not unreasonable to suppose that Martians are surviving today. Perhaps some few groups have managed to withstand the rigors of cold near the poles and live near its plentiful water supply. We all agree it is possible.
Another trip was made to the canal. This time Markers brought his photographic equipment along. They came back with several hundred excellent views of the canal, city, animal life and geological formations. The home staff of scientists will find these pictures highly interesting—if we ever get back with them. Markers also took a hundred feet of moving film, photographing the city from the highest bfoken wall he was able to clamber.
Thanks for the program dedicated to us yesterday. Particularly give our thanks and appreciation to President Mason for his fine, inspiring speech. We feel a little guilty about all the praise and eulogy he heaped on us. We don’t consider ourselves “cosmic heroeg,” President Mason, but we like the words anyway!
* * * * *
Seven hundred and ninety-seventh day.
No more explorations were made as the fall and winter set in. And what a winter! The highest temperature we recorded in six months was 20 below zero. Once it dropped to a record low of 120 below.
During that time we stayed in our clay house, venturing out only to perform the necessary chores of readjusting the seleno-cells, polishing the sun-mirror on the roof, hauling ice from the pool for the electrolytic plant, etc. Captain Atwell took a regular part in this and all other things. He Is the one, we unanimously agree, who should get credit for all our success. A leader and a man!
There was no snow, of course, but at times during the coldest snaps a light frost coated our windows—of carbon dioxide snow! Wind storms that lashed sand against our walls rose at frequent intervals, but never lasted more than a day.
We were quite snug in our sturdy clay house, our heater supplied by the current of the sun-mirror. But during the coldest spell, When old Sol was lowest on the horizon and our mirror did not build up much charge, we had to put on our heaviest clothes to offset the freezing temperature in our house. Even our drinking water froze for three days. We had to warm our protein-sticks next to our skins before eating them.
Greaves came in once with a badly frozen pair of feet, tending the electrolysis outfit. He had been out only an hour. Atwell had us take fifteen minute shifts on our outside chores after that. Greaves was well taken care of by Parletti, but lost two toes. However, that extreme spell lasted only seventeen days. The rest of the time it was more like a severe Arctic winter on Earth.
Monotony set in with the winter, of course. We would have given our souls at times for music, or even an advertiser’s voice from Earth. We played games until we were sick of them. A rotating game of bridge lasted for almost a month between the eight of us. Nobody won, though the rubbers ran into three digits. The law of averages evened everything out over that long stretch. We then paired off with permanent partners. Alado and Swinerton ran up so many points in two months that if paid off at a thousandth of a cent a point, they would have owned us lock, stock and barrel.
Alado chuckled at his winnings.
“By glory,” he said, “when we get back to Earth, we ought to challenge the Culbertsons, eh, Swinny?”
He didn’t know—God rest him!—that seven months later he would be buried under the red sands of Mars.
Quarrels arose, an inevitability. Yet they never became bitter, or prolonged. The feeling of being alone on an alien world knitted us together like brothers. Our strict system of share-and-share alike, under the iron discipline of Captain Atwell, gave no permanent grounds for differences.
We celebrated Christmas and New Year’s by singing all the appropriate hymns and songs we knew, accompanied by Dordeaux’ guitar, and having a feast of an extra bowl of hot bouillon each. We celebrated the Fourth of July, too, before the long Martian winter was over!
SEVEN hundred and ninety-eighth day.
A waterless thaw came with the rise of the sun toward the zenith. The daily temperatures began to average around zero. We were able to go out and relieve our cramped muscles in short hikes.
It was at this time that we talked over the fuel question seriously. We had been afraid to before that. Our only hope, of course, was to find a supply of selenium. Greaves promised to extract it from the ore, if some ore were found.
Captain Atwell commissioned two search parties to make constant explorations in all directions. Parletti, Winerton and Alado as one; Dordeaux, Greaves and himself in the other. As soon as weather permitted, his plan was carried into operation. Each party leader was to make tests of underlying soil every mile, carrying along small chemical kits for flash tests. The others were free to catalog any other phenomena on the way, if it did not mean too much delay.
Atwell had worked out a system of routes and directions which made it simple to survey new territory every time. The constant sun and strange but true compass that had a north pole in the east were their guides. In all, the two parties made a total of sixteen one-week, and ten two-week treks into the surrounding territory, in a period of nine months.
It was during one of these trips that Alado came down with inflamed lungs He was put to bed and nursed carefully, but pneumonia set in. He was dead a week later. Not a hero’s death, but he died with a smile. His last words, with his eyes fixed on
the brilliant evening star, were simply: “Good-by, Earth!”
We buried him at night under the two moons of Mars. We will not broadcast tomorrow in his memory.
* * * * *
Eight hundredth day.
Opposition time is drawing near. How we would like to cross at this time! Yet we won’t be able to do it. We will have barely enough homemade fuel, crude and inefficient, to drag the ship away from Mars and set up a drift sunward. We will have to time it just right or we will miss Earth next year.
We are not trying to fool ourselves. Our chances of a successful navigation with a half-ship and crude fuel are small. Most of all, it will be a close race between time and oxygen starvation for that year-long trip. But we can’t stay on Mars, either. Our preserved food supply is running short. We could never live on what we hunt—our ammunition is almost gone. Even our sunpower units are beginning to balk, and they are the only thing between us and freezing on this cold, cold planet.
So we will have to take our chances in our half-ship.
It was nine months ago that the two exploring parties began to range over our surrounding territory, searching for selenium.
Markers and I, who were left in camp all this time, had enough to do to keep us going from dawn until dark. But Markers, with energy enough for two men, found time to make careful observations through his four-inch telescope on the roof. He has discovered two new moons of Jupiter, tiny far-flung ones. Also one for Saturn and even one for Pluto. He says the thin air makes telescopic observation on Mars ideal.
He has made complete records and computed orbits of the moons, and of the eleven new asteroids he has charted. He spent most of his time with the asteroids. He is especially interested in the one called Anteros, which he says has a very eccentric orbit. He has worked its orbit out to seven decimal places.
Several times he had me look through his tube at the beautiful sights of Jupiter with his colored bands and Saturn with his remarkable Rings. But the sight that fascinated me most was that of Earth itself, a green-gold half-sphere with bright cusps. The north polar cap sparkled like a diamond and most of the surface was covered by a filmy gauze of white clouds. But through it could be seen the continents and oceans, so familiar that it made me choke.
