Could that have been the belt of air we struck?' put in Rex.
'Possibly. Or part of it - what was left of it,' replied Vargo. Certainly not all of it because the disaster here occurred some time ago and much of the air was retained. That we know, for our friends here say that since the tornado the density of the air has been greater than before. Of even more interest, although such things have happened before to our certain knowledge, is their report that the storm brought certain visitors, some to their advantage, others not so good.'
'Visitors?' queried the Professor. 'What sort of visitors?'
'Insect and vegetable, probably carried in the form of eggs and seeds, from another world.'
The Professor nodded thoughtfully. 'There is no direct evidence, but there are some scientists who believe that such a thing may have happened on Earth. How very interesting.'
'That is one of the new vegetables,' stated Vargo, pointing at the thistles. 'When our Andoan friends first landed here there was none. They are now increasing so fast that they threaten to occupy the entire planet. The small blue butter-flies you see were not here, either. Now their caterpillars are on everything. The plague is spreading fast, so that in the end they may denude the planet of its vegetation. The new air also brought a tiny biting insect which causes irritation and brings on fever. Thus can these space storms over a great period of time change the character of a planet, turning fertile lands to deserts, and deserts into gardens.'
'Insect and vegetable life could be carried from one planet to another in spaceships,'
averred Rex, pointing to the open door of their own ship.
The Professor patted Rex on the shoulder. 'Excellent,' he congratulated.
That certainly could happen. Aeroplanes on Earth are doing the very same thing.'
It was agreed that the Andoans had little cause for com-plaint in their choice of landing ground, for while the food supply was meagre by Earthly standards, consisting chiefly of fruit, roots, berries and grass seeds, they had no enemies to contend with.
'The paint is, do they know where we are?' Tiger asked Vargo.
Vargo delighted them by saying yes, they did. They were on one of the most distant planetoids and therefore a long way from Mino.
Can you tell me why it is so warm here at such a distance from the sun?'
questioned the Professor. would have expected to be frozen.'
Quite easily,' answered Vargo, and went on to explain. The little planet they were on, dike the planetoid Adonis, had an extremely elliptical orbit that took it, at one extremity, nearer to the S1113. than, Earth, actually passing between Earth and Venus. During its proximity to the Sun the heat was so intense that it was necessary to retire into the shade. But during that period the ground and its thick belt of dense atmosphere were charged with so much heat that it was not entirely lost at the cold end of the orbit. This was only made possible by the short period in which the orbit was completed, the journey taking a shorter time than any other known. The quick extremes of heat and cold were, of course, very trying, but could be endured. All forms of life on the planet had, as would be expected, adapted themselves to it. The rapid growth of the vegetation as the planet approached the sun was phenomenal.
Vargo smiled. On the first trip round the Sun the Andoans feared everything would be burnt to a cinder.'
'Which way are we going now?' asked Rex.
'Towards the sun.'
'Which means that it will get hotter every day.' 'Naturally.'
'Then the sooner we get away the better.'
'By no means. We are already being carried nearer home every second.'
'Riding on an orbit,' chuckled the Professor, popping a caramel into his mouth.
'As I understand it,' put in Tiger, filling his pipe, we have only to sit still to pass near our real home, Earth.'
'And close to Mars on the way,' observed Toby. 'As Vargo says, it's more comfortable here than in the ship so we might as well sit still. What about our new friends, though?
How are they going to get home?'
'They will come back with us to Mino,' said Vargo. 'After-wards, one of their ships, or one of ours, will take them to their own world.'
'Good!' exclaimed the Professor. 'What fun this space travel is. I suggest we have something to eat. Some fresh tomatoes will make a nice change in our rather monotonous diet.'
I I Stars in their courses
Rex had no means of working out the passing of time, by Earthly standards, on their island in space which, by reason of its pleasant conditions, they had decided to name Arcadia; for not only was its orbit a fast one but its rate of revolution so high that day and night followed each other in swift suc-cession. After the twenty-four-hour day in which he had spent most of his life Rex found this not a little bewildering.
The day, the period when the side of the globe they were on was turned towards the Sun, was only about five hours as he still reckoned time.
There was a brief twilight and then it was dark, the dark hours corresponding to those of daylight. The nights were comfortably warm, the side which had been exposed to the Sun retaining much of its heat through the short hours of darkness. Every day, as the planetoid ap-proached its summer season, it became progressively warmer, until they were soon forced to seek shade during the glare of noon.
For the rest, so little sensation was there of being on a star, and so like were the conditions to the subtropical zones on Earth, that it often came as a shock to Rex to remember where he was. But, after all, there was nothing remarkable about that. Few people On Earth pause during their activities to remind themselves that they are on one of a million globes, spinning as they whirl through the limitless spaces of the Universe.
With the mounting temperature the vegetation became more and more tropical in its luxuriance, and had it not been. for the tiny irritating flies Arcadia would have been as near perfection as Rex could have imagined. One and all agreed that Arcadia was far and away the most attractive world they had seen since leaving home.
This led to some discussion as to why a world so well adapted for human life had failed to produce any, particularly, as they had found human or sub-human populations on worlds less well-endowed. The same argument could be applied to the absence of mammals, birds and fish. That warm-blooded creatures had not yet had time to develop did not seem to be a very convincing explanation.
'As the place has such a congenial climate why not put some people on it as it passes the nearest point to Earth,' suggested Toby, smning Start a new colony, in fact. You'll always find people ready to emigrate.'
'A camping holiday on a new planet, as an advertisement, should produce plenty of schoolboys looking for a thrill,' put in Rex, grinning.
Funny to think that when space travel really gets into its stride this place might become a holiday resort ' said Tiger. 'Most places on Earth are overrun already. And properly cultivated quite a lot of food could be produced here against the time Earth begins to run short. Arcadia would make a capital colony for people looking for a slice of free land.'
I doubt it,' interposed the Professor.
Tiger looked surprised. 'Why?'
'Life would be too easy. Haven't you noticed that men most often succeed where life is a struggle against adverse conditions? Hard work brings out the best in them. In the smiling South Sea Islands, where life is easy and food plenti-ful, no progress was ever made towards a higher civilization. It is fear and necessity that drives men on to do their utmost. On the languorous Pacific islands people spend most of their time singing and dancing, with intervals of doing nothing at all.'
'They'll probably be singing and dancing when your higher civilizations have blown themselves to smithereens with atom bombs,' declared Toby, grimly.
The Professor smiled wanly, Good for you, Doctor. You got in a shrewd one at me there.
I hope you're wrong, but I fear you may be right. But before talking of making Arcadia a colony someone would have to check all the seasons to make
sure the place is really safe.
I have a good mind to stay here and do the full trip round the Sun. It would be a fascinating experience, and an instructive one. For instance, I would get a close view of that lonely little planet, Mercury.'
'You're not serious!' exclaimed Rex.
'Indeed I am,' answered the Professor. Vargo could take you home and pick me up later.'
'He might never find this particular world again - what then? ' said Rex.
The Professor chuckled. 'As you say, my boy, what then? I could think of worse places to spend my declining years, provided I had a good telescope and a notebook.'
The subject was not pursued, and the Professor's startling project did not materialize.
For a very good reason.
A certain amount of exploring had been done without the discovery of anything particularly noteworthy. Sometimes they had gone off together as a party, but as time went on without the slightest sign of danger appearing Rex had taken more and more to going off alone, sometimes on quite long walks. These had served a useful purpose, for he usually collected fruit on the way home. So far his only adventure had been an amusing one. One day a breeze got up and to his astonishment he saw what he took to be a snowstorm corning towards him. But it turned out to be a great cloud of thistle seeds picked up by the breeze, and he recalled what Vargo had said about the invading weeds overrunning the planet.
But a far more serious adventure was in store, one that altered their ideas about the security of their temporary home. At the time it so happened both Mars and Earth were in sight, Earth easily recognizable by its single moon, so there was no longer any risk of Borron again getting off his course. He knew just where he was, and already there had been talk of departure.
Rex went off on one of his jaunts and this time he went farther than.
usual, and in a new direction, his objective being some low cliffs which he could see in the distance. These he reached, or nearly reached, without incident, and he was approaching what looked like a dry watercourse, when with an involuntary cry of alarm he came to a dead stop, his eyes on a dark face staring fixedly at him through the sparse branches of a shrub. It did not move. Nor did he. Indeed, the shock had made him incapable of movement. Then, as he recognized the thing for what it was his nerves relaxed. Fear gave way to amazement and he moved forward for a closer examination of his discovery, a discovery, he realized in-stantly, of profound importance.
The thing was a graven image. It had the body of a lion-like animal with a sad human face. The top of the head had been carved into a fair representation of a feathered hat, something in the style of a Red Indian bonnet. Feathers - where there were no birds! An animal - where there were no animals ! And a human face where there were no human be-ings !
For a minute Rex was completely flabbergasted by what all this implied.
How wrong their assumptions had been!
The thing was obviously an idol. By whom it had been carved, and presumably worshipped, was a question for which he never expected to find an answer. One thing, how-ever, was quite certain. If the planetoid had no human population now it must have had one at some period, for only human hands could have fashioned such a piece of sculpture. That the thing was of great age was made apparent by the way the stone had weathered, the base providing a foothold for moss and lichen.
Deep in thought, looking about him for more signs of occ-upation, he went on to the dry watercourse, again to come to an abrupt halt, staring at some marks clearly defined in the hard, slaty bottom of the lost river near his feet.
It was a line of tracks, footprints of a large bird, or lizard, he didn't know which. All he knew for certain was that the tracks were much too large to have been made by any creature on the planet at that time. He knelt down to examine them and found, as he had anticipated, that the tracks were in hard stone. They could only have been made, therefore, when the stone was soft. How long ago that had been he had not the remotest idea, of course. The river bed was, he con-firmed, slate, and that to some extent explained the mystery. For under the Professor's instruction he now knew enough about geology to be aware that slate is a sedimentary rock. That is to say it had once been mud, or silt, deposited by water; over the years, by pressure and exposure, it had hard-ened to its present form.
The picture was now fairly plain. While the rock had been soft, ages before, some creature had walked down the drying river bed. Naturally, this interested him enormously, because it told him that conditions on the planet had not always been the same as they had found them. That was a piece of real news to take home to the Professor. But more was to come.
Following the tracks he came upon more tracks which, without the slightest doubt, were human footprints, and must have been made at about the same period as the others. This discovery shook him, because it answered the question that had puzzled them, why did not the planet carry a human population? Now he knew beyond all shadow of doubt that it had.
What had become of it was another matter. He carried on, still following the tracks.
His next discovery was a fossilized fish, quite a large one, about three feet long. The outline had been clearly impressed in the rock, even to the scales; but there seemed to be some-thing wrong with the fins. He wasted no time on it. The Professor would probably know all about it when he saw it, as he would, when he heard of these enlightening finds.
They were, decided Rex, more unexpected than really remarkable. After all, these things were fairly common on Earth in. similar rock formations.
He went on, now following in the footsteps of the man who had passed that way perhaps a million years earlier. That alone was a sobering thought.
He was now close to the cliffs, which he thought were limestone.
Surveying them, his eyes came to rest on the entrance to a cave. Its irregular outline told him that it was natural, not artificial; and that again was in order, because most limestone formations are honey-combed with caves. The footsteps left the river bed in a direct line for the opening. So that, mused Rex, was where the fellow had lived. Or was it the lair of some beast which he intended to attack?
Perhaps he could find out. Excited, slightly overcome by this link with the prehistoric past, he moved forward, slowly, for he was also a little apprehensive of what he might find. Reaching the entrance he saw not one but several footprints, some large, some small. Lying about, bleached white by the sun, were many bones, none of them large, and none of them, as far as he could make out, human.
The question now was, should he go on, or should he go back to report? He was torn both ways. In the end, prudence, supported by the need of an adequate torch for such an undertaking, won. But before turning for home he advanced to the threshold of the cave and peered inside. The entrance being high - it was really a wide fissure - a fair amount of light filtered in, so that when his eyes became accustomed to the gloom he had a fading view for about twenty paces. There was little to see. More bones lay about. Apart from these there was only one defmite object. It was on the ground, not far in. Dark brown in colour it looked as if it might have been a large length of rough timber, such as a piece of tree trunk.
Rex stared at it: and the more he stared the more convinced he became that it was.
nothing of the sort. Slowly a grim suspicion as to what it was crept over him, and he went forward to investigate.
As he had suspected it turned out to be the body of a man. Not a skeleton, but a body, as dry and shrivelled as a smoked fish. It lay at full length, one arm reaching forward, as if the man had fallen and died while making a desperate attempt to get farther into the cave. The corpse had obviously been there for a very long time. Why? Why had his friends left him lying there? Why was the body parched like an old piece of leather? It looked as if it might have been scorched by fire. Conditions on the planet must certainly have been different when the man had lost his life, reasoned Rex, for as things were at present a body would quickly decompose.
He lingered a moment longe
r, staring fearfully into the dark recesses of the cave; then he made his way out, and turning away from this drama of the past hurried back to the ship.
He did not stop to collect fruit on the way.
The brief twilight was nearly over when he rejoined the others. They were sitting round a fire, lighted to discourage the midges, which at this hour became more active than at any other time. Seeing from his manner that something unusual had happened they looked at him questioningly. He did not keep them waiting, but forthwith gave an account of his discoveries. 'You remember that body in the Egyptian Room at the British Museum - an Arab who had died of thirst lying in a hole in the sand? It had become sun-dried. Well, this body looked just like that,' he concluded.
So there was once a human population here,' remarked the Professor pensively. can't say I'm surprised. We are now confronted with an interesting field for speculation. What became of it?'
'Whatever it was must have happened a very long time ago or we should have found signs of occupation, and accord-ing to the Andoans there was none,' observed Vargo.
03 Now To The Stars Page 10
