The Red Planet

by Charles Chilton

  “Search me,” I replied, “but just before we lost contact with him he mentioned hearing a peculiar noise--just as you did when we landed, and as the pilot of Freighter Number Two did before she crashed. But McLean also said he saw a light.”

  “Yes,” said Jet quickly, “McLean. What on earth was he doing up there on the terrace, Doc? And how did he manage to breathe when he wasn’t wearing a helmet? All our tests of the Martian atmosphere have proved beyond doubt that it is impossible for a human being to live in it-- the oxygen content is too low.”

  “That doesn’t mean it can’t support any kind of life,” I reminded him. “Those rhubarb plants outside seem to thrive very well.”

  “Yes, Doc, but they’re plants. Even on Earth plants grow at altitudes almost too high for human beings to live comfortably.”

  “Then the only possible explanation is that somehow, somewhere, McLean’s body has been conditioned to live in the Martian atmosphere. To do so, his body temperature must be extremely low, and here we find Lemmy, with McLean bending over him, and Lemmy’s body temperature is extremely low, too. And so was Whitaker’s--and yours, Jet, after we crash landed. It’s becoming quite clear to me now,” I went on. “Whitaker was a man already under some very powerful influence that somehow contrived to get him into one of our ships in the hope that he would wreck the whole project. That’s why there was no record of his having been to the Astronautical College.”

  “But Whitaker was a normal human being, Doc.”

  “No--not normal, Jet. No man who’s been missing for forty-seven years and then turns up as a member of our space fleet, looking as young as he did in 1924, is normal. It’s my belief that the reason you, Lemmy and Rogers had nightmares when Whitaker was around was that he could more or less hypnotise any member of the crew with whom he came in contact. That’s what he must have done with Peterson; that’s how he was able to make off with one of our ships.”

  “Well, that sounds plausible enough, Doc. But where had Whitaker been during the forty-seven years he was missing?”

  “Up here, on Mars.”

  “What?”

  “Yes. Walking around, breathing the Martian atmosphere just as McLean is doing now.”

  “You mean McLean has already been ‘conditioned’, as you call it--become another Whitaker? And that Lemmy, if we hadn’t found him in time, would . . ?”

  “Yes. At least, that’s how it seems to me.”

  “Well,” went on Jet, “let’s assume that is true; but how did Whitaker get up here?”

  “He was kidnapped and brought here.”

  “In 1924--when space travel was no more than a wild dream?”

  “The ship that visited the wreck of Number Two and carried off her crew was no wild dream.”

  “You mean it was a space ship, capable of reaching Earth?”

  “I don’t know,” I said a little impatiently, “all I do know is that Mars is a planet at least as old as the Earth, maybe millions of years older. If it has no animal life now, it almost certainly did once. How else can you account for that city out there? If you ask me, that place is thousands of years old, built when life on Earth was in its early stages of evolution.”

  “You mean,” said Jet, almost sarcastically, “that there were advanced civilizations up here? Probably still are?”

  “Mars is a dying planet, Jet,” I reminded him. “If there ever were creatures up here even remotely like human beings who could think, reason and build, they must have long since died out, or most of them. But any that are left must have the advantage of millions of years of civilization behind them. And who knows what that could enable them to do?”

  There was a groan from the bunk. Jet turned towards Lemmy. “He’s coming round, Doc,” he said.

  “He’ll feel very cold when he does. Perhaps you’d better make him a hot drink.”

  By the time Jet returned with the tea, which was Lemmy’s favourite beverage, it was obvious that the Cockney was slowly but surely recovering.

  “Well, Jet,” I greeted him, “I don’t think it’s going to be long before Lemmy is talking to us again, which is pretty encouraging. It’s less than half an hour since we brought him in.”

  “What!” exclaimed Jet. “Half an hour? Then where’s Mitch? He said he would be with us in just a few minutes.”

  I had forgotten all about the engineer. “Call him up, Jet, for heaven’s sake.”

  Jet went over to the radio, but there was no reply from Mitch, although Jet called him for fully five minutes. Jet hesitated a moment then walked resolutely towards the locker where his space suit was stowed.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked him.

  “I must go out there,” he replied, “and look for him.”

  “No, Jet--wait,” I began.

  “I haven’t time to wait, Doc. Anything might have happened to him. He might already be in a far worse position than Lemmy was.”

  At this point Lemmy spoke his first intelligible words since we found him. They were: “Lokshen soup and begels.”

  “Eh?” said Jet, coming over to where Lemmy and I were. “What did he say?”

  “He’s still delirious,” I said.

  “Then you look after him. I’ll put my suit on and get ready to go out.”

  “No, Jet. I’m sure Lemmy’ll be OK once he wakes up. Then we can leave him here while you and I go and look for Mitch. If you go out alone, how do I know that you’ll come back?”

  “I’ll keep in radio contact. You don’t have to worry. You’ll know that I’m OK.”

  “Lemmy was in radio contact with us, wasn’t he? But he wasn’t OK. And Mitch was supposed to be in contact, too, but...”

  I was interrupted by Lemmy calling: “Let go! Let go! I won’t take it off. I shall die! Let go of my arm, do you hear? Let go, you old . .”

  Lemmy was waving and kicking his arms about, just as Jet had done the night Whitaker died. I tried to hold him down but had to yell for Jet to come and help me.

  With two of us trying to restrain him, Lemmy became more vehement than ever. “Let go of me--let go!” he yelled.

  “He’s awake, Doc,” said Jet in surprise. “His eyes are open.”

  I could see they were, but Lemmy didn’t seem to recognise either of us and he fought harder than ever. “Let go of me, do you hear?” he kept saying. Then: “My helmet--where’s my helmet? You give me back my helmet. I shall suffocate . . .”

  “You don’t want your helmet, Lemmy,” Jet said. “You’re in the living quarters. You don’t need your helmet.”

  Suddenly Lemmy stopped struggling. He looked first at Jet and then at me, and said: “Oh--Jet--and Doc. I thought you were Mr Vanberg.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Vanberg. The fellow who lived upstairs.”

  “Lemmy,” I said, reaching for the tea, “drink this. It’s nice and hot and it’ll do you good.”

  “I can do with it,” he replied with a little shudder. “I’m all cold inside. I need something to warm me. What wouldn’t I give for a nice bowl of lokshen soup right now!”

  “Tea is all we have that’s hot, Lemmy. Now drink it.”

  “Yeah,” said the Cockney, taking the flask from my hand. “Ta.” He took a few sips and then said: “Where am I, did you say?”

  “In one of the trucks, in the caravan.”

  “That’s funny,” said the radio operator. “I thought I was back in London, just off the Commercial Road.”

  “You must have had a bad dream, Lemmy,” I suggested.

  “No, Doc--it was no dream. It was real. So clear in every detail. It was Sunday morning and, as I said, I was back home in London, in the market. It was crowded with people, as it always is on Sundays, but I couldn’t talk to them. They couldn’t hear me. I don’t think they could even see me. But a voice from nowhere kept talking to me, telling me to go on to Bernstein’s where I could get some soup and begels and some smoltz--which I’m very fond of.”

  “But if you were dressed
up in your space suit, how could you have eaten it?” queried Jet.

  “That’s what I’m telling you, mate; this voice kept telling me to take my helmet off. But I wouldn’t.”

  “That voice you heard--did you recognise it? Or see the person it belonged to?”

  “No, Jet, I didn’t see him, but the voice was familiar all right.”

  “Whose was it, Lemmy? Think--think hard.”

  “Well, if it was anybody’s at all, I’d say it was McLean’s. But it wasn’t his normal voice, if you know what I mean. He sounded almost like Whitaker.”

  “McLean’s!” said Jet in triumph. “That’s what I thought you’d say.”

  “But how could it be McLean’s? We haven’t seen him since Number Two crashed.”

  “Look,” interrupted Jet, “there’s some strange power at work here. You were induced to think you were home, where you’d been happy. Somewhere where you felt safe and everything was normal. And then, having been hypnotised into this state, somebody--someone using McLean’s voice maybe--tried to get you to remove your helmet.”

  “But what for?”

  “I can’t be sure, Lemmy. But I have a good idea. You don’t know it, but while you were under that illusion you somehow found your way up to the next terrace. And that’s where we found you--with someone who looked very much like McLean bending over you and about to unfasten your helmet and take it off.”

  Lemmy’s startled comment was interrupted by Jet who, still consumed with anxiety for Mitch, said to me, “Let’s go.”

  “Go? Where are you going?” Lemmy asked anxiously.

  “Mitch should have been back nearly an hour ago,” said Jet, “but he hasn’t returned. We must go out and look for him. Doc insists it’s safer for two of us to go, which means you’ll have to remain here.”

  “But what if that noise comes back?” exclaimed Lemmy. “What if it starts hypnotising me again?”

  “You must fight it as you fought against taking off your helmet in your dream. When we’re gone, break the airlock circuit so that the door cannot be opened from the outside. And open it to nobody but us or Mitch, if he should come back before us. We’ll keep in constant radio contact.”

  “And what if anything happens to you?” Lemmy asked.

  “We’re hoping it won’t. Now we’re aware of what can happen, maybe we can fight it, too. All right, Doc. Put on your suit and we’ll go.”

  What had happened to Mitch? We discovered later that he, too, had been affected by the same mysterious hypnotic power from which we had only just succeeded in rescuing Lemmy.

  Against his will the Australian was led away from the terrace of the pyramid and, when he recovered his senses, it was to find himself out on the sand dunes of the desert. There was no sign of the city, the canal, the jungle, the trucks; no sign of Jet, Lemmy or me, either. No sign of any kind of life. But he was still dressed in his suit and so decided, quite naturally, to try and contact us by radio.

  He began to call. “Hullo--hullo, Jet, hullo, hullo . . .”

  And in his receiver he heard a reply. “Hullo, there.” But it was not the voice of Jet.

  Mitch looked across to the next dune and saw the figure of a man. He was dressed in high boots, trousers, a flannel shirt and an Australian bush hat.

  “Where did you spring from?” the engineer said, startled.

  “I might ask you that,” said the strange figure. “Come on over. I’ve got a fire going and the billy’s on the boil. You’d like a cup of tea, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yeah,” said Mitch, “I’d like it fine.”

  “Come on, then.”

  Mitch made his way over to the man who took him down into a small valley where a fire was burning. Stretched out in front of it were two or three blankets and nearby lay a tucker bag.

  “Sit down, cobber,” said the stranger. “Make yourself at home.”

  Mitch thanked him and sat down. It was almost dark; deep twilight, and the fire lit up the leathery face of the stranger with a bright orange glow.

  Suddenly from the distance came a mysterious, bloodcurdling wail. Mitch started. “What’s that?” he asked.

  “Dingoes,” said the man calmly. “They’re starting up early tonight. You hunting scalps?”

  “Eh?”

  “Dingo scalps for the Government bounty. I’ve got a swag bag full of ‘em.”

  “No, I’m not hunting dingoes,” said Mitch. “I’m lost, I need help.”

  “Where do you have to get to?”

  “The city. I must get back.”

  The stranger laughed. “City!” he repeated derisively. “The nearest settlement to here is Oodnadatta--two hundred miles to the south. And city is a fancy name for that place. But, apart from it, there’s no city within five hundred miles of here, unless you count Marugee, and that’s in ruins, anyway.”

  “Is it in a valley?” asked Mitch eagerly; “a long, wide valley?”

  “That’s the place.”

  “How far is it?”

  “Oh, a couple of miles.”

  “Then show me the way to go--the others will be looking for me,” said Mitch anxiously.

  “Well, if you insist,” replied the stranger, “but, if you ask me, you don’t seem in a fit state to be walking any place.”

  In spite of his opinion, the stranger stood up and, with Mitch following, led the way towards the valley.

  They reached it in about twenty minutes and, from the hill top, Mitch looked down on Marugee. “That isn’t the place,” he said, his voice breaking with disappointment.

  “You said a ruined city, in a valley, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, but the one I’m looking for is at least a mile square and built up in steps like a great pyramid. And the valley is full of plants--like rhubarb. You brought me to the wrong place.”

  “There’s no other place to take you. Now, you’d better come on back to my camp and take a rest. It’ll be dark directly, and you’ll be getting cold.”

  Mitch shivered. “But the city,” he said, “I must find the city.”

  The stranger took his arm and led him down the slope and back towards the camp. “You can find it tomorrow,” he said with finality.

  When they got back, the stranger ordered Mitch to sit down and then put a blanket round his shoulders. “There’s Matilda in the bag,” he said conversationally. “Tastes pretty good roasted over the red ashes. Would you like a bite?” “No thanks,” said Mitch, “just the tea. That’s all I need.” The stranger stirred up the embers of the fire. “What are you doing out here? What’s your line?”

  “Astronautics,” said Mitch. “I’m an engineer.”

  “ Astro-what-ics ? “

  “Astronautics. I travel among the stars.”

  The stranger eyed Mitch thoughtfully for a moment, and then said: “I see what you mean. Thirty-two years ago I felt much the same way myself. That’s when I came out here to live in the desert, with only the dingoes and the stars for company. When did you decide to leave it all behind?”

  “Leave what behind?”

  “The noise, the fight, the jungle--the grind of city life.”

  “We took off last April.”

  “Wasn’t easy, was it? Something deep inside you said you should resist the desire and go back. But you won’t regret it. Look at me; thirty years I’ve been tramping over this desert, and still as young and fresh as when I started out. You wouldn’t think I was sixty-two, would you?”

  Mitch certainly didn’t think so. “You don’t look a day over thirty,” he said.

  “Exactly. This is the place to keep you young. Out here with the sand, the mulga, the eucalyptus, the dingoes and the stars. What more could a man want?”

  As if in answer the dingoes started up their mournful chorus again, but this time Mitch, listening to them, thought he could detect the voice of Jet calling to him.

  “Hey, listen,” he cried, jumping up excitedly, “did you hear that? That was Jet.”

  “Sit down,” said th
e stranger calmly. “It was the dingoes. There’s nobody here but you, me and the dingoes. Now, in that bag there’s a box of tea. Pass it out, will you?”

  Mitch fumbled awkwardly into the bag. “Is this it?” he asked.

  “Thanks. How do you like it? Strong?”

  “Look,” said Mitch desperately, “before we go any further I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  The stranger ignored him--and the cries of the dingoes increased “Do you like plenty of sugar?”

  “Never mind the sugar,” said Mitch angrily, “I’m talking to you.”

  “Sorry I’ve got no fresh milk.”

  “What’s the matter with you?” screamed Mitch. “Can’t you even listen to what I’m saying?”

  “Sit down, Mitch,” said the stranger firmly. “Sit down and save your breath.”

  Mitch sat down suddenly. “Sit down, Mitch?” he repeated, fear clearly discernible in his voice. “How do you know my name? And what are you doing here anyway? What’s happened to me? Where is this place?”

  “This is the Northern Territory,” said the stranger deliberately.

  “Northern Territory. Where?”

  “Australia. Where else?”

  “Australia! On Earth?”

  “Where the heck did you think it was? On Mars?” Mitch was really scared now. “But this is Mars, isn’t it?” he pleaded. “Isn’t this the Red Planet?” “Yes--and I’m a kangaroo.”

  “What are you trying to do? Drive me crazy?” said Mitch, his voice rising hysterically.

  “Me? Drive you crazy? You walk into my camp, two hundred miles from the nearest town, without so much as a billy to brew your tea, tell me you’re lost, and that you live in a pyramid and can’t find your way home.”

  Mitch went to great lengths to tell the dingo-hunter who he was. “My name is Stephen Mitchell,” he said hesitantly, struggling to convince himself as he spoke. “I’m an astronautical engineer. Seven months ago I left the Moon on an expedition to Mars. A week ago I landed on the southern ice cap and, with three other members of the ship’s crew, began to explore this planet. And now I find myself here and you tell me this place is Australia--back on Earth.”

  The stranger took a step towards Mitch and, looking down at him, his face grim, said: “Look, Mitch, it’s my opinion that you’ve spent too long in the sun. Not many miles from here there’s a cattle station run by a farmer and his wife. Tomorrow I’ll take you there and they’ll call up the flying doctor and get him to look you over. Now, lie down and take it easy. Or do I have to put you to sleep with the butt of this rifle?”