Perilous Planets

by Brian Aldiss

  That’s straightforward enough. As to why we want to visit planets in fiction—that’s less simple. But there are valid reasons for our interest in unvisited or unvisitable planets; this anthology sets out to explore some of them.

  In this opening section, the action unfolds on uninhabited worlds. Even within this setting, there are different categories of uninhabited worlds. Masson’s story is set on a purely imaginary planet. Nourse’s story is set on a purely imaginary Mercury. Morrison’s story is set on an imaginary planetoid, or asteroid. Each choice of location has its due effect on the kind of story which is told.

  ‘The Sack’ is an excellent story. I do not know why it has not been anthologized more often; nor do I understand why the name of its author, William Morrison (the pseudonym of Joseph Samachson), is not more widely known. There is no mistaking ‘The Sack’ for anything but an sf story; yet we can see that it is also a fairy story, with all the traditional virtues of that genre: a grain of unpalatable wisdom incorporated within the fantastic, the medicine within the spoonful of jam.

  The wisdom comes in the form of a fairly standard, but continually necessary, precept concerning the rightful use of knowledge and power. ‘The Sack’ was first published in the USA in 1950, one of those awful years that have trudged by, when Senator Joe McCarthy was just beginning his inquisition of anyone suspected of being a Communist; Morrison’s senator is less interested in the truth than in his own career. The story itself takes the form of an inquisition. Now that McCarthy has long since disappeared from the scene, ‘The Sack’ reveals more universal aspects of its fable.

  ‘The truth will make you free’ is an adage from a safer era.

  Morrison offers a revised version—‘The truth may enslave you.’

  Several of the other tales in this collection also represent quests for the ultimate in one form or another. The lure of ultimate answers to everything is embodied in ‘The Sack’. Alan Nourse’s ‘Brightside Crossing’ embodies the solar system ultimate in adventure, a crossing of Mercury’s bright side during perihelion.

  ‘Brightside Crossing’ is a fine story. It is included here because it is also absolutely out-of-date.

  At the start of the sixties, Alan Nourse published a highly successful book entitled Nine Planets, with colour illustrations by Mel Hunter, which embodied all the knowledge then current about the nine planets of our solar system. In the chapter on Mercury, Nourse has this to say:

  The planet turns completely around on its axis in exactly the same time it requires to complete one revolution around the Sun. This means that on Mercury a ‘year’ and a ‘day’ are equal in length, and that the same face of the planet is therefore always turned toward the Sun… Mercury has a bright side and a dark side; the bright side is perpetually hot, exceedingly hot, while the dark side remains bitterly cold.

  Well, so the astronomers all thought, before the astonishing successes of nasa’s Mariner fly-bys of the sun’s nearest planet. We know now (is this the ultimate answer to the question?) that Mercury does in fact have a slow axial revolution, so that its days do not equal its years.

  Mercury remains a mysterious planet, its pocked face resembling to an odd degree that of our familiar Moon. And yet—the Bright Side, the Dark Side, and that thrilling area, the Twilight Zone, have all been abolished at the click of a computerized shutter. They provide settings for many sf stories, harbours for many imaginations. We then regarded them as ‘fact’; they have been proved one hundred per cent fictitious, like the forests and swamps of Venus, or the canals and dead cities of Mars.

  When lecturing on science fiction, I am often asked, ‘What will science fiction do now that science has caught up with it?’ My answer is to say, in effect, that every new advance opens up new doors for speculation. I believe this to be so. But I see ‘ the point of the question. Year by year, old ports of call of the imagination have been closed until further notice. This book celebrates a type of fiction which belongs to the past.

  The will to believe in life everywhere is very strong, and not simply in science fiction writers. The recent Viking landing on Mars was designed to check for signs of life. It is hardly to be wondered at that we live on an over-populated globe, when mankind continually populates the deserts, the deeps, the interior of the Earth, and the Heavens, with a riotous assembly of imaginary beings. Life is supported by conjuring life. Conception is all.

  So how can ‘Brightside Crossing’ be out-of-date, and yet retain its attraction for us? Because it speaks of human endeavour and the will to venture where no man has ever set foot. Nourse’s adventure remains as up-to-date as ever; the point of the story does not rest on whether the world conjured up for us is real or imaginary. Space flight has not changed human nature, only human knowledge.

  ‘Mouth of Hell’ takes place upon an entirely imaginary planet. The author does not inform the reader of the name of the planet, or in what star system it is located. This is deliberate. David Masson is one of the most remarkable authors of sf thrown up in the sixties. His stories were printed in Michael Moorcock’s New Worlds— less than a dozen of them, and then he ceased to publish. His most famous piece is probably Traveller’s Rest, a remarkable time-travel tale.

  Like the rest of his slender oeuvre, Masson’s Mouth of Hell shows admirable control of material that, in the vital tradition of sf, has enormous implications. While it is undoubtedly about an uninhabited planet, and may appear to have no interest in anything but describing as remarkable a physical feature as could be found on any imaginary planet, it has much to say about the nature of the human animal. Not only is it about the marvellous, like the Nourse story; it is also about the domestication of the marvellous.

  Time has had its little ironies with ‘Mouth of Hell’ as with ‘Brightside Crossing’. When Masson imagined his enormous sloping plateau and its attendant features, it lay almost at the limits of the unimaginable. Whereas Mariner fly-bys of Mercury have outdated Nourse’s (and similar stories) premises without invalidating its imaginative power, similar fly-bys of Mars have confirmed Masson’s premises. There are monstrous features on the Red Planet at which we can but wonder: the great equatorial rift valley, which is 6 km deep, 75 km across, and hundreds of kilometres long, the gigantic Olympus, a volcano some 29 km high—features which considering that the radius of Mars is only half Earth’s, are almost unbelievable. In all the sensational stories of Mars written over the past century, not one author dared imagine such monstrosities for fear of being laughed at. Olympus and the rift valley make ‘Mouth of Hell’ more, rather than less, credible (whether to its advantage or disadvantage is up to an individual reader to decide).

  * * *

  This is a ‘what if story, the account of a discovery. What does humanity make of it? What does a robin make of a wheelbarrow? What was it Blake said about the sun: ‘ You see a Disk in shape somewhat like a Guinea…’?

  MOUTH OF HELL

  by David I. Masson

  ==========

  When the expedition reached the plateau, driving by short stages from the northern foothills, they found it devoid of human life, a silent plain variegated by little flowers and garish patches of moss and lichen. Kettass, the leader, called a halt, and surveyed the landscape while the tractors were overhauled. The sun shone brightly out of a clear sky, not far to the south for the quasi-arctic ecology was one of height, not latitude. Mosquitoes hovered low down over tussocks below wind-level, beetles and flies crawled over the flowers. Beyond a quarter-metre above the ground, however, a bitter wind from the north flowed steadily. The distance was clear but it was difficult to interpret what one saw, and the treeless waste held no clues to size. Ground undulations were few. There were not signs of permafrost beneath. After a time a fox could be made out trekking southward some way off. Some larger tracks, not hooved, showed by the edge of a bog pool. If one wandered far from the vehicles and men, the silence was broken only by the thin sound of the wind where it combed a grass mound, the zizz and skrittle of insects, t
he distant yipe of fox or other hunting animal, and the secretive giggle of seeping water. Here and there on the north side of a mound or clump traces of rime showed, and a few of the pool edges were lightly frozen.

  Returning to the main body, Kettass ordered the midday meal to be prepared. He thought about the situation. The wind was a trouble: it was steady and merciless and evidently below freezing point. One could bake at one’s south side and freeze, literally, on one’s north side. As the hour wore on the wind increased and became, if anything, colder as the sun grew hotter.

  But a fringe of dark grey cloud began to climb along the southern horizon, like a ragged curtain seen from upside down, climbed and spread, until its outer streamers menaced the sun. Kettass got the party going again, and the little group of tractors trundled carefully, picking their way, towards the clouds.

  After two hours, ‘Afpeng spotted a herd of greydeer and the party stopped. A long stalk by ‘Afpeng, Laafif and Niizmek secured three carcasses which were strapped to the vehicles, and the party moved on. The clouds continued to grow and by evening covered half the sky, to south, the icy wind from the north meanwhile growing in strength. A camp was made, using the tractors as weather walls to supplement the canvas. The deer were cured and their flesh preserved, against a time of shortage of food.

  During a wakeful night the wind blew steadily on, slackening only towards dawn. The night was clear and freezing hard. In the morning the sky was cloudless and the whole plateau covered with white frost.

  ‘What direction now, chief?’ asked Mehhtumm over breakfast.

  ‘Press on south, simply.’

  In two hours the frost was gone. The beetles came out from their hiding places, the sun beat down, the ground was warm, but the wind blew fiercer than ever and as cold. Far ahead, cumulus heads rose fully formed from the horizon, and soon towering thunderclouds covered the southern sky. A screen of false cirrus spread and became a grey pall, shutting off the sun. The wind grew and turned gusty at times.

  ‘Have you noticed the ground?’ said Mehhtumm in Kettass’ ear some hours later.

  ‘The slope? Yes.’ And the chief halted the convoy. It was just as though someone had tilted the world slightly. They were pointing down a gentle slope, nearly uniform, which spread east and west as far as the eye could see. Behind to north, the same slope. The change had been too gradual to notice before. Kettass had the troop deploy into a broad arrow with his vehicle in the lead and centre.

  In the next two hours the tilt became more and more pronounced. Pools had become moist watercourse-beds. Kettass’ altimeter showed that they were down half-way to sea-level. Yet the vegetation was hardly changed. The mosses were richer, the ground almost hot, but the icy gale hurtled at their backs as if to push them down the hillside, a hillside that stretched mile after mile to either horizon. They were shut in north and south by the tilt of the ground, now visibly a curve round which they could not see. ‘Ossnaal’s face was a grey green, and Kettass wondered why one who could be so cool on a rock-face should be so easily affected by this landscape. Not that ‘Afpeng looked too good, and no one was happy.

  ‘Where’s it going to end, eh?’ muttered Laafif.

  The thundercloud had become a vast wall of dark vapour, lit by frequent flashes. An almost continuous rumbling came from the south, and their sets crackled. Kettass ordered the vehicles to run level with his own. The slope was now a clear threat to progress,

  An hour later Kettass stopped the vehicles again. The slope was dangerously steep. Although it was barely noon the light was poor, under the pall of cloud which now arched over most of the sky. Plants were more lush but more isolated, so that much rock and gravel could be seen. The biting wind rushed on.

  ‘Looks as though we’ll need our climbing suckers after all,’ suggested Mehhtumm. Pripand and Ghuddup were muttering together beside vehicle 5 and looking darkly about them. ‘Ossnaal’s face was white and everyone looked anxious.

  ‘If only a handy hollow or ledge would appear, then we could park the tractors,’ went on Mehhtumm. Kettass said nothing. He was considering the altimeter.

  ‘Must be below sea-level,’ he said at last; ‘yet no trees, nothing but this arctic wind, keeping vegetation down I suppose, and no sign of a bottom.’ Then ‘Immobolize here, everybody. Keep two vehicle-lengths apart. Cast out grapnels as best you can. Pull out the packs and climbing equipment, just in case. Pitch tents, but well east of the vehicle line, and choose vegetation areas: the gravel may be in the track of floods. Same thing with the stores. After all that’s done, a meal.’

  Before the meal was ready the gale was suddenly full of soft hail, which turned to cold rain. The afternoon was punctuated by showers of this sort. The grapnels saved two vehicles from rolling off in a shallow spate.

  Kettass held a council of war. ‘Seems to me,’ growled Niizmek, ‘there’s no bottom in front of us. We could send one or two ahead to report, and camp here till we know more.’

  ‘What do you say,’ Afpeng?’

  ‘Strike twenty kilometres east or west, in case there’s a spur or a chimney?’

  ‘ ‘Ossnaal?’

  ‘I think… I don’t… It’s a waste of time trying east or west. You can see there’s nothing however far you go. It’s go on or turn back.’

  ‘You can’t take the lot of us,’ Laafif snapped; ‘you can’t get enough stores down with us, without tractors. If the ground isn’t reached soon and this slope steepens, we’ve had it. Only two or three men can get down, and then only for a few kilometres’ travel.’

  Ghuddup and Pripand, mechanics, said nothing.

  ‘I think,’ now put in Mehhtumm, ‘we might send a patrol party first tomorrow, to go up to half a day down, return by twilight, and report. Then you can decide, eh, chief?’

  ‘Probably best, but I’ll sleep on it,’ said Kettass.

  Few slept that night. The wind was moist, the ground cooled off, the thunder ceased after midnight but the storm of wind roared on. Next morning again a clear sky, apart from some tumbling clouds low down on the southern horizon (which owing to the slope, was not very far off). It was chilly but not freezing. Kettass chose a party of three after a breakfast at first light, among the long dark purple shadows cast across the tilted ground by vehicles and tents. Mehhtumm was to lead; for the other two Kettass asked for volunteers. To his surprise ‘Ossnaal and Ghuddup spoke up. ‘If we’re not able to use the tractors I’ll be at a loose end. Pripand can keep an eye on them. I like climbing, if we get any,’ said Ghuddup. ‘Ossnaal assured Kettass he was fit; ‘I want to find out what we are really coming to.”

  The trio set off almost at once; besides iron rations and water, ropes, karabiners and the newly devised suckers, they carried oxygen. ‘You don’t know how deep this basin is going to go, and what air you’ll encounter,’ Kettass pointed out.

  At first they were in communication with the main party, but at about five kilometres reception grew too faint, partly from the crackling that came with the morning’s cumulonimbus. Before this Mehhtumm reported that the air-pressure suggested they were 2000 metres below Mean Sea-Level, that the slope was over 50deg from the horizontal, that the surface was rock and sand, interspersed with unusual and highly-coloured lichen, that there were numerous small torrents east and west of them, and that mist and cloud had appeared, hovering off the edge not far below. After that, silence… until a hysterical signal, eventually identified as Mehhtumm’s, in the deep evening twilight.

  ==========

  Soon after they lost radio contact with the camp, Mehhtumm, ‘Ossnaal and Ghuddup paused to stare at the cloud-formations. Swags of dirty grey, like dust under beds, floated in the air level with their eyes and a kilometre or so south. Lightning from the formless curtain behind turned them into smoky silhouettes. The cumuloid heads above had largely vanished in the general mass of thundercloud. The tilted horizon terminated in a great roll of clear-edged cloud like a monstrous eel, which extended indefinitely east and west. The ground air, a
t any rate, was here free of the gale, but the rush of wind could be heard between the thunder. The atmosphere was damp and extremely warm. The rock surface was hot. What looked like dark, richly-coloured polyps and sea-anemones thrust and hung obscenely here and there from crannies. The scene was picked out now and again by shafts of roasting sunlight funneling down brassily above an occasional cauliflower top or through a chasm in the cloud-curtain. Progress even with suckers was slow. Mehhtumm got them roped together.

  An hour later the slope was 70deg, with a few ledges bearing thorn bushes, dwarf pines, and peculiar Succulents. The torrents had become thin waterfalls, many floating outwards into spray. A scorching breeze was wafting up from below. Two parallel lines of the roller cloud now stretched above them, and the storm seemed far above that. The smooth, brittle rock would take no pitons.

  A curious patternless pattern of dull pink, cloudy lemon yellow, and Wedgwood blue could just be discerned through the foggy air between their feet. It conveyed nothing, and the steepening curvature of their perch had no visible relation to it. Altimeters were now impossible to interpret, but they must clearly be several kilometres below sea-level. Crawling sensations possessed their bodies, as though they had been turned to sodawater, as Ghuddup remarked, and their ears thrummed.

  Mehhturnm and Ghuddup ate part of their iron rations and swallowed some water, but ‘Ossnaal, whose face was a bluish pink, could only manage the water. They took occasional pulls of oxygen, without noticeably improving their sensations.

  Two hours later found them clinging to a nearly vertical rock face which continued indefinitely east, west and below. The patternless pattern below their feet was the same, no nearer visibly and no clearer. The waterfalls had turned to fine tepid rain. The air behind them, so far as it could be seen (Mehhtumm used a hand mirror) was a mass of dark grey vapour, with much turbulence, through which coppery gleams of hot sunlight came rarely. The traces of sky above were very pale. The naked rock was blisteringly hot, even through sucker-gloves, but carried a curious purple and orange pattern of staining, perhaps organic. The crawling sensation had become a riot of turbulence in their flesh. Their ears were roaring. Something stabbed in their chests at intervals. Their sense of touch was disturbed and difficult. It was lucky they had suckers. Yet with all this, an enormous elation possessed Mehhtumm, an almost childish sense of adventure. ‘Ossnaal was murmuring continuously to himself. Ghuddup was chuckling and apostrophizing the ‘Paisley patterns’ of the abyss.