Red Star

by Loren R. Graham

  “You are so good . . .” I said, vaguely sensing the change.

  He smiled and put his hand on my forehead. It was a small, soft hand. I closed my eyes again, and with the absurd thought that I must kiss this hand I sank into a quiet, blissful sleep.

  4. The Explanation

  When I awoke and turned on the light my watch showed ten o’clock. When I had finished my toilet I pressed a button, and a moment later Menni entered the room.

  “Are we leaving soon?” I asked.

  “In an hour,” replied Menni.

  “Were you in here last night, or was I only dreaming?”

  “No, you were not dreaming. It wasn’t I, however, but our young doctor, Netti. You were sleeping restlessly, and Netti used the blue light and suggestion to calm you down.”

  “Is he your brother?”

  “No,” replied Menni with a smile.

  “You have not told me your nationality yet. Do all of your comrades look like you?”

  “Yes,” answered Menni.

  “In other words, you lied to me,” I declared sharply. “This is no scientific society. It is something else.”

  “Yes,” Menni answered calmly. “We are all inhabitants of another planet, representatives of another humanity. We are Martians.”

  “Why did you deceive me?”

  “Would you have listened to me if I had told you the truth straightaway? I did not have time to convince you. It was necessary to distort the truth for the sake of plausibility. Without this transitional stage you would have been severely shaken. But about the main point, the trip ahead of us, I told you the truth.”

  “So I am your prisoner after all?”

  “No, you are still free to go. You have an hour in which to make your decision. If you refuse, we will take you back and postpone the journey, because there is no point in our returning alone.”

  “Just why do you need me?”

  “You are to serve as a living link between the human races of Earth and Mars by familiarizing yourself with our way of life and acquainting the Martians with yours. For as long as you yourself wish, you are to be the representative of your planet in our world.”

  “Are you telling me the whole truth now?”

  “The whole truth—if, that is, you are equal to the task.”

  “In that case I shall have to try. I am staying with you.”

  “Is that your final decision?” asked Menni.

  “Yes, unless your last explanation is also some sort of . . . transitional stage.”

  “Well then, let’s go,” said Menni, ignoring my caustic remark. “I must go to give the final instructions to the mechanic now. I’ll return in a moment, and we can watch the etheroneph take off together.”

  He left, and I fell to pondering. Actually, our explanation was not quite complete. One rather serious question remained, but I was unable to bring myself to ask it. Had Menni knowingly contributed to my rupture with Anna Nikolaevna? It seemed to me that he had. He probably thought that she was in the way. Perhaps he was right. At any rate, he could only hasten the break, not cause it. Even doing that much, of course, was a case of insolent interference in my private business. Now that I was tied to Menni I would have to repress my hostility toward him, however, so there was no use in bringing up the past. It would be best not to think of the matter at all. Otherwise, the new turn things had taken did not astonish me too greatly. Sleep had refreshed me, and after all that had happened the night before I was no longer easily surprised by anything. All that remained was to work out a plan for further action.

  I obviously had to orient myself in my new situation as quickly and thoroughly as possible. The best procedure would be to start with what was near at hand and proceed step by step to things that were more distant. Closest to me just then were the etheroneph, its passengers, and the takeoff. Mars was still a long way off—two months at the very least, according to what Menni had told me the day before.

  I had already managed to take note of the external form of the etheroneph the previous evening. It was almost spherical, being flattened at the lower end rather like Columbus’s egg. Such a shape, of course, provided for the greatest volume with the least amount of materials and the smallest cooling surface. The etheroneph was evidently made mostly of aluminum and glass. Menni would show and explain to me the interior structure of the craft and would also introduce me to the other “monsters,” as I mentally called my new comrades.

  When Menni returned he took me to meet the other Martians, who were all gathered in a side room with an enormous crystal window half the length of one wall. Real sunlight was very pleasant after the ghostly light of the electric lamps. There were about twenty Martians, and my first impression was that they all looked exactly alike. The absence of beards, mustaches, and wrinkles on their faces almost erased even the age differences among them. I unconsciously kept my eyes on Menni in order not to lose him in this strange company. Soon, however, I was able to recognize my noctural visitor, Netti, who was distinguished from the rest by his youth and liveliness, and the broad-shouldered giant Sterni, with his strikingly cold, almost sinister expression. Only Menni and Netti spoke Russian with me, while Sterni and three or four others spoke French and the others English and German. Among themselves they evidently used their native language, a tongue I had never heard before. It was sonorous and pleasing to the ear, and I noted with satisfaction that it did not seem to be particularly difficult to pronounce.

  5. Takeoff

  Interesting though the “monsters” were, most of my attention was on the approaching solemn moment of takeoff. I gazed intently at the snowy surface before us and at the sheer granite cliff rising above it. I expected at any moment to feel a sharp jolt and then watch everything shrink as we rapidly pulled away from it, but nothing of the sort happened. A slow, noiseless movement gradually began to separate us from the snowy field. For some seconds the rise was almost imperceptible.

  “Acceleration two centimeters,” said Menni.

  I understood what that meant. The first second we would move only one centimeter, the second three, the third five, the fourth seven, and so on, as our speed steadily increased in arithmetical progression. In a minute we would reach the speed of a man walking, in fifteen minutes, that of an express train, and so on. We were moving according to the law of falling bodies, except that we were falling upward and five hundred times slower than ordinary heavy bodies falling near the surface of the Earth.

  The plate-glass window extended from the floor, with which it formed an obtuse angle, and conformed to the spherical hull of the etheroneph, of which it was a part. Thus by bending forward we could also see what was directly below us.

  The Earth was receding faster and faster, and the horizon became increasingly broader. The dark spots of the rocks and villages shrank, and the outline of the lake stood out as on a map. The sky darkened, and the blue band of the open sea now occupied the entire western half of the horizon. I was already able to discern the brightest stars in the midday sunlight.

  A very slow revolving movement of the etheroneph on its vertical axis afforded us a view of the entire space around us. The horizon seemed to rise together with us, while Earth below resembled a huge concave saucer with embossed designs. The contours of their relief became progressively shallower, and soon the entire landscape looked like a map that was drawn with sharp lines in the middle and blurred toward the edges, over which there hovered a semitransparent, bluish fog. The sky had now become quite black. Countless stars, even the tiniest ones, shone with a tranquil, unblinking light in defiance of the bright sun, which was beginning to become uncomfortably hot.

  “Tell me, Menni, this acceleration of two centimeters at which we are now moving—will it continue throughout the journey?”

  “Yes,” he replied, “except that when we are about hallway its direction will be reversed, so that second by second our velocity will decrease rather than increase along the same gradient. Thus although the maximum speed of the e
theroneph will be approximately 50 kilometers a second and its average velocity about 25 kilometers, by the time we arrive it will be as low as it was at takeoff, and we will land on the surface of Mars with no jolt or bump whatever. Were it not for these tremendous variations in velocity we would be unable to reach either Earth or Venus, because even though they are relatively close—60 and 100 million kilometers respectively—at the speed of, say, your trains it would take us centuries rather than months to cover the distance. As for the ‘cannon shot’ method I have read about in your science fiction novels, it is of course simply a joke, because according to the laws of mechanics there is practically no difference between being hit by the shot and being inside the projectile at the moment it is fired.”

  “But how do you manage to achieve such an even deceleration and acceleration?”

  “The motive power of the etheroneph is provided by a certain radioactive substance which we can obtain in great quantities. We have discovered a method of accelerating its decay by hundreds of thousands of times. This is done in the engine by means of certain fairly simple electrochemical processes which release an enormous amount of energy. As you know, the particles of decaying atoms fly apart at a speed tens of thousands of times greater than that of an artillery shell. When these particles are allowed to issue from the etheroneph in only one direction, that is, through a passage whose walls they cannot penetrate, the entire craft is propelled in the opposite direction. Thus it is the same principle that operates in a recoiling rifle or artillery piece. You can easily calculate that in accordance with the well-known law of kinetic energy, a tiny fraction of a milligram of such particles per second is quite sufficient to give our etheroneph its evenly accelerated movement.”

  As we were talking the other Martians disappeared from the room. Menni suggested we go to his cabin and have breakfast. His quarters were along the outer hull of the etheroneph and had a large crystal window. We resumed our conversation. I knew that I would be experiencing new and strange sensations as my body became weightless, and I asked Menni about it.

  “Yes,” said Menni, “the sun continues to attract us, but here its force is negligible. The force of Earth will also become imperceptible by tomorrow or the day after. Only the steady acceleration of the etheroneph will allow us to retain 1/400 to 1/500 of our previous weight. It is difficult to get used to this at first, even though the change occurs very gradually. As you become weightless, you will lose your former agility and make a great many clumsy movements. You are going to find flying through the air a most dubious pleasure. As for the palpitations of the heart, the dizziness, and even the nausea that are bound to occur, Netti will be able to give you some relief. It will be difficult to cope with water and other liquids, as they will slip out of their containers at the slightest bump and scatter about in huge spherical drops. However, we have taken great pains to eliminate these inconveniences. Furniture and dishes are fastened down, liquids are kept in corked containers, and everywhere in the ship there are handgrips and straps to keep you from bouncing off into the air should you make a sudden movement. Don’t worry, you will have plenty of time to get used to it.”

  We had been traveling about two hours, and my decrease in weight was already quite perceptible, although the sensation was still very pleasant. All I could feel was my body becoming lighter and my movements freer. We had already left Earth’s atmosphere, but this was of no concern to us, since our hermetically sealed craft naturally had an adequate supply of oxygen. The visible portion of Earth’s surface now very definitely resembled a map. Its scale was distorted, however, being smaller at the middle and larger toward the horizon. Here and there it was covered with white patches of clouds. To the south, beyond the Mediterranean, the north of Africa and Arabia were clearly visible through a blue haze. The area beyond Scandinavia to the north faded away in a wasteland of ice and snow; only the cliffs of Spitzbergen still stood out as a black spot. In the east, beyond the greenish brown band of the Urals, which was dotted with patches of snow, there again began an expanse of solid white occasionally shot with a greenish hue, a faint reminder of the vast coniferous forest of Siberia. Beyond the clear contours of central Europe to the west the shores of England and France were lost in the clouds. I was unable to look at this gigantic panorama for very long, for the mere thought of the terrifying depth of the abyss below almost made me faint. I renewed my conversation with Menni.

  “You are the captain of this ship, are you not?”

  Menni nodded and said:

  “But that does not imply that I have what you call the power of command. I just happen to have the most experience in piloting the etheroneph, and my instructions are observed in the same way that I observe Sterni’s astronomical calculations, or in the way we all follow Netti’s medical advice so as not to jeopardize our health or fitness for work.”

  “How old is this Doctor Netti, anyway? He seems awfully young to me.”

  “I forget, 16 or 17,” Menni answered with a smile.

  That was about what I thought, but I could not help being surprised at such early erudition.

  “A doctor already at that age!” I exclaimed in spite of myself.

  “A competent and experienced one at that,” Menni added.

  I did not realize at the time (and Menni intentionally neglected to mention the fact) that the Martian year is almost twice as long as ours. Mars completes a revolution around the sun in 686 of our days, so that Netti’s age of 16 was equivalent to about 30 Earth years.

  6. The Etheroneph

  After breakfast Menni took me on a tour of our ship. First we went to the engine room, which occupied the entire lowest floor of the etheroneph at its flattened bottom. It consisted of five rooms, with one in the center and four others arranged around it, all of them separated by partitions. The huge engine stood in the middle of the center room. Round glass windows were set in the floor on all four sides around it. One was pure cyrstal, while three were of different colored glass. They were all about three centimeters thick and marvelously transparent, though at that moment we could only see a small part of Earth’s surface through them.

  The main part of the engine was a vertical metal cylinder three meters high and a half meter in diameter. Menni explained that it was made of osmium, a very refractory precious metal resembling platinum. It was in this cylinder that the decomposition of the radioactive material took place. Its red-hot, 20-centimeter thick walls gave an indication of the enormous energy being released in the process. It was not very warm in the room, however, for the cylinder was encased in 40 centimeters of a transparent material that provided excellent insulation from the heat. The etheroneph was evenly heated by warm air conducted through pipes running off in all directions from the top of this case. The other parts of the engine attached to the cylinder—electric coils, accumulators, dials, and so on—were arranged in perfect order around it, and a system of mirrors enabled the mechanic to see all of them at once without leaving his seat.

  Of the side compartments, one was the astronomy room. To the right and left of it were the water and oxygen chambers, while on the opposite side was the calculations room. The floor and outer wall of the astronomy room were of pure, geometrically ground crystal. They were so transparent that as I happened to glance straight down while following Menni along the suspended footbridges, I was seized by a distressing fit of giddiness and forced to close my eyes, for I saw absolutely nothing between us and the abyss below. I tried instead to look to one side at the instruments arranged on the intricate supports which extended down from the ceiling and the inner wall of the room between the bridges. The main telescope was about two meters long, but its lens was disproportionately large, as was apparently its optical power.

  “We use only diamond lenses,” said Menni. “They provide the broadest field of vision.”

  “What is the ordinary power of this telescope?” I asked.

  “Its direct-vision magnification is about 600,” Menni replied, “but when that is
insufficient we take a photograph and examine it under a microscope, which raises the power to 60,000 or more. The operation only takes about a minute.”

  Menni invited me to sit down and look at the planet we had left behind us. He aimed the telescope.

  “We are about 2,000 kilometers away right now,” he said. “Do you recognize what you see before you?”

  I immediately recognized the harbor of a Scandinavian capital I had passed through a number of times on party business. The ships anchored in the roads presented a fascinating sight. With a single twist of a knob on the side of the telescope, Menni replaced the eyepiece with a camera. A few seconds later he removed it and inserted the entire device in an apparatus to one side which proved to be a microscope.

  “We develop and print the image right here in the microscope without touching it with our hands,” he explained.

  After a few simple operations, which took some 30 seconds, he turned the eyepiece of the microscope over to me. One of the familiar steamships of the Northern Company stood out with amazing sharpness, as if it were only a few dozen paces away. The picture seemed three-dimensional in the transmitted light, and the colors were all quite natural. Standing on the bridge was the gray-haired captain with whom I had chatted a number of times while traveling on the ship. A sailor setting a large box on the deck was frozen in his pose, as was a passenger showing him something with his hand. And to think that all this was 2,000 kilometers away!

  A young Martian, one of Sterni’s assistants, entered the room to measure the exact distance the etheroneph had covered. Not wishing to disturb him in his work, we went on to the water chamber, which contained a huge reservoir of water and several large apparatuses for purifying it. A multitude of pipes carried the water from the tank to all parts of the etheroneph.