Red Star

by Loren R. Graham

  In some instances they were simply ruined, and their land fell to the large regional holders with enough capital to finance irrigation. In other cases the peasants formed large cooperative associations and pooled their assets in the interest of the common cause. Sooner or later, however, these associations were bound to suffer a lack of pecuniary resources. The deficiency seemed only temporary at first, but as soon as the first loans were concluded with the powerful capitalists the cooperatives rapidly began to deteriorate. High rates of interest on the loans increased outlays, it then became necessary to seek new loans, and so it went. The associations fell under the economic control of their creditors, who eventually ruined them and took over the holdings of hundreds and thousands of peasants in a single sweep.

  Thus all cultivated land was transferred to a few thousand powerful agricultural capitalists. In the interior of the continents, however, there still remained vast deserts which the individual capitalists could not afford to irrigate. When the by then thoroughly democratic state was forced to involve itself in the project in order to absorb the growing surplus of the proletariat and aid the remnants of the dying peasantry, it turned out that even it did not possess the kind of resources necessary to build the gigantic canals. The capitalist syndicates wanted to take charge of the enterprise, but the entire people rose in protest, realizing that this would give the syndicates complete control over the state. After a long struggle in which the agricultural capitalists put up desperate resistance, a progressive tax on profits from the land was introduced. The revenues obtained through this tax went into a fund to finance the enormous project of building the canals. The power of the landlords was broken, and soon the land was nationalized. The last remnants of the small peasantry disappeared in the process, because in its own interests the state leased land only to the big capitalists, and the agricultural concerns became vaster than ever. Thus the famous canals served as a powerful stimulus to economic development at the same time as they firmly reinforced the political unity of all mankind.

  When I finished reading all this I could not refrain from telling Menni how surprised I was at the fact that human hands had built water routes so gigantic that they could even be seen from Earth with our weak telescopes.

  “That is not altogether correct,” said Menni. “The canals are indeed immense, but they are not dozens of kilometers wide, as they would in fact have to be for your astronomers to be able to see them. What they see are the broad bands of forest we have planted along the canals in order to maintain an even level of humidity in the air and prevent the water from evaporating too rapidly. Some of your scientists seem to have guessed as much.”

  The epoch of the digging of the canals was a time of great prosperity in all areas of industry and a period of profound calm in the class struggle. The demand for labor was tremendous, and unemployment disappeared. But when the Great Project was finished, bringing to completion the capitalist colonization of the former wastelands, an industrial crisis soon broke out which disrupted the “social peace.” The result was a social revolution, but once again the course of events was relatively peaceful. Strikes were the workers’ main weapon, while the rare uprisings that occurred were restricted to a few, almost exclusively agricultural regions. The owners retreated step by step before the inevitable, and even when the government fell into the hands of the workers’ party, the vanquished did not attempt to assert their interests by force.

  When the means of production were socialized, there was no compensation in the true sense of the word. At first, however, the capitalists were pensioned off. Many of them later played an important role in the organization of state-owned enterprises. It proved very difficult to distribute labor resources in accordance with the vocational training of the workers. Except for the capitalists on pension, for about a century there was an obligatory working day of six hours at first, which was successively shortened. Technical progress and the exact computation of available labor, however, finally helped to eliminate even these last vestiges of the old system.

  I could not help feeling a certain envy as I viewed this picture of steady social evolution free from the fire and blood of our own history. I mentioned it to Netti as we were finishing the book.

  “I don’t know,” he said thoughtfully, “but I think that you are wrong. True, the conflicts on Earth have been more acute than ours, and the natural environment has always shown a greater tendency to retaliate with death and destruction. But perhaps this is due to the fact that Earth is so much more richly endowed with natural resources and the life-giving energy of the sun. Look how much older our planet is, yet our humanity arose only a few tens of thousands of years before yours and is at present a mere two or three hundred years ahead of you in development. I tend to think of our two humanities as brothers. The elder one has a calm and balanced temperament, while the younger one is stormy and impetuous. The younger one is more wasteful with his resources, and prone to serious errors. His childhood was sickly and turbulent, and as he now approaches adolescence he often suffers from convulsive growing pains. But might he not become a greater and more powerful artist and creator than his elder brother? And in that case, will he not eventually be able to adorn our great Universe even better and more richly? I cannot be certain, but it seems to me that this is what may happen.”

  10. Arrival

  Piloted by Menni’s lucid intellect, the etheroneph continued toward its distant goal without further incidents. I had managed to adapt tolerably well to the conditions of a weightless existence and could already cope with the main difficulties of the Martian language by the time Menni announced that we had come halfway and attained maximum velocity, which now would begin decreasing. At the exact moment Menni had indicated, the etheroneph quickly and smoothly turned over. Earth, which long ago had shrunk from a large bright sickle to a little crescent and from a little crescent to a bright greenish star near the disc of the sun, now moved from the lower to the upper hemisphere of the black firmament, and the red star Mars that had been shining above our heads was now below us.

  Dozens, hundreds of hours passed, and the red star became a bright little disc. Soon one could see two small stars, its satellites Deimos and Phobos, tiny, harmless little planets wholly undeserving of their ominous Greek names “Terror” and “Fear.” The usually serious Martians became more lively and visited Enno’s observatory more frequently to look at their native land. I looked too, but despite Enno’s patient explanations I understood little of what I saw. The planet presented a strange sight indeed. The red patches were forests and meadows, while the darker ones were fields ready for harvesting. The cities appeared as bluish spots, and only water and snow were of a color familiar to me. The jovial Enno sometimes made me guess what it was I saw in the telescope, and he and Netti were greatly amused by my naïve mistakes. I repaid them by jokingly calling their planet the home of erudite owls and mixed-up colors.

  The red disc grew steadily larger. Soon it was noticeably bigger than the circle of the sun and resembled an unlabeled astronomical map. The force of gravity also began to become perceptibly greater, and I found the sensation very pleasant indeed. Deimos and Phobos were transformed from bright points of light into tiny but distinctly marked little circles.

  Fifteen or twenty hours later, Mars appeared spread out below us like a huge flat disc. I could see more with my naked eye than is found on any of our astronomical maps. Deimos glided across this map, while Phobos had disappeared from sight to the other side of the planet.

  Everyone around me was happy. I alone could not overcome an uneasy, melancholy feeling of expectation. Closer and closer . . . No one could concentrate on work; everyone was gazing down at the world unfolding below. It was their world; to me it was full of mysteries and riddles. Only Menni was not with us. He was in the engine room, for the last hours of the journey were the most risky, and he had to check the distance and regulate our speed. Why was it that I—as fate would have it, the Columbus of this world—felt no joy or pr
ide or even the soothing calm that should have come from the sight of the solid shore after a long voyage across the Ocean of the Ethereal? The events of the future were already casting their shadow on the present.

  The approach of the space ship to Mars, with Leonid on board

  Only two hours to go. Soon we would be entering the atmosphere. My head started throbbing so painfully that I could look no longer and retired to my cabin. Netti came with me. He started talking to me—not about the present but about the past, about distant Earth, there up above.

  “You must return when you have accomplished your mission,” he said, and to me his words sounded like a gentle reminder to be brave. I lost track of time as we discussed the necessity of the assignment and its many difficulties.

  Netti looked at the chronometer. “We have arrived. Let’s rejoin the others!” he exclaimed.

  The etheroneph came to a stop, the wide metal plates opened, and fresh air rushed in. Above us was a clear blue green sky—around us, a throng of people. Menni and Sterni disembarked first, carrying a transparent coffin containing the frozen body of their dead comrade, Letta. The others followed after them. Netti and I left last. Together, hand in hand, we made our way through a crowd of thousands, who all looked just like Netti.

  PART II

  1. Menni’s Apartment

  During the first period of my stay I moved in with Menni in a factory settlement—that is to say, a planned complex of industry and residences—whose physical center and economic base was a large chemical laboratory located far below ground. The part of the settlement above ground was spread through a park covering about ten square kilometers and consisted of several hundred apartment buildings for the laboratory workers, a large meeting hall, the Cooperative Depot, which was something on the order of a large department store, and the Communications Center, which connects the settlement with the rest of the world. Menni was the factory supervisor and lived not far from the community buildings right next to the main descent to the laboratory.

  What first surprised me about nature on Mars, and the thing I found most difficult to get used to, was the red vegetation. The substance which gives it this color is similar in chemical composition to the chlorophyll of plants on Earth and performs a parallel function in their life processes, building tissues from the carbon dioxide in the air and the energy of the sun. Netti thoughtfully suggested that I wear protective glasses to prevent irritation of the eyes, but I refused.

  “Red is the color of our socialist banner,” I said, “so I shall simply have to get used to your socialist vegetation.”

  “In that case you must also recognize the presence of socialism in the plants on Earth,” Menni remarked. “Their leaves also possess a red hue, but it is concealed by the stronger green color. If you were to don a pair of glasses which completely absorb the green waves of light but admit the red ones, you would see that your forests and fields are as red as ours.”

  I lack the time and space to describe the peculiar Martian flora and fauna, nor can I devote much attention to the atmosphere of the planet, which is pure and clear, relatively thin, but rich in oxygen. The sky is a deep, dark green, and the most prominent celestial bodies are the sun—much smaller than it appears on Earth—the two tiny moons, and two bright evening or morning stars, Venus and Earth. All of this was strange and foreign to me then and seems splendid and precious to me now as I look back upon it, but it is not essential to the purpose of my narrative. The people and their relationships are what concern me most, and they were the most fantastic and mysterious of all the wonders of this fairy-tale world.

  Menni lived in a small two-story house that was indistinguishable architecturally from all the rest. The most original feature of this architecture was the transparent roof made of several huge sheets of blue glass. The bedroom and a parlor for receiving guests were located directly beneath it. Because of its soothing effect, the Martians prefer blue light during their leisure time. The color of the human face in this light does not strike them as gloomy. All of the work rooms—the study, Menni’s home laboratory, the communications room—were on the ground floor, whose large windows freely admitted the restless red light reflected from the foliage of the trees in the park. This light made me uneasy and absentminded at first, but the Martians are used to it and find it has a stimulating effect on work.

  Menni’s study was full of books and writing implements, from ordinary pencils to a phonotype, a complex mechanism in which a phonograph recording of clearly enunciated speech activated the keys of a typewriter which accurately translated it into the written alphabet. Playing the phonogram did not erase it, so that one could use either it or the printed translation, whichever happened to be more convenient.

  Above Menni’s desk hung a portrait of a middle-aged Martian. He resembled Menni, although his almost sinister expression of grim energy and cold resolve was alien to Menni, whose face merely reflected a tranquil and resolute will. Menni told me the story of this man’s life.

  He was one of Menni’s ancestors, a great engineer* who lived long before the social revolution, during the epoch of the Great Canals. It was he who planned, organized, and supervised that grandiose project. His first assistant envied his fame and power and launched a conspiracy against him. Several hundred thousand men were employed on the construction of one of the main canals, which passed through a swampy, disease-infested region. Thousands perished, and great discontent spread among the survivors. While the chief engineer was busy negotiating with the central government of Mars about pensions for the families of the dead and the incapacitated, his assistant was secretly rousing the dissatisfied workers against him, inciting them to strike and demand transfers to other regions. This was impossible, as it would have disrupted the entire plan of the Great Project, but he also urged them to call for the resignation of the chief engineer, which, of course, was quite feasible. When the latter learned of all this he summoned his assistant for an explanation and killed him on the spot. The engineer declined to defend himself at his trial, declaring that he considered his behavior just and necessary. He was sentenced to a long prison term.

  Soon, however, it became obvious that none of his successors was capable of running the gigantic undertaking. Misunderstandings, embezzlement, and disorders followed. The entire mechanism of the project broke down; expenses increased by hundreds of millions, and the acute discontent of the workers threatened to end in open revolt. The central government hastenend to address an appeal to the chief engineer, offering to pardon him in full and reinstate him in his former position. He refused the pardon, but consented to head the project from prison. The inspectors he appointed quickly got to the bottom of things at the various construction sites. Thousands of engineers and contractors were put on trial. Wages were raised, the system by which the workers were supplied with food, clothing, and tools was reorganized from top to bottom, work plans were reviewed and revised. Order was soon fully restored, and once again the enormous mechanism began functioning rapidly and smoothly like an obedient tool in the hands of a real master.

  The master, however, not only supervised the entire project but also planned its continuation in the years to come, grooming a certain energetic and talented engineer from a working-class background to be his successor. By the time his prison term had expired, everything had been so well prepared that the great master was confident the project could be safely entrusted to others. The very moment the prime minister of the central government arrived at the prison to release him, the engineer committed suicide. As Menni was telling me all this his face underwent a peculiar transformation, taking on an expression of inflexible severity that gave him a striking resemblance to his ancestor. I sensed that he understood and sympathized with this man who had died hundreds of years before he was born.

  The communications room was at the center of the ground floor. It contained telephones attached to visual devices which transmitted an image of everything that passed in front of them at any distance. One of th
ese apparatuses connected Menni’s house with the Communications Center, which was in turn joined to all the cities of the planet. Other devices provided communication with the underground laboratory which Menni headed. These were in continuous function: several finely gridded screens showed a reduced image of illuminated rooms full of large metal machines and glass equipment attended by hundreds of workers. I asked Menni to take me on a tour of the laboratory.

  “That would be ill-advised,” he answered. “The substances handled there are unstable, and although we take considerable precautions, there is always a slight risk of explosion or of poisoning by invisible rays. You must not expose yourself to such dangers. Being the only one of your kind we have, you are irreplaceable.”

  Menni’s home laboratory contained only the materials and equipment relevant to the research he was doing at a given moment. Near the ceiling of the corridor on the ground floor hung an aero-gondola that was always ready to take us wherever we might want to go.