by Eric Brown
The station is a hive of industry, with a constant toing and froing of all manner of transportation; there is even a dedicated railway station to ferry passengers and goods from the newly arrived ships to the centre of London. A veritable small town of commerce has grown up around the port, with crowds of human servitors bustling hither and thither. Glimpsed in amongst, from time to time, one can observe the form of vehicle preferred by the Martians when not riding their iconic tripods: these are bulky, domed cars like trilobites, which beetle busily back and forth on three wheels.
At noon precisely I stepped from my cab, found a porter, and had him transport our cases through the busy concourse of the station to the vast, glass-covered disembarkation lounge. This resonant chamber was occupied, for the most part, by tentacled Martians – no doubt diplomats, traders and the like, come to the end of their secondment on planet Earth: I wondered if they were longing for the red sands of their homeplanet after their sojourn on our strange world.
A dozen or so humans stood among the alien crowd, with chests and cases at their feet. These I took to be businessmen and civil servants; one fellow – a singular specimen of humanity, perhaps only a little over five feet high but as broad across the shoulders as a bull – struck me as familiar. I was sure I had seen his barrel chest, great head, and flowing black beard pictured in some periodical. He wore a tropical suit as if equipped for exploration, finished off with a solar topee.
I scanned the crowd, but of my friend there was no sign.
Through the glass roof of the chamber I made out the gargantuan shape of a Martian liner, its graphite-hued carapace pitted and excoriated with its passage through the void of space. Although it towered to a height of a hundred yards, yet it gave the impression of being squat, for it was perhaps thirty yards wide, its appearance made even broader by the addition of two scimitar-like tail-fins which flared from its base. This, evidently, was the Valorkian, the vessel which would transport Holmes and me to the Red Planet.
I had done a little preliminary reading on the subject of interplanetary travel, and learned that we would pass the bulk of the week-long journey under sedation, with only a few hours at take-off and landing being spent fully conscious. This was perhaps just as well, for a week’s confinement in a small cabin was the definition of tedium. At least we would be able to look out upon our world as it diminished in our wake – and view our destination when we approached the orb of Mars.
I was day-dreaming of our arrival there, and what adventures might await us, when I was hailed by a familiar voice and I turned to see Sherlock Holmes approaching, accompanied by a squat Martian scurrying along on his six ambulatory tentacles.
“All set, Watson?” my friend enquired.
“Everything packed, as you instructed, Holmes,” said I, indicating our cases and giving Holmes a wink to inform him that I had not forgotten to pack his firearm.
Holmes gestured to the Martian at his side. “Gruvlax-Xenxa-Schmee,” he said, “will be making the journey too; he will be our guide while on the Red Planet.”
“Capital,” I said, nodding at the alien.
“It will be my honour to show you around our capital city, my friends, before your investigations commence.”
“Most kind of you,” I murmured.
“Now, if you will excuse me for a moment, I must ensure that all the relevant details are in order...” and so saying he scurried off towards a counter behind which stood a human custom’s official.
“Well, Holmes,” I said when we were alone, “what did you learn?”
“Precious little,” he said. “I informed Gruvlax-Xenxa-Schmee about the curious absence of all mention of the philosopher from the relevant literature, but he waved it away as of no concern. According to him, only a fraction of all information regarding the Red Planet is translated. There is hardly the time to render all information into English – or, he added, the need. For who, after all, would be interested in many of the more arcane aspects of Martian life?”
“And what did you make of this reason?” I asked.
“Specious in the extreme, Watson. I know that the finest minds of Earth are eager to learn everything possible about Mars, its history, culture and philosophies… and the idea that all mention of one of its finest thinkers should be denied to mankind… No, Watson, I find the entire business decidedly rum.”
Before I could question my friend as to his notions why the Martians should have elided mention of the philosopher from all Earthly literature, a stentorian boom all but deafened me.
“Holmes, be Gad! As I live and breathe, what the deuce are you doing here?”
I turned to see the huge man I had noticed earlier bearing down upon us like a charging bull.
Holmes turned and, beholding our interlocutor, a smile cracked his visage. “Challenger! What a sight for sore eyes! You look set for an adventure into darkest Africa, sir.”
The great man bellowed his mirth. “Africa? Perish the thought! I’ve charted that neck of the woods, old boy. Now I’m set for pastures new.”
“Mars, I presume?”
“None other.” He gestured through the glass roof at the Valorkian. “Leaving aboard that ugly old can on the dot of two. And you?”
“Likewise,” said Holmes.
“Capital! We should take tea – or whatever noxious beverage the Martian might serve – on our arrival.”
Holmes introduced us. “Watson, meet my old friend, Professor George Edward Challenger, zoologist, explorer, and adventure extraordinaire. Challenger, my friend and faithful companion, Dr John Watson.”
The professor gripped my hand. I winced. “Delighted,” I said, retrieving my hand and massaging life back into the crushed metacarpal.
“But what takes you to the Red Planet?” Holmes asked.
“A spot of lecturing, followed by a bit of sight-seeing. The Martians are more than eager to avail themselves of my expertise in the area of Terran fauna, don’t y’know? I hope to climb Olympus Mons, if my hosts are willing, and I have a mind to sail the southern seas. I’d like to bag the mammoth leviathan said to haunt those waters, but getting the trophy home might prove somewhat problematical, what? But you? What takes you to Mars?”
I glanced at my friend, who said, “The Martians have roped me in to do a little investigating – but more of that later,” he hurried on as he beheld the return of Gruvlax-Xenxa-Schmee.
The professor tapped the side of his nose. “Understood, Holmes. We should shoot the breeze beneath the light of Phobos! Excuse me while I ensure my crates are properly stowed.” And so saying he hurried across the concourse to where a porter was labouring with three vast timber chests.
“Everything is in order, gentlemen,” the Martian said. “We should proceed to the check-in desk.”
We passed through a perfunctory customs check, then across the apron of the station towards the bulk of the waiting ship. Seen at close quarters, I was struck by the craft’s size and latent power – and by its bizarre alien quality. This was a vessel constructed by an alien race, and therefore like nothing made by mankind. Its carapace was dark and bulbous, and somehow appeared almost biological, like the epidermis of some great ocean-dwelling leviathan.
We stepped into its shadow, climbed on to a commodious elevator plate, and were whisked in seconds into the craft’s arching atrium. Martians and humans alike scurried back and forth; I noticed, among the crowd, a dozen or so green-uniformed men and women who were employed as pursers and stewards by the shipping line.
Gruvlax-Xenxa-Schmee led the way to another elevator place, and this one lofted us to a gallery that ran around equatorial circumference of the ship. We proceeded along a narrow curving passageway until we came to a series of rectilinear portholes set in the outer skin. Straps hung to either side of these viewing portals, and our Martian guide advised that we should take a firm grip on these when the ship took off.
In due course a thunderous rumble shook the vessel, and motion like an earthquake almost knocked me fro
m my feet. “Whoa!” I cried, and not a second too soon gripped the straps. The ferocious roar increased. I pressed my nose to the glass and beheld, in wonder, the grid-like streets of London pull ever so slowly away… Never before had I flown – not trusting the new-fangled, flimsy aeroplanes with my life – but the sensation I experienced now was not what I might have expected flight to be: rather, it was like being carried into the heavens by some vast, slow-moving elevator. As I stared out, all London became visible beneath me, and I spotted familiar landmarks down below like architect's scale models: there was Buckingham Palace, and here St. Paul’s; tiny Electrical Automobiles whizzed back and forth, and citizens crowded the thoroughfares of the Strand and Pall Mall, overlooked here and there by Martian tripods.
Soon all detail was lost to sight, other than the pattern of the capital’s streets, shot through by the great squiggle of the Thames. Fifteen minutes later we were at such an elevation that the coastline came into view, the bright blue of the channel contrasting with the verdant pastures and orchards of Kent.
In due course, as we sailed into the heavens high above Europe, Gruvlax-Xenxa-Schmee suggested that he show us to our berths. These were small cabins, barely larger than water-closets, and each contained a metal pod suggestive of a futuristic coffin. Our alien guide explained that we should undress, stow our clothing in the locker provided, and climb into the ‘suspension pod’, as he called it. He counselled us not to be alarmed when we were submerged, up to our neck, in an enveloping gel which would take care of our every bodily function for the duration of the voyage. Presently a human steward would come along to administer the sedative.
The Martian departed, taking Holmes to his own cabin, and I closed the outer door and regarded the ‘suspension pod’ with some scepticism. Taking a breath, I undressed, lifted the lid of the pod, and stepped gingerly into its confines. The pod was canted at a thirty-five degree angle, with at its upper end a wooden support for one’s neck and head. No sooner had I settled myself in its length, and pulled down the door which covered my body but left my head free, than I felt the insidious tickle of some viscous fluid rise around my legs and torso. Cold at first, the fluid gel soon warmed up, and the sensation, as it submerged me to the neck, was not unpleasant.
An alarm pinged, no doubt alerting a steward to my readiness, and seconds later a unformed young woman entered the cubicle bearing a small cup.
“Now drink this straight down, Dr Watson, and the next thing you know you’ll be waking up high above Mars.”
I hardly heard her words, for I was staring in amazement at the young woman’s singular beauty.
“But...” I said as the sedative took effect, a dozen questions on my lips.
For the steward was none other than Freya Hadfield-Bell…
Five
A Most Curious Note
Her last words were prescient: it seemed that no sooner had my eyes fluttered shut than I was struggling feebly awake, the gel draining from the pod. As I sat up and lifted the lid, I found it incredible to believe that a full seven days had elapsed. We were now sixty million miles from Earth, in orbit around the Red Planet.
These thoughts were pushed aside by the vision that entered my head of Freya Hadfield-Bell, followed by a slew of questions. Had our ‘meeting’ in Hyde Park been as accidental as it had seemed at the time? What was Hadfield-Bell, a self-confessed opponent of the Martian presence on Earth, doing here, working for the very Martians she considered her enemy? Had she manufactured our second meeting here aboard the Valorkian, and if so… why?
The alarm bell pinged, and I hurried to the locker and dressed quickly lest the young woman enter and find me dishabille.
I need not have worried, however, for when a tapping sounded at the door, it was not Hadfield-Bell but our alien guide.
“If you are quite ready, Doctor, would you care to join us as we come in to land?”
“I’ll be with you in a jiffy,” I said as I finished dressing. In due course I adjusted my collar and joined the alien in the corridor.
As we took an elevator plate down to the observation gallery, I said, “I was surprised to find that you employ human stewards aboard your ships.”
“For the convenience of our human passengers,” said Gruvlax-Xenxa-Schmee.
“And are these human employees resident on Mars?”
“For brief periods only,” the alien replied. “They have what is known as a ‘stopover’, until they board the next returning ship for Earth.”
The elevator plate reached its destination, and with an out-thrust tentacle my guide indicated that I should alight before him. I found Holmes a little further along the curving gallery, and beside him stood Professor Challenger. They were gripping the leather straps to either side of the portholes and staring out, Challenger bellowing his appreciation of the view.
I grasped the straps of the porthole next to Holmes, while Gruvlax-Xenxa-Schmee positioned himself beyond the professor.
“Developments!” I hissed at Holmes as I stared through the glass. We were sailing, as serene as any child’s balloon, high above a rust-coloured desert, with wind-sculpted dunes running off towards the horizon like some fabulous alien script. Here and there far below I made out what I thought were great silver lakes – though time and experience were to put me right on that score – and die-straight canals that carried precious water from the poles to the equatorial regions.
“This is astounding!” Challenger bellowed like the bull he so resembled. “Why, look up to your right, Holmes! Now is that great tumbling spud Phobos or Deimos?”
“The former, Professor. Deimos, which is smaller, you will observe in the heavens to our left.”
To me he whispered, “What is it, Watson?”
I peered along the corridor to ensure that Gruvlax-Xenxa-Schmee was out of earshot: the Martian seemed absorbed in the view of his homeworld. I said, “Freya Hadfield-Bell, the young woman I met in Hyde Park last week, is aboard this ship, working as a stewardess!”
“Not only beautiful, if your description is to be believed, but enterprising.” He cogitated for a time. “It would appear, upon reflection, that your meeting in Hyde Park was not as accidental as you assumed at the time.”
“That had occurred to me,” I said.
“Did she have time to speak to you?”
I shook my head. “No, other than to tell me to drink the sedative, and that soon I’d awake above Mars. But...”
“Go on.”
“But it can’t be just a coincidence, can it? I mean, if she did arrange our meeting in the park...”
“Then,” Holmes interjected, “she must therefore have had the intelligence that we had been invited to Mars, and so ensured her presence aboard the Valorkian accordingly. My admiration for the girl increases by the second.”
“But what can she want, Holmes?”
“That remains to be seen. We must be vigilant.”
I told him about the human stewards enjoying stopovers before boarding the next scheduled ship to Earth, and Holmes digested this and said, “In that case we must ascertain when the next ship leaves for home, so that we know how long we have in which to expect word from the girl.”
“You think she’ll contact us, Holmes?”
“Indubitably,” said he.
My heart skipped at the thought, my excitation caused not merely by the derring-do inherent in the situation.
“By Jove!” Professor Challenger ejaculated. “Just feast your eyes on that, my friends!”
I returned my attention to the scene outside the ship. Far below, situated between two rearing mountain ranges, was a wide red plain covered in a webwork of what looked like girders. On closer inspection, these girders proved to a be a vast network of rails – for upon them, or rather depending from them, I beheld carriages like bullets shooting back and forth. The web converged on an agglomeration of black, carbuncle-like domes, in the centre of which, like the bull’s-eye at the centre of a dartboard, was a great docking station occupi
ed by a dozen mammoth spaceships similar to the one carrying us to our destination.
“That,” declared Holmes, “if I am not mistaken, is the city of Glench-Arkana, the capital of all Mars.”
“And the greatest metropolis in the solar system,” Gruvlax-Xenxa-Schmee informed us, “home to fifty million of my kind.”
“Imagine,” Challenger muttered. “Fifty million… That’s more than the population of Great Britain – and all in one vast city!”
The ship decelerated, swung about and came in low over the metropolis. I stared down at great wide boulevards thronged with Martian pedestrians and trilobite vehicles, and lined with buildings that emerged from the ground at odd angles, like daggers thrust into the earth. Small air-cars, which the Martians had not introduced to Earth, buzzed about the sky like so many bluebottles. The effect was wholly novel and disconcertingly alien.
We approached the central docking station and came down slowly upon a great metal flange. The ship clanged like a struck bell and the roar of the engines diminished into silence.
“Welcome to Mars!” Gruvlax-Xenxa-Schmee declared. “Now if you would be so good as to follow me...”
We stepped aboard an elevator plate and descended to the arched atrium, where our fellow passengers, Martian and human, were gathered prior to disembarkation. I searched the crowd for the tall, blonde-haired figure of Freya Hadfield-Bell, but in vain, and surmised that the human crew of the Valorkian left the ship via a separate exit.
“You will find the gravity of my planet a little lighter than that of Earth,” Gruvlax-Xenxa-Schmee explained. “Also, the oxygen content of our atmosphere is not as great as that to which you are accustomed. The effect will be similar to that which you might experience when dwelling at high altitude on your planet. I recommend you do not unduly exert yourselves, for fear of becoming somewhat light-headed.”
