So I won’t waste much time on that, for it really was much the same inside the Comet as it was in the Albatross, even though we were so much bigger. Just take it for read and I’ll try to say something instead about how we all got on together inside—and I won’t even waste much time on that either (trust me! I’m the kind of authoress to have—no padding), for we really ought to be pushing on to the way we landed and everything that happened afterward and what that impossible boy Mike called Old Jellybags and the way that—ugh! don’t let me think about it!
The biggest scream was young Maggie Sherwood, of course. Really and truly! You could have knocked us all down with a feather when she turned up, if you’d had one handy—and you could too, for of course we didn’t have any weight. I must say that right at the start there were the beginnings of a row—from our revered captain Dr. M. Berkeley Kalkenetcetera. Well, can you blame him?—when he’d made all his plans and so forth and suddenly, bang! there was Maggie to upset ’em all? But on the other hand, can you blame her?—when you consider that M. Berkeley K. was her O.L.R. (Only Living Relative), and there he was nosing off into space without her?
Of course, she and young Mike had cooked up the whole thing between them. He’d told her all about the time when he and the others had stowed away on the Albatross, and nothing would do for Our Maggie but that she should pull the same thing off on this trip, so there was all the biz about not coming out to see us off that morning, couldn’t bear it, etc. (what an act), so that we wouldn’t be surprised when she wasn’t there, and all the time she’d sneaked out in the middle of the night and all aboard the lugger and the girl was ours . . . !
Mind you, I must say that she’d checked to be absolutely sure there was enough spare food and equipment for her, even allowing for Stephen MacF. and Dr. McG. on the way back; and she also said she’d even told the bold M. B. Kalkenbrenner that she was coming—given him due warning and such when he didn’t give her permish to come openly; and I must say that when you look back on all she said that night before we left, it could be read like that, if you stretch the point a bit. . . .
Anyway, we just had to lump it. By the time M. Berkeley K. had done his duty as captain and given her a mild spanking (in a manner of speaking), he beamed all over and had to confess he was secretly delighted, for I know he’d been worried about what would happen to her if he Never Came Back, whereas now we were all in it up to the neck and if worse came to the worst we all sank or swam together, as the bishop said to the actress when it started to rain the day she was opening the garden party.
Heigh-ho! It certainly added a bit to my troubles, for of course the reason I was in the Comet at all was supposed to be to look after the whole impossible flock (ha-ha). So now I’d four of them instead of three—and Maggie was the biggest handful of the lot, I can tell you. Anyway, we managed somehow. You’d be surprised at all the strange chores there were to do. There wasn’t any cooking or washing up or anything like that, of course, for we had our “wittles,” as Eddie Wheeler used to call them, out of those itsy-bitsy tube things (what wouldn’t I have given for just one two-inch steak all smothered, but smothered, in onions after months of spinach paste and vitamin juices—just one!), but there were all kinds of other things that needed doing, and mostly, believe it or not, it was a matter of sheer entertainment! Oh yes sirree, if you can actually believe it, the real trouble was, after a while, that we were pretty nearly bored stiff in the dear old Comet, even with the solar system and all to look at night and day! We had practically no exercise, you see, and there were seven of us all cooped up together, and four of us natural healthy youngsters, so what could you expect but a fight or a quarrel every now and then? And besides (and let’s drop all the nonsense for a minute, darlings—off with the dear old motley for a change) you see, when it really came to the pinch, there wasn’t one of us, not one, who didn’t remember way, way deep down just what we were there for, and it wasn’t just a matter of romping off through space, but somewhere at the other end of the journey there were two decent men in some kind of terrible danger, and somehow we had to save them, whether or not we saw much of Mars in the process. Somehow Mike and Co. had to save them, and though I’d racked and racked my brains (the few I’ve got, darlings—O.K., wait for the laugh) I couldn’t see how they could save them, except that that was what the last message had said, and we had to take it on trust: “Bring the children—ask no questions—bring the children . . .” and then silence, and those two in mortal trouble. And we had found a way—we were bringing the children. But what were we bringing them to?
I tell you, it was behind everything we thought and did, that nightmare. And it wasn’t any wonder, surely, if it did get on our nerves a bit, and we had to find ways and means to pass the time so that we wouldn’t think about it more than we could help. Heigh-ho. Laugh Punchinello and all that. I think I went through every song routine I’d ever learned—and all the scripts I’d had to learn by heart since ever I started in rep in Walthamstow, before I even went into Vaudeville at all!
Well, never mind—it was all worth it, I suppose. Who’d ever have thought it all the same? Katey Hogarth, Sparkling Star of Stage, Screen and Radio, the way the credits used to put it, doing her poor little stuff in the middle of Space, in magnetic boots and all! There were times . . . well, never mind, dears, never mind.
Soft lights and sweet music—angel voices on the sound track. No sir. This isn’t what I meant—not it at all. Best sign off. I’m no script writer. Now we’re getting serious this is where I exit singing and dancing. I’ll be surprised if they put this in the book at all—not what they’d counted on, I reckon; I was supposed to be bright and cheerful when things were beginning to get tough—and here I am, muffing my cue and making ’em more serious than ever.
Anyway, we made it—there’s that much that must be said. We had almost three months of it, but we did touch down at last. We got to Mars, darlings—we got to Mars!—but when I think of some of the things that happened there I almost wish we hadn’t, even though we did do what we set out to do—or at least part of it.
But those Canals—those devilish Canals!
Well, cue for exit—and I’m not going to muff this one. I hope they don’t print this. It’s time someone else took over, and I’ve an idea that K.C. has contracted my fiancé Archie for the job. Archie always did fancy himself as something of a writer as well as a scientist—and I don’t mind admitting that he’s done not badly at it in the past (he wrote some sketches for old Salmon once, under a different name, and old S. thought the world of them). . . .
So we made it—that’s as good a line as any for me to end on. We made it. And it was barely two days after we did make it that we found the Albatross and were right in the thick of things, heaven help us all.
Oh yes—we found them. Dr. Livingstone, I presume! But oh my suffering Sam, the things, the things we saw!
Up in a balloon, boys—
Up in a balloon!!!
Cue for Curtain. Bye, darlings. Love and kisses. Bye.
2. A Technical Note by Dr. Marius B. Kalkenbrenner
In this, my only contribution to the present sketchy volume, I will be brief to the very point, perhaps, of baldness.
I am not, myself, concerned in any way with the narrative part of this anthology; indeed, if anything, my own tendency (it must be said in all frankness) would be to avoid putting upon the market any such romanticized account of the Third Martian Expedition as this is in some danger of becoming; for although each contributor is undoubtedly speaking the truth as he or she sees it, the over-all effect is, surely, to give the impression of little more than an adventure tale, and this ill accords, in all conscience, with the basic scientific nature of the entire project.
It seems, however, that my companions are intent upon the compilation of this abstract, and while I will not connive at the solecism by contributing any lengthy personal “piece,” I will go along with them so far as to inscribe these few purely factual notes at t
his juncture, so as to add some authority to their (if I may say so) somewhat sentimental lucubrations.
The facts, then, and only the facts, are:
The duration of the Third Martian Expedition was precisely eleven weeks, four days, twenty-three hours, thirty-one minutes, calculating from the specially prepared chronometers with which I had equipped my ship.
Throughout the journey there were no unexpected developments; I was more than pleased with the performance of my craft.
The “turning around” of the rocket (if I may indulge in lay language to suit the occasion) took place some thirty hours before the moment of landfall; and, like all else on the journey, went exactly according to plan.
Thus, we approached the Martian surface without a jar—came quietly to rest almost precisely on the spot I had already chosen for the event.
As to the choice of that spot itself, I will say only this, in elucidation of a matter which perhaps has exercised the more discriminating readers of this compilation:
When my colleague Roderick Mackellar, in Scotland, succeeded in making contact with the lost explorers on Mars, he had the foresight (being a scientific man) to endeavor to discover from MacFarlane the exact whereabouts of his transmitting station. Unfortunately, as is known, the more scientifically minded of the two space travelers (Dr. McGillivray) was incapacitated, and MacFarlane himself was not fully equipped to give Mr. Mackellar the information in as accurate a form as might have been desirable. However, working from the data he was intermittently able to supply, and from the observed facts compiled by Mackellar himself (the times of transmission and reception, the known opposition of the two planets during these periods, etc.), it had been possible to form a fairly shrewd idea of the situation of the Albatross.
It was from this information I worked when plotting our own course; and I was fairly confident that the spot I had chosen for landing was, if not the very spot on which my predecessor’s ship rested, one sufficiently in the vicinity to make discovery almost certain.
I may add that as we landed we naturally “kept a lookout” for any signs on the terrain below—particularly for something in the nature of a “dark-green ridge” with, perhaps, the gleaming hull of the spaceship in close proximity to it (for we landed, I should perhaps explain, in daylight).
We saw no gleam—no sign of the Albatross itself. But—we did see, even in the imperfect conditions of the landing (it was extremely difficult to keep the Comet entirely steady as we approached the Martian surface, because of the different nature of the gravity pull of which, despite my careful calculations, I had had no previous practical experience)—we did see, may I repeat, a long, an interminably long line or ridge of an unmistakable deep olive-green color stretching across the vast plain beneath.
When we came to rest, we were close to a range of mountains—as, indeed, I had intended. From our ground-level viewpoint the ridge was no longer visible. But, if it were indeed the mysterious ridge to which reference had been made in the MacFarlane messages, we knew it lay some distance to the south.
Toward it, making full use of the protective measures I had had the foresight to carry with us, we proposed to travel, after the necessary attention to certain details connected with preparing the Comet for a return journey to Earth—perhaps even a hasty one.
In the event, as will be discovered in due course, my calculations had been as nearly accurate as one could hope for in such conditions.
What had not been foreseen—what no reasonable man could have foreseen—was the terrible, the truly terrible nature of the Ridge!
I thank heaven that we did make all due preparations for a hasty departure in the Comet Alas that that departure befell so soon after our arrival—far, far too soon for any satisfactory scientific exploration of the planet Mars.
But—I shall return! And when I do I will be equipped at every point to deal with the unspeakable horrors of those Living Canals, as I must, as I only can call them. It is a subject to which I have given much thought; and when I feel myself ready to surmount the last intolerable difficulties—
I SHALL RETURN!
3. A Final Editorial Interlude
So, then, we have followed out the story of that desperate Red Journey Back. For my own part at this stage of the adventure (J.K.C. now writing), I can only say that back once more in Britain, I was in a continuous state of almost unbearable suspense. I fear that I made myself extremely troublesome to the good Roderick Mackellar for, needless to say, although he was engaged in his further work on the airstrip as an airstrip, we still continued in our endeavors to use the vast metallic surface as a means of contact with Mars. Every available moment that either of us could spare was spent in the small wireless hut beside the main laboratory; and when we were both engaged elsewhere we still kept the apparatus manned by trustworthy assistants. Night and day the receiver was switched on in readiness for possible messages from across the void; at periodic intervals we sent out a call sign on the beamed transmitter—that ancient code signal which Stephen MacFarlane and I had used in our boyhoods.
But the void was empty. Only once—and then perhaps only illusorily—did I hear, or fancy I heard, a thin remote chattering which might have been Morse. And the message, if it was one, made little sense: it consisted of two words, received very imperfectly, with some letters missing, thus:
GUI— —A P—GS
The only thing I could make of it, after much bewildered thought, was the quite impossible: “Guinea Pigs.” Plainly, I felt, we had been deceived—had picked up somehow a cross message from a ship, or, even more probably, from one of the many amateur radio stations operating all over the globe.
The nerve-racking months went by—the suspense continued through all the summer. All I knew—and the knowledge haunted me day and night—was that millions and millions of miles away two separate groups of my friends were lost and wandering—if indeed the rescue party had reached Mars at all through the hazards of interplanetary flight. My friend and cousin MacFarlane, with his blind, enfeebled companion, McGillivray, were at the mercy of the mysterious creatures known as the Vivores; and toward them moved the little group of young people who alone, in all the universe, could save them . . . yet how? How could only those three save them?
I learned the truth at last—the fabulous truth, and also, alas, the tragic truth. There came a day—the events of it to be related in due course—when, more than six long months after its departure, I learned of the Comet’s return. With thankfulness—but also sorrow—in my heart, I sped to greet my friends. And so, when all the first flurry of welcome was over, I came to a knowledge of everything that had befallen.
It was plain to me, as the various contributions reached me, that in order to do full justice to the last long part of the adventure, it would be necessary to change somewhat the method of presentation. The narrative of the Rescue is so continuous that it would lose much of its flavor and atmosphere split up into successive viewpoints. I therefore set out to choose one member of the party to set down, in as detached a manner as possible, the whole strange tale; and, after some consideration, decided upon Mr. Archibald Keith Borrowdale as the likeliest to accomplish the task. He had had some previous literary experience—moreover was, as a scientist (yet perhaps not quite so “scientifically minded” a scientist as Dr. Kalkenbrenner, if I may say so), more likely to be able to take up the necessarily impartial point of view.
I consequently asked Mr. Borrowdale to undertake almost single-handed the telling of the last part of the story. I am happy to say that he consented. Until the last chapter of all, therefore—the final summing up—the tale of the Living Canals of Mars is told by Mr. A. Keith Borrowdale in a continuous narrative, commencing upon the next page. The one interpolation from another pen has been kept to a minimum.
For purposes of dramatic convenience Mr. Borrowdale’s narrative has been split into chapters: the first of them (Chapter Eight in the over-all pattern of the book, of course) follows herewith, under the title—<
br />
CHAPTER VIII. LOOMINGS, by A. Keith Borrowdale[3]
OUR FIRST STEP when we landed on Mars (as Dr. Kalkenbrenner has already said) was to set about attaching the prefabricated booster rocket to the under part of the Comet, so as to be prepared for a departure at any moment. The work was comparatively simple—every detail had been carefully worked out beforehand; and even allowing for the extreme haste with which all our final preparations had to be made on Earth, there were no undue complications.
As the Comet stood on its gigantic tripod undercarriage, extending from the three great fins at its tail, a secondary and wider entrance hatch was opened in its side, giving access to what I may call the “hold,” beneath the main living cabin. From this, a small but powerful derrick lowered the component parts of the booster, then swung them into position and held them firm for assembly.
While this work was going forward, the young folk, needless to say, were having the time of their lives. After the long period of near-imprisonment in the small cabin of the spaceship, they were like puppies—leaped, skipped and ran with a complete happy abandon. Katey, I may add, was as delighted as any of them to be free. Like Maggie, she was being introduced for the first time to the extraordinary sensation of being almost three times as strong (or as light, rather) on Mars as upon Earth. She went sailing twelve and thirteen feet in the air in huge jumps, and—
“Look—look, Archie,” she cried, as she glided serenely above my head while I worked at the booster assembly, “what wouldn’t I give to be able to do this back home! I’d make my fortune as an act at the Palladium! And the air! It’s like bubbly—dear old bubbly!”
The Red Journey Back Page 8
