The Red Journey Back

by John Keir Cross

  We heard him in horrified silence—and watched him as he unbuckled his revolver- and cartridge-belt and sent it hurtling, with the weapons themselves, far, far behind, till it fell with a little puff of red dust in the sands of the desert. One by one, compelled by the nightmare image he had conjured, we followed suit.

  His next step was to move to the front of the tractor toward the cannon and machine-gun mountings. We thought for a moment that he meant to disconnect them also, but instead we saw him jam the mounting in such a way that the weapons could point only forward—could not be swung backward to face into the vehicle. When he had completed the work he threw away the adjustment mechanism: the guns now pointed irrevocably away from the tractor, as also did the flame throwers when he had treated them likewise.

  “These,” he said, when he saw our questioning glances, “might help a little. As we go forward—and we must go forward—we shall have set them in action, jammed them so that they stay in action. It might achieve something. One Brain may be put out of action if it comes into the tractor’s path, and so lessen our burdens. At least the flames will clear a pathway through the Ridge plants. For the same general reasons I propose to set the tractor in motion when the time comes and remove most of its controls, so that even if we have an impulse to change direction or go more slowly, we shall be physically unable to do anything about it. The only mechanisms I shall leave untouched are the brakes and the ignition key. We must pray to heaven that I shall have sufficient will power to stop the tractor when we reach the rocket itself.”

  So then, laboriously, our plans were made. We saw, with every moment that passed, that our only hope lay, indeed, in ourselves—in our own ability to concentrate all our efforts toward success. All the time, as we went forward, we would be subject to an intolerable command not to go forward; our every instinct would be to defeat our own purposes.

  We jammed our oxygen breathing equipment, so that we would be unable to act on any impulse to switch it off. We broke the latching mechanisms of our helmets, knowing that once we were aboard the Comet—if we ever reached the Comet—we would be able to find tools to disconnect them again. We made other similar preparations; and all the time, as we worked, the sun sank lower and lower: the moment approached when the Martian night would fall with all its tropical swiftness. Whatever happened, we had to start our last long Martian journey before darkness enveloped us to add to our danger.

  Swiftly, Kalkenbrenner disconnected the trailer. It was essential that we should travel through the forest at speed—the highest speed to which we could mount. Somehow, somehow, we would all have to crowd into the tractor itself—packed close, but with some measure of safety in that very closeness, since each of us could watch the others for any signs of weakness.

  Always, as we worked, MacFarlane helped us with advice. He knew, more bitterly than any of us, the power of the controlling Brains. Only once, toward the end of our preparations, did he make mention of McGillivray and Malu. As the moment approached for our journey, he shook his head sadly, looking back across the wastes we had traveled toward the distant Ridge where lay the Albatross.

  “If only,” he said, in hardly more than a whisper, “if only they were with us!”

  “We can do nothing,” said Kalkenbrenner quietly. “We cannot go back—he would not even wish us to go back. Before heaven, MacFarlane, my own deepest desire is to stay! We have done nothing here—achieved no single one of the scientific purposes I had hoped for. But until we can combat those creatures—” and he waved toward the silent forests ahead, “—we must only return to Earth. We have the young people to think of—we have our own very lives to think of. We cannot stay here, to be surrounded further by yet others of those monsters—to be utterly destroyed by them—and worse than destroyed, if it is their intention to use us as McGillivray once said: as living sacrifices toward their own need for survival. We must go—and we will go. I do not know—I know no more than any of you—what the end may be, what McGillivray intended in his effort to save us. He may already be dead back there, he and Malu. There is nothing we can do for them in the course they have chosen. We must go on.”

  And so, at the last, our moment came. We steeled ourselves toward it. Each one of us knew his duty—each one of us knew the part to be played. We took our places in the little tractor, our faces pale, determined, our hearts as calm as we could make them.

  Our leader, upon whom so much depended, gave one last look around at us, sketched over for confirmation the plan we had formed. Then he too mounted to his place. The tractor pointed straight across the plain toward the rearing Comet, ready for its own dying journey, for it too would have to be abandoned when we reached our destination.

  Kalkenbrenner revved the engine, nodded to me to be ready to set the guns and the flame throwers into action at the moment when I first began to feel the influence of the Vivores stealing over me.

  We went forward, gathering speed; and Providence alone knows the thoughts crowding in upon us as we approached the silent menace lying between us and safety.

  We won through. You must know, you who read, that we did win through, or this account of our last strange journey would never have been written. Here, at the end, when all should mount to a final searing climax, I feel most my inadequacy as a writer. It is not possible—not in any way possible—for me to convey even the merest suggestion of the horror we encountered. I would face a thousand physical dangers—I would undertake to write, in all fullness, an account of them thereafter; but to describe the silent nightmare of our journey is beyond me forever.

  I remember only, as we advanced, that I was filled at the first with an ineffable sadness—a sense, somehow, in spite of all that had been achieved, of strange failure. I thought of those we had abandoned—I thought of all that might have been done in the alien world to which we had traveled so long before, as it seemed. I thought of our friends on distant Earth, toward which, with heaven’s help, we might within the hour be speeding. I looked into the pale mauve sky—was overwhelmed, yes, even at such a moment, by a sense of the unutterable beauty of all the scene surrounding—yes, even of the dark green forest toward which we sped: the great olive sheaths of the plant we would always think of as alisma, the wonders of the sentient cactus creatures on all sides, the rearing distant line of the Martian hills, fretted against the last sky. . . . I saw all these things, felt all these things; and marveled at the infinite bounty of nature.

  I felt Katey’s gloved hand in my own—looked around to see her pale quiet face within the helmet, smiling a final salutation. Perhaps, perhaps we looked our last upon each other. I made to whisper some few inadequate words to her—then recollected, with a strange reserving foolishness, even then, even at such a moment, that whatever I said would be heard by all our companions; and so said nothing—only smiled, as she did. . . .

  We all were silent—all silent. We clustered together in the speeding tractor, our eyes ahead. We waited, waited—as also waited the enemies before us. Never, never before in all human history was so strange a battle joined—so silent, so subtle a battle, with no other weapons than those of the mind, with no other banner to carry us forward to the attack than simple human hope.

  And suddenly—unexpectedly almost, even although we were prepared for it—the battle was joined, at the very moment when we were approaching the forest wall, the tossing barrier of the Ridge plants now writhing at last with life. They must have waited, the Vivores must have waited, until long, long after we had, in fact, entered their orbit of control, so that their attack, when it concertedly came, would be more powerful, more compelling than any gradual mounting of control would have been. I remembered only to set our little weapons into action—even then was assailed by a desperate wish not to touch and jam the controls; and the silence was broken by a harshness of sound, nightmarish in its alien impact on the silent battlefield.

  And I recall little else than that—in all the circumstances I recall indeed little else than that. Not one of us i
s able to remember the detailed movement of the conflict—how could we, when our own minds were the veritable battlefield after all?—when our thoughts were a chaos, a confusion of conflicting impulses? We longed, longed to stop the tractor—to destroy the very tractor. We longed to defeat our own so careful plan—to surrender, to go forward quietly into the great swamps before us, to submit to the gigantic intelligences commanding us. Yet somehow, fighting desperately to retain control—somehow we did go forward. The great soft tossing plants went down before us, crushed and blasted. Amid all other horrors possessing us was a sense of unbearable primitive agony from them as their tissue withered and died. Soft puffy wisps of the Yellow Cloud encircled us, no longer ejected as a weapon, but expired, as it were, by the dying plants as we fought our way through them. I saw Kalkenbrenner’s face at one moment, twisted with an intolerable effort as he resisted the impulse to switch off the ignition, to apply the brakes before we had reached our goal. I saw the children huddled together, striving even physically, with desperate movements of the hands, arms, shoulders, to keep from attempting to tear off their jammed helmets, from leaping out from the tractor to what seemed, oh seemed, like safety in the hidden heart of the morass . . . !

  From first to last there was no sign of any of the Vivores themselves: somewhere, somewhere in the steamy depths, they remained hidden, their thoughts alone encompassing us. But always and always, as we struggled, our minds were full of the gigantic images of them—the white loose nightmares that they were.

  And now above us loomed at last the rocket—yet the bitterest stage of all was still to be faced. In a contortion of endeavor, our leader brought the tractor to a halt, the flame throwers still spouting, the guns ablaze. Like creatures bewitched, our movements laborious and tormented, we left our places in the prearranged order, fought forward across the last small intervening space. Once Maggie turned—I heard a cry, a scream from her within my helmet; she made to run toward the forest. It was Michael who gripped her and held her until she had refound her strength and stumbled clumsily forward with the rest of us.

  The ladder now—but the power of the Vivores stronger, always stronger. As I mounted, as I followed the children and Katey up the long, long extent of the last barrier, I bit my lips to blood in resisting the temptation to throw myself out and away—to fall into the soft lush comfort, as it seemed, of the clustering forest below. Behind me, at one moment, there was a soft moan from MacFarlane, who more than any of us was in torment from his own previous experiences; but an instant later, and at heaven knows what cost, there came a sharp, even brutal command from Dr. Kalkenbrenner to restrain him from the biting impulse to let go.

  Our limbs half-paralyzed, our bodies scarcely obeying the last shreds of control left to us, we fell one by one across the threshold of the rocket’s cabin. I heard, I recall, a last spluttering from the now empty machine gun far below; then I was crawling forward, crawling like an animal, one thought, one only in me now: to destroy the rocket launching mechanism before Kalkenbrenner could reach it. In an ecstasy of hatred against myself I set to clambering over the instrument panel toward the master switch, to break, to shatter it utterly.

  Our leader knew—he saw my intention. It must have burned also in him, that impulse; yet with a last gigantic effort he overcame it—and defeated me. In a gush of thankfulness I felt myself pushed aside—felt myself roll and fall against the wall. He had somehow, on entering the rocket, closed the great door of the entrance hatch. Now he too, with everything in readiness if only he could reach the master switch, he too went crawling and clambering toward the control panel as I had done—but with different motives.

  His hand was outstretched. He fought. I saw from his white screwed face how hard he fought. His eyes burned out toward the master switch as he reached for it—closer and closer—his fingers trembling, quivering in the desire to touch it and yet not to touch it. I fought his battle with him—we all did, crouching helplessly in the cabin there: longed, longed for him to reach the switch—longed, longed for him not to reach the switch.

  He failed. At the last he was defeated. I knew he was defeated. I saw his hand fall back, fall back. I knew that a moment more and all would be lost—that we would be compelled, each one of us, to crawl across the cabin floor once more, this time to retreat from the rocket and eternal safety—to fall down into the green horror surrounding us. I saw MacFarlane, his expression a mingling of bitter shame and still more bitter relief, lift his own hand to release the catch of the door. I saw Kalkenbrenner fall still farther back from the panel, weak and helpless. . . .

  And then, almost beyond the last, in that one moment when our salvation hung in the balance, my ears were filled with a strange far roaring sound. I thought for a moment that Kalkenbrenner had reached the switch after all—that what I heard was the sound of the booster-rocket in action; but I knew that he had not touched the switch—that we were motionless still upon the Martian surface, that our ship would never rise at all, never.

  Yet the sound I heard intensified—it filled my very being. I saw MacFarlane, his hand now no more than an inch from the door catch, look down toward the plain and his whole face transfigure in a moment, his whole expression change to one almost of exultation.

  I knew nothing—nothing. Except that instantly, miraculously, the great burden lightened. All, all that had oppressed me fell away—I was suddenly free and myself again; at the very moment when, with a cry of triumph, a veritable scream of triumph, Kalkenbrenner leaped forward, a free man also, and threw over the switch.

  The great ship rocked, then steadied herself. The mighty blast of the booster drowned all other sound. The others now were on their feet, their expressions ecstatic. I saw, outside, from where I lay, the darkening sky light up with a great outbursting of flame. We soared higher, still higher, the menace now far, far behind us. I saw MacFarlane, still motionless by the doorway, looking down through the little porthole in it; and his eyes were wet with tears. I rose and moved toward him; yet before I could reach him to see what he so strangely saw, the booster fell away, the great main engines of the rocket roared into life, and our senses all swam into blackness as we hurtled farther and farther into space, the Angry Planet, upon which we so nearly had met our deaths, already many thousands of miles away.

  Beyond the velvet void, across the gigantic reaches confronting us, lay our own quiet Earth—lay safety. As we traversed those incalculable miles we learned and marveled at the truth—learned how it was, after all, that a desperate promise made had been fulfilled; how much had been dared by the man we had left behind and by his companion to bring us to safety; how, at that last moment, when all hung in the balance, the deadly influence of the Vivores had been destroyed, so that Kalkenbrenner’s hand could at last go forward to the master switch.

  The story ends. My part in it is played. I set aside my pen.

  Three months after that moment when the gallant action of Dr. McGillivray brought us to safety, we reached our Earth indeed, so concluding in triumph, but also in deepest sorrow, the Third Martian Expedition, the first full flight of the spaceship Comet. Much, much had been left undone—but also much had been achieved. We had at least returned safely—had fulfilled our own promise to bring back the young people and one, if only one, of the men we had gone to find.

  The story ends; but beyond it lies another story, still to be told and to which also, with heaven’s help, I may be permitted to contribute: the story of the projected Fourth Expedition to the Angry Planet, when, as it is hoped, once more under the leadership of Dr. Kalkenbrenner, we shall set out yet again to master the mysteries of our nearest true neighbor in space.

  May I, then, in concluding my own task, say only, both to those who may believe and those who may not believe—the eternal doubters who see nothing more, perhaps, than a pleasant fiction in these patient pages of ours—may I say only, with my companions of the Third Expedition: Dr. Kalkenbrenner, Catherine Hogarth, Michael Malone, Margaret Sherwood, Paul and Jacqueli
ne Adam, Stephen MacFarlane: only au revoir! and so sign myself, in all sincerity—

  A. Keith Borrowdale

  AN EPILOGUE by The Editor; With Some Concluding Remarks and a Final Salutation by Stephen Macfarlane

  THERE IS LITTLE I need add in my own person (J.K.C. writing). The story has been told and is ended: it ended on the day when I heard of the landing of the Comet in Scotland, and hurried by air, with the young people’s parents (Mike’s mother and father were also back in Britain by this time), from London to distant Pitlochry. It was a slight miscalculation on Dr. Kalkenbrenner’s part, at the point of entering Earth’s atmosphere, which guided the great vessel toward Britain rather than America, as had been his first intention; and when it grew apparent that a landing in this island would be preferable to an attempt to regain the original course, Dr. Kalkenbrenner wisely chose the reaches of the kingdom least inhabited, so that the risk of danger to our populace should be reduced to a minimum. Thus, then, the Scottish Highlands; with, in the event, that happy coincidence of landfall in reasonable proximity to Pitlochry, the site of Dr. McGillivray’s original experimental laboratory.

  It will not be necessary, I fancy, to dwell upon the delight with which the young explorers were greeted by their parents, nor to describe the scene of reunion with Mr. Borrowdale and Miss Hogarth which was happily enacted when Roderick Mackellar arrived in the Highlands from Glasgow, pursuant on the telegram I had dispatched to him from London. It was a jovial party indeed which sat down to a communal meal that evening in Pitlochry’s largest hotel. Will you believe me when I tell you that before the night was out, Dr. Kalkenbrenner and Mackellar were discussing the first tentative plans for a return journey to Mars?—in all seriousness, I assure you, with us others joining in in like spirit.