A Honeymoon in Space

by George Chetwynd Griffith

  CHAPTER X

  The words were hardly out of his mouth before Zaidie, who still had herglasses to her eyes, and was looking down towards the great city whoseglazed roofs were flashing with a thousand tints in the pale crimsonsunlight, said with a little tremor in her voice:

  "Look, Lenox, down there--don't you see something coming up? That littleblack thing. Just look how fast it's coming up; it's quite distinctalready. It's a sort of flying-ship, only it has wings and, I think,masts too. Yes, I can see three masts, and there's something glitteringon the tops of them. I wonder if they're coming to pay us a politemorning call, or whether they're going to treat us like trespassers intheir atmosphere."

  "There's no telling, but those things on the top of the masts look likerevolving helices," replied Redgrave, after a long look through histelescope. "He's screwing himself up into the air. That shows that theymust either have stronger and lighter machinery than we have, or, as theastronomers have thought, this atmosphere is denser than ours, andtherefore easier to fly in. Then, of course, things are only half theirearthly weight here.

  "Well, whether it's peace or war, I suppose we may as well let them comeand reconnoitre. Then we shall see what kind of creatures they are. Ah,there are a lot more of them, some coming from Brooklyn, too, as youcall it. Come up into the conning-tower, and I'll relieve Murgatroyd, sothat he can go and look after his engines. We shall have to give thesegentlemen a lesson in flying. Meanwhile, in case of accidents, we may aswell make ourselves as invulnerable as possible."

  A few minutes later they were in the conning-tower again, watching theapproach of the Martian fleet through the thick windows of toughenedglass which enabled them to look in every direction except straightdown. The steel coverings had been drawn down over the glass dome of thedeck-chamber, and Murgatroyd had gone down to the engine-room. Fiftyfeet ahead of them stretched out the long, shining spur, of which tenfeet were solid steel, a ram which no floating structure built by humanhands could have resisted.

  Redgrave was standing with his hand on the steering-wheel, looking moreserious than he had done so far during the voyage. Zaidie stood besidehim with a powerful binocular telescope watching, with cheeks a littlepaler than usual, the movements of the Martian air-ships. She countedtwenty-five vessels rising round them in a wide circle.

  "I don't like the idea of a whole fleet coming up," said Redgrave, as hewatched them rising, and the ring narrowing round the still motionless_Astronef_. "If they only wanted to know who and what we are, or toleave their cards on us, as it were, and bid us welcome to the world,one ship could have done that just as well as a fleet. This lot comingup looks as if they wanted to get round and capture us."

  "It does look like it," said Zaidie, with her glasses fixed on thenearest of the vessels; "and now I can see they've guns too, somethinglike ours, and perhaps, as you said just now, they may have explosivesthat we don't know anything about. Oh, Lenox, suppose they were able tosmash us up with a single shot."

  "You needn't be afraid of that, dear," he said, putting his arm roundher shoulders. "Of course it's perfectly natural that they should lookupon us with a certain amount of suspicion, dropping like this on themfrom the stars. Can you see anything like men on board them yet?"

  "No, they're all closed in just as we are," she replied; "but they'vegot conning-towers like this, and something like windows along thesides. That's where the guns are, and the guns are moving. They'repointing them at us. Lenox, I'm afraid they're going to shoot."

  "Then we may as well spoil their aim," he said, pressing one of thebuttons on the signal-board three times, and then once more after alittle interval.

  In obedience to the signal Murgatroyd turned on the repulsive force tohalf power, and the _Astronef_ leapt up vertically a couple of thousandfeet. Then Redgrave pressed the button once and she stopped. Anothersignal set the propellers in motion, and as she sprang forward acrossthe circle formed by the Martian air-ships, they looked down and sawthat the place which they had just left was occupied by a thickgreenish-yellow cloud.

  "Look, Lenox, what on earth is that?" exclaimed Zaidie, pointing down toit.

  "What on Mars would be nearer the point, dear," he said, with what shethought a somewhat vicious laugh. "That, I'm afraid, means anything buta friendly reception for us. That cloud is one of two things--it's thesmoke of the explosion of twenty or thirty shells, or else it's made ofgases intended to either poison us or make us insensible, so that theycan take possession of the ship. In either case I should say that theMartians are not what we should call gentlemen."

  "I should think not," she said angrily. "They might at least have takenus for friends till they had proved us enemies, which they wouldn't havedone. Nice sort of hospitality that, considering how far we've come, andwe can't shoot back, because we haven't got the ports open."

  "And a very good thing too!" laughed Redgrave; "if we had had them open,and that volley had caught us unawares, the _Astronef_ would probablyhave been full of poisonous gases by this time, and your honeymoon,dear, would have come to a somewhat untimely end. Ah, they're trying tofollow us! Well, now we'll see how high they can fly."

  He sent another signal to Murgatroyd, and the _Astronef_, still beatingthe Martian air with the fans of her propellers, and travelling forwardat about fifty miles an hour, rose in a slanting direction through adense bank of rosy-tinted clouds, which hung over the bigger of the twocities--New York, as Zaidie had named it.

  When they reached the golden-red sunlight above it the _Astronef_stopped her ascent, and then, with half a turn of the steering-wheel,her commander sent her sweeping round in a wide circle. A few minuteslater they saw the Martian fleet rise almost simultaneously through theclouds. They seemed to hesitate a moment, and then the prow of everyvessel was directed towards the swiftly moving _Astronef_.

  "Well, gentlemen," said Redgrave, "you evidently don't know anythingabout Professor Rennick and the R. Force; and yet you ought to know thatwe couldn't have come through Space without being able to get beyondthis little atmosphere of yours. Now let us see how fast you can fly."

  Another signal went down to Murgatroyd, the whirling propellers becametwo intersecting circles of light. The speed of the _Astronef_ increasedto a hundred-and-fifty miles an hour, and the Martian fleet began todrop behind and trail out into a triangle like a flock of huge birds.

  "That's lovely; we're leaving them!" exclaimed Zaidie, leaning forwardwith the glasses to her eyes and tapping the floor of the conning-towerwith her foot as if she wanted to dance, "and their wings are workingfaster than ever. They don't seem to have any screws."

  "Probably because they've solved the problem of bird's flight," saidRedgrave. "They're not gaining on us, are they?"

  "No, they're at about the same distance."

  "Then we'll see how they can soar."

  Another signal went down the tube. The _Astronef's_ propellers sloweddown and stopped, and the vessel began to rise swiftly towards thezenith, which the sun was now approaching. The Martian fleet continuedthe impossible chase until the limits of the navigable atmosphere, abouteight earth-miles above the surface, was reached. Here the air wasevidently too rarefied for their wings to act upon. They came to astandstill, looking like links of a broken chain, their occupants nodoubt looking up with envious eyes upon the shining body of the_Astronef_ glittering like a tiny star in the sunlight ten thousand feetabove them.

  "Well, gentlemen," said Redgrave, after a swift glance round, "I thinkwe have shown you that we can fly faster and soar higher than you can.Perhaps you'll be a bit more civil now. If you're not we shall have toteach you manners."

  "But you're not going to fight them all, dear, are you? Don't let us bethe first to bring war and bloodshed with us into another world."

  "Don't trouble about that, little woman, it's here already," he replied,a trifle savagely. "People don't have air-ships and guns which fireshells or poison-bombs, or whatever they were, without knowing what waris. From what I've seen, I should say these Ma
rtians have civilisedthemselves out of all emotions, and, I daresay, have fought pitilesslyfor the possession of the last habitable lands of the planet.

  "They've preyed upon each other till only the fittest are left, andthose, I suppose, were the ones who invented the air-ships and finallygot possession of all that was worth having. Of course that would givethem the command of the planet, land and sea. In fact, if we are able tomake the personal acquaintance of the Martians, we shall probably findthem a set of over-civilised savages."

  "That's a rather striking paradox, isn't it, dear?" said Zaidie,slipping her hand through his arm; "but still it's not at all bad. Youmean, of course, that they may have civilised themselves out of all theemotions until they're just a set of cold, calculating, scientificanimals. After all they must be something of the sort, for I'm quitesure we should not have done anything like that on earth if we'd had avisitor from Mars. We shouldn't have got out cannons and shot at himbefore we'd even made his acquaintance.

  "Now, if he, or they, had dropped in America as we were going downthere, we should have received them with deputations, given thembanquets, which they might not have been able to eat, and speeches,which they would not understand, and photographed them, and filled thenewspapers with everything that we could imagine about them, and thenput them in a palace car and hustled them round the country foreverybody to look at."

  "And meanwhile," laughed Redgrave, "some of your smart engineers, Isuppose, would have gone over the vessel they had come in, found out howshe was worked, and taken out a dozen patents for her machinery."

  "Very likely," replied Zaidie, with a saucy little toss of her chin;"and why not? We like to learn things down there--and anyhow that wouldbe much more really civilised than shooting at them."

  While this little conversation was going on, the _Astronef_ was droppingrapidly into the midst of the Martian fleet, which had again arrangeditself in a circle. Zaidie soon made out through her glasses that theguns were pointed upwards.

  "Oh, that's your little game, is it!" said Redgrave, when she had toldhim of this. "Well, if you want a fight, you can have it."

  As he said this, his jaws came together, and Zaidie saw a look in hiseyes that she had never seen there before. He signalled rapidly two orthree times to Murgatroyd. The propellers began to whirl at their utmostspeed, and the _Astronef_, making a spiral downward course, swooped downon to the Martian fleet with terrific velocity. Her last curve coincidedalmost exactly with the circle occupied by the ships. Half-a-dozenspouts of greenish flame came from the nearest vessel, and for a momentthe _Astronef_ was enveloped in a yellow mist.

  "Evidently they don't know that we are air-tight, and they don't useshot or shell. They've got past that. Their projectiles kill by poisonor suffocation. I daresay a volley like that would kill a regiment. NowI'll give that fellow a lesson which he won't live to remember."

  They swept through the poison-mist. Redgrave swung the wheel round. The_Astronef_ dropped to the level of the ring of Martian vessels, whichhad now got up speed again. Her steel ram was directed straight at thevessel which had fired the last shot. Propelled at a speed of nearly twohundred miles an hour, it took the strange-winged craft amidships. Asthe shock came, Redgrave put his arm round Zaidie's waist and held herclose to him, otherwise she would have been flung against the forwardwall of the conning-tower.

  _It took the strange-winged craft amidships._]

  The Martian vessel stopped and bent up. They saw human figures more thanhalf as large again as men inside her staring at them through thewindows in the sides. There were others at the breaches of the guns inthe act of turning the muzzles on the _Astronef_; but this was only amomentary glimpse, for in a second the _Astronef's_ spur had piercedher, the Martian air-ship broke in twain, and her two halves plungeddownwards through the rosy clouds.

  "Keep her at full speed, Andrew," said Redgrave down the speaking-tube,"and stand by to jump if we want to."

  "All ready, my Lord!" came back up the tube.

  The old Yorkshireman during the last few minutes had undergone atransformation which he himself hardly understood. He recognised thatthere was a fight going on, that it was a case of "burn, sink anddestroy," and the thousand-year-old Berserker awoke in him just, as amatter of fact, it had done in his lordship.

  "They can pick up the pieces down there, what there is left of them,"said Redgrave, still holding Zaidie tight to his side with one hand andworking the wheel with the other, "and now we'll teach them anotherlesson."

  "What are you going to do, dear?" she said, looking up at him withsomewhat frightened eyes.

  "You'll see in a moment," he said, between his shut teeth. "I don't carewhether these Martians are degenerate human beings or only animals; butfrom my point of view the reception they have given us justifies anykind of retaliation. If we'd had a single port-hole open during thefirst volley you and I would have been dead by this time, and I'm notgoing to stand anything like that without reprisals. They've declaredwar on us, and killing in war isn't murder."

  "Well, no, I suppose not," she said; "but it's the first fight I've beenin, and I don't like it. Still, they did receive us pretty meanly,didn't they?"

  "Meanly? If there was anything like a code of interplanetary morals ormanners one might call it absolutely caddish. I don't believe even Steadhimself could stand that--unless, of course, he wasn't here."

  He sent another message to Murgatroyd. The _Astronef_ sprang a thousandfeet towards the zenith; another touch on the button, and she stoppedexactly over the biggest of the Martian air-ships; another, and shedropped on to it like a stone and smashed it to fragments. Then shestopped and mounted again above the broken circle of the fleet, whilethe pieces of the air-ship and what was left of her crew plungeddownwards through the crimson clouds in a fall of nearly thirty thousandfeet.

  Within the next few moments the rest of the Martian fleet had followedit, sinking rapidly down through the clouds and scattering in alldirections.

  "They seem to have had enough of it," laughed Redgrave, as the_Astronef_, in obedience to another signal, began to drop towards thesurface of Mars. "Now we'll go down and see if they're in a morereasonable frame of mind. At any rate we've won our first scrimmage,dear."

  "But it was rather brutal, Lenox, wasn't it?"

  "When you are dealing with brutes, little woman, it is sometimesnecessary to be brutal."

  "And you look a wee bit brutal right now," she replied, looking up athim with something like a look of fear in her eyes. "I suppose that isbecause you have just killed somebody--or somethings--whichever theyare."

  "Do I, really?"

  The hard-set jaw relaxed and his lips melted into a smile under hismoustache, and he bent down and kissed her.

  "Well, what do you suppose I should have thought of them if _you_ hadhad a whiff of that poison?"

  "Yes, dear," she whispered in between the kisses, "I see now."