The Angry Planet (10 page)

Dr. McG
—
was considerably excited as
we stood surveying the plants.

“It means,” he said, “that
there is water somewhere
—
or at least moisture of a sort. When we were standing on the
knoll back there, I looked all over the plain for some sign of a stream or a
lake, but there was nothing. Yet moisture there
must
be, or these huge
things simply could not exist.”

As he spoke, he took out a long
sharp knife he carried in a sheath at his waist. He advanced to one of the
plants that was about man-size and stabbed the knife into it, at the point
where the short stalk branched out into the leaves. There was a soft,
unpleasant squelching sound, and simultaneously it was as if I heard in my head—hardly
in my ears—a high-pitched wail or scream, as if from an immense distance.

I looked at my companions.
Their faces wore a puzzled, listening expression.

“Did you hear anything?” asked
Mr. McF—.

“Yes,” I vouchsafed. “It was a
kind of scream. Yet I can hardly say that I
heard
it. It was rather as
if I . . . well . . .
thought
it!”

“That is what it seemed to me
too,” nodded P—. “It must have been imagination—there is nothing within miles
that could possibly have made that sort of noise. But it’s strange we all heard
it at the same time, though.”

While we spoke Dr. McG
—
was stooping forward
examining the deep triangular gash he had made in the leathery flesh of the
plant. A milky, viscid fluid was oozing out of it, and simultaneously an acrid
but not unpleasant odor assailed our nostrils. Dr. McG
—
touched the sticky-looking gum with his finger and conveyed
some of it to the tip of his tongue. For a moment he frowned, as if trying to
assess the taste, then he nodded his head.

“M’m, quite nice,” he said. “Like
sweet butter-milk, almost. Rather sickly, I should fancy, if you took a lot of
it. Well, moisture there undoubtedly is, as I have said before. To judge from
the dryness of the soil, it must be very far down. I should guess that these
things have immensely long tubular roots. I propose to come back with an axe
and a spade to cut down one of the bigger ones to make a thorough examination. Meantime,
I must confess that I am getting very hungry—this keen air has whetted my
appetite considerably, and in all the excitement of the landing we have quite
forgotten to eat. I have some food in the refrigerator back in the rocket
—
we may find, later on, that
these plants are edible, but meantime some real earth-quality bacon and eggs
would not come at all amiss after so many weeks of tooth-paste food, eh?”

We greeted this suggestion with
great acclaim, and immediately set off back to the hollow where we had left the
rocket. On top of the ridge we turned and looked once more at the strange and
desolate landscape spread out before us. There are no words to describe the
extraordinary bare silence and stillness of it—yet I had the impression, as I
looked again across the enormous poisonous-looking dark green clumps to the
mountains, that there was something,
something
disturbing the silence.
No sound—nothing as definite as a sound, although it seemed a sort of sound:
again it was as if I were
thinking
it, rather than
hearing
it. A
vague rustling disturbance—a sensation of disquiet vibrating all about us.

I dismissed the feeling as mere
fancy and descended the ridge with the others. Soon all else was forgotten in
our excited arrangements for what was to be our first real cooked meal since
leaving earth.

That, then, was our first
glimpse of a Martian scene. I conclude by saying in all humility that I am only
too aware of the inadequacy of my poor pen to describe the strangeness of it. I
console myself with the reflection that the intention has been there even if
the performance has been weak—“a poor thing, but mine own,” to draw once more
in quotation from the teeming works of that great figure who towers as a
mountain above the plain of literature: William Shakespeare.

(
Note:
The rest of this chapter
consists of disjointed comments by Stephen MacFarlane. It is evident, I think,
that he originally intended writing a long chapter here on the reactions of the
party on first landing on Mars—he has even, as you will see, completed some
parts of it, particularly the closing paragraphs. But for some reason he left
this part of the book to the last—at no other point in the whole collection of
papers is there such a gap.

I will explain later how it was
that the papers came into my hands before MacFarlane could polish them.
Meantime, as matter of interest, I print his notes for this chapter exactly as
he left them.—J.K.C.)

MacFarlane’s Notes:

General coverage of Chap. 5:
first impressions; experiments in jumping (possible dissertation by Mac on
gravitational differences between earth and Mars?—Mac also on subject of
composition of soil in hollow where we landed?)

We climb to top of ridge.
General excitement and reaction to landscape, etc., etc. Describe curious
plants and so on. Work in a couple of paragraphs about distant hills—something
along these lines:—

While Mike and the others were
talking about the curious plants in front of us, I was surveying the distant
hills through my binoculars. It was clear from a first examination of the plain
that there was no sort of human life on it. I was, in my own mind, positive
that there was life on Mars—why should there not be?—we were plainly alive and
comfortable on the planet: the air was breathable: there was, as the presence of
the plants showed, moisture. So I searched the hills through my powerful lenses
to see what traces of habitation there might be there.

The hills were barren. They
seemed, as far as I could see, to consist of huge porous red rocks—rather like
sandstone as we know it on earth. I seemed to perceive, on the lower slopes,
patches of green—possibly, I thought, mountain varieties of the plants
immediately in front of us. Only once did I have any impression that I might be
looking at something connected with human life. Just as I was lowering the
binoculars from my eyes, I saw, behind the shoulder of one of the lower hills,
a sudden brilliant flash. My first impression was that the sun was reflecting
from a hill lake, but I soon saw that this was impossible
—
the flash was half-way up the
hill, and seemed, as far as I could see, a sort of crescent—not lying
horizontally, as a lake would, but at an angle along the hill-slope. I swept
the glasses along the range to see if there might be any other such flashes,
but there was nothing; and when I moved them back to the original spot, the
bright crescent had gone. It had not been in my field of vision long enough for
me to be able to form any real opinion as to what it had been.

Description of plants at close
quarters—write up in some detail. Extraordinary episode of far-off screaming
noise,
seemingly in
our heads
, as Mac cut into one of them. What
can it have been? Plainly nothing immediately near us that could have caused
it—
except the plant itself!

A bizarre, extravagant notion—but
in a sense the only one that offers any real explanation. Could it
possibly
be so? Write up whole theory at some length.

Various remarks—conversations,
etc., as we move back to the
Albatross.
The party in excellent
spirits—Mike enjoying his high-jumping hugely. Various points mentioned by
Mac—his intention to take some photographs of the scene etc. Work in this way
towards end of chapter. End chapter thus:—

 . . .
and
within a very short time, the boys had the
Primus
working (how
extraordinary to see such a homely thing as a
Primus
here on Mars, with
all its associations of picnics and alfresco outings of all sorts on earth!),
and Jacky was busying herself with cooking the bacon and eggs that Mac fetched
for her from the refrigerator. Soon, drifting out on the thin sharp air, there
came the delicious smell of real, freshly-cooked food—real food, after all our
weeks of vitamin pastes and sieved vegetables! Mike turned a good half-dozen
huge cartwheels in sheer ravenous excitement.

Jacky insisted that we did
things properly, and so we set out a clean bed-sheet as a tablecloth. There
were not enough plates, knives, forks, and so on, to go round (after all, we
had reckoned on only two travelers in the
Albatross
)
,
but since the
food had to be cooked piece-meal in our one small frying-pan anyway, that did
not worry us a great deal—we took our viands in turns. When the meal was
eventually over, we sighed deeply and contentedly and lay back in the
sand—which was now quite warm from the sun. I lit a pipe and passed my tobacco
pouch over to the Doctor.

“Well, Mac,” I said, smiling, “we’re
here. We’ve made it, after all. I don’t mind confessing to you now, that in the
old days back on earth, I often had my doubts—I thought sometimes that maybe
your lab assistants were right and you were just a little bit mad!”

“To tell you the truth, I
thought so myself at times,” he said with a warm chuckle.

So we puffed contentedly in the
sunshine, watching the fumes of the Virginian tobacco, grown so many millions
of miles away, go drifting lazily up to disperse in the clear air. I felt
deeply satisfied with myself—one of the very first human beings to land on
Mars! Think of it—I, Stephen MacFarlane, a writer of books, a weaver of dreams,
creator (in my head) of fantastic adventures!
 . . .
and here I was, actually engaged in the flesh in an
adventure more wild and fantastic than any I could
possibly
imagine!

As I lay there in the sun,
relaxed and comfortable, I felt a curious drowsiness coming over me. After all,
it was a long time since any of us had slept properly, in all the excitement of
the landing. Perhaps the fresh strong air had something to do with it too, and
the fact that we had just had a large meal—a meal that gave our digestive
organs rather more work than they had had for a long time. At any rate, it was
all I could do to keep my eyes open. I looked round at the others. Apparently
they were being affected in the same way; Paul and Jacky were already actually
asleep, and Mike was not far from it. Mac’s pipe had fallen on his chest and he
was making no effort to retrieve it. He smiled at me lazily.

“Feeling sleepy, Steve, eh?”

I nodded.

“No harm in having forty winks,
I suppose.”

“None at all.” And he yawned. “I’m
certainly going to—I feel incredibly drowsy—the excitement, I guess.”

I sighed and yawned myself, and
then closed my eyes and settled myself to doze.

I slept deeply—we all did, as I
afterwards learned. I remember—and it comes back to me with a curious
distinctness, even after all this time—that I had a vivid and vaguely
terrifying dream, about the huge dark green plants we had just been examining.
It was as if I were walking down an immense avenue, bordered by two endless
rows of them; and as I walked, on and on, there was a whispering and rustling
among them, and then, slowly—almost imperceptibly—they began to stoop down
towards me. Lower and lower they came, and now the rustling changed to a high-pitched
far-off screaming, very faint and eerie. I started to run, but the avenue was
endless. And now the plants were very low and very near
—
their huge fleshy fingers were
reaching out to grasp at me. I had a knife in my hand, and I hacked and stabbed
at the great leathery writhing fronds—and with every stroke the screaming grew
more and more intense.

I became aware of someone
shaking me violently by the shoulder. I opened my eyes drowsily, and Mike’s
face swam into my consciousness. Mike’s face—but it was strained and anxious.

“Uncle Steve,” he was saying
urgently, “Uncle Steve, wake up! Look—for the love of Pete, just look!”

I sat up abruptly, on the
instant wide awake, so insistent had been Mike’s command. The others were awake
too, and staring, just as I was.

And well might we stare! On the
ridge above us, standing silently gazing in at us, were creatures!—creatures
vastly, vastly different from anything that any of us had ever known, but
living creatures—individuals—Martians!

And as I stared at the tallest
of them—the one plainly their leader—I heard him address us. And the language
was English—English!

For a moment I thought I must
still be in my dream. But the sun was shining, my companions were all about me.
They, as plainly as I, heard the cool, detached, far-off tones: