The Red Journey Back (8 page)

What
would you have done? He got a spurt on himself—went on more furiously than ever
with his own experiments.
And
—take
my word for it—he’d been pretty successful too, oh yes! He
was
almost ready!
His rocket was all ripe for a flight!

How
do I know all this? For the very simple reason, dear friends, that when I was
in Chicago I went and called on Dr. K. It was only natural after all, wasn’t
it?—after all that had happened.

And
he wasn’t in the least like the ogre we’d all thought him when he was doubting
our word after the first trip. Now that he was in sight of triumph himself, he
was a perfectly decent chap, and I had a simply swell time with him in his lab,
telling him all the little ways the
Albatross
was different from his own rocket. Oh yes—I saw it! I was shown all over it;
and if I couldn’t go into all the technical details, at least I could tell him
the little things, like how we’d stored our food in the old toothpaste tubes,
and so on. His rocket was much bigger than the old
Albatross
—a great huge lovely shiny job—just
the thing.

Oh,
we got on like a house on fire, old Kalkers and me (I was even allowed to call
him that, so that shows you). I reckon one of the reasons was that I grew to be
real friendly with his niece Maggie—Maggie Sherwood, and an orphan—Kalkers had
brought her up from the time her father and mother had died (Maggie’s mother
was Kalkers’ sister, you see). And he was very fond of her.

And
so was I, I don’t mind admitting right now. She was an American, of course, but
she was all right—she sure was. Just my own age, you see—and more of a tomboy
even than Jacky. I hardly noticed she was a girl at all.

It
was Maggie and Kalkers who showed me all over the
Comet
, which is what he called his rocket.
And when I got the first long air-mail letter from old J.K.C. in Scotland, with
enclosures from Paul and Jacky, telling me the whole story of the airstrip
messages, why, what would you have done but show the whole thing to Kalkers and
Maggie too?—which is just what I did do.

And
this time there wasn’t any doubt at all from Dr. K.—no sir! And it’s just as
well, as you’ll see.

So
I did have my nose in after all. Well and truly in. If I hadn’t, things mightn’t
have been so easy to arrange when, about a couple of weeks after the first air-mail
letter, I got a second “communication” (as Jacky would call it) from the folk
in Scotland.

This
one was a cablegram—a very long cablegram. And when I read it I showed that to
old Kalkers too. And when
he
read it he said, “Phew!” (If that’s how you spell the kind of excited whistle
he gave). “Phew!” he said. “You know what this means, Michael, don’t you?” (I
hated being called Michael—always have—much prefer Mike; but it was what Dr. K.
always called me.)

“Phew!”
says he, “you know what
this
means, Michael?”

And
I nodded. I sure did. And I winked at Maggie—and then nudged her and nodded
over to the great shiny
Comet
,
all stuck up on its launching field, ready for a take-off. And Maggie Sherwood
winked back
 . . . 
!

All
in due course. For the moment, and until it is made clear why “Maggie Sherwood
winked back,” we must return to MacFarlane himself and the continuation of the
narrative built by Miss Hogarth from those lonely messages from across the
skies.

To
Chapter Five, then—entitled:
The Canals.

Editors
Note: From now on, in our original reception of them, the Martian Messages were
more disjointed than in the earlier stages of MacFarlane’s continuous
chronicle. Although they have been edited and remolded since by their original
sender, I leave them here with some
flavor,
at least, of their fragmentary
nature, so that readers will understand something of our own mystification as
we listened to them at
Larkwell.

 . . .
IT WAS,
I firmly believe, the reappearance of Malu which brought back to health my old
friend Dr. McGillivray. As you know, he never fully recovered—there were long
lapses into lethargy
and forgetfulness; and
certainly his blindness never left him; but at least he retrieved some of his
old verve—has been, among other things, sufficiently his old self to help me in
the construction of this method of radio communication to you on Earth.

Nothing
I can say can describe our joy at Malu’s appearance. It was a strange
reunion—his silent thoughts of welcome contrasting with our own noisy
exclamations, as our feelings were expressed in our own less delicate way.

As
we “talked” together beside the gleaming
Albatross
on the plain, we learned what had
happened in the course of the last great battle before our previous
departure—the battle which formed the climax to our book
The Angry Planet
, my dear John. Indeed, we more
than “learned”; for side by side with the words translating themselves inside
our heads as Malu’s thoughts flowed into us, there came a full communicated
vision
of all that had befallen that day.

It
seemed that the blast of the
Albatross’
take-off had momentarily stunned the attacking Terrible Ones. Malu himself was
thrown clear of the group surrounding him; and with his greater rapidity of
movement was able, on recovery, to escape around the rim of the great seething
saucer of lava in which lay the dying city of his tribe.

By
now, the force of the volcano had almost spent itself.
The Terrible Ones
were in confusion and rout, their great clumsy egg shapes slithering back
toward the hills. By the time Malu had organized his scattered troops into a
striking force, the last remnants of the invaders had dispersed; and so the
battle ended, barely an hour after we ourselves had left the fearful scene of
it.

The
terrible ones were in confusion and rout.

“And
oh, my friends,” said Malu, “the desolation in our poor dwelling place when all
was done! Only a few of our homes of glass remained unruined, the floor of our
valley lay littered with the dead from the battle itself and from the lava
poured down upon us from the angry mountain. Sadly, we who were left set to
gathering together as many of our friends as we could find. Among them, let
there be praise!—lying helplessly under the dead form of the Chief of the
Terrible Ones—was our Leader, the great intelligence controlling us, known to
you as the Center. He was sorely wounded, but alive, and able to direct us in
our work of rescue.

“We
left our shattered city—it was beyond all mending. We pushed southward, toward
other centers of our race among the hills. In one of them we found refuge for a
space, but then moved on again, until at last, in another small hill valley, we
came upon some uninhabited glass bubbles, and there took to dwelling.
 . . .”

Thus they
built again their peaceful and benevolent way of life; until one day there
came—no more than faintly at first, as the telepathic impulses weakened over
the distances involved—an
impression
that a strange shining
object had fallen from the skies and rested far to the south. Eventually, Malu
himself came to an understanding that his legendary friends from the remote
world of “Earth” had returned; and so set off, guided by the plants on the plains . . .
and found us at last, and succored us. . . .

I hasten—I
must hasten; there may be little time to complete my story. Already I am
desperately aware of . . . of—an
attempt
to
control, to control . . .

(This single brief disjointed message
here broke
off;
and for two anxious nights there was
no further communication from MacFarlane—despite the arrangement he had made to
broadcast at regular periods. Toward dawn on the third night the Morse began
again—somewhat hastily in its transmission now, as if the sender were in some
fear; yet he made no references to the source of such disturbance for some
further nights. And then—however, to proceed in order:)

—The Canal.
The Canal has crept closer and grown all around us. And the Vivore, the Vivore . . .

(This message too broken off—with a
disjointed repetition over and over again of the single word, “Vivore.” On this
night reception was extremely faint and difficult—we were not even sure of the
word . . . and this, as will be seen, was a contributing factor
toward christening the terrible new Martian creatures encountered by the
explorers “Vivores.”)