The Angry Planet (27 page)

One task remains to me, as
editor. That is, to explain how the preceding Mss. came into my possession at
all—how it came about that I saw this book through the press instead of
MacFarlane himself.

This explanation I set forth
now in the form of an Epilogue, which you will find on the next page. I
apologize for intruding myself on you—as editor, I should, by rights, remain very
inconspicuous in the background. But, as I think you will agree, the intrusion
is entirely pardonable. The Epilogue is an integral part of the book, if only
in the sense that it is an integral part of the story of MacFarlane.—J.K.C.)

Being the End of the Story of Stephen MacFarlane

ONE day, at my flat
in
Glasgow
, I received
a bulky parcel through the
post. It contained a pile of manuscripts and two letters. One of the letters
was loose on top of the manuscripts, the other was in an envelope marked:
Not
to be opened till you have read through the contents of the parcel.

I glanced first at the loose
letter. It was quite short—one page. I recognized the close, cramped hand-writing
of my cousin, Stephen MacFarlane. This is what I read:

My dear John,—It is a long time
since I have seen you, but you seem, somehow, because of your own literary
inclinations, and because of all our deep private association, to be the
natural man to turn to in the impasse in which I find myself.

You will have read, no doubt,
of the extraordinary stir created some months back by the flight to Mars I undertook
with my old friend Andrew McGillivray, and the three children, Paul and
Jacqueline Adam and Mike Malone. The various papers and magazines have issued
articles from time to time (though not much lately, confound them!) describing
what we saw on Mars and in space, but so far no really coherent account of the
adventure has appeared in print. Attached to this letter you will find the
manuscript of a book that should remedy this. It is the story of the whole
experience from the beginning to the end, as told from the different points of
view of each one of us that underwent it. I want you to read through these
papers carefully. When you have done so,
and not before
, open the other
letter I have written to you, which I also enclose in this package.

I hope you enjoy the reading.
As a literary man, you will at least be amused by some of the charming
gaucheries
in the children’s style. Yours ever,—Stephen.

I set the parcel aside, and
that evening, when I had finished my day’s work, and eaten a meal, sat down to
give the book the careful reading my cousin had demanded for it. It was, of
course, the book you have just read.

I shall not weary you with a
description of my reactions to the extraordinary tale. It will be sufficient to
say that as I read, flashes of recognition came into my mind as I encountered
some episode or description that had been written up in the Press. I am not a
careful reader of the papers, but I did undoubtedly remember the great stir the
news of the flight of the
Albatross
had caused—more so than usual
because of the part my friend and cousin had played in the adventure. I also
remembered that after the flurry of the first few weeks, a note of skepticism
had begun to creep into the accounts—leader-writers began to say that it was
all very well having a magnificent excuse for not having brought back any proof
of the visit, but was it not just possible that it was only an excuse? No one
had actually seen the
Albatross
land except three very simple-minded old
French peasants. It was not beyond the bounds of possibility that the
Albatross
(which was, they had to admit, since it had been examined by trustworthy
scientists, a working rocket) had made nothing so spectacular as a flight
through space, but had, perhaps, made only a short earth flight from some quiet
spot, landing at Azay. Why such a mammoth deception
should
be practiced
they had no idea—the incurable urge in some human beings to hoax their fellow
men, perhaps (after all, three of the inmates of the rocket had been
schoolchildren, who are notoriously given to japes of all sorts—and another
passenger had been a professional writer, skilled in the weaving of authentic-sounding
romances)
. . .
at any rate, without casting
any real aspersions on the integrity of the people concerned, they took leave
to wonder, etc., etc.

As I say, memories of all this
came into my head as I read through the book. When I finished it, in the early
hours of the morning, there was no doubt in my own mind that the skeptical
complaints in the papers had been quite unjustified—no one could, for no
seeming reason, have
invented
such a fantastic tale. Why should they?—what
gain could possibly accrue to them from doing so? I attributed the remarks of
the leader-writers to the insatiable desire of journalists to create a sensation
at all costs. The technique seemed quite clear to me: first of all, create a
sensation by spreading a story of a flight to Mars, then, when that begins to
pall as news, stimulate fresh interest (to say nothing of the circulation of
the paper!) by alleging that the whole thing has been a pack of lies—thus
creating a sensation all over again.

I was soon to see that Stephen
MacFarlane and Dr. McGillivray were much more prone to be affected by the
adverse remarks in the Press than I had been. When I reflect on my cousin’s
character, I must confess that this does not surprise me. Let me give you a
brief description of him—it is conceivable that it will interest you, since you
have just finished reading some of his works, and may, indeed, from time to time,
have come across one or two others of his publications.

He is (perhaps I should say “was,”
though I am loath to) a man of middle years, yet with something perpetually
young about him. This is all the more surprising when you reflect that he is,
basically, of a melancholy nature: secretive—as it were, haunted. He is good
company, but you invariably feel that he is only superficially so—all the time,
behind his merriest remark, there lurks this other sensitive self: a self
preoccupied with turning over deep problems and seeking a solution to them. He
believes in things profoundly and sincerely, and is hurt when people doubt his
beliefs, though he invariably greets their criticisms of him with some
disarmingly witty remark. In short, he is a mixture—what was called, in old
German mythology, a
doppelganger
. As such, an enigma.

This man had proclaimed, in all
sincerity, that he had left the earth and gone to another world. And the world
in which he lived had doubted the genuineness of the claim. I do not think
there is a great reason to be surprised that he took the course of action he
has taken.

I reproduce now the second
letter he wrote to me—the one I opened, according to his instructions, after I
had read the pile of manuscripts. This is what it said:

My dear John,—You will by this
time have read the manuscripts by myself and my companions setting out our
account of our journey to Mars. I was keen for you to do this before hearing
what I have to say now, because I believe that anyone who reads the book will
reject the accusations against Dr. McGillivray and myself made recently in the
papers—and, as you will see, I consider it imperative that you
should
have faith in my integrity before reading any further.

What I want you to do is to
take these papers you have read, edit them, and have them published—act, in
short, as my literary executor! You will ask why I pass this task to you, when
obviously I myself am the man to do it. The reason is very simple. I shall not
be here to do it. By the time you read these words, I shall be in outer space—I
shall be, my dear John,
on my way back to Mars!
—and for the very good
reason, among others, that I prefer an Angry Planet to a Mean, Envious,
Uncharitable Planet.

Let me tell you briefly what
has happened. I shall be objective—I cannot hope to explain my feelings. In any
case, one never
can
explain things—one can only make statements. So I
shall, here, content myself with describing the circumstances that have
contributed to the formation of my present feelings in my heart.

When we first returned from
Mars the world greeted us with acclaim and jubilation—we were heroes,
conquerors, and very, very glorious. We were invited to talk at innumerable
meetings, we were interviewed, we wrote articles. But gradually a note of doubt
crept in. We were accused—we, who had gone through so much!—of deliberate
deception. We had no
proof
that we had been to Mars—and therefore,
according to the specious arguments of those who are, by a stroke of irony,
professional liars themselves, we could not possibly have been to Mars at all!

I have described, in the course
of my writings, the character of Dr. McGillivray—a reticent man, interested
above all else in his work. You know something of my own personality. You can
imagine our feelings, therefore, when we were confronted by this sudden change-round
of public opinion—feelings of infinite weariness of spirit and contempt, rather
than the more obvious resentment. As for the children, well, as far as this
aspect of things is concerned, they hardly matter a great deal. To them, the
whole thing was an adventure—it did not have the almost mystic solemnity of
occasion it had for us. They are quite happy—they know it happened: they are
chagrined, of course, that people do not believe them, but they are young, and
look at things objectively. We were concerned with the establishment of
scientific truths—not only in having an adventure. Ours is the profounder fate—the
fate of Galileo, for example, confronting the Inquisition.

At first, we did not mind the
opposition a great deal—it was, in a way, natural to expect it from the popular
Press, from a world such as ours with its hideously twisted sense of values.
The mob always condemns that which it cannot understand—it is motivated almost
entirely by envy: it hates those people who do things that it, in its heart,
would like to do, but everlastingly cannot. No, all that was understandable.
What galled us was when the scientific world itself began to doubt us.

The trouble began with
Kalkenbrenner of Chicago. I have mentioned him in the course of the book—in the
introductory chapter, to be precise. He was a rival of Dr. McGillivray’s—a man
himself profoundly interested in rocket flight. After our return from Mars he
came over to see us, to have a look at the
Albatross
. It was obvious
from the beginning that he was jealous that Mac had succeeded in solving the problem
of inter-stellar flight before he had. He sneered at everything we said. In his
heart he believed us, but his pride was so great that he pretended he did not.
Where were our proofs? he kept on saying—we had no photographs, no samples,
nothing—nothing but an array of plausible excuses.

The snowball grew.
Kalkenbrenner, after all, is a man of great reputation and influence. Other
scientists associated themselves with him in his decrying of our
achievement—men small in spirit but large in numbers, and therefore a force to
be reckoned with. Mac was asked to resign from several societies and
professional clubs—one by one the scientific journals stopped commissioning
articles from him.

All this, you must understand,
has come to a head since the book you have just read was written—that is why
there is no reference to it all in its pages. The sequence of events was this:
1. We returned from Mars. 2. We lectured and were fêted. 3. We went to
Pitlochry for a rest, and wrote the book. At the end of the holiday, the
children went back home, leaving me to put the various manuscripts in order. 4.
The rot set in.

And 5—Mac and I decided that we
had had enough, and were going to leave the whole ungrateful crew—were going to
leave them in the most irrevocable way of all: not by becoming hermits, or
anything like that, but by
disappearing from the earth altogether!

That, dear John, is why you are
being appointed my literary executor while I am still alive—an event
unparalleled, I imagine, in the history of letters.

We made our plans a month
ago—secretly: even more secretly than the last time. On this trip there will be
no stowaways. It was good having the children with us, but it must be
faced—Mars is no place for them.

The day before yesterday we
decided the time of our departure. Yesterday and to-day have been spent in
clearing up our affairs. I write this letter to you in the afternoon. When I
have finished it, I shall pack up the parcel and go into Pitlochry to post it.
It should reach you tomorrow, in the midday delivery. By that time we shall
have gone—our time of departure is 10.43 to-morrow morning!

The
Albatross
, shining
and new-looking, after being re-equipped by Mac, is waiting for us in the
enclosure (it was brought here by road from London shortly after our return
from the first flight). It is our mechanism of escape—our road to salvation!
Ave
atque vale
, Cousin!—hail and farewell!