The Angry Planet (7 page)

This sobered me. I started to plod across to the control
panel. Before I got there, however, Mac managed to push himself down from the
ceiling to one of the handrails, and groped his way by means of that to the
motor switch and put it off. The children, too, by this time, were beginning to
get some slight control into their movements. Paul had come to earth, so to
say, and was clinging to one of the mattresses on the floor I have already
mentioned. Mike had got hold of the top of the open door of the store closet
and was swinging gently to and fro with it. Jacky had pushed herself down from
her corner towards me, and this time we both managed to grab properly. She
clung to me very tightly, and I could feel her trembling and hear her breathing
in deep excited gasps.

“Get me a pair of boots, Steve, for heaven’s sake,”
cried Mac. “There are a couple of spares in the locker too—you can give those
to two of the children—they’ll be able to tighten the straps up so as to make
them fit reasonably well.”

With Jacky still round my neck I moved over to the
locker for the boots. I gave the Doctor his pair, strapped a pair on Jacky, and
handed the third pair to Paul. Mike worked his way down the closet door and we
got him across the cabin to a pair of floor-straps. Then we all looked at each
other in silence.

“Well!” said the Doctor at length, his face set and
grim. “I suppose you children realize what you’ve done? Have you any idea how
serious a situation you’re in? Do you know where we’re going?—to Mars!”

They looked at us with white scared faces.

“We didn’t mean it, sir,” said Paul tremulously. “Honestly
we didn’t.”

“How did you get in here at all?” asked the Doctor in
some exasperation. “That’s what I can’t understand.”

“We were
 . . .
exploring, sir. We saw your rocket in the enclosure
up at your house last Sunday, and then we heard of it from old Mr. McIntosh,
the gamekeeper, and we—we thought we’d like to have a closer look at it. We
didn’t mean to do any harm, sir—really we didn’t. And we’re very sorry if we’ve
upset you.”

And then out it all came, the whole story as you
already know it—how they arranged to get back from the picnic early, how they
got over the stockade wall, how they hid in the store closet when they saw us
approaching the
Albatross.

“...
And, of course, we went unconscious for a time,”
finished Paul. “And then, when we came round, we went all light-headed. The
door must have got jammed in some way, because we couldn’t open it for a bit,
and we had to knock on it and call to get out. We were floating about in there,
and then the door opened suddenly and we floated out.”

“You can count yourselves lucky you didn’t suffer any
worse effects than a bout of harmless unconsciousness from the start-off,”
grunted the Doctor. “You were young and healthy enough to get off lightly.”

He surveyed them sternly.

“And whether we like it or not,” he said, “you’re with
us now. There’s no sort of hope of turning back—I can’t control the ship
properly in empty space going at this speed. My heavens!” he exploded suddenly,
“little did I think I’d have three children on this trip with me! Children! You’d
think it was a holiday outing to Brighton! And it’s a voyage to Mars, do you
understand?—the first in history! You’re on your way to Mars!”

The children stared at him sheepishly. At least, Paul
and Jacqueline did. Mike was behind them, and out of the immediate gaze of the
Doctor. And I’ll swear he was grinning—and that I heard, as a gentle whisper in
the air of the cabin, the one triumphant word—”Whoopee!”

We had calculated before leaving earth—or rather, the
Doctor had—that if we achieved through his patent fuel the truly incredible
initial speed we hoped for, it would take a little under three weeks for the
Albatross
to reach Mars. As I have said, once we got into outer space, we
had no outward notion of time. The Doctor, however, was able, eventually, to
calculate day and night by examining the surface of the earth as it came into
our view as a globe—he observed the rotation of it on its axis, and from that,
allowing for our movement, got a fairly reliable standard of measurement.

As the journey progressed we settled down to a routine—we
grew accustomed to the extraordinary conditions. We all kept diaries of
sorts—jotted down something at least of our impressions (the Doctor, of course,
as well as a personal notebook, kept a most careful and scientific log which
has since proved invaluable to astronomers). Writing at first was very
difficult—the merest push of a pencil sent it floating off the paper altogether
(we had to write with pencils: ink simply would not flow from the nib of a
pen). However, this, like everything else, soon came under control. It is a
brief selection of some of the most representative entries in these odd
journals and notebooks that makes up the next part of this chapter. Here they
are:

Dr. McGillivray’s Personal Notebook—2nd Day.
Everything goes according to plan. The ship travels
beautifully—to us on it, by a paradox, almost imperceptibly. There is nothing I
can do to steer the
Albatross
—we can only pray that I did not in any
degree miscalculate our direction when leaving earth, and that we shall fall
within the
gravitational pull of Mars. If we do not,
then—heaven help us!—we travel from now to the end of time—lost in
space—another meteor, no more. Our food (of which, fortunately, I have enough
in store for these unhappy children who have joined us)—our food would give
out, our air would exhaust itself—we should die here unmourned in measureless
space. No one would know. Centuries hence, if we had not collided with a planet
or meteor, we should still be traveling on and on, going nowhere—nowhere!
 . . .

But this is pessimism. Useless
to dwell on such thoughts—I cannot have miscalculated. I was too careful—I
checked and counter-checked everything
.
 . . .

My days are very full. I make
continuous observations—I am well equipped with instruments. The earth is now
visible as a vast globe, seemingly over our heads—terrible and beautiful
against the darkness of space. Further out, when it is smaller, we shall see it
in phases, as it were the moon—in thin crescent and half crescent. It is
unbelievably beautiful and fascinating
.
 . . .

Extract from the Journal of
Michael Malone—2nd Day of Journey.
This is the most wizard thing that has ever happened
to anybody, I bet. It’s terrific, I can tell you. Of course, we’re used to this
business of not having any weight by this time, though it wasn’t half funny to
begin with. There are only two pairs of magnetic boots for us three, so we’ve
got to take it in turns to go into the strap things on the floor. Sometimes, if
we feel like it, we have a float around for a lark (ha-ha, but no pun meant—a “lark,”
see???). It’s eating and drinking that’s the joke, though. Old Paul had some
sandwiches left in his haversack and we had a shot at eating them the first
day. Gosh! When you put them up to your mouth they just went floating on out of
your hand up to the ceiling! And when Jacky tried taking a drink of lemonade
out of a cup, it just came out in a sort of bulb and doddered about in the
air—and I had a swipe at it and it didn’t burst or anything—it just sort of
oozed and crept over my hand like a sort of queer oil. So the Doctor had to
show us how to eat and he’d had a really great idea for that. All those things
we thought were tubes of tooth-paste in the cupboard where we hid were really
food! There were all sorts of things—vegetables like spinach done up very fine,
and meat-paste things, and sorts of thick soups, and concentrated essences and
whatnot, all shoved into these toothpaste tubes. You take one, you see, and put
the point of it in your mouth, and then you just squeeze. You can’t chew
properly or anything—it just goes into your mouth and then you swallow it (you’ve
got to learn how to swallow with muscle movements, because there isn’t any
weight in this stuff, see, and it won’t go down by itself
—
but you master that after a
time, same as everything else). Drinking’s the same sort of idea—the water is
in rubber bag things, like hot water bottles, with a tube at the end, and you
put the tube in your mouth and just squirt.

The Doc’s not so bad now. He
was a bit sticky at first about us being here, but he’s getting over that. As a
matter of fact, I think he’s beginning to like us, though he won’t admit it
yet. He likes explaining things and all that. He’s not half a bad stick, really,
and I think Uncle Steve’s secretly on our side, so it’ll be all right. Oh boy,
the more I think of it—going to Mars! This’ll be something for the chaps at
school! Not half it won’t!

Stephen
MacFarlane’s Journal—3rd
Day.
How can I possibly, possibly describe in any adequate way the wonders that
surround us? Sometimes, as I gaze through the port-holes, I find my mind
tottering on the edge of things—how can one begin to conceive the incredible
vastness of space?

The sky, surrounding us on all
sides, presents a new kind of spectacle—a beautiful one, yet a terrible one
too. We see, as it were, with an awful clarity (because, the Doctor has
explained, light rays are no longer being reflected or obscured by any kind of
atmosphere). The whole wide expanse of space is perpetually a deep bluish
black, smooth and velvety, yet luminous too, in a strange and totally
indescribable way. The stars (unbelievably brilliant) are always visible, yet
the sun shines all the time. And how it shines! It is impossible to look at it
without powerful dark glasses. When I do look at it so, I perceive that it
seems just a little smaller (Mars is further away from the sun than earth, and
so as we travel we recede from it).

But it is the spectacle of the
earth that haunts and fascinates. At first, as we journeyed, we saw it only
mistily—a large, greenish-bluish expanse behind us. Then we came to see the
outlines—the whole outlines of countries—and even to be able to observe the
huge curve of the surface. Think of it—to see the whole of Britain in outline,
as we did, surrounded by the deep blue, sparkling, shining sea!—a gigantic
relief map in vivid green, with only the largest rivers traceable as silvery
thread-like veins in the body of it, and dark vague blobs for the larger
cities—London, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow. As we traveled, the country
seemed to flatten out and elongate, as it were the reflection of the relief map
in a vast distorting mirror. More and more outlines came into sight—France, then
the coastline of Spain—Norway. Then
—
gradually—the whole sweeping curve of the globe; the stark
whiteness of the polar caps—the earth as a gargantuan ball, all of it—an
enormous shining sphere, filling the whole of space with its radiance, it
seemed at first, then slowly, slowly contracting—and all the time, more and
more obviously as we receded, revolving on its axis.

Now, on the third day, the
earth is about ten times the size of the full moon as we would see it from back
home in Pitlochry. It shines with a terrible hard brilliance—silvery, seeming
cold. Britain is no longer separately visible—it is no more than a little green
finger attached to the vague mass of Europe. Only the bigger shapes are
recognizable—America, Africa. The seas are a greyish blue (strange how colors
still are visible, despite the brightness of the earth: but they are—only, in a
shrill and luminous way). The two poles are pure, pure white—little caps, they
seem—skull caps.

As we recede the colors grow
less distinguishable. Already the green of the continents is becoming only a
gentle tint, and a bright, phosphorescent silvery-whiteness is beginning to
flood the whole surface. Smaller land masses are beginning to appear only as
vague shadows
.
 . . .

It is awesome and terrible. Yet
fascinating—I spend hours at the port-holes, staring and staring
.
 . . .

A letter from Jacqueline
Adam to her Mother—written on the 12th Day.
My darling Mummy,—It seems
such a strange and silly thing to be doing, sitting up here in space, millions
and millions of miles away from you, and yet writing a letter as if you were
only a few towns away. And, of course, it’ll never be delivered, because Doctor
Mac has explained that even if I dropped it out of the
Albatross
it
wouldn’t fall down home the way that maybe you would think it would—it just
wouldn’t drop at all. It has something to do with there not being any gravity—I
don’t really understand it, but anyway, that is what Doctor Mac says.

But you see, I’m not really
writing to you thinking this letter will ever reach you—it’s only a sort of
imaginary letter, because I want to put down my thoughts to somebody, and can’t
speak to you the way I would really like to.

Oh, mummy, I get so frightened!
I can’t help it, and I try not to show it, but I do all the same. And there is
no one to turn to—not even Uncle Steve, though I am sure he understands inside
the way I am feeling. It is so terribly lonely out here, although there are the
five of us, and we are all quite cheery. But it is not that—it is a different
kind of loneliness—not the loneliness of not having people. When I look at the
earth (and it is very tiny now—not so big as the moon—just a sort of large
star), I think of you there on it, and Aunt Marian, and old Mrs. Delaware next
door, and the milk-boy, and the little red mail box at the corner of the
street. And it is all very queer and far away and like a dream, and I can’t
help crying a little bit inside for it all being so lost and strange. You see,
it is all so terrible and so big and so cold-looking here, and it is always the
same—always, always, always. And I think of things like you and Paul and me on
the sands at Bournemouth, or the little cottage in Cornwall last year, and old
Mrs. Tregerthen, do you remember, and the strange way she talked, and bathing
in the sea, and going down the old tin mine—and Tibby, her cat that had only
one eye and was lame in one leg. Oh mummy!