AN INTRODUCTION by the Editor, With a Footnote by Michael Malone

THIS IS THE STORY of the second and last great flight of the little spaceship Albatross to the planet Mars—the Angry Planet, as it has been called, from its ferocious red color, and also from all that happened on it during the first visit of the Albatross travelers.

Now, I have no wish to embark on any complicated “summing-up” of everything that befell during that first adventure, which involved my friend and cousin Stephen MacFarlane, his colleague Dr. Andrew McGillivray, and the two young people Paul and Jacqueline Adam—to say nothing of their cousin, the irrepressible Mike Malone. But perhaps a few editorial comments right at the outset won’t do any harm: hence this brief preface (which, Mike asks me to add, “You can easily skip if you want to push on to the real meat”).

So:

At least most readers—old and new—should remember the immense excitement when it was announced in the late 1940’s that a small spaceship had succeeded in making interplanetary contact:

MAN’S FIRST FLIGHT TO MARS

Scots Professor and Well-

known Writer Accomplish

Spaceship Journey in Two

Months!

THREE TEEN-AGE STOWAWAYS ON BOARD!

Following the first wild outcry—the newspaper interviews, the radio and television appearances, the scientific and popular articles—a secondary reaction set in. The story was doubted, was eventually ridiculed: Dr. McGillivray’s obviously workable rocket might indeed have set off from the small Scottish town of Pitlochry, as he had claimed; but it surely achieved no more than a brief flight into the stratosphere, landing uselessly at Azay in North France . . . and for some unaccountable reason the five travelers in it had chosen to invent a tale of a visit to a planet 35,000,000 miles away at its very nearest—to embroider that tale with descriptions, fantastic beyond all measure yet curiously probable too, of mobile plant people living in gigantic glass bubble houses, of “thinking” trees and telepathic communication.

Set out thus, in its barest bones, the tale does seem, at the least, highly colored—perhaps it is no great marvel that the world turned against the explorers. But two of them were profoundly hurt by the popular reception: the sensitive Dr. McGillivray himself, of Aberdeen University, distinguished alike in his achievements and his appearance, and Stephen MacFarlane, the “well-known writer” of the newspaper headlines, a man of thirty-six when last I saw him, thin, wiry, adventurous. And so these two, alone, went back across the skies, set off once more to meet the “Beautiful People,” to explore the further mysteries of the dying red sphere which is our nearest true planetary neighbor in space.

“I leave and maybe lose the world,” MacFarlane wrote to me before his second departure, “—and somehow, from all the enmity we have encountered in it, I consider it well lost. I can be assumed dead. By the time you read these words I shall be once more in outer space—I shall be, my dear John, on my way back to Mars!—and for the very good reason, among many others, that I prefer an Angry Planet to a Mean, Envious, Uncharitable Planet. . . .”

So they went back, then; and we who did believe—myself and the young people left behind—mourned the loss of two fine men. We looked longingly across the vast velvet spaces and speculated, dreamed, wondered. . . . The Red Journey Back, as we came to think of it in Jacqueline’s brief poetic phrase: what had been its nature?—what had McGillivray and MacFarlane found?—in what unimaginable adventures were they even now engaged?

The months, almost a year, went by; and it was as if, indeed, our friends had perished.

And then, out of the blue—literally out of the blue—came a coincidence so vast that I almost hesitate to use it as this book’s true starting-off point; for authors are naturally chary of using coincidences in their works. “It could never happen that way,” the reader cries. “It is too much, too much of a coincidence!”

Yet coincidences do occur—the newspapers every day are full of them. And so I must, in this factual account of all that happened, attempt to describe this single great coincidence of my own life. I do so in the only full chapter which I personally propose to contribute to this book—the chapter entitled The Airstrip. To it—the beginning of the adventure proper, however irrelevant it may at first seem—I now proceed without further delay.

A Footnote by Michael Malone. All I want to say right now is, thank heaven old J.K.C. has got on with it at last! I was all for starting straight away, you know—bang into Chap One and a bit of action—Steve MacFarlane and Doctor Mac and the new kind of Martians they met, called the Vivores—all that kind of thing. But you know what editors are, particularly fussy ones, and old J.K.C. said, “No go,” we had to have something to tie up the threads from that other book of ours, which was all about how we accidentally stowed away in the Albatross first time it went to Mars, etc.—that is, Paul and Jacky and me, the “three young people” old J.K.C. keeps referring to. (By the way, I just ought to emphasize that it doesn’t matter in the least if you never read that previous book, which we called The Angry Planet—this one will still make sense in its own right, I hope!)

Anyway, the real reason why I wanted to add this postscript to old J.K.C.’s preface is just this: I reckon that one or two of you will maybe wonder as you go on reading just when we three “young people” are going to turn up in this adventure. I know we had bags of letters saying: jolly good show! How did you feel on Mars first time you went?—all that kind of thing; to say nothing of people wanting to know what happened to Malu after the eruption of the Martian volcano (Malu was the Prince of the Beautiful People we got so friendly with on the good old Angry Planet).

So you might say, “Here—when are Mike and the chaps coming in?”

O.K. Don’t worry. We’ll be there—even Malu, although he doesn’t have much to do in this adventure—maybe not quite so much as in the last one, although what he does do sure is important. Oh, we’ll be there all right—back on Mars!—only not for a little while yet. You’ll see why as you go on. Hold your horses, that’s all I say. There’s all the stuff about Steve and Doctor Mac first—what happened to them when they popped off so suddenly without telling any of the rest of us; that’s enough to be going on with, I reckon. What about the Yellow Cloud?—and the Canal Zone?—and Old Jellybags, eh? Have a sniff around Old Jellybags before you start worrying about us—Old Jellybags is something, I can tell you! Of course, that wasn’t his real name—he didn’t have anything as simple and decent as a Name—oh no! Poor old Dr. McGillivray called him Discophora, and said he was “a hydromedusan or some similar coelenterate” (!)—all of which was fine and dandy (and I’ve copied the spelling out of one of Steve MacFarlane’s notebooks), but it didn’t alter the fact that . . . ugh! I prefer Old Jellybags for a name myself: it makes him sound a bit more comfortable at least—and he was one kind of Martian who was far from comfortable . . . !

Anyway, on with the washing: jolly old Chap One. We crop up in Chap Four or so—I mean Jacky and Paul and me. So we’ll be seeing you then. All the best!

Yours,

Mike

P.S. What price Malone’s Conducted Cosmic Tours Inc.?—Founder and President Michael Malone Esq., the Only Boy to have made the Interplanetary Martian Flight Twice before he was Fourteen! Join the Malone Stardusters, the Old Original Galactic Sports Club: Football, Baseball, Cricket Matches, etc., arranged between Planets: Founder and Captain, Michael Malone Esq., etc., etc., etc. Ah well . . . Better let old J.K.C. push on to Chap One before I get carried away!—M.M.