CHAPTER IX. THE GOLDEN JOURNEY, by A. Keith Borrowdale

I HAVE little enough space, alas, to describe in full detail the extent of our preparations for combating the mysterious menace of the Vivores. Much will emerge as my tale proceeds; for the moment, I touch broadly on the general appearance of our “caravan” as it set out across the Martian wastes—as it might have been observed, perhaps, by some alien eye scanning the sandy desert from the distant mountains.

All of us (needless to say) wore heavy suits of protective “armor”—heavy, that is to say, upon Earth, although on Mars we hardly noticed the weight—certainly welcomed the warmth of the strange garments against the undoubted chill of the long bright Martian autumn. The suits resembled diving suits, tunic and trousers (for both sexes) in one piece, the material a compound of asbestos and flexible plastic—water-, gas- and fire-proof. The helmets were large transparent globes of unbreakable “kalspex,” a variant on perspex patented by our leader some years before. When not in position they could be folded back over the shoulders to admit of free breathing. Pulled into place, they automatically locked on an aluminum rim at the neck, and this process also automatically brought into operation the oxygen-breathing apparatus carried partly on the wearer’s back, partly on his chest. It was possible, for air-conservation purposes, to switch off this apparatus, in which case breathing the free external atmosphere was achieved through a valve.

With the helmets in position, the members of the party could communicate with each other by means of small microphones and short-wave radio receivers mounted close to the mouth and ears. It was a matter simply of speaking quite normally within the globes. Additional microphones and loudspeakers, mounted externally, made it possible to communicate with any outside parties not wearing the garments.

Thus we garbed ourselves then—and must have seemed a group of strange, amorphous creatures, indeed, as we clustered around the rocket ready to depart. Both the entrance hatches had been closed, of course, and locked by a special method also devised by Dr. Kalkenbrenner. In addition, an ingenious invisible barrier—an arrangement of photo-electric cells—had been contrived to encircle the whole ship. Any unauthorized approach to it was made known by an immediate radio danger signal, transmissible into the helmets of the rescue expedition up to a distance of some eighty miles.

As to transport: we had carried with us in the Comet, and assembled in readiness the afternoon before, the component parts of a small but extremely powerful caterpillar tractor—virtually a light tank. It was large enough to carry three—even more if necessary; for the rest (and for MacFarlane and McGillivray once we had rescued them—even Malu) there was ample room in the trailer attached—space also for our necessary concentrated food supplies, first-aid gear and (in some instances considerably bulky) weapons.

The tractor was equipped with a complete cabin, again of kalspex, which could be levered into position in a matter of seconds, thus affording a double protection to the asbestos-suited occupants. And the trailer could also very rapidly be shrouded in a complete “tent” of treated canvas with kalspex windows—this also to serve for sleeping quarters, together with another small collapsible tent carried in the tractor’s spacious boot.

So then we departed, in solemn array. Behind us the immense silvery spire of the Comet receded, its outlines wavering delicately in the bright, the almost intolerably bright, sunshine. The sound of our engine—an alien sound indeed across the Martian wastes—dispersed, died flatly over the soft yielding sand of the plain and in the rare ozone-charged atmosphere. And fabulously, even ridiculously, as our caravan advanced across that arid desert, Katey declaimed, half-seriously, remembering the verses as she had learned them years before at the start of her career—when, as a child actress, she had appeared in a revival of the old play of Hassan . . . she declaimed:

We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go

Always a little further; it may be

Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow

Across that angry or that glimmering sea,

White on a throne or guarded in a cave

There lives a prophet who can understand

Why men were born: but surely we are brave,

Who take the Golden Road to Samarkand.

Then Michael began to whistle raucously: “Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching,” with Maggie pompomming solemnly at an imaginary tuba, and the tension in us broke at once, and out across the plain went the sound of our laughter—as alien on silent Mars, in its different way, as the throb of our engine.

We pushed constantly southward, weaving among the groups of the cactus plants. Was it once more only fancy, or was there, occasionally, a kind of shrinking, as it seemed, from those strange sentient growths?—a shrinking away from us, not fully expressed in actual movement but somehow in attitude. They “reared,” as it were, as startled horses might have done, but not physically—in thought only.

The mountains—on our right as we advanced—loomed ever closer. Jacky and Paul scanned their slopes and valleys with powerful binoculars for some sign, perhaps, of Martian habitation. Once Jacky cried out, pointing excitedly; and when I leveled my own binoculars it was to see, in a small hollow, a bright shining from a brilliant reflecting surface of some kind. As my eyes grew accustomed to the glare, I could make out a group of immense dome shapes—huge bubbles, inverted bowls, the largest of them seeming veritably as grand in outline as the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

“The bubble houses,” called Jacky from the trailer.

“There’s no sign of life near them,” I said, still scanning the hillside.

“There wouldn’t be, if they’re the ones I think they are,” said our captain briefly. “If it’s the settlement MacFarlane mentioned in his messages, it was deserted, you’ll remember, as the Vivores danger increased.”

“And if it is that settlement,” murmured Katey, “it means that the Albatross is near at hand—they dragged her across the plain, near to the village.”

“Beyond those very foothills, my dear,” said Kalkenbrenner grimly. “If my bearings are accurate—if the ridge we saw in landing was the Ridge—MacFarlane and McGillivray are barely two Earth miles ahead of us!”

As he spoke, he brought the little tractor to a halt. We had been traveling now for some time—the sun was high in the almost white sky. The nature of the terrain had changed: the clustering cactus plants had grown sparser on the first slopes of the foothills—had eventually disappeared altogether, their place being taken first by small leathery shrubs, then, among the hills proper, by occasional trees, slender-trunked and with heavy, fleshy leaves.

“You can eat them, you know,” cried Michael, jumping up for a handful as we halted. “I lived on nothing else that time I was captured by the Terrible Ones on the last trip. They’re like melon flesh, but with a kind of salty taste about them too. Very good—try some.”

We set to nibbling—tentatively at first, but in truth the leaves did have a strangely attractive flavor.

“Don’t anyone move any distance away from the tractor,” said Dr. Kalkenbrenner. “In fact, we had better stay aboard together, Michael—no more leaves, if you please. I have stopped so that we can prepare ourselves. As far as my reckoning goes, we shall be face to face with MacFarlane’s ‘Canals,’ whatever they may be, the moment we mount that hill immediately ahead there. We had best have something to eat—some of the biscuits and cheese Miss Hogarth prepared for us; it may be long enough before we can eat again. And when we go forward afterward, I want you to wear your helmets, with the air valves open, but be ready to switch over to oxygen the moment I may give the word.”

The very brusqueness of his manner sent a chill through us. In the interest of the journey we had forgotten momentarily how closely danger loomed. I saw that Jacky had gone white—that even Mike trembled a little as he held out his hand for the eatables Katey had unpacked and was handing around.

For my own part, I switched my gaze to the sky above the line of the small hillock facing us. I sought for the faintest tinge of possible yellow—the least shadow. But I sought in vain. From the journey’s start we all had scanned the southern sky for an appearance, however sparsely, of the Cloud. But from first to last there had been not even a far hint of it.

So we ate in silence. I will confess to little appetite. A slight sense of empty sickness afflicted me. I was, in truth, afraid.

I watched Dr. Kalkenbrenner as, with white set face, he made a few final adjustments to the small cannon and machine gun mounted on the front superstructure of the tractor. I myself checked over the powerful flame thrower ready to my hand—saw that Paul, Katey and Michael were looking to their own hand weapons, rifles and revolvers. Maggie furtively polished a small automatic she had somehow smuggled with her from the rocket—for it had been agreed that the two girls should be unarmed, and no arrangements had been made by the Doctor to equip them.

Then, at a word from our leader, we set our helmets in position and switched on the communication apparatus within them. Through the exterior microphones we heard the powerful revving of our engine as, once more, we went forward, climbing the gentle slope which separated us from . . . what?

The tension mounted as we proceeded. My hand, I realized, was trembling on the control of the flame thrower, and in fear of accident I withdrew it. Close in my ears was a low strange whispering moan; I saw Katey’s lips moving through the transparency of the kalspex and understood that her excited, apprehensive breathing was being transmitted through the little microphone so close to her lips.

Higher and still higher we climbed. Ahead, the sky was still clear. And a moment later we were over the top and descending; and saw, and saw, and saw—

A plain, a vast extending plain, entirely similar in its red expanse to that which we had left behind.

But cutting across it in a straight wide line, to the remotest horizon, was a great ridge of dark, dark green—a confusion of tumultuous growth, lush, prodigal. A mile, perhaps, in width—perhaps, at its farther reaches, even wider. And swelling, at the end now near us, to an immense circumference, enclosing in its vernal depths—

“The Albatross—the Albatross!”

It was Jacqueline’s voice, thin in my ears through the reedy diaphragm of our communication apparatus, yet charged with profoundest feeling.

The great ship lay on a slight incline, gleaming in the sunlight, a silvery contrast to the monstrous fronds surrounding it. I recognized her from the photographs I had seen—I saw her very name across the swelling brow of her.

Over all—over all the silent scene—there hung an air of unutterable strangeness. All was still, all peaceful—no sign, no hint of danger. And yet something, something—

Kalkenbrenner, bewildered, drew to a long slithering downhill halt, small reddish clouds rising from our tracks. And I heard Jacqueline’s voice once more: “Uncle Steve—oh, Uncle Steve! And Doctor Mac . . . !”

Standing close to the looming spaceship, unbelievable after all we had known, all we had expected, were two human figures. One—the older—held his head inclined a little away from us, as if uncertain of our true direction. But the other gazed at us—and waved in all cheerfulness, beckoning us forward.

I had seen neither before; but again I knew them both from photographs and descriptions. They were the men we had come so far to find—alive, alive and well, unharmed—awaiting us!

And MacFarlane still waved us forward—was shouting, as we could see, yet stood at too great a distance for us to hear his words. And all about were peace and utter stillness—no menace, no danger after all. . . .

Slowly we crawled forward again, in lowest gear. Nearer and nearer to the great forest of silent green growth. And at last MacFarlane s voice came, rare and distorted through the exterior microphones: “Come closer, closer! Why do you hesitate? There is nothing to fear—nothing, nothing!”

There was nothing to fear indeed—nothing in all that extending scene—and the two men stood beckoning us on, the men we had thought to find besieged and in uttermost peril.

There was nothing to fear as we crept forward, always forward.

And yet, and yet—and yet . . .

Something lingered: over all that peaceful scene, in the very silent air itself: something lingered!