Authors: John Keir Cross
This being—The Center—lay at an
angle on the little mound I have mentioned. For a time he stared at us with his
bulbous, luminous eyes (there were four of them), and then he said:
“Which one is the
leader—McGillivray?”
The Doc stepped forward. There
was a long long silence while The Center looked at him. The Doc stood perfectly
still and straight. At length The Center said:
“You and your friends are
welcome among us. What you are, we do not know. You are different from
us—
much different. We have never
seen creatures like you. You will explain what you are and where you come from,
to me and to the Wiser Ones when The Voice has summoned them. We know you do
not mean evil, and that you have interesting things to say. So you will be
cared for and protected. You will let us know of anything you require, and it
shall be provided if it is in our power to provide it.”
Doctor Mac bowed. Before he
could say anything, the solid wall of Martians had closed up again in front of
The Center. Malu moved forward, and we realized that our interview was at an
end. We followed Malu to the tunnel, and so found ourselves out in the open air
again—which seemed, by the bye, very pleasant and refreshing after the stuffiness
of the dome.
Well now, where do I go from
here? There’s so much to write about—that first day was so crowded—that I
hardly know where to begin. Besides, I don’t want to poach on Doctor Mac’s
territory—I know he’s got a lot to say about the Martians (he has a most
interesting theory about them, by the way), and he has a chapter coming along
soon. I think I’ll just leave it to him—he’ll be able to make a much better job
of it all than I ever could. I’ll just deal very sketchily with one or two of
the main things that happened, and then jump straight on to when the excitement
began (that doesn’t mean to say we didn’t find it
all
exciting—it sure
was; but a different kind of excitement came along early the second morning,
when Mike got himself mixed up with—however, that’s anticipating, and all the
books on writing say that that isn’t allowed).
When we came out of the dome we
found a little group of the Martians—including Mike’s pal Nuna—gathered round
our baggage examining the various things. Nuna had picked up a movie-camera in
his front tendrils, and was poking about at the various controls. Two
females—Malu introduced them (if that’s the expression for being made to know
names in that queer thinking way) as Lalla and Dilli—they were feeling over a
blanket. As best as we could we explained what the things were for, but it
really was surprisingly difficult. The idea of “blanket” they just managed to
get, but the camera was quite beyond them, and so were the tins of food and the
guns. We decided that we would have to wait a bit, till we got to know the
Martians better and what (to quote the Doc) their “ideological background” was,
before we could hope to get over the more complicated sort of ideas.
The next thing that happened,
after we had got our stuff together again and packed on our backs, was that
Malu and Nuna led us through the city to one of the domes on the edge of the
valley. They told us that we could make this our headquarters. We went in
through a small tunnel and dumped our stuff in a clear space that Malu
indicated not far from the inner entrance. (The dome, by the way, was quite
full of Martians, standing quietly in little groups—it was really an amazing
sight; all they did when we went in was to turn and stare at us with those
queer eyes of theirs—they didn’t seem to show any surprise—they weren’t half as
curious as a bunch of earth-folk would have been, say, if some Martians had
suddenly appeared among
them
. We found out later on that everybody in
the city had been told about us, by means of all this quick thought
transference business, from the first moment we arrived; and we also found out
later, as we got to know them, that the Martians were not terribly curious
about things—they liked to have things explained, certainly, but they never
pressed
for an explanation; and if they never got one at all, well, it didn’t seem to
worry them in the slightest—they just accepted things in the most curious
indifferent sort of way.)
The first thing we wanted to
know about was food—it would be awkward if we could not find anything edible on
Mars. Besides, we wanted to know how the Martians ate and drank, not having any
mouths, you know. We managed to convey this idea to Malu, and he led us out of
the dome and across to a part of the city where there was an immense clearing.
Here we saw a most curious sight.
In this clearing, or field,
there were, growing in orderly lines, hundreds and thousands of the cactus-type
plants. They were much smaller than the ones we had seen on the plain, and
lighter in color altogether. The leaves, too, were not so leathery. Moving
among these plants were some hundreds of Martians. Every now and then, one of
them would stop before a plant and lean his head down towards it; then he would
stay quite motionless for about four or five minutes. When we moved closer we
saw what was happening. Uncle Steve has described the little pendulous feelers,
or tendrils, on each side of the Martian “face.” Well, the Martians were
pressing these things against the leaves of the plants. They were, we
discovered,
feeding
through them!—sucking the sap into themselves
through the little tentacles! Somehow it wasn’t a very pleasant sight at first,
although we soon got used to it. (This incidentally, is one of the things
Doctor Mac will be writing about later—I only mention it here because it was
one of the interesting sights we saw that first day.)
The problem was, what were we
going to eat? There was the chance, of course, that we might find the flesh of
the plants quite edible, but somehow we didn’t like the idea of trying it. We
knew that the Martians had a sort of thought transference thing working between
themselves and the plants, and the notion of our cutting off leaves and so
on—well, it was all a bit nasty—particularly when we remembered how we had
heard the scream of pain from the plant on the plain. Strange that on earth we
had never thought it might actually be painful for a plant to be cut—grass, for
instance. Well, I don’t suppose for a moment it can hurt earth plants—come to
think of it, they haven’t any nerve cells. But here on Mars it was altogether a
different matter.
Finally the Doctor had a
brainwave. He asked Malu about the trees—did they have any communication with
them? Malu said no, so the Doc said that later on we would go up to the forest
and gather some of the big spikes and leaves. He would analyze them—he had some
equipment for doing so—and then he’d be able to let us know whether we’d be
able to eat them or not, and just how nourishing they would be. Meantime, we
had enough food in tins not to have to worry for a day or two.
Well, on we went, exploring one
thing after another through the city. We took endless photographs, and the Doc,
as far as I could see, filled up several notebooks with jottings about this and
that. So did Uncle Steve—I expect that as this book goes on you’ll get to know,
from one or other of them, some of the hundreds of interesting things we saw. I
can’t hope to cover even a hundredth of the ground.
Insert by Michael Malone:
I was keen to get to know
about this children business I’d asked old Nuna about before. But all he did
was to say the same as he’d said on the plain—that they weren’t able to move,
and all that. So I said, what about seeing them sort of thing? But he said,
well later on sort of—they actually weren’t in the city at all. He said we’d go
tomorrow into the hills to see them. So I had to leave it at that. Anyway,
there were so many things to have a look at that first day that it went out of
my mind after a bit. There was one thing that was pretty exciting, I must say.
We saw some Martians playing a kind of game at one place, and it was actually a
sort of football! Yes—really—no kidding. The ball was a roundish block of wood
from one of the trees. They made a big sort of circle in the sand, and there
was a shallow hole in the middle of it, see. Then there were some Martians
round the hole, and other Martians in a ring out
side. And these outside ones
had to get the ball through the inside ones and put it in the hole. The way
they played was to get the ball caught up in their big sort of tendril things
they had for feet, and then they’d scoot along, pushing it as they went. And
the defenders would tackle them, see, and try to get the block of wood into
their
tendrils. Sometimes you’d see two of them standing absolutely still together,
with their tendrils sort of interlocked. You thought they were just being
matey, maybe, they were so quiet, but all the time they’d be pushing at each
other’s tendrils with terrific strength—and as I say they were usually so
evenly matched that you didn’t think they were moving at all. Then one of them
would give in suddenly, and the other would career off with the ball until
another of the B.P. tackled him in his turn. The real object of the game was
this sort of all-in tendril wrestling, apparently—the block of wood was really
just an excuse for them to try their strength this way. It was great fun—I’d
have joined in, only, of course, I didn’t have any tendrils—ordinary dribbling
wouldn’t have been much use.
I just thought I’d put in this
bit about the football here, while Paul is chewing the end of his pen wondering
what to say next. I see he’s ready now, so I’ll pass over to him again and he
can carry on.
By this time the day was
wearing on (Paul Adam writing). We went back to the dome where our kit was.
Somehow we didn’t fancy the idea of spending the night in the dome—the
atmosphere was too hot and stuffy. We were just wondering what to do about it
when Malu, who had gone off for a moment, came back to say that the Wiser Ones
were with The Center now, and would the Doctor go to see them.
While he was gone we had a
conference. We were beginning to feel peckish again, and rather sleepy (there
must have been something in the air of Mars—we all felt very sleepy there). So
we opened some tins and had a meal, while a group of the B.P., with Lalla and
Dilli well to the fore, stood silently looking at us. The sun by now was
nearing the horizon. Suddenly Mike did his famous brow-slapping act.
“I’ve got it!” he yelled. “We’ll
build a tent! We can easily rig up a lean-to with a couple of blankets and the
rifles—we could borrow some of these glass spear things, too, for poles.”
It was a great idea, and we set
to with a will. Before very long we had quite a satisfactory little tent
erected, and just as the sun was disappearing we crawled into it and made
ourselves comfortable with the remainder of the blankets. We had taken a glance
into the dome before settling down, to see how the Martians slept. It was very
odd—they weren’t lying down or anything; they just stood in rows, with their
feet-tendrils buried in the sand, absolutely motionless—they might have been so
many posts.
Mike was already asleep and
snoring when the Doc came back.
“This is a good idea,” he said,
as he crawled into the tent beside us. “I don’t think I could have stood the
heat in the dome—I’ve just been closeted with The Center for the past hour-and-a-half,
and the atmosphere was really unbearable. Phew!”
“Did you manage to get anywhere
with the Wiser Ones?” asked Uncle Steve sleepily.
“Yes—we got on famously
together,” said the Doc. “It’s been a remarkable experience, Steve—quite
remarkable. I’ll tell you all about it in the morning. The Wiser Ones are
astonishing—really astonishing. I’ve never known anything like it. By heaven,
what a tale it all is to tell when we get back! What a tale!”
“If we ever do get back!” said
Uncle Steve. Then he grunted and turned over, and in a few minutes I heard his
breathing deepen as he went to sleep.
For a time I heard the Doc
crawling about getting ready for bed, but eventually he too settled down, with
a long contented sigh, and all was quiet.
Although I was so tired, it was
quite a time before I could get to sleep—the strangeness, I suppose, and all
the excitement we had gone through. I lay on my back, with my head cupped in my
hands, looking out under the edge of our tent. There had been a very short
twilight
—
now
it was quite dark (the Doc, by the way, had explained to us earlier that the
Martian day and night were almost the same as ours—the cycle lasted about
twenty-four-and-a-half hours and not twenty-four—that was really the only
difference). The strangest thing to me, as I lay there, was to see two moons
overhead—two small, shining moons, very pretty and brilliant against the blue-black
velvety sky. The night was clear, and there were millions of stars, in
constellations strange to me. One of those stars, I thought (which one I did
not know—perhaps that small, slowly-winking one just above the horizon)—one of
them was our earth—our home. All those millions and millions of miles away were
the things we knew and the places we knew—yes, and the people we knew: old Mrs.
Duthie, who had been so kind to us—Mr. McIntosh the gamekeeper, with the fish-hooks
in his Sherlock Holmes hat
—
our own mother and
father, and Mike’s mother and father. It was a strange thought—and a sad one
too. They would be worrying about us—perhaps they would have given us up for
lost altogether by this time. They might have had search parties out in the hills
round Pitlochry
.
. . .
I remember feeling a lump in
my throat just before I dropped into sleep—and wishing too that there might be
some way,
some
way by means of which we could communicate with them all,
just to let them know that we were well and happy.