Jet rattled the latch violently. “We’ve got to get in there, Doc, and get him out.”
“If you ask me,” put in Lemmy, “it doesn’t sound as though he wants to come out.”
Before I could prevent him, Jet put his shoulder to the door. I was afraid he might damage his suit, but the door gave way almost at once.
It opened on to a dimly-lit room into which a small window allowed only a little daylight to enter. On the opposite wall was a crude bed with Mitch lying on it. He lay much as McLean had lain on the bunk of the living quarters truck, staring at the ceiling. He hardly seemed aware of our presence.
“Land sakes, Jet,” I exclaimed, “I think we’re too late. Look at him--no helmet--no suit--and he doesn’t even recognise us.”
Jet looked at the still form a moment and then said: “Mitch, don’t you know us?”
Mitch turned his head in our direction. “You took you’re time coming, didn’t you?”
“Took our time?” I protested. “We didn’t even know you were here.”
“Did you bring the ambulance with you?”
“Ambulance?” I asked.
“You must have done. Well, if we’re going, let’s go. I won’t really be sorry. That sheep farmer and his wife are scared of me. They think a little sunstroke has driven me crazy.”
“Sheep farmer?” I said. “What are you talking about, Mitch?”
“‘That couple that took me in. They’re certainly sheep they have in the pens outside, aren’t they?”
“No, Mitch,” said Jet, “they’re not sheep. They’re . . .”
“I didn’t want to scare ‘em,” Mitch went on, as though Jet hadn’t spoken. “They were good enough to me. Made up this bed with nice clean sheets and . . .”
By this time Lemmy was also standing by the couch and gazing down at his crew mate. “Sheets, did he say? That bed’s nothing but a heap of old furs--skins from those animals outside.”
“Well,” Mitch continued, “why don’t you sit down? It’ll take me a couple of minutes to get dressed.”
“And where do we sit?” asked Lemmy.
“There are chairs enough, aren’t there? Two arm chairs by the fire and a sofa in the window.”
We looked around the room and saw three objects which, with a lot of imagination, could perhaps have resembled the furniture Mitch had described.
“Arm chairs yet,” said Lemmy under his breath. “I could make better myself out of an orange box.”
“Yes, we will sit down, thank you,” I said to Mitch gently, “but over by the window. It’s rather warm in here.” I indicated to Jet and Lemmy to follow me and we seated ourselves as best we could on the long, plank-like object which Mitch believed to be a sofa.
“What on earth has happened to him, Doc?” Jet whispered.
“He must be crackers,” said Lemmy.
“No, Lemmy,” I corrected him, “just changed.”
“To what?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“He’s not another Whitaker, is he?” asked the Cockney.
He had voiced my own fear, but I merely replied: “Whatever he is, he sees things quite differently from how they really are.”
“But why did he think we might have brought an ambulance with us?“ asked Jet.
“Because he believes he’s sick and we’ve come to take him away,” I replied. “And so long as he thinks that, that’s what we will do. We’ll take him to the trucks with us. At least we’ll have him back again, and then . . .”
My suggestion was interrupted by the shrill barking of the dog-beetle at the door.
“What’s worrying that dog?” called Mitch.
“Dog!” said Lemmy. “He thinks it’s a dog, too.”
“What’s he kicking up that row for?” went on the Australian. “Have you got somebody else out there?”
“No, Mitch,” I said, “there’s only us.”
“Well, something’s worrying him.”
“Oh, blimey,” said Lemmy suddenly, “and no wonder.” He was gazing out of the window. “Look out there,” he said. “That ship we’ve been following--that sphere. It’s just landed outside.”
Jet and I followed Lemmy’s gaze and saw that what he had said was true.
“What was that?” asked Mitch from the other side of the room. “A plane just landed, did you say?”
“Yes, Mitch,” said Jet, hardly knowing what to reply.
“But didn’t you just land here?”
“No, Mitch--we came in the trucks.”
“But the farmer told me you’d be flying here.” Mitch was out of the bed now and was dressing himself in his crew suit--the undergarment which we all wore beneath our space suits.
“How could he?” I called back. “That farmer, as you call him, couldn’t even have known we were coming.”
“Who are you?” said Mitch approaching us. “Aren’t you the flying doctor?”
“You might call me that,” I said cautiously.
“From Alice Springs?”
“Look, Mitch,” I said firmly, “finish dressing and come on.”
“Where to?”
“Back to the trucks, of course,” replied Jet, putting his hands on the engineer’s shoulder.
“Take your hands off me,” said the Australian, pushing Jet away. “I’m not coming with anybody until I know just who you are.”
“We are Doc, Jet and Lemmy,” I said, “of the Mars space fleet. You’re one of our crew.”
“The Mars space fleet?” repeated Mitch dazedly.
“Yes, Mitch. We landed here on Mars nine days ago in the Flagship Discovery--you, too.”
Mitch took a couple of paces backwards and looked at us with fear in his eyes. “You’re crazy, the whole lot of you. This is Australia.”
“Australia!” exclaimed Jet, taking a step towards the engineer.
“Keep away,” said Mitch, his voice rising dangerously.
“Mitch,” I pleaded, “you must believe us.”
“Keep off--or I’ll hit you with this chair.”
“Mitch,” said Jet, advancing towards the Australian, “we’re your friends. We want to help you.”
“Come a step nearer and I’ll let you have it!”
Jet came to a halt not a yard from Mitch. He dare not approach any closer for the Australian was standing with the chair poised above his head. If he brought it down on Jet’s helmet and broke it, Jet was liable to be suffocated by the Martian atmosphere which, for all we knew, might be poisonous to us, although, I must admit, Mitch seemed to be breathing it quite easily.
“Mitch, for the last time,” begged Jet, “you must come with us. You belong to us. You are one of us.”
“I’m not going with anybody,” said Mitch decisively, “until I know exactly who you are.”
The dog-beetle was making more noise than ever now, and then, quite suddenly, we heard footsteps coming along the passage. My heart sank. Whoever had come out of the sphere which had just landed was now in the house and there was no escape for us.
“The window,” said Jet urgently. “We can get out of there.”
“Yes,” I said, “but what about Mitch?”
“If he won’t come, there’s nothing we can do about it. Let’s get back to the trucks. Maybe we can think up a plan for rescuing Mitch later. What else can we do?” he said, turning to me in despair.
“Very well,” I agreed, and headed for the window.
But I had hardly reached it when a voice behind me said: “Stay where you are!”
Five figures stood in the doorway. The man who had spoken was of moderate height and build, with a thin, leathery face, indicating that he spent much of his time outdoors in the sun. He wore an Australian-type bush hat, a loose shirt, trousers held up by a wide leather belt and tight-fitting boots which came halfway up his calves. Behind him were the farmer, a woman I took to be his wife and behind them, to my great surprise, were Dobson and Harding, two of the men missing from the crashed Freighter Number Two. None of these people wore space suits or breathing apparatus of any kind. Dobson and Harding stood staring vacantly before them, and it was obvious that they, too, were in a conditioned state, similar to that of McLean and Mitch.
The farmer pointed towards us. “That’s them, Doc. Appeared from nowhere. Frightened the wits out of my wife and then began to search the house without so much as by-your-leave.”
The leathery-faced man stepped into the room. “Who are you?” he demanded in a strong Australian accent.
“We might well ask you that,” replied Jet, shouting in his helmet to make himself heard.
“That’s easily answered,” said leather face. “I’m the flying doctor in this part of the Territory. I received a report that there was a man here suffering from over exposure to the sun. So I came to pick him up.”
So this was the man Mitch was expecting; indeed a Flying Doctor.
“If I may say so, Doctor,” I said, as courteously as I could, “he’s not suffering from over exposure to the sun.”
The Flying Doctor ignored my remark. “Who are you?” he demanded.
“Matthews is my name. Doctor Matthews.”
“A doctor of medicine?”
“Yes. Of space medicine in particular.”
“Of what?” “Space--astronautics.”
“That’s a branch of medicine I’ve never heard of. What are you doing here? Where did you come from?”
“We came looking for our Chief Engineer,” said Jet, “Stephen Mitchell--the man you say has had an overdose of the sun. But he was fit enough when he left us.”
The Flying Doctor turned to Mitch and asked: “Have you ever seen these men before?”
“Not that I can remember,” Mitch replied.
“Mitch,” I said gently, “what do you remember? How did you get here?”
“That’s the funny thing. Everything that happened before today seems vague and uncertain.”
“In your condition,” said the Flying Doctor, “what else do you expect? The sooner I get you into bed and under proper medical care, the better.”
I was not going to have Mitch taken away from us so easily. So I turned to the Doctor and said: “Sorry to disagree with you again, but that’s not the reason. Yesterday he was one of us and, like us, he couldn’t even walk around on this planet without a space suit. And now look at him.”
“A space suit? So that’s what those get-ups you have on are supposed to be? And where do you reckon to be from?”
“The Earth,” said Jet.
The Flying Doctor laughed heartily.
This annoyed Lemmy who demanded what the heck he thought he was laughing at.
“The Earth, you said,” replied the Flying Doctor, grinning broadly. “Had you said Mars or Venus or some other planet, maybe I wouldn’t see any reason to laugh. But this happens to be the Earth and as for your being creatures from another planet, you don’t look any different from the rest of us.”
“Earth, is it?” said Lemmy sarcastically. “And I suppose you’ll be saying next that those weird creatures outside in that pen are sheep, and that that beetle sitting there is a dog?”
“If they’re not sheep and that’s not a dog, then I’ve been living under an illusion for years. Now listen to me, all of you. I’m going to shut you in this room while I decide what to do with you. I shall post one of my attendants outside the door and another below the window and give them orders to yell if you make any move to escape.” He turned to the farmer and his wife. “Now come on, John, and you, Mrs Bodie--and you, sir,” indicating Mitch. “We’ll leave them here to think things over for a bit.”
Mitch seemed relieved to be free of us, for he eagerly accompanied the others through the door which was closed behind them but not locked.
“Well,” asked Lemmy as soon as they had gone, “who’s crazy? Us or them?”
“Not us, Lemmy,” said Jet. “Not for one moment must you imagine it’s us.”
“It’s just me, then,” said the Cockney. “I can’t even be sure that you and Doc are yourselves anymore.”
“Let us begin by assuming that we are mentally stable,” I said.
“Yes, let’s assume it,” said Lemmy uncertainly.
“In that case, it must be the others who are unbalanced in some way. Look at this place; it’s ancient, derelict and in a state of decay, yet to these people--and Mitch--it is a comfortable home. To them things are not what they seem. They think they live normal, earthly lives, surrounded by normal, earthly animals, on a cattle station in the Australian bush.”
“But where did they come from in the first place, Doc?”
“We can only conclude that they came from Earth, Lemmy, as Whitaker did. And, having been brought here, they were made to think that they are still on Earth. They carry on exactly the life they were leading before they left it.”
“And when did they leave it?”
“Goodness knows,” I replied. “Probably years ago, as Whitaker did.”
“But, Doc,” asked Jet, “who brought them up here? And what for? Why go to all the trouble of conditioning them to induce them to believe that they’re back on Earth anyway? What’s the point?”
“We may never know the answer to that one, Jet. The fact is, up to now, they’ve had to go down to Earth to pick up their victims. But we have come to them. They already have Dobson and Harding and now, apparently, they have Mitch.”
“And we’re next on the list,” said Lemmy. “That’s why that so-called Flying Doctor came. Next thing we know he’ll be hypnotising us and that’ll be our lot.”
“No, Lemmy; I don’t think so. He’s just as bewildered about us as that farmer is. I’m sure he believes himself to be down on Earth, too, and that to him we are the peculiar ones.”
“In that case,” observed Lemmy, “he’s going to have a job figuring out how we got here. Mitch, too, for that matter.”
“Well, it’s my guess,” said Jet, “that he’ll report it to somebody. He’ll probably be under the impression that he’s telling the police or some other authority, but in actual fact it’ll be the people who are capable of, and responsible for, this conditioning business.”
“And then,” said Lemmy, “they’ll come and get us.”
“They might,” Jet agreed, “but I’m hoping that before they get around to it we’ll have figured out some way to get away from here.”
“What a hope!” said Lemmy. “With Dobson outside the door and Harding below the window.”
“Well, one of us at least must get back to the trucks,” I said. “We’ve got to contact Polar Base and tell them what’s happening--guards or no guards.”
“Here,” said Lemmy suddenly, as an idea struck him, “do you think Dobson out there will remember us?”
“I doubt it,” I said, but Lemmy was already at the door and opening it.
“Hey you,” he called. “Hey! I’m talking to you.”