I sat at the entrance to my tent and gazed up at the
sky. Like diamond dust, the Milky Way flung its misty
haze across the zenith, and I speculated dreamily on the
brilliance of the stars and planets in these tropical
latitudes. It was a midnight in August, and above me
Mars glowed like a large ruby; its yellowish-red light
in strange contrast to the blues and whites of the stars
about it. I gazed at it reflectively, as I had done a
thousand times before, and then I jerked my pipe from my
mouth with an ejaculation at surprise.
Across the darkness of the heavens, a darker
object was speeding! An airplane, here in the desert,
over a hundred miles from a civilized settlement! I
watched it in amazement and my amazement only increased
as I saw that it was rapidly approaching the ground.
When I first saw it, it was little more than a spot in
the heavens; yet as I continued to gaze, it drew nearer
and nearer until I could make out all the details of its
form.
It was a huge, tri-motored monoplane, and its
entire body glistened like a polished copper. It moved
with a speed that was remarkable, but as it drew nearer
the ground, I could see that its speed was being
reduced, and that it was maneuvering for a landing. All
the time that I stood staring at it I was half-aware of
something strange about it, but it was not until it was
close ‘to the ground that I realized that it was
absolutely silent! That the engines were running seemed
obvious from the accuracy with which the ship was
manipulated; but although it was now no more than a
quarter of a mile from me, I was still unable to hear
the slightest sound from the propellers. I heard a thump
as it struck the ground and, a moment later, I was
hurrying off to see who and what the strange visitor
was.
As I approached it, I began to see that there were
more strange things about this machine than I had at
first expected. For one thing, it was all metal, and the
metal, which was either copper or copper-plated,
glistened red in the light of the newly-risen moon. And
for another, I saw as I came close that the three
“propellers” were not propellers at all, but huge gray
disks fully eight feet in diameter. They were three in
number, and were situated at the rear of the plane
instead of in front.
Pondering on the strangeness of the visitor, I had
drawn nearer to it and was now beneath one of its huge
wings. As I paused, the cabin door opened and a man
emerged—a blue-eyed, light-haired man of about
thirty-five, who looked as if he might have been a
specimen from some museum case labeled “pure Nordic
type.” He was dressed in a dark wool bathing-suit, and,
as he saw me in the light that emerged from the open
door, he came forward eagerly, with extended hands.
“My word, what luck! A white man! You know, I
never expected to run across a white man here in the
Sahara! I do hope you speak English. My French and
Spanish are terrible.”
I hastened to assure him that I was acquainted
with the English language and he grinned at my accent.
“American, what? I don’t suppose it’s necessary
to tell you I’m British. My accent must be as obvious
to you as yours is to me. What?“
I agreed with a smile and then invited him up to
my tent.
“It’s not often that I have a visitor in this neck
of the woods,” I said, “and I must admit I’m a little
curious about that plane of yours. Is that some new kind
of propeller you have there?“
“New kind of propeller? My word, yes! Wait till I
get into some proper rags and I’ll tell you something
about it.”
He disappeared into the plane again and I noticed
with surprise that there were double walls to the cabin
and that the door was operated on a valve system, there
being an outer and an inner door, with a vestibule
between. I stood there, puzzling over the strangeness
of the vehicle until the stranger returned, this time
clad in a sack suit that bore all the earmarks of having
been recently cut by a London tailor.
“It’s quite a neat little bus, eh? he beamed as he
emerged from the car.
The
Stranger’s Story
I nodded acquiescence and we strolled back to my
tent. Arousing my servant, I bade him prepare a pot of
tea (don’t tell me I don’t know my Englishman), and in a
few moments we were seated at the tent door conversing
like lifelong companions. I explained the purpose of my
expedition into the desert, arid discussed at some
length the hopes I had of adding materially to the
archeological knowledge of the district.
“Jolly interesting,” my visitor exclaimed, when at
last I had finished, “but, my word! I’ve got a story
that is a story !" and setting down his tea-cup (which
he had emptied for the fourth time), he filled his pipe,
lighted it and began to tell me his tale.
“My name is Harold Davies Fox-Kirton, and if that
sort of thing interests you, I may as well admit that I
have a title—Lord Dunsmere. But my friends call me
‘Dirk,’ “ and he affectionately patted a short dagger
that hung in a holder at his belt. I looked at it and
then leaned forward with interest and surprise, for it
was of Bedouin make and was thickly covered with
jewels.
“Always wear it,” smiled the Britisher. “Present
from a silly old egg in Morocco, who thought I once
saved his life. But that’s another story, so that’s
that.
“But to continue — I’ve always been a sort of
experimenter, and this bus is—well, what you might call
my magnum opus. I’ve been working on it ever since
directly after the war and there are at least a half
dozen new ideas incorporated in it.
“But the greatest of all is my ‘ether-propeller.’
And it’s such a simple idea, too. I can’t understand why
someone else hasn’t invented it years ago !“
“Ether-propeller ?“ I asked, “You mean a propeller
that drives through the ether?“
“Exactly, old man, that drives through the ether.
Have you ever studied radio theory to any extent?“
I admitted a very slight knowledge of radio and he
continued:
“Well in that case, you are probably familiar with
the wave analogy. You know, where they compare a
broadcast note to a stone thrown in the water?”
“Of course,” I answered. “The note or ‘dot’ in the
transmitter sets up waves in the ether, just as a stone
thrown in a pond sets up waves in the water.”
“Right-o. Or just as a hand clap sets up sound
waves in the atmosphere,” he continued, “That’s it
exactly. Well, I’ve just carried the analogy a little
farther, Just as a screw drives a vessel through the
water, or as a propeller drives a plane through the air,
so this ‘ether-propeller’ of mine drives a car through
the ether.”
“By George! You have an idea, all right! How did you
ever come to think of it ?“
“Just to satisfy an old ambition of mine. Ever
since I was a lad, I’ve longed to visit places that were
never explored before. I knew, though, that there wasn’t
much left to explore on this planet, and I don’t suppose
I was more than fourteen years old before I was struck
with the desire to visit the other ones.
“Of course, it seemed a hopeless ambition. But
then along came radio, and the idea of communicating
with Mars by wireless took up quite a hit of my time. I
lived radio from the time I was seventeen until the
outbreak of the War, and then all my work was swept
aside and I found myself in Flanders.
“I don’t suppose the War would have actually meant
so much in my life if it hadn’t been that I chose
aviation as my branch of the service. But after the War
(in which I bore a charmed life, and came out without a
scratch), the idea of an ether-propeller came to me with
a bang. I began to work it out at once, but it was ten
years before I could get it finished.
“You see, my idea was something like this. I
figured an aerial revolving somewhat on the order of an
electric fan, with a ‘shield’ behind it to reflect the
waves, like a beam. And I figured that the waves would
have to be extremely short, approximating the X-rays in
length, so that the atoms of matter would ‘ride’ on them
as they passed. You understand, it was quite impossible
to produce waves that short with the present type of
transmitter, so my first job consisted of inventing
something that would produce excessively short waves. I
worked for seven years on that problem alone, and
finally produced a radio-valve that was quite different
from any ever made before. It incorporated features of
both the radio-valve and the X-ray bulb, and it sent out
waves that were only the minutest fraction of a
millimeter in length.
An Astounding Statement
“I thought my troubles were over then, but, Great
Scott, they were only just begun! I hooked up my
transmitter to a revolving aerial, switched it on
and—nothing happened. After studying the matter over, I
at last decided that the speed of the aerial was too
slow. So it was up to me to increase that speed
somehow.
“Well, old chap, I won’t go into all the details
of my experimenting. When I finally completed my
ether-propeller, it was built something like this. I
took a very thin tapering piece of copper about four
feet long and four inches wide. Then I prepared a liquid
bakelite bath, and dipped the copper in it. When the
copper was removed, a thin film of bakelite adhered to
it, which, on drying, formed a very efficient insulator.
Over this, a copper plating was formed, taking care that
it should be deposited more heavily at the end where the
copper was already thickest. This process was then
repeated, and continued until there was built up a great
semicircle consisting of thousands of layers of
alternate copper and bakelite insulator. Another of
these semi-circles was now made and they were then
fastened together to make a disk.
“And now I was able to bring into use the wisdom
of another experimenter. Burton Farley, the great
chemist, had succeeded, the year before, in discovering
and isolating osmium B, an isotope of the element
osmium, and had discovered in it a peculiar property.
Normally a rather inert metal, when an electric current
passed through it, it combined with the oxygen of the
air to form an osmium oxide, a non-conductor. Of course,
the electric current could not pass through the oxide,
and so it ceased, and this, remarkably enough, caused
the osmium to release the oxygen and revert to its
original form.
“I utilized this peculiar element in the following
fashion. Around the rim of my ‘circle’ I placed a band
of osmium B of just the right thickness. Then around
that I placed a band of copper. The current would pass
from the transmitter to the copper band and, through the
osmium to the first thin copper plate, which thus acted
as the aerial. But as the osmium between the copper band
and the first copper plate became oxidized, it
immediately stopped the current, which sought release
through the second thin plate of copper. Here the same
process occurred, driving the current to the third plate
and so on around the circle.
“Now the osmium was carefully measured so that,
just as the current completed the circle, the return of
the osmium to its original state was begun. The result
was that the current again found passage through the
first plate and began the revolution all over again.
Being entirely automatic, I secured a speed of over a
hundred thousand revolutions a second! Neat, what?
“Well, on my first experiment with it, I used a
wavelength that I figured was about that of an atom of
copper. I held various elements before the circle, as I
have called it, but felt only a tiny pull until I put up
a piece of copper. My word! It took that bit of copper
out of my hands like a shot! The propeller was lying on
a table and it hurled the copper upward and buried it
over an inch in the ceiling.
“So then it was merely a matter of time until I
had built a nice little copper bus, named it the
Mercury, after the old chap who used to fly between the
heavens and the earth, and was all ready to strike out
for Mars, Venus or any way-points!“
“By George! Do you really mean it ?“ I ejaculated,
“Are you actually going to Mars in that car?“
“Going to Mars?” he answered, “Wait a bit, old
chap. You don’t understand. I’m just getting back!”
On to Mars!
For over a minute, I gazed at him in
astonishment. Somehow, the idea that he was going to
Mars was not nearly so hard to believe as that he had
actually accomplished that incredible feat! For the
first time since his story was begun I felt a doubt of
the truth of his narrative.
He noticed my incredulity and laughed
good-naturedly.
“I’ll have you believing me before we say
good-by,” he grinned. “There are some mighty queer
things in that car of mine, things that I feel sure will
convince you or anybody.”
Somehow, his careless matter-of-fact manner did
more toward convincing me than anything that he might
have offered in the way of proof, and I urged him to go
on with his tale.
“Well,” he continued, “when the Mercury was
finished, you can imagine I lost no time preparing it
for a trip into space. It was loaded with food and tubes
of compressed oxygen, and I took along a lot of guns and
ammunition, too. No telling what one may find on a trip
to a world entirely different from ours, you know! And I
had a rubber suit like a diver’s, that had a metal
headpiece connected to an oxygen tube, and this
headpiece had windows of thick lead glass. That was for
keeping out the ultra-violet rays of the sun, which
would obviously be much more powerful on thin-atmosphered
Mars than upon the Earth, quite sufficient to blind one
if his eyes were exposed to their glare for any length
of time.
“And oh! there were a lot of other things that I
took along, but, don’t you know—in the end I forgot to
take any tea! You’ve no idea how refreshing these cups
have been.
“So then at last I was ready, and one clear night
I hopped off from my landing-field and headed for Mars.
It was just like that, old chap, no mathematics, no
careful aiming of my space-ship, none of the stuff that
is so dull in most of the science stories one reads. You
see, my ether-propeller enabled me to drive the Mercury
just as easily as an ordinary plane, and so I just
steered for my destination.”
He paused for a moment, and puffed meditatively at his
pipe.
“There’s so little to tell about that flight,” he
said, after some moments of silence. “I rose up into the
air, higher and higher, hour after hour, and it seemed
that I was never going to cut loose from the Earth. My
speed at first was about a hundred and fifty miles an
hour, but it kept increasing, three miles a minute, five
miles a minute, eight miles a minute, until at six
o’clock it was approaching a mile a second. I almost
said ‘by dawn’, but, you understand, there wasn’t any
dawn. Mars was almost in opposition, and I was keeping
my course as closely as possible directly toward her. So
that kept me speeding westward, and held me in the
Earth’s shadow.
“My speed was accelerating all the time, even
though there was the gravity of the Earth pulling in the
opposite direction. You’ve no idea how uncomfortable a
constant acceleration can be; but I held to it, for I
was anxious to see just how fast my bus really could go.
But I was doomed to be disappointed in this, for I never
had the nerve to let it get above forty miles a
second.”
“Forty miles a second !“ I cried, “but how could
you avoid meteors and such particles of matter at that
speed?“
“I suppose I did take a chance,” was the answer,
“but I rather imagine that that end of it has been a bit
overdrawn by writers. At least, I never ran across any
of those wanderers of space. If I had, there in the
early part of my journey, it would have been the end,
for I couldn’t have steered the car away from it. You
see, I was a damn’ sick egg.
“I reached the speed of forty miles a second about
the time I passed the moon’s orbit. I decided that this
speed was quite enough and ceased the acceleration. And
then, my word! it was just like being in an elevator
that suddenly began to drop swiftly. You know, that
queer feeling that one gets in the pit of one’s stomach?
Well, it was just like that, only—it kept on! There was
still enough gravity to keep me on the floor then, hut
by the time we reached five million miles from the
Earth, almost the last traces of gravitational pull had
vanished. Of course there was a pull still there, but it
was quite unnoticeable.
“It was about this time that I got my idea of
constantly varying the speed of the machine, so that
the acceleration would act as a substitute for the
gravity. I would drop the speed lower and lower until I
was going no more than a hundred miles an hour, and then
pick it up until I was hack at forty miles a second
again.
“In this way, I constantly had an effect of
gravity, even though I (lid have to spend half of my
time walking about on the ceiling. And so my illness
vanished. But I can assure you, old fellow, that the
idea of space sickness has been quite under-estimated
by the imaginative writers. It’s something that has got
to be allowed for.
Strange Life
“Well, that’s enough about the trip. It got to be
VI’ the most boring, tiresome thing that I have ever
,lived through. It was only the promise of the wonders
at the end of it that kept me going on. And at last one
evening, I landed upon the surface of Mars.”
He relapsed into another period of silence, and
after a while again took up the thread of his story.
“Like most students of the planet Mars, I’d always
suspected that the green tracts seen in the telescopes
were vegetation, so I planned to land at the apex of
that vast triangle known as the Syrtis Major, as the
spot on Mars most likely to support comfortably both
Martian life and Terrestrial, as represented by myself.
“It was dusk when I landed, and I was completely
fagged from the work of the day. So without so much as a
look out of the window I threw myself down on the cot
and fell asleep.
“The next morning, you may be sure, I was up with
the sun. As soon as I left the cot, I rushed to the
window and gazed out at as unearthly a scene as might
he imagined.
“I had landed on a low, rolling plain that
stretched nearly a mile to a group of flat-topped,
reddish cliffs in the distance. All the ground between
me and the hills was covered with large groups of
translucent, pale green globes that grew in scattered
clusters over the ground and ranged in size from a few
inches to as much as two feet in diameter. Here and
there stood red, branching things not unlike cacti,
their branches waving vaguely in the air as though
searching for something. And far in the distance grew
tall, tapering things, for all the world like a group of
Lombardy poplars.
“Well, that was my first glimpse of the life of
the planet Mars. I stood gazing at it in the light of
the rising sun, and presently I began to wonder if this
was animal life or vegetable. You see, those things
breathed! You could see them expanding and contracting
gently and regularly, the globes and the cactus-things;
and it even seemed that there was some movement in the
tall things in the distance. But there was no use in
speculating, sitting here in the plane, so I hurried to
make preparations to go outside.
“First I tested the temperature and the air. The
temperature was all right, about six degrees above
freezing, but the air! It exerted a pressure of only a
little over six pounds to the square inch, and’ on
analysis proved to have a far larger proportion of
nitrogen than the earth. There was some oxygen, but not
nearly enough to support human life. And there was
hydrogen too, and carbon dioxide, in a ratio to the
oxygen of about the same as we have on the Earth. In a
word, except for the excess of nitrogen, there was about
as much air as we would ‘expect about nine miles above
the surface of the Earth.
“So I unpacked my oxygen helmet and ‘diving suit’
and got into them, prepared to saunter forth. I realized
now, how lucky I was in having those thick windows in
the helmet. In this air, the ultra-violet light would
have soon blinded me.
“Well, I stepped out of the car into a group of
green globes, and then for the first time I thought
about the gravity. Somehow, while I was in the car, it
hadn’t dawned on me that I was accepting the lesser
gravity of Mars in a very matter-of-fact manner. I don’t
understand even yet why I didn’t have trouble adapting
myself, but I believe that the many days in space under
a constantly changing acceleration had trained me
unconsciously to accept any degree of gravity imposed
upon me.
“At any rate, there I was walking along among the
globes much the same as if I was on the Earth. The
globes seemed to be semi-transparent, you could faintly
see some outline of internal organs and veins or
trachea. There was no doubt at all that they were
complicated organisms. But as they were rooted in the
ground, I decided that they were some sort of vegetable.
After thinking it over on the way home, however, I don’t
believe now that they were either animal or vegetable,
but something unique.
“And. now I noticed another form of life. All
about among the globes were little rods of a darker
green. about the length of one of those cigars that you
Americans called ‘stogies.’ For the most part they grew
straight up in the air, but there were quite a number
that lay flat on the ground, and one of these would
occasionally give a sort of flip to its tail and shoot
across the ground for about a foot. And twice I saw one
reach a spot which it evidently considered favorable,
whereupon it immediately buried its nose in the ground,
stuck its bally tail into the air and became an
immovable vegetable. I tried to pull one of these things
up, but it seemed to be well rooted in the ground!
“Then my attention was attracted to one of the
cactus-things that happened to be not far away. There
were none of the other things within five or six feet of
it, but as I looked, one of the little green cigars
flipped itself across the vacant space surrounding it.
Like a flash, one of the stiff-looking branches swept
down and caught it, and, contracting, like the eye of a
snail when you touch it, folded the thing inside the
main trunk of the ‘cactus.’ Again I was forced to revise
my estimate of the form of life these creatures were.
Hostility!
“I picked my way among the things, avoiding them
as much as possible, for I didn’t know what they might
be capable of, and I’ve been stung once by a jelly-fish
and have no desire to have it happen again. But the
globes must have been harmless for I accidentally trod
on several and although I didn’t harm them much, they
made no attempt to harm me.
“I made my way toward the tall things in the
distance, for the rods, the globes and the ‘cacti’ were
the only forms of life near me, and I was anxious to
inspect everything in sight. But the clarity of the air
was deceiving and the distance of the things must have
been greater than I thought, for it was nearly noon
before I finally reached them.
“And then their appearance was disappointing
enough - just thin central rods they were, with tough,
dark green plates radiating from them in all directions.
But my disappointment was not to be long-lived, for it
was in this group of things that I found the greatest
mystery that I was to see on Mars.
“Just as I entered the ‘grove’ I saw it—a huge
globe nearly five feet in diameter, mounted on four
stiff metal legs, a globe of just the same pale green
color as the smaller ones, but one that gave clearly the
impression of being artificial, mechanical. And as I
drew near, it lowered itself on its legs, drew them up
into it, and sat down on that squat, globular body and
watched me! I hadn’t a doubt, you know, from the
beginning that this was a creature of some sort of
intelligence, and that it was wondering what in the
world I was.”
He paused again, and after a moment went on, a
reflective, philosophical tone in his voice.
“Have you ever thought how little we know about
Nature’s ways of producing thinking beings? We humans
have hardly the faintest idea of the thinking processes
of even the higher mammals. And when it comes to the
birds and the insects, why, we’re just at a loss where
to start. Yet such insects as the bees or ants have
evolved a very complicated social system without using,
so far as we know, anything like what we call reason.
Instinct governs them entirely, and yet they have a
system of government superior in every way to that of
us humans.
“But if we are at a loss to interpret the acts of
these intelligent little insects, how are we to
understand the creatures of another world? Back in the
Proterozoic Age or the lower Cambrian, the ancestors of
insects and men were probably brothers; but the
creatures of Mars are totally unrelated to us. Yet,
strange to say, there are some persons who expect to
find familiar creatures, yes, even men, upon Mars.
“And so, in describing the events that followed, I want
you to remember that I am as much at a loss to account
for the actions of the creature as you. And I wouldn’t
he surprised, you know, if it were just as much at a
loss to account for mine.
“When I first spied it, I just stood still and
looked. Somehow, I wasn’t surprised. There was no use in
being surprised at anything one found there. So for a
while I just stood still and looked—waiting, you know,
for the Martian to start things. But the Martian
evidently had the same idea as I; so after a little I
began to make signs. I pointed to myself, and then to my
plane, visible, off there across the plain ; and then I
motioned up into the sky in the general direction of the
sun.
The Martian made no response, so I began all over
again, this time supplementing my gestures with a
one-sided conversation. I knew, of course, that it
couldn’t understand, but I hoped that it would grasp
that I was using some intelligent mode of expressing my
thoughts, at least. The Martian never moved, however,
and I began to feel no end silly, you know, swinging my
arms around and chattering away there.
“But at last something did happen, although I
haven’t the least idea what it all meant. I’ve
mentioned, I believe, that the Martian was of the same
translucent shade as the globes that covered the ground.
Well, after a while a brown spot began to form on a part
of the thing nearest me. It got larger and larger and
after a while a sort of streamer of mist or vapor
emerged from it and stretched out toward me. As it
approached, I started with surprise, for on the end of
that streamer was a little round solid button, a brown
glistening thing that crime nearer and nearer and
finally touched me.
“And then the Martian jumped as if it had been
shocked, and the streamer of vapor snapped back into the
brown spot which faded out far quicker than it had
formed. And again we stood and stared at each other.
“After a while I had another idea. Surely the
Martian would appreciate the intricacies of my plane.
All that I could see of the creature was that globe and
a faint glimpse of complicated machinery in the
interior; but I figured from that, that it would surely
comprehend some part of my machine; so I decided to go
over and bring the Mercury back.
“And then something new and—well, sinister
developed. As I turned to retrace my steps, the Martian
glided around me and planted itself between me and my
machine. I tried to walk around it, but it moved again,
just keeping itself between me and the bus. I turned
away, feeling a deuced queer sensation in the pit of my
stomach, and pretended that I intended to walk in the
opposite direction. It swept around me and planted
itself in my path again, and quick as a flash I whirled
and started to run in the direction of the plane.
“But quick as I was, the Martian was quicker, and
in a moment it was ahead of me and had again placed
itself directly in my path. And from then on, try as I
might, I couldn’t keep the thing from in front of me,
whenever I tried to move.
Stalemate!
“I did manage to gradually work my way nearer to
my plane by a series of rushes in first one direction
and then another, hut as the afternoon grew later it
began to appear that I could never reach the Mercury by
nightfall. Although that may not seem so serious at
first thought, just remember that the temperature of a
Martian night must be far below zero. And I was hardly
dressed to battle with a temperature of the polar
regions.
“So I redoubled my efforts, but it soon became
plain that sunset was going to find me quite a way from
the plane, with the Martian still between it and me. And
at last the sun did set, while I was still some three
hundred yards from the bus.
“Have you ever run across the phrase, ‘the night
fell with tropical suddenness’? Well, the suddenness of
nightfall in the tropics is a snail’s pace compared to
nightfall on Mars. So clear is the air that it remains
almost broad day until the last tip of the sun has set.
Then it’s just like a black curtain sweeping up over the
sky from west to east, and night is upon you.
“And with the coming of night, I discovered a new
phenomenon of this world. Even before darkness entirely
covered us, I could see that all the little globes that
covered the ground were turning black. The cigar-shaped
things were popping out of the ground, and as they fell
on their sides, they, too, were turning black. And as
the last faint rays of daylight fell upon the Martian. I
saw that some subtle change had come over it, too. With
renewed hope, and driven by the fear of freezing if I
stayed there very long, I again tried to get around the
Martian, and this time it remained quite motionless, and
I was soon running like mad toward my plane, my teeth
chattering with the sudden and increasing cold. I dashed
through the doors, slammed them shut and turned on all
the heaters in the cabin. Then I prepared and finished a
much-needed supper, and turned in for the night.
“You know, I’ve thought quite a little hit about
that sudden change that caine over the Martian world at
sunset, and I’ve come to the conclusion that that sudden
cessation of life corresponds to our sleep. But with the
extremes of temperature, and the thinness of the
atmosphere, the Martian sleep is a thing far more
overpowering than ours, apparently just a sudden
overwhelming unconsciousness that lasts until the next
sunrise. At any rate, the next morning when I awoke,
the sun had already risen, and on glancing outside, I
saw that the Martian world was again its normal pale
green self.
“I saw another thing, too, for directly outside my
door squatted the globular Martian. It had evidently
awakened and finding me gone, had hastened to the only
place that its reason or instinct told it that it could
find me. And when, after breakfast, I tried to leave the
plane, I found the Martian just as determined to keep me
in it as it had been the clay before to prevent me from
getting into it.
“Well, old chap, it seems absurd to admit it, but
it was a stalemate! For three days. I remained iii the
vicinity. trying to elude the Martian or at least trying
to penetrate the mystery of it but in the end I gave it
up. I decided that that particular part of Mars was no
place for me, and so I started the plane and left for
parts unknown.
“But once I was in the air again, I went into a
funk. I don’t know whether it was the air, or my food or
what, but I got into the worst spell of the blues that
I’d ever had in my life. And it all ended in my turning
the bus back toward the Earth! You see, I figured that
this Martian game was just a little too much for one
man, and that I’d better conic back for reinforcements.
And so here I am, back on the Earth, feeling like a
Columbus that had turned back in sight of San Salvador.”
He finished his narrative, refilled his pipe and
sat smoking, thought fully.
“Anti-climax, what?‘‘ he said at last, “No
princess rescued, no rebellion quelled, not even the
usual guide to give an explanation of the wonders I saw.
I feel no end a bally fool. I shouldn’t have tried to do
it all by myself. But I’m going back to London in the
morning and get a staff of scientist Johnnies and trot
them up to Mars and let them do a little observing. Then
when we return perhaps we’ll have a more interesting
tale to tell, eh?”
He knocked the ashes out of his pipe and stood
up.
‘‘I won’t impose on your hospitality any further,
old man. I can sleep just as well in the cabin as I
could up here, anyhow. So I’ll just toddle along. See
you in the morning,” and he sauntered away. I watched
his form as he walked away, and finally I, too, arose
and entered my tent.
The next morning when I arose his plane was gone!
I supposed, of course, that he had returned to London,
and I watched eagerly for news of him. But even after my
return to civilization, I heard nothing of him, and I
have finally concluded that he never returned to London
at all. I wonder—I just wonder if his curiosity overcame
him and he returned to Mars? Or, perhaps. did he go to
Venus?
THE END