CHAPTER XII. THE RETURN TO EARTH, by Various Hands

 

1. Stephen MacFarlane. And so it is finished—“like an old wife’s story,” as the playwright has it. In that high moment, when Malu flung himself on the great yellow-and-red monster, our adventure on Mars came to an end. What follows is anti-climax—and must necessarily be so. In books, in plays, there is the contrived “curtain”—the dramatic peak of action, when all the threads are gathered together in one great explosive point: in life there is no great point—the curtain never falls. We have our moment of drama; we stand poised—but not for ever. Life goes on: we turn a corner, and eat, and sleep, and tie our shoe-laces, and it is all the same as before.

That is the way it was with us. There was the jerk as the Albatross leapt from the heaving surface of Mars, and there was, immediately, for each one of us in the cabin, the sense of unbearable pressure I have described already in talking of our flight from earth. We lost consciousness—and one of us, alas, never recovered from the sudden shock of that desperate start. Nuna, weakened already under his wounds, and in any case much frailer than we were, and probably with organs of respiration less easily adaptable than ours, lay immovable on the floor of the cabin long after we had recovered and were shakily adjusting ourselves for another long spell of inter-stellar flight. Mike—none the worse for his collapse, and the slight burns he had received from the raining lava—moved shakily over to the limp shape of his friend, whom he had risked so much to save, and called him by name. There was no reply—no thought came into our heads from the still figure. Mike put out a hand to touch the little Martian, and immediately he went floating up into the air and stayed against the steel wall, bouncing gently against it. And we saw, unequivocally, that he was dead—he had died quite simply in the moment of acceleration. Mike’s effort had been in vain. That Nuna had been alive when Mike brought him into the rocket there was no doubt—we had seen him moving before his collapse. But he was no longer alive—he bounced and floated in the cabin with the same air of forlorn helplessness I have seen in a goldfish that has died in its bowl; his tendrils waving limply, his glaucous eyes all dulled. There was nothing we could do. With sorrow in our hearts we laid him gently in a corner of the cabin, strapping him to the floor.

This done, we stayed quiet for a while, our heads full of unspeakable thoughts. We did not look at one another, but sat or stood with our heads bowed, preoccupied with the visions we were seeing. We were, I believe, a little crazed in the first hour—the impact of the horror of that last scene on Mars had been too great—intolerable in its effect on us and our reactions. It was already a thousand miles and more behind us, but still I seemed to see it, stark and brilliant before my eyes—the spouting lava, the great shining bubbles collapsing and melting, the writhing limbs and agonized bodies of the Martians . . . above all, the terrible spectacle of the leaders of the two great species confronting each other: the squat, flaming figure of The Center, the monstrous, jelly-like bulk of the chief of the Terrible Ones, white and evil, pulsing with sheer malevolence.

It passed—in time it passed. We returned to normal. We were once more, in outer space, weightless—but this time there was no joy, no sense of adventure. It gave us no pleasure to be able to bounce round the cabin, to undergo the curious experience of eating from the “toothpaste tubes.” In short, the long return journey had a weariness in it—some sort of sense of defeat and frustration. There was so much we had wanted to do—so much we had not done. All about us was infinite space—a great velvet expanse, immeasurable, full of terror and mystery. The sun shone golden against the deep, deep azure, the stars were silver buttons, unwinking, in a vast and ever-subtly-changing kaleidoscope. But somehow this—yes, this unutterable glory—was old, old news to us. We longed only for the journey to end—although all the time we were haunted by the thought that perhaps it never would end; perhaps, in all the trembling of the plateau on which the Albatross had rested, the launching ramp had changed position sufficiently to throw us out of course—perhaps we would travel forever, never resting till the end of things—going nowhere. . . .

But in time this terror passed too. We saw, behind us, the great shining disc of Mars, which, at the outset, had loomed hugely over our whole range of vision—we saw it dwindle till it seemed no more than a red, glowing tennis-ball—till eventually it was a mere speck, a star among the rest. And we saw the other star—the one we knew for earth—grow proportionately larger, shining in silver like the moon, a burnished sphere against the dark velvet of space. It grew till we saw its shining poles—till we vaguely perceived the outlines of the continents. And we knew that we were safe.

Almost four weeks elapsed between our departure from Mars and the moment when Mac told us that we were well within the gravity-belt of earth, and that he would soon be switching on the nose tuyères to retard our flight, and pushing out the Albatross’s wings so that our landing would be smooth. Quite where we were going to land he could not say. In the limited time at his disposal for maneuvering he would be able to make roughly for Britain, but he was not altogether sure if there would be enough fuel to get us there (if you remember, we did not switch off the engines when we ought to have done on the journey out, because of all the turmoil and excitement of discovering the children, and we had therefore used up some of our precious fuel; and although this had been counteracted, to an extent, by the fact that we had not needed a great deal of fuel in starting from Mars, because of the smaller gravity-pull, the two things had not quite cancelled each other out—we were just a little on the debit side).

We entered the swirling white mist I described when writing of our outward flight. The Doctor and Jacky adjusted their masks—Paul, Mike and myself strapped ourselves to the beds and waited, as stoically as we could, for our brief bout of unconsciousness. The Doctor reached up to touch the control levers. Beneath us, dim through the swirling mists, I saw indistinct patches of green and blue, and, for a moment before my senses left me, a corner of earth—a map, as it were—that seemed like the northern coast of Africa, with Gibraltar jutting out as a stubby finger from Spain towards it.

And then all went blank once more. When I regained consciousness it was to the realization of a great sliding bump and tremor. Then all was still—for a moment, painfully still. We had arrived—we were back home—on earth. We were among our friends again. . . .

 

*     *     *     *     *     *

 

As the world knows, we landed in the Albatross in Northern France, at a small village not far from Cherbourg, called Azay. The story of our sudden appearance out of the blue, and our landing in a field in which three old peasants were working, is altogether too well known to require any repetition here. The old people were simple-minded, honest souls who accepted the Albatross quite willingly as some new type of airplane, but were utterly astonished to see five people—two adults and three children—descend from it and go rushing round their familiar field like lunatics. Jacky was laughing a little hysterically, I remember, and crying too, at the same time, and as for me, well, I confess it unashamedly—I got down on my hands and knees and actually kissed the good brown earth, digging my nails into it deeply and letting the loose damp soil, so different from the remorselessly dry soil of Mars, go running through my fingers! All this is old news now—there have been endless accounts of it all in the papers, with photographs of the Albatross resting in the field with ourselves beside it, with the old peasants—the Picaults—beside it, with the Mayor of Azay himself beside it; photographs of the Picaults giving us wine and milk after our arrival (specially posed the following day, actually, but counterfeiting quite successfully, as far as the Press and its readers were concerned, the real occasion); photographs of the Albatross being dragged by huge tractors from the little farm, being swung by great derricks at Cherbourg docks on to the ship that brought it, and us, to England.

 

We landed the Albatross in Northern France

 

 

All this has been told and retold a hundred times, and would be stale in the re-representation here. We have, all five of us, broadcast our accounts of the arrival, our impressions on landing on earth again after so many weeks in space. We have addressed meetings up and down the country, we have been banqueted and fêted—particularly the children; we have been filmed and televised—we have even made gramophone records for a well-known company, complete with sound effects supposed to represent (not very successfully, I fear) the swishing, explosive sound made by the motors of the Albatross. At the beginning of this book—this holiday task of ours—I said we would write only of the things not properly covered so far in the various accounts of our adventures that have appeared: that, in short, we would set down our honest impressions of the journey as it affected us individually. That task is done—our holiday after the great (and embarrassing) welcome we were given is at an end. We have not, in any sense, in the preceding pages, attempted to explain anything: we have simply, each in his own manner and style, set down our thoughts, our accounts of our reactions and experiences. Inevitably this book is sketchy. How can it be otherwise, being so short? Inevitably, too, it is merely the prologue, the harbinger of others. As I have already said, the Doctor is engaged in the compilation of a volume of some bulk that will set out, for the more scientific reader, an account of his innumerable valuable findings, both in space and on Mars—that will, among other things, provide an amplification of the theory on the nature of the Martians he has sketched for us in these pages. I may add that I myself am beginning work immediately on a much fuller version of the entire adventure than these present jottings present you with, and I have a feeling that Jacqueline, who is, by general consent, the most literary-minded of the children (although, by a paradox, she has contributed least to this volume), will be embarking on a long personal essay on the whole episode. She, during the memorable days of waiting on Mars, had much intercourse with the two little females we were introduced to by Malu—Lalla and Dilli. I know that she has much of interest to communicate on the subject of the domestic life of the Beautiful People. She also was able to collect, and note down, one or two of the haunting folk tales of these strange creatures—it is possible that she may be in a position soon to publish these separately in book form, either as a collection or individually.

Until these more comprehensive volumes are ready (and, because of the vastness of the subject, it may be some time before they are), this present book must stand as an earnest of our intentions—a scenario, as it were—a synopsis of the full, detailed story. As such, it comes now to its natural end, imperfect though it may be in many aspects (for instance, I have not dwelt at length on the return journey, partly because it was in the main uneventful, and hardly different in general shape from the somewhat fully described outward flight, and partly because, for us, the adventure may be said to have ended when Malu freed us from the incubus of the thing on the ladder at the height of the volcanic eruption). It will remain only, in the final pages of this last chapter, to set out one or two documents concerning our arrival—letters, diary entries, and so on—that will, perhaps, strike a more intimate and personal note than the flaming headlines that announced to a startled world only a few weeks ago:

 

MAN’S FIRST FLIGHT TO MARS

SCOTS PROFESSOR AND WELL-KNOWN

WRITER ACCOMPLISH SPACE-SHIP

JOURNEY IN TWO MONTHS

THREE CHILD STOWAWAYS ON BOARD

 

These notes and jottings now follow. With them we say good-bye to you, our patient readers, and to this book, which, it must be admitted, has given us much joy in the compilation: for, in the evenings, here in my quiet little Pitlochry house—the house I feared I would never see again when first the Doctor and I set out—we have regaled each other by reading aloud the various chapters as they were written, living over again, as we did so, our adventures on that infinitely strange and different world millions and millions of miles away.

 

2. Miscellanea.

A cablegram from Jacqueline Adam to her mother, Mrs. Margaret Adam, at Upton Minster Nursing Home, Dorset:

CHERBOURG

ALL WELL STOP PAUL AND I HAVE BEEN TO MARS STOP ALL OUR LOVE JACKY STOP.

 

A cablegram from Mrs. Margaret Adam to Miss Jacqueline Adam, Cherbourg:

UPTON MINSTER

DELIGHTED TO HEAR FROM YOU MY DARLINGS STOP DADDY AND I THRILLED BY NEWS JUST SEEN IN PAPERS STOP ALL OUR LOVE STOP HURRY HOME MUMMY STOP.

 

A cablegram from Mrs. Marian Malone to Michael Malone:

LONDON

AUNT MARGARET HAS JUST PHONED ME NEWS YOU NAUGHTY BOY COME HOME SOON STOP HAD TO RETURN FROM ARGENTINE WHEN YOU WENT MISSING STOP DADDY WILL BE FURIOUS STOP LOVE TO UNCLE STEVE STOP LOVE MOTHER STOP.

 

A cablegram from Dr. Marius B. Kalkenbrenner to Dr. Andrew McGillivray:

CHICAGO

CONGRATULATIONS ON REMARKABLE ACHIEVEMENT STOP COMING OVER TO CONSULT STOP.

 

A letter to her mother written by Jacqueline Adam from her aunt’s home in London:

 

My darling Mummy,—It’s very probable that we shall be seeing you almost as soon as this letter reaches you, if not before it altogether. But that doesn’t matter in the least little bit—this letter is not meant to be full of news, for there is far too much of that to be written down—it will all have to wait till we meet. It is just that I am so terribly excited at the thought of seeing you again that I must just say something to you straight away.

As you can see from the address we are at last at Aunt Marian’s house in London. We had to come straight here from Cherbourg because there is so much to do—they want us to broadcast, for one thing, and then there are all the newspaper people to be seen. But Paul and I have said that we are not having any more of it. The broadcast is tomorrow night (be sure to listen), and immediately it is over we are going to come down to see you—Daddy is going to bring us, I heard him discussing it all with Uncle Steve when he arrived from Dorset this morning. People are arranging all sorts of things for us—one of the newspapers is fixing a lecture tour all over the country, and although Paul and I said we were no good at lecturing (imagine us trying!), they said we ought to go all the same, that people would want to see us at least, even though Uncle Steve and Doctor Mac did all the actual talking. So we may have to leave again soon to go on this tour (the newspaper is making all arrangements for us to get off school for it, so that’s not a bad thing), but anyway we are going to have at least a few days with you—we insist on that absolutely.

Oh Mummy, I can’t tell you how lovely it is to be back again! It has been a wonderful adventure in many ways, but it was very terrible too, and I’m very glad it’s over. Sometimes, you know, I can hardly believe that it happened at all—and yet at other times it all comes back in a sort of wave and I know I shall never, never forget it, not as long as I live. Some of the people of Mars were lovely—I wish you could have seen them, or that we could have brought them back with us. You would have been very fond of Lalla and Dilli, my own two special friends. Oh, but it isn’t any use talking like this—it is all over, and it did all happen. And we’re back again, among all our own people. It’s so wonderful to see everything just exactly as it was before we set off—somehow, when we were looking at the earth from Mars, and it was only a star, it wasn’t possible to think that places like London existed at all—even that Britain existed. But here it all is, not one little bit different—and oh, how good it is to be able to sleep on a real bed again, and to be our own weight, and to eat proper food, not leaves and tinned stuff and the vitamin pastes out of Doctor Mac’s toothpaste tubes!

Aunt Marian has been very kind. She pretended to be a bit angry with Mike at first—she said he must have been the ringleader, and that if he had behaved himself it probably wouldn’t have happened to us at all. But that was all just hot air. She was really terribly glad and relieved that nothing serious had happened to us, after all the worry of thinking we had been lost up in the hills at Pitlochry. Doctor Mac took all the blame—he said it was all his fault, that he should have looked over the Albatross thoroughly before setting off and that he probably would have found us then. Aunt Marian thinks he is “sweet,” so really she has completely forgiven Mike and the rest of us, it’s only that she likes to make a bit of a fuss. Besides, I believe that secretly, in her heart, she was glad to get back from South America—she didn’t really fit in there. And then of course there’s all the excitement of the newspaper men and the B.B.C. people coming all round the house to interview us—she’s having the time of her life, if truth be told—you know the way she is.

Well, I really must stop, Mummy darling—it’s time to go to bed. I can’t wait till I see you. I hope you’re very much better—Daddy says you are, that you are almost on your feet again, and that probably seeing us will complete the cure altogether. Oh Mummy, I hope so! All our love till we meet—

Your loving daughter,

JACKY

 

Script of an interview in the B.B.C. radio magazine series, In Britain To-night.

 

(Fade up signature tune and opening sound sequence. Fade slowly out as announcer speaks.)

Announcer: In Britain To-night! One of the most thrilling stories of recent times has been told in the Press these past few days—the story of the flight to Mars by Dr. McGillivray, of Aberdeen University, Mr. Stephen MacFarlane, the writer, and three children, Paul and Jacqueline Adam and Michael Malone. The three children are in the studio with me now, making a brief microphone appearance. Dr. McGillivray and Mr. MacFarlane will be giving talks in our programs in the course of the next few days, describing life on Mars and what it was like to travel through space. Meantime, we thought you would be interested to hear the voices of the children. Here they are.

Interviewer: Well now, children, perhaps you had better introduce yourselves to begin with.

Jacqueline Adam: My name is Jacqueline Adam and I come from Dorset.

Paul Adam: And I am Jacqueline’s brother. My name is Paul.

Michael Malone: I’m Mike Malone, of London. I’m the youngest of the party.

Interviewer: It’s true, isn’t it, that you stowed away on board Dr. McGillivray’s space-ship?

Jacqueline Adam: Oh yes. It was Mike’s idea, really. You see, we didn’t really know that Dr. Gillivray was going to Mars.

Michael Malone: My idea was just to have a look round the rocket, you see, and then before we knew where we were, we had started off and were thousands of miles into space.

Interviewer: And what was it like to travel in space?

Paul Adam: It’s very difficult to say. Actually, that’s one of the things that Mr. MacFarlane will be able to talk about much better when he comes to the microphone. As far as we were concerned, I think the really exciting thing was not having any weight.

Interviewer: Not having any weight? Why, what do you mean?

Paul Adams: I can’t explain it technically, but the thing is that once you get outside the gravity pull of earth, you are as light as a feather. We had to wear magnetic boots in the rocket to keep ourselves from floating about in the cabin.

Interviewer: That must have been grand fun.

Michael Malone: Oh it was! We very often took the boots off for a lark, and went for little flights in the air.

Interviewer: It sounds like something out of a fairy tale. And then, when you landed on Mars itself, what was it like?

Jacqueline Adam: Quite different from anything we could ever have imagined.

Interviewer: You met some of the Martians, of course?

Jacqueline Adam: Oh yes. We were with them in one of their cities for more than a week.

Interviewer: What were they like?

Jacqueline Adam: We got on very well with them. Of course, it isn’t possible to describe them in the few moments we have on the air, but we have told the newspapers all about it—you can read about it in them. And Dr. McGillivray will be describing them when he talks over the air. But they were really very charming and kind to us.

Interviewer: Well, Miss Adam, it has been most interesting to chat with you, and I’m sure our listeners will have enjoyed hearing your voices. What are your plans now that you are back on earth?

Jacqueline Adam: We have to go on a lecture tour with Dr. McGillivray, but before that Paul and I are going down to Dorset to spend a few days with our mother.

Interviewer: I’m sure your mother will be very proud of you. And after the lecture tour, what then?

Paul Adam: I think we shall all deserve a holiday then.

Interviewer: Hear, hear! Does that go for you too, Michael?

Michael Malone: Well—to tell you the truth, if it’s a matter of a holiday, I wouldn’t mind going back to Mars to have one there!

(They all laugh. Fade into music.)

 

A letter from Mrs. Duthie, of Pitlochry, to Mr. Stephen MacFarlane:

 

Dear Mr. MacFarlane,—I was very relieved to get your letter for which I thank you and to know that you and the children will be coming up to the cottage for a wee rest after all your stravaiging up and down the country lecturing to this one and that one. I read all about your trip in the papers and heard you talking on the wireless it really was very like your voice it was exactly as if you was in the room with me and it was a real relief to hear you although I thought you sounded a bit run-down, I expect you have not been looking after yourself and it will be the food in those hotels too, it’s never what it should be, and them charging the earth for it—I tell you it is exactly what my Mother used to say when she was alive, these hotel people are like the Gordon Highlanders, they know how to charge. Well, Mr. MacFarlane, you are to take care of yourself and you are to look after the children, poor little things, imagine them going all that way to those outlandish parts and not having anyone proper to take care of them—and then eating leaves off trees too, it can’t be good for anyone all that sort of thing. But it is a real relief to know that you are all safe and sound, I can tell you we were real worried about you, losh me it caused a terrible stir in the town when you went missing, and McIntosh had search parties out in the hills for days. The Doctor’s labritary assistants, if that is how you spell it, they said when we heard an explosion and then they saw that the rocket thing had disappeared, well they said that you had all gone to the moon or that something had exploded, but we thought they were daft and went on looking all the same, but of course we did not find anything and it has been a mystery ever since and in all the papers too till suddenly we heard that you had turned up again. Well, I shall close now, and tell the children I shall be having a lot of special bakings for them when they get here, and that will do them good and fatten them up a bit, there is not any doubt that growing youngsters need their food, that is what my Mother always used to say.

Well, let me know what train you will be arriving on and I shall see that McIntosh meets you at the station with the trap, Yours Truly,

ELSPETH DUTHIE.

 

An entry in Paul Adam’s notebook:

 

. . . Well, it’s all over. In a few days we will be finished with this tour, and then it will be Pitlochry and a long rest. By Jove, a bit different from the last time we went to Pitlochry! Uncle Steve has suggested that while we’re there we might all club together and write a book—a chapter each, sort of thing, while it’s all fresh in our minds. Not a bad idea, I must say—I won’t mind having a whack at an occasional chapter. Funny, I never thought of myself as anything of a writer, but take this notebook, for example. I started it as something to do on the journey out to Mars, and now I’ve got used to the idea of jotting things down from time to time—a sort of diary, like that chap Pepys they tell us about at school. Well, this is the last entry I’m going to make in it—we’re almost back to normal now. It will certainly be something to show my grand-children (that is, of course, if I ever have any!).

Well, that’s the lot. I don’t quite know how I ought to finish—maybe I should take a solemn oath that everything contained herein is truth. I think it would be best just to say cheerio, so that’s what I’ll do. This is the end of Paul Adam, his Notebook.

 

A letter from Michael Malone to Mr. McIntosh, gamekeeper, Pitlochry:

 

Dear Mr. McIntosh,—Mrs. Duthie will likely have told you that we are coming to Pitlochry in a few days. I’m looking forward to seeing you again, but before I do there is something I have got on my mind, and that is why I am writing this letter. I’ve had a guilty conscience about it all the time we have been away on Mars, and I kept on wishing I could get in touch with you somehow. Do you remember that just before we left I borrowed one of your salmon gaffs—an extra big one it was. As a matter of fact, this whole adventure would probably never have happened if you hadn’t lent me the gaff. You see, we used it for climbing over the wall of the stockade at Dr. McGillivray’s laboratory. And then, when the rocket started off, there it was, still hanging on the wall, with the rope fixed on to it. So I never had a chance to return it to you. I hope you didn’t need it too much and that you weren’t angry with me.

I thought I would just drop you this little note of apology before we met, so that maybe you wouldn’t feel too sore about the gaff and not speak to me or something when we come to Pitlochry.

Hope your rheumatism is not troubling you too much these days. Yours sincerely,

MIKE MALONE.

 

A letter from Hamish McIntosh, gamekeeper, Pitlochry, to Michael Malone:

dear Mr. Mike,—i am not good at the writing so this is to say do not wory about the gaff she was an old one indeed when you come you can keep her as a suvener i am glad you are well i found the gaff on the wall, when i was looking for you. i shall meet you with the punny at the station i am not ofended about the gaff i remain your obedient servant

HAMISH MCINTOSH.

 

3. Concluding Remarks by Stephen MacFarlane. There is one more thing to be said, and this I have kept deliberately to the last, because it seems to me to be the one episode that gathers up symbolically in itself the whole evanescence, as it were, of our story. As I sit at my desk here writing, chewing over the cud of our crowded reminiscences, this above all is the image that haunts me—even more potently than the image of that first fight between the Beautiful People and the Terrible Ones, I think, or the flaming mind’s-eye picture of the last great battle in the Shining City.

In all our interviews with the Press, with distinguished scientists, with representatives of the various film companies and the B.B.C., the one thing we were invariably asked was, had we brought with us any relics of Martian life. You who know by this time the extraordinary and sudden circumstances under which we left the Angry Planet, will realize that there was no time for us to collect anything—even a sample of soil—to bring back with us. Had we been left to our own devices we would have laden the Albatross with relics, as you can well imagine—it is inconceivable that a scientist of Dr. McGillivray’s acumen would have omitted to do this. He was, indeed, engaged, as I well know, in compiling a huge stock of samples during the period while we were waiting for the Beautiful People to assemble themselves to attack the Terrible Ones. In our tent by the dome there were neatly labeled articles of every sort—leaves from the trees, small specimens of the cactus plants, pieces of the glass-like substance the domes were made of, even some seeds of the Beautiful People, and two very young sprouts from the great nursery-cave among the hills—in short, every conceivable thing likely to be of interest to enquiring minds on earth.

But our tent, and all its contents—these were overwhelmed by the lava. Nothing at all was conveyed to the Albatross—all we had stored in it, against a possible sudden emergency, was some water from the well.

Of our cameras, all but two were destroyed by the lava—and when we reached earth, and set about having the films in these two developed (they were of the 36-exposure-per-spool type, so allowing for the few exposures not made, there would have been some 60 odd photographs of the Martian scene available—a goodly number)—it was only to find, to our chagrin, that some deleterious quality in the rare atmosphere of Mars had rendered the sensitized emulsion quite useless—the films were absolutely blank. Dr. McGillivray has written extensively and learnedly on this unfortunate aspect of our adventure in the Photographic Journal—I mention the circumstance here only by way of explaining why the obvious course of illustrating these writings with actual authentic photographs has not been taken. Another thing that was destroyed by the lava, incidentally, was our portable recording equipment: but since, as we have said so often, there was no actual sound on Mars—no speech—this apparatus had been entirely useless to us: we did not make one single disc with it.

No, we had nothing to show—absolutely nothing.

But—and here’s the rub—I can hear you say: But Nuna—Nuna was in the rocket with them—Nuna was a specimen better than any other—an actual Martian.

Nuna, alas, never reached earth with us. Nuna exists no more—the body of Nuna has been disintegrated beyond all hope of reconstruction—Nuna has vanished, has become an imperceptible dust, scattered in the enormous wastes of space. It is the dissolution of Nuna—the last glowing moment—that haunts me in the way I have already mentioned. Let me, quite simply and detachedly, describe how it happened—let me set it out here as the last scene of our book. . . .

Nuna never recovered from the shock of our start-off from Mars—this I have already given an account of: how he was strapped to the floor of the cabin when we found that he had died. On the third day of the journey, we began to notice a sickly heaviness in the atmosphere of the Albatross. It intensified. On the fifth day it was so potent as to fill us with nausea—and we could no longer disguise from ourselves the fact that we all had realized secretly in our hearts but had been unwilling to mention to each other: the body of the little Martian was decomposing—was, in doing so, poisoning our precious air. . . .

There was only one thing we could possibly do. Mac and I, with heavy hearts, steeling ourselves to the effort, unstrapped the frail limp body and took it to the inner door of the cabin. Jacky and Paul turned away, so as not to have to watch us, but Mike kept his face in our direction, though I could see that he was biting his lip, poor boy. We opened the inner door and laid Nuna against the outer one. Mac had contrived, at the outset, a device for getting rid of things from the rocket while it was traveling in space, though there had been no occasion to use it on the journey out. It consisted of a heavy spring between the inner and outer walls of the Albatross that could be attached to the object to be ejected and controlled in its release from the inside of the cabin once the inner door had been closed and the outer door opened (the movement of the outer door could also be controlled from inside the cabin while the ship was traveling).

We set the spring in position, and closed the inner door. Mac touched the lever that opened the outer door, and then immediately set the spring in operation that would push Nuna into space. Then, with a sigh, he closed the outer door again. Nuna was no longer with us.

And now I come to the amazing part. When I looked through the port-holes beside the doors, it was to see, to my utter horror, that Nuna was still there—traveling alongside us a few yards away from the Albatross!

“Mac,” I gasped, “what has happened? Look—look! He’s there—outside!”

Mac spoke quite softly and simply. “Steve,” he said, “it can’t be otherwise. Don’t you realize, man, that there isn’t any gravity in space—there is nothing to pull Nuna away from us. By the process of inertia, any object we put out from the rocket while we travel will travel with us—on and on—Nuna will go with us like that, where the spring pushed him, until—”

“Until what, Mac?” I asked, as he hesitated.

“Until we reach the atmosphere belt of the earth. And then,” he lowered his voice still further, “well, Steve, although he seems quite motionless, Nuna is traveling as fast as we are, and you know what an incredible speed that is. You know what a shooting star is—a particle of matter traveling in space that suddenly comes within the gravity pull of earth, and then, as it shoots towards it, is made white-hot for a moment by the friction of the atmosphere, then is burned up. Nuna is not protected as the outer shell of the rocket is. When we reach the outer atmosphere—”

“My heavens, Mac,” I said, “you mean . . . ? Oh, it’s horrible, it’s horrible!”

But however we felt, the thing had to be faced. If we had kept Nuna with us, the gases of his decomposition in the strong air of the cabin would have poisoned us all. As it was, with no air to continue the process of decay, he traveled there in space, a few yards away from us, in the same state of preservation as when we put him out. It was impossible to believe he was moving at all—he seemed motionless, just outside the window, staring in at us, as it were, with his glazed jelly-fish eyes.

And so he remained. As our journey neared its end I told myself I would not look through the port-hole to watch the inevitable happen—and yet I knew, in my heart, that I would. When we were within the gravity pull of earth, and were preparing for the landing, with its bout of unconsciousness, I lay on the bed with my head on one side, staring out at the still figure of the little Martian. My heart was beating, I remember, and I trembled.

The end, when it came, was very sudden. And it was—and it is the only word, in spite of all the unpleasant associations of the thing—very beautiful too.

Mac looked at me significantly.

“It’s almost time, Steve,” he said quietly.

And a moment of two after that, it happened. For a diminutive fraction of a second the figure of Nuna glowed absolutely incandescent—every fiber of his tendrils, his whole outline, burned with unbelievable brilliance against the darkness of space. Only for a flash—and then . . . he was gone! Where he had been, there was nothing.

Our last contact with Mars had gone. Perhaps, on earth, some dreamer gazing skywards had seen, that night, a brief trail of fire—a shooting star, as he would think, gone out of his knowledge almost before he had time to register it. . . .

As for us, we remained dazed for a moment or two, looking at each other solemnly. And then the brief unconsciousness came, as I have described it, and when we recovered from that, it was all over. . . .

 

(A Note by the Editor of MacFarlane’s Papers. At this point the book sent to me by Stephen MacFarlane comes to an end. There were, in his writing, several disjointed notes that he intended shaping into a closing sequence—I have already referred, earlier in this volume, to the incompleteness of the manuscripts with which I was provided. These notes, unlike his earlier ones, are almost unintelligible—it is quite impossible to reconstruct from them exactly how he proposed to shape his last paragraphs. I have, therefore, not thought it worthwhile to reprint them here. I leave the end of Chapter XII as above.

One task remains to me, as editor. That is, to explain how the preceding Mss. came into my possession at all—how it came about that I saw this book through the press instead of MacFarlane himself.

This explanation I set forth now in the form of an Epilogue, which you will find on the next page. I apologize for intruding myself on you—as editor, I should, by rights, remain very inconspicuous in the background. But, as I think you will agree, the intrusion is entirely pardonable. The Epilogue is an integral part of the book, if only in the sense that it is an integral part of the story of MacFarlane.—J.K.C.)