CHAPTER V. A MARTIAN LANDSCAPE by Jacqueline Adam

JACQUELINE ADAM ON “A MARTIAN LANDSCAPE—FIRST IMPRESSIONS”

(Editor’s Note: This contribution was originally written as a free-subject school essay by J.A. when she returned to normal life on earth. It was later, as an interesting curiosity, printed in the annual school magazine.

It is inserted here in the present volume because this seems the natural place for it—it fills very appropriately a gap in the various papers that Stephen MacFarlane left for me to edit (I should say, incidentally, that there are several such gaps in MacFarlane’s collection; the papers were passed to me before they were properly completed and annotated, though the children’s contributions had all been corrected for spelling and punctuation).

The essay, may I add, is reprinted from “The Wellingborough Magazine,” No. 23, Vol. 5, by kind permission of the Headmistress of the Wellingborough Hill High School for Girls, Dorset.—J.K.C.)

MY COMPANIONS and I effected our landing on the planet Mars in the early morning. It was, indeed, dawn when we first set eyes on our “brave new world,” to quote the Immortal Bard of Avon.

There were five of us: myself, my brother P—, our cousin M—, Mr. McF—, and the leader of the party, Dr. McG—.

We were naturally curious to see what our new home looked like, but from our position in the doorway of our space-ship, we could at first see little. We were, as far as we could judge in the dim morning twilight, lying in a small depression, or saucer, surrounded by a high ridge. (I hesitate to call it a hill—it was only slightly taller than our rocket).

Our first impulse was to lower the ladder and rush to explore, but Dr. McG— gave it as his opinion that it would be better to wait till full daylight before venturing out. We had no idea of what we might find on Mars, and he felt it safer for us to be able at least to see any danger that might assail us.

We were constrained, therefore, to remain in the rocket till, if I may quote the late Poet of Empire, “the dawn came up like thunder.” I must confess that the simile in this instance is not a very suitable one. The dawn, as it came, was somewhat mild and gentle. There was a deep pinkening of the sky first, which presently spread all round our small horizon. This changed soon to a deep orange color, and then, to our joy, we saw the thin smoky edge of the disc of the sun rise slowly above the ridge confronting us. The twilight dispersed, and in about half-an-hour the sun—a smaller sun than any I have ever seen on earth—was riding in a clear blue sky.

Our first Martian day had begun!

We perceived now, on examining the ground beneath us, that we were in a dry hollow, the floor and sides of which seemed to consist of a dark brown, reddish earth, or sand. There was no sign of any vegetation—the ground seemed curiously barren and dead to our eyes. Dr. McG— ventured the opinion that it was probably volcanic.

We prepared to leave the rocket. Dr. McG— opened a locker and took out some firearms. He handed Mr. McF— a large rifle and took another such for himself. He also strapped a pistol round his own wrist and handed a second small pistol to my brother. P—, I may say, greeted this gesture with no small pleasure.

The flexible steel ladder was now lowered, and one by one we descended it. Our joy at standing once more on terra firma can better be imagined than described. The terra in question was, we could perceive on closer examination, a reddish, coarse-grained species of sand, very dry and loose; it was on the question of its being firma that we received our first Martian surprise.

We were standing in a group at the foot of the ladder. I may say, that in descending, I had experienced a strange lightness—a sensation of buoyancy. I attributed this at the time to excitement and pleasure combining to fill me with elation. It seemed, however, that the cause was altogether more physical.

M— was the first of the party to move. He gave a cry and jumped forward, intending to rush to the top of the declivity facing us. In a moment, however, and after one step, he was rolling on the ground a good ten feet away from us, his face a perfect study of dismay and bewilderment!

P— rushed to his aid, and he, too, seemed to stumble, and go rolling and bouncing over the sand. Before either of them could rise, Dr. McG— burst into hearty laughter.

“Of course,” he cried, “I forgot! The force of gravity—it is not so powerful on Mars as it is on earth. I should have warned you!”

And he went on to explain something of the mechanics of our situation. I regret I cannot reproduce his statement with any real technical exactitude. But as far as I understood things, this was the position. (I am able to quote some actual figures since I made notes of them in my diary):

The planet Mars is considerably smaller than our own earth—its diameter, indeed, is very little more than half that of our mother planet. Nor is it so dense—if the density of earth be represented by the unit 1, then the density of Mars is about .72. For these reasons, the gravitational pull on the surface of Mars is not so strong as the gravitational pull on the surface of the earth—the actual ratio is something like .38. This means that a man weighing say 150 lb. on earth would, on Mars, weigh only 57 lb.

Reflect now that our muscular development is such as to provide us with the means of moving ourselves on earth in what is to us a normal way. On Mars, where we weighed little more than one third of what we did on earth, our muscles seemed abnormally developed.

While Dr. McG— was engaged in this explanation, the two boys had succeeded in raising themselves to their feet. M—, full of excitement, now exclaimed that he proposed doing a “high jump.” We knew him, on earth, for a reasonably good jumper. Judge now of our surprise when we saw him soar into the air, high above our heads! P— immediately also indulged in a short “flight,” and soon we were all at it— yes, even the two more sedate members of the party! The sensation was quite indescribable. I myself, at the school sports last year, cleared the four foot bar; with the same effort here on Mars, I found myself soaring into the empyrean a good ten feet! It was like pole vaulting without the pole—and the landing was soft and pleasant. There was no heavy jolt—a gentle bump on the yielding red sand and that was all.

It was exhilarating in the extreme. After the long period of confinement in the cabin of our space-ship, the exercise in the rare thin atmosphere did us all the good in the world. Even running was an excitement—an ordinary earth-pace covered eight or nine feet. It was like walking in seven-league boots, as Tom Thumb did in the fairy tale. We hopped about in our little hollow like kangaroos, shouting merrily in the sunshine and generally behaving like lunatics.

Presently, however, the first novelty wore off. We set about trying to control our muscular movements so that we might be able to walk as we were accustomed. And we found that, just as we had been able to adjust ourselves in space, when we had no weight at all, so we could, after a little practice, adjust ourselves to moving about comfortably on Mars. We could still, of course, if we wanted to, make prodigious leaps, but for the most part we contented ourselves with the more ordinary mode of progression to which we were used.

The time had now come for us to widen our field of exploration. The sun was high and the air was clear. So Dr. McG—assembled us at the foot of the ridge and we set about mounting to the top of it (an easy task this, because of our reduced weight, although the slope was quite steep—indeed, almost vertical).

We reached the summit. And now, indeed, we felt like “stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes,” etc. (Keats). Only our peak was on Mars, and not in Darien. However, what we saw was just as awe-inspiring and strange to us as the glimpse of the far Pacific was to the intrepid Spaniard.

What we saw was awe-inspiring and strange

Before us, bright and silent in the sun, was a huge plain. It stretched, as far as we could immediately judge, some eight or ten miles before it was terminated by a line of high bare mountains. They—as indeed was the whole plain—were of the same reddish color as the soil in our hollow. Every now and again, in the surface of the plain, as we could see from the incline on which we stood, there were similar deep hollows to the one in which our spaceship lay, behind us.

But what gave the scene its character, what caused us the real wonder, was the vegetation. Dotted all over the plain were immense clumps of huge, dark green, leathery plants. It is impossible to describe them other than very generally, since each individual plant varied in shape from its neighbor. Some of them were tall—as tall as good-sized church steeples—others were small and squat, mere bulbous masses clinging to the ground.

The nearest large clump of these plants was about five hundred yards away in front of us, and since it was quite clear to Dr. McG— that there was no immediate danger threatening, we set off at once to conduct a closer examination, using our leaping ability to cover the ground quickly.

I have said that the plants were dark green in color. That is the effect a clump of them created at a distance. But seeing them at close hand, we observed that many of the individual plants—particularly the smaller ones—were mottled with large irregular patches of yellow, and even (in some of the very small bulbous ones) dark red—a somewhat evil coloration, this, without brilliance; somber and heavy, like coagulating blood.

I have said that the shape of the plants varied individually, and this was indeed so. But one feature they all had in common: they were composed of short squat stalks with huge finger-like leaves on them. These leaves were convoluted into fantastic shapes—like twisted vast fingers sometimes, with rheumatic joints, seeming to grope up into the air as if stretching and grasping after the sun.

The nearest I have seen on earth to these strange and evil-looking Martian plants are the cacti in the Botanical Gardens at Kew. But the Martian species was smooth and more leathery—and presented, moreover, a much richer variety of shapes, besides a wider range of color.

Dr. McG— was considerably excited as we stood surveying the plants.

“It means,” he said, “that there is water somewhere—or at least moisture of a sort. When we were standing on the knoll back there, I looked all over the plain for some sign of a stream or a lake, but there was nothing. Yet moisture there must be, or these huge things simply could not exist.”

As he spoke, he took out a long sharp knife he carried in a sheath at his waist. He advanced to one of the plants that was about man-size and stabbed the knife into it, at the point where the short stalk branched out into the leaves. There was a soft, unpleasant squelching sound, and simultaneously it was as if I heard in my head—hardly in my ears—a high-pitched wail or scream, as if from an immense distance.

I looked at my companions. Their faces wore a puzzled, listening expression.

“Did you hear anything?” asked Mr. McF—.

“Yes,” I vouchsafed. “It was a kind of scream. Yet I can hardly say that I heard it. It was rather as if I . . . well . . . thought it!”

“That is what it seemed to me too,” nodded P—. “It must have been imagination—there is nothing within miles that could possibly have made that sort of noise. But it’s strange we all heard it at the same time, though.”

While we spoke Dr. McG— was stooping forward examining the deep triangular gash he had made in the leathery flesh of the plant. A milky, viscid fluid was oozing out of it, and simultaneously an acrid but not unpleasant odor assailed our nostrils. Dr. McG—touched the sticky-looking gum with his finger and conveyed some of it to the tip of his tongue. For a moment he frowned, as if trying to assess the taste, then he nodded his head.

“M’m, quite nice,” he said. “Like sweet butter-milk, almost. Rather sickly, I should fancy, if you took a lot of it. Well, moisture there undoubtedly is, as I have said before. To judge from the dryness of the soil, it must be very far down. I should guess that these things have immensely long tubular roots. I propose to come back with an axe and a spade to cut down one of the bigger ones to make a thorough examination. Meantime, I must confess that I am getting very hungry—this keen air has whetted my appetite considerably, and in all the excitement of the landing we have quite forgotten to eat. I have some food in the refrigerator back in the rocket—we may find, later on, that these plants are edible, but meantime some real earth-quality bacon and eggs would not come at all amiss after so many weeks of tooth-paste food, eh?”

We greeted this suggestion with great acclaim, and immediately set off back to the hollow where we had left the rocket. On top of the ridge we turned and looked once more at the strange and desolate landscape spread out before us. There are no words to describe the extraordinary bare silence and stillness of it—yet I had the impression, as I looked again across the enormous poisonous-looking dark green clumps to the mountains, that there was something, something disturbing the silence. No sound—nothing as definite as a sound, although it seemed a sort of sound: again it was as if I were thinking it, rather than hearing it. A vague rustling disturbance—a sensation of disquiet vibrating all about us.

I dismissed the feeling as mere fancy and descended the ridge with the others. Soon all else was forgotten in our excited arrangements for what was to be our first real cooked meal since leaving earth.

That, then, was our first glimpse of a Martian scene. I conclude by saying in all humility that I am only too aware of the inadequacy of my poor pen to describe the strangeness of it. I console myself with the reflection that the intention has been there even if the performance has been weak—“a poor thing, but mine own,” to draw once more in quotation from the teeming works of that great figure who towers as a mountain above the plain of literature: William Shakespeare.

(Note: The rest of this chapter consists of disjointed comments by Stephen MacFarlane. It is evident, I think, that he originally intended writing a long chapter here on the reactions of the party on first landing on Mars—he has even, as you will see, completed some parts of it, particularly the closing paragraphs. But for some reason he left this part of the book to the last—at no other point in the whole collection of papers is there such a gap.

I will explain later how it was that the papers came into my hands before MacFarlane could polish them. Meantime, as matter of interest, I print his notes for this chapter exactly as he left them.—J.K.C.)

MacFarlane’s Notes:

General coverage of Chap. 5: first impressions; experiments in jumping (possible dissertation by Mac on gravitational differences between earth and Mars?—Mac also on subject of composition of soil in hollow where we landed?)

We climb to top of ridge. General excitement and reaction to landscape, etc., etc. Describe curious plants and so on. Work in a couple of paragraphs about distant hills—something along these lines:—

While Mike and the others were talking about the curious plants in front of us, I was surveying the distant hills through my binoculars. It was clear from a first examination of the plain that there was no sort of human life on it. I was, in my own mind, positive that there was life on Mars—why should there not be?—we were plainly alive and comfortable on the planet: the air was breathable: there was, as the presence of the plants showed, moisture. So I searched the hills through my powerful lenses to see what traces of habitation there might be there.

The hills were barren. They seemed, as far as I could see, to consist of huge porous red rocks—rather like sandstone as we know it on earth. I seemed to perceive, on the lower slopes, patches of green—possibly, I thought, mountain varieties of the plants immediately in front of us. Only once did I have any impression that I might be looking at something connected with human life. Just as I was lowering the binoculars from my eyes, I saw, behind the shoulder of one of the lower hills, a sudden brilliant flash. My first impression was that the sun was reflecting from a hill lake, but I soon saw that this was impossible—the flash was half-way up the hill, and seemed, as far as I could see, a sort of crescent—not lying horizontally, as a lake would, but at an angle along the hill-slope. I swept the glasses along the range to see if there might be any other such flashes, but there was nothing; and when I moved them back to the original spot, the bright crescent had gone. It had not been in my field of vision long enough for me to be able to form any real opinion as to what it had been.

Description of plants at close quarters—write up in some detail. Extraordinary episode of far-off screaming noise, seemingly in our heads, as Mac cut into one of them. What can it have been? Plainly nothing immediately near us that could have caused it—except the plant itself!

A bizarre, extravagant notion—but in a sense the only one that offers any real explanation. Could it possibly be so? Write up whole theory at some length.

Various remarks—conversations, etc., as we move back to the Albatross. The party in excellent spirits—Mike enjoying his high-jumping hugely. Various points mentioned by Mac—his intention to take some photographs of the scene etc. Work in this way towards end of chapter. End chapter thus:—

 . . . and within a very short time, the boys had the Primus working (how extraordinary to see such a homely thing as a Primus here on Mars, with all its associations of picnics and alfresco outings of all sorts on earth!), and Jacky was busying herself with cooking the bacon and eggs that Mac fetched for her from the refrigerator. Soon, drifting out on the thin sharp air, there came the delicious smell of real, freshly-cooked food—real food, after all our weeks of vitamin pastes and sieved vegetables! Mike turned a good half-dozen huge cartwheels in sheer ravenous excitement.

Jacky insisted that we did things properly, and so we set out a clean bed-sheet as a tablecloth. There were not enough plates, knives, forks, and so on, to go round (after all, we had reckoned on only two travelers in the Albatross), but since the food had to be cooked piece-meal in our one small frying-pan anyway, that did not worry us a great deal—we took our viands in turns. When the meal was eventually over, we sighed deeply and contentedly and lay back in the sand—which was now quite warm from the sun. I lit a pipe and passed my tobacco pouch over to the Doctor.

“Well, Mac,” I said, smiling, “we’re here. We’ve made it, after all. I don’t mind confessing to you now, that in the old days back on earth, I often had my doubts—I thought sometimes that maybe your lab assistants were right and you were just a little bit mad!”

“To tell you the truth, I thought so myself at times,” he said with a warm chuckle.

So we puffed contentedly in the sunshine, watching the fumes of the Virginian tobacco, grown so many millions of miles away, go drifting lazily up to disperse in the clear air. I felt deeply satisfied with myself—one of the very first human beings to land on Mars! Think of it—I, Stephen MacFarlane, a writer of books, a weaver of dreams, creator (in my head) of fantastic adventures! . . . and here I was, actually engaged in the flesh in an adventure more wild and fantastic than any I could possibly imagine!

As I lay there in the sun, relaxed and comfortable, I felt a curious drowsiness coming over me. After all, it was a long time since any of us had slept properly, in all the excitement of the landing. Perhaps the fresh strong air had something to do with it too, and the fact that we had just had a large meal—a meal that gave our digestive organs rather more work than they had had for a long time. At any rate, it was all I could do to keep my eyes open. I looked round at the others. Apparently they were being affected in the same way; Paul and Jacky were already actually asleep, and Mike was not far from it. Mac’s pipe had fallen on his chest and he was making no effort to retrieve it. He smiled at me lazily.

“Feeling sleepy, Steve, eh?”

I nodded.

“No harm in having forty winks, I suppose.”

“None at all.” And he yawned. “I’m certainly going to—I feel incredibly drowsy—the excitement, I guess.”

I sighed and yawned myself, and then closed my eyes and settled myself to doze.

I slept deeply—we all did, as I afterwards learned. I remember—and it comes back to me with a curious distinctness, even after all this time—that I had a vivid and vaguely terrifying dream, about the huge dark green plants we had just been examining. It was as if I were walking down an immense avenue, bordered by two endless rows of them; and as I walked, on and on, there was a whispering and rustling among them, and then, slowly—almost imperceptibly—they began to stoop down towards me. Lower and lower they came, and now the rustling changed to a high-pitched far-off screaming, very faint and eerie. I started to run, but the avenue was endless. And now the plants were very low and very near—their huge fleshy fingers were reaching out to grasp at me. I had a knife in my hand, and I hacked and stabbed at the great leathery writhing fronds—and with every stroke the screaming grew more and more intense.

I became aware of someone shaking me violently by the shoulder. I opened my eyes drowsily, and Mike’s face swam into my consciousness. Mike’s face—but it was strained and anxious.

“Uncle Steve,” he was saying urgently, “Uncle Steve, wake up! Look—for the love of Pete, just look!”

I sat up abruptly, on the instant wide awake, so insistent had been Mike’s command. The others were awake too, and staring, just as I was.

And well might we stare! On the ridge above us, standing silently gazing in at us, were creatures!—creatures vastly, vastly different from anything that any of us had ever known, but living creatures—individuals—Martians!

And as I stared at the tallest of them—the one plainly their leader—I heard him address us. And the language was English—English!

For a moment I thought I must still be in my dream. But the sun was shining, my companions were all about me. They, as plainly as I, heard the cool, detached, far-off tones:

“Who are you? Who are you? What are you doing here?”