CHAPTER VI. THE MEN OF MARS by Stephen Macfarlane

THE NARRATIVE CONTINUED, BY STEPHEN MacFARLANE: THE MEN OF MARS

WE ROSE to our feet. Jacky moved over towards me, and I put my hand on her shoulder to allay her nervousness. We were all nervous. Why should we not be?—there was something unutterably awesome in the very quietness and immobility of the two-score odd creatures above and all around us. How long had they been standing there, gazing down at us while we slept? The vast plain had been empty—now, from nowhere seemingly, these beings had appeared, creeping unerringly to the one hollow among all the hollows in that expanse that held a secret.

What did they look like?—what was our first impression of them? It is difficult to say. Since that first day, I have known them so intimately, have studied them at such close quarters, that I can hardly remember how they first seemed to present themselves.

There was nothing, in the whole range of our experience of living beings on earth, to which they could quite be compared, although in general shape they were not unlike human beings. They were small, varying in height from 4 to 5 feet—their leader, to whom I have already referred as the tallest, was about 5 feet 6 inches. Their bodies were slender, smooth and round; in general dimensions comparable to the trunk of a medium-sized silver birch on earth. In color they were, in general, yellowish—a dark, patchy yellow ochre; but this deepened to green towards the foot in most cases, and sometimes merged to a fleshy pink and even red at the top. At the top, this trunk of theirs, as I have called it, bulbed out slightly into a head (I am, in this description, forced to use analogous human terms—“head,” “trunk,” “hands,” and so on; but, as you will see later, the Martians are quite different from us—the words are used only as equivalents, for the purpose of building up some sort of image, however imperfect, in your minds). This “head” was covered, on the rounded top, with a sudden fringe—a sort of crown—of small soft tufts of a vivid bright yellow color. Just below this, on the front—the “face” (although strictly speaking the Martians, as we decided later, had no faces—or rather, their faces were these tufts or crowns on the top that I have described)—there were three, sometimes four, sometimes even five, small jellyish bulbs—glaucous protuberances which glowed transparently. These were the eyes. There were no organs of hearing or smell—at least, in that first glimpse we could see nothing that might be an ear or a nose; we found out later, as we shall describe, that the Martians had a very highly-developed sense of smell, although they could only “hear” sounds of considerable loudness.

I now come to describe the “feet” and “hands” of the Martians. At the lower extremity of the trunk—the greenish part I have mentioned—the body suddenly bifurcated. Each of the forks split again almost immediately, and so on and so on, so that on the ground, at the foot of each figure, there was a perfect writhing mass of small, hard, fibrous tentacles. About a third of the way up the trunk, in the front, there was another sudden branching of similar “tendrils,” as I might call them—only these ones were longer and lighter in color and seemingly more sensitive. These were obviously the “hands,” since they held, in their twining grasp, the Martian weapons—long spears, or swords, of some bright transparent crystalline substance—a sort of flinty glass, as it seemed. Finally, to complete this sketch of the appearance of the Martians, there were, just under the bulb of the head, and on each side of the trunk, two smaller clusters of tentacles (or “tendrils,” as I really prefer to call them). These were very short and slender, and light green, almost white in color—like small pale sea anemones.

These, then, were the creatures that confronted us that first morning on Mars. The task of describing them properly has been almost impossible—as I say, I have had to use human terms—we think, us men, almost always in terms of ourselves (“anthropomorphically,” as Mac would say—a monstrous big word meaning, quite simply, just that—thinking of everything, the whole universe, in terms of ourselves, as being like ourselves). The Martians were quite, quite different from ourselves—it was not till we grasped that that we began to understand them. As our story goes on, and you begin to learn more about these strange creatures of another planet, perhaps you will be able to form a clearer picture of them than I have been able to give in the brief sketch above.

The thing that astonished and unnerved us most, however, at that first meeting with the Martians, was not so much their appearance, strange as that was. It was the fact that the leader was addressing us, and that the language he was using was our own English, as I have said already at the end of the previous chapter.

“Who are you?” he said distinctly. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

I looked wildly at Mac—it seemed, at any incomprehensible moment of our whole adventure, the only thing to do; he was the wisest of our party—a Doctor of Philosophy, no less; if anything was understandable, he surely could understand it—if he did not, what chance had we?

Mac, alone among us, seemed to have recovered some of his composure. He looked up at the leader of the Martians and said, in a clear slow voice:

“We are men. We come from earth.”

There was a rustling round the top of the ridge—a mercurial quivering of those hundreds of white, wormy tendrils. And the response came immediately—seemingly from several of the Martians at the same time—in the chill, detached tones:

“What are men? What is earth? Explain, explain, explain. Who are you? Where do you come from? What are you doing here?”

The terrifying thing was that I could not see anything in the way of a mouth on the creatures. How were they talking at all, let alone talking in English? Where was the sound coming from? And yet I knew, in my bones, that there was no sound—that I was not hearing what the Martians said! The sensation was exactly the same as that that we had experienced when Mac cut into the huge cactus-like plant on the plain, and a scream seemed to come into our heads. I remembered what Jacky had said on that occasion—it was as if we were thinking the sound rather than hearing it. Now it was as if I were thinking these cold, detached, insistent questions—they were forming of their own accord in my brain! It was an uncanny experience—it was impossible not to feel uncomfortable and a little terrified. Jacky shivered at my side—I could see that the boys’ faces were pale and strained.

“Mac,” I cried, “for heaven’s sake what is it? How are they speaking to us?—how in the Lord’s name can they be speaking to us?”

He was curiously calm—when I look back I always think of this as Mac’s best moment throughout our whole adventure. He was, on earth, a quiet, reticent, scholarly man—the last man to possess, in any marked degree, courage as we have come to define it. But courage he did have—courage within his own terms of reference: the courage of brains, of sheer intellect—he confronted the incomprehensible with his own weapons, his brains. And he was confident in the possession of those weapons, and in their efficiency—he was confident and cool in the face of this strange enigma now, standing with one hand loosely on the pistol at his belt, the other raised to shade his eyes from the sun as he gazed up at the Martian leader.

Without shifting this gaze for a moment, he now answered me.

“I don’t know, Steve,” he said quietly. “I do have a glimmering notion—no more than that yet. Give me time—just a little longer.”

Then he raised his voice again, and addressed the Martian in the same loud clear tones as before.

“Before I explain further who we are,” he cried, “tell me who you are.”

Again the rustling and the quivering, and again the response:

“We are the Beautiful People.”

Quick as a flash, Mac turned round to us.

“Tell me, Steve—what did they say?” he asked.

“Why—‘We are the Beautiful People,’ ” I answered dazedly.

“And you, Jacqueline—tell me what you heard them saying.”

“I thought they said—‘We are the Lovely Ones,’ ” said Jacky timidly.

“Ah! And you, Paul?”

“I agree with Jacky,” said Paul.

“So do I,” volunteered Mike. “That’s what I heard them say—‘We are the Lovely Ones.’ ”

Mac smiled.

“Steve,” he cried, “I believe I’ve got it. Watch this—I’m going to ask them a question—I’m going to ask them if they knew we were here or if they came on us accidentally. And you won’t hear me saying a word. Watch.”

There was a silence while he gazed up at the Martian leader, with a curiously tense expression on his face. Presently there was the usual quivering among the Martians, and there floated into my head:

“Yes. We knew you were here. We were told. We had a message.”

“I was right, Steve!” cried Mac immediately, to me. “I know what it is! Try it yourself—look at that big fellow, the leader—ask him a question. But don’t say anything—think it to him, in your head—think it as hard as you can—put all your powers of concentration into it.”

I did as he told me. I stared at the Martian leader and thought, in my head:

“How did you know we were here? Who gave you the message?”

There was no quiver—no response.

“You’re not thinking hard enough, Steve—you’re probably a bit nervous,” said Mac. “Make an effort—throw your thought towards him.”

I tried to calm myself, and repeated the mental question with more concentration. And this time the response came back:

“We were told by our friends the Plants, whom you injured.”

I stared at Mac helplessly—the whole thing was too much for me. Apart from the uncanny business of the conversations, this latest response—that the Plants had told the Martians of our presence—was bizarre and incredible. But Mac, far from seeming as baffled as I was, was actually smiling triumphantly.

“Steve, it’s magnificent!” he cried. “Who would ever have thought it! It’s so simple, man—don’t you understand?—it’s thought transference! It isn’t speaking at all, as we understand it—it’s pure communication—what scientists back on earth have been arguing about and experimenting with for years. These creatures have got it highly developed—they can plainly communicate with each other by simply thinking a thought and so projecting it. That’s how they can speak to us—we receive the thoughts they project—and of course, we receive them in the form we are accustomed to think in—in our case English. I got the final clue when you said you heard them say ‘Beautiful People,’ while Jacqueline claimed they said ‘Lovely Ones.’ You were both right—the thought is the same in both cases. ‘Lovely’ is probably a word that Jacqueline and the boys use more frequently than ‘Beautiful,’ which is a literary word, natural to a writer like you. If a Frenchman had been with us, he would have claimed that the Martian said: ‘Nous sommes les Beaux.’ If my old rival Kalkenbrenner were here (and I bet he wishes he was!) he would have heard the thought in his own native language of German: ‘Wir sind die Schoenen Leute.’ It’s the pure thought we receive—we translate it in our heads into whatever language or form of language we’re accustomed to.”

“But, Mac,” I protested, “it’s fantastic—it’s unholy! Does that mean they’re listening-in now up there to all this conversation of ours—these ideas that are flying to and fro between us in the form of language?”

“I doubt it,” he replied. “I think we may take it that the thought has to be consciously projected in a certain direction—otherwise we would have known that the plants out there were busy summoning the Martians to our hollow here.”

“Do you mean that the plants have it too—this power?” I gasped.

“Undoubtedly. You heard what he said—or rather, what he thought at us. Probably they only have it in a primitive way—they could only transmit thoughts of danger, say, or fear—they couldn’t express any coherent thought to us, for example, because they have not got coherent thought. But a message that strangers were among them—a possible source of danger—such a simple thought could be passed from clump to clump till it reached our friends up there and summoned them.”

I was beginning to understand.

“And that scream we heard—it was the plant after all?”

Mac nodded.

“A really intense thought like that—a protest against pain—that would ‘get over’ because it’s simple enough for the plant to direct, even to such imperfect receivers as us. My dear Steve, it’s beautiful—it’s perfect and beautiful in its sheer simplicity and economy! Language is a clumsy thing—half the trouble in the world arises from people not understanding each other because language expresses thought so imperfectly. These creatures don’t have to use a clumsy tool like language—they can exchange pure ideas!—think of it—sheer thought!”

He was excited again. In the glow of a scientific discovery he seemed totally oblivious to our situation. As far as I was concerned, I had the drift of what it was all about—I did not understand in detail yet, but I realized at least that communication with the Martians was possible, and that the thing to do now was to establish friendly relations with them, and go into the whys and wherefores later.

I looked up at the creatures on the ridge. Throughout the whole long conversation between Mac and me they had not moved—they still stood staring down at us quietly. One of the most disconcerting things about them (I found it so even later, when I knew them better) was this gift of theirs of complete immobility.

I addressed the leader, putting all my concentration into the thought I was projecting.

“We are friends,” I said (for convenience’s sake I shall use words like “said,”

“replied,” etc., in reporting our conversations—our exchanges of thought, rather). “We do not mean any harm to you.”

And, rather surprisingly, the response came:

“We know. If there had been evil intention in you we would have felt it at the first when you looked at us. But you have not yet explained. Who are you? You are not like us. Where do you come from?”

I was puzzling in my mind how this question could possibly be answered simply and satisfactorily, when Mac said to me:

“It’s no use, Steve—we can’t explain anything as complicated as that at this stage: we shall have to wait to find out how much these creatures know of the universe—there will have to be some common ground of knowledge before we can exchange thoughts about the earth and so on. Leave it to me for the moment—I’ve got a suggestion to make to them. I might as well speak aloud—that gets the thought over just as well, and it means we all know what is being said.”

He turned to the Martian leader and addressed him in these words:

“Where we come from and who we are are difficult things to say. We shall be able to tell you in time, when we know you better, and when you know us better. What we would like to do now is to go with you to see the rest of the Beautiful People—you know we are friends, and so we want to see you and the places where you live. Will you let us come?”

There was a short pause, then the rustling and quivering again. This, we learned later, was all we could perceive of thoughts being exchanged among the Martians—a vague disturbance in the atmosphere, as it were. Finally the leader said to us:

“Yes. You can come. We shall welcome you as our friends. And we shall hear in time who you are and what you do among us.”

“Good,” said Mac. Then he pointed to himself and added:

“I am McGillivray. That,” pointing to me, “is MacFarlane. That is Jacqueline, that is Paul, and that is Michael.”

At this there was a disturbance—Mike plainly was overcoming his sense of awe and strangeness, and was almost himself again, for he said now, in some indignation:

“It isn’t Michael—I hate Michael! It’s Mike!”

The leader extended the long crystalline spear he held in his front tendrils and gravely pointed it at each of us in turn.

“McGillivray—MacFarlane—Jacqueline—Paul—”

He hesitated for a moment.

“Mike,” cried my redoubtable nephew fiercely.

“Mike.”

Then he gestured with the spear to himself, and we heard, clearly and slowly in our heads:

“I am Malu—I am Malu the Tall, War Prince and Counselor of the Beautiful People.”

And in some way this seemed to set the seal on this, our first encounter with the Martians. Our nervousness went—even Jacky confessed that she no longer was afraid, only timid and (her own word) “shy.” We mounted into the rocket to fetch some necessities—some tins of food, lest, as the Doctor explained, we should find nothing edible among the Martians. We also took some water, some coats and blankets, cameras, and a small compact recording equipment the Doctor had brought from earth. It was easy for us to carry all these things, we found, because of the reduced weight they had on Mars.

Thus laden, we descended the ladder, Mac taking care to lock the door of the Albatross behind us. We climbed the slope and confronted Malu—Malu the Tall, who was barely a foot bigger than Mike! And so, surrounded by the strange and silent, but no longer sinister Beautiful People, we set out on our second Martian journey of exploration—Mike occasionally, as he gained confidence, leaping high into the air, even laden as he was, just to show what he could do.

Appendix to Chapter VI by Dr. McGillivray. Mr. MacFarlane has suggested I should add a footnote to this chapter by way of amplifying his remarks on thought transference. There is little I can say: I consider that he has given a reasonable, balanced and clear account in the preceding pages of how we first learned to communicate with the Martians (an account somewhat flattering to myself, albeit: I deserve no credit for what was, after all, a simple process of deductive ratiocination, wedded to the type of instinctive perception a scientist is almost bound, by his training to acquire). It occurs to me, however, that it might be relevant for me to make a few parenthetical remarks on the subject of thought transference as we know it on earth.

It has been believed for a long time that there are good scientific grounds for assuming that such a thing as thought transference—telepathy, as it has been called—is possible. We all know the simple, almost everyday experience of suddenly thinking of something at the same time as someone else—very frequently two people, apropos of nothing, will start on the same sentence together in a conversation. Even allowing for coincidence, the number of well-authenticated cases of this sort is such as to suggest that thought occasionally can be transferred direct from one mind to another.

Unfortunately, in the past, telepathy has been allied to such doubtful subjects as clairvoyance and second sight—even fortune telling—and so has got surrounded by a mass of superstitious beliefs, legends, and exaggerations, thus precluding the possibility of a proper assessment of its validity. However, towards the end of the last century, several unbiased scientific minds set to work to examine impartially the arguments for and against. Unfortunately, although some extraordinary experiments were conducted, and remarkable results obtained, at that time there were not enough operatives involved for the findings to be considered general in application—moreover, the experiments, it was considered, were not conducted in such a way as to rule out all chances either of coincidence or deliberate fraud.

Not long ago, however, a group of workers allied to and subsidized by an American University, set about tackling the subject in an absolutely true scientific way. They collected first a great mass of evidence for telepathy and sifted it to the roots. They then devised a series of very simple and fool-proof experiments. These consisted of preparing a set of cards, like playing cards, with certain clearly printed symbols on them—a circle on one, a square on another, a cross on a third, and so on. There were five such clearly differentiated symbols, and ten cards to each symbol—thus fifty cards to a pack.

Two people are now arranged—say in separate rooms—so that they have no obvious way of communicating with each other. One of them thinks to the other a certain symbol, and the recipient chooses a card from the pack. Now it follows that since the number of symbols is known, and the recurrence of each symbol in the pack is known, the mathematical law of averages can be used to calculate the number of times when the right card would be chosen by sheer chance. A regular score of “right guesses” above that number would seem to suggest—even to the most skeptical and impartial scientific mind—that the card-choosing subject is being controlled by the symbol-thinking subject: and if this score goes on through a vast number of experiments—each one carefully checked and notated by detached observers—then it can fairly be assumed that thought is being transferred from one mind to another.

This is a sketchy description of only one of the experiments that have been conducted over a considerable number of years—are, indeed, at the time of writing, still going on. After a vast amount of research, and the ruthless rejection of anything not 100 per cent proven, the scientific group to which I have referred are of the opinion that there is definitely such a thing as thought transference.

So far, on earth, no real success in deliberately transferring coherent ideas has been achieved—experiments have been confined to simple things like symbols on cards. On Mars, as we have seen, thought transference of a very highly-developed type is the normal means of communication. It seems obvious that because of their evolution along these lines, the Martians have developed super-efficient transmitting and receiving faculties—hence their ability to communicate with minds like ours not normally adapted to this mode of converse. It is significant that we humans on Mars, although we grew expert in communicating with the Martians, were quite unable to communicate by means of thought transference with each other. We frequently tried projecting thought among ourselves in the same way as we did to Malu and his companions, but always without success. In the end, we got into the habit simply of speaking to the Martians aloud. This meant that we humans understood what was going on, and the thought behind the speech still got over as thought to the Martians.

As far as the ability the Martians seemed to possess of being able to understand the elementary thought processes of the plants is concerned, I hope to be permitted to contribute to this volume at a later stage a paper setting forth my own theories as to what the Martians were—theories that may seem outrageous, but which you may be prepared to accept when you have heard more about the general mode of life on our sister planet from the gifted pens of the other writers of this book.

I hope these few notes may help to make clear and acceptable to skeptical minds Mr. MacFarlane’s remarks in the previous pages.