The Red Journey Back Read Online Free PDF Page A

been accompanied by Jacky
and the others. Now, in our joint sense of exile so many millions of miles away
from all we had ever counted as home, we came to know each other in a way that
few men do. He still was young, for one who had achieved so much. His mind was swift
and alert, but gentle and with much wisdom in it. He was brave: a man of action
and decision when the occasion required, yet reserved and modest—a dreamer as
well as a warrior. And I choose the word quite deliberately: he was indeed a
warrior—a veritable crusader, his lofty ambitions realized as we sped across
the void. He was a leader indeed for such an enterprise as we were now engaged
in—the stuff of which great discoverers have always been made.
    So we
traveled. The world receded—grew to as tiny a pin point of light as Mars had
been at the journey’s beginning. The smaller planet, in its turn, waxed as
Earth waned—grew to a diminutive red disc, then recognizably became a sphere.
As we drew closer, we saw the two small moons, Phobos and Deimos, each barely
more than ten miles in diameter, circling rapidly around it, Phobos in some
seven hours, Deimos in a little over thirty—and Phobos, the closer of the two,
busily engaged in its circuit in an opposite direction from its twin, so that
it rose in the west and set in the east.
    One by one the
familiar outlines grew clearer: we saw the two brilliant polar caps, the great
red patches of the continents, the splashes of darker green we had taken before
to be seas or sea beds. On this occasion, it seemed, we were approaching at a
slightly different angle to the planet’s axis—our view of the dark green areas
was subtly different: they seemed less concentrated—ran occasionally in long
straight narrow lines—broke off—began again—continued . . .
until, at one moment, as we neared the atmosphere belt, they formed a perfect
intertwining network, strangely symmetrical in its design.
    Mac, as he
watched, his hand poised over the controls which would force the nose tuyères into life and so brake our fall ready for a landing, breathed quietly, “The
Canals, Steve—great glory, the famous Martian Canals themselves! We saw nothing
of them on the last trip—I had meant to try to find out the reason for the old
legend—if there was anything at all in it. . . . This time we
will find out!”
    “But surely
the old Canal theory has been exploded long ago.” I smiled, thinking he was
joking.
    “Ah, not
quite! In its original form, yes. It was Schiaparelli the Italian who first
proclaimed the Canals in the 1870’s. He called them ‘canals,’ meaning only
channels—lines, in his own tongue. But the idea caught the popular fancy—the
suggestion that if there were Canals there was active intelligent life. Lowell,
the American, developed the whole notion—he drew fantastic maps of the Canals
and showed them to be sometimes single, sometimes double—he even claimed that
the positioning of them changed from time to time. Other observers who saw the
marks declared that they were only marks—they were optical illusions, because
of the imperfect conditions under which Mars is ever observed from earth. Then
the theory was advanced that at least they might be
waterways—but narrow waterways; and what we saw as straight shadowy lines were
not the ‘Canals’ themselves, but the belts of vegetation on each side of the
Canals. . . . No one has ever known the truth; but, by heaven,
we will before we’re much older!”
    As he spoke,
he threw over the lever; and within a few moments, as we rushed toward the
surface, there was a brief return of the old black-out sensation—but, as I have
said, this time less potent because of the smaller gravity pull of the Angry
Planet itself. My last conscious thought as I sank into the throbbing pain of
the moment was that the surface toward which we raced at such appalling speed
was less red after all than I remembered it—was a deep misty yellowish
color,