The Space Trilogy (34 page)

The path of the
Ares
was now cutting steeply across the planet’s orbit, and in a few days the motors would be checking the ship’s outward speed. The change of velocity needed to deflect the voyage orbit from Phobos to Deimos was trivial, though it had involved Mackay in several hours of computing.

Every meal was devoted to discussing one thing—the crew’s plans when Mars was reached. Gibson, the gentleman of leisure, could land on Mars right away, but the workers, as it was pointedly explained to him, would have to stay on Deimos for several days, checking the ship and seeing the cargo safely off.

Gibson’s plans could be summed up in one phrase—to see as much as possible. It was, perhaps, a little optimistic to imagine that one could get to know a whole planet in two months, despite Bradley’s repeated assurances that two days was quite long enough for Mars.

The excitement of the voyage’s approaching end had, to some extent, taken Gibson’s mind away from his personal problems. He met Jimmy perhaps half a dozen times a day at meals and during accidental encounters, but they had not reopened their earlier conversation. For a while Gibson suspected that Jimmy was deliberately avoiding him, but he soon realized that this was not altogether the case. Like the rest of the crew, Jimmy was very busy preparing for the end of the voyage. Norden was determined to have the ship in perfect condition when she docked, and a vast amount of checking and servicing was in progress.

Yet despite this activity, Jimmy had given a good deal of thought to what Gibson had told him. At first he had felt bitter and angry towards the man who had been responsible, however unintentionally, for his mother’s unhappiness. But after a while, he began to see Gibson’s point of view and understood a little of the other’s feelings. Jimmy was shrewd enough to guess that Gibson had not only left a good deal untold, but had put his own case as favourably as possible. Even allowing for this, however, it was obvious that Gibson genuinely regretted the past, and was anxious to undo whatever damage he could, even though he was a generation late.

It was strange to feel the sensation of returning weight and to hear the distant roar of the motors once again as the
Ares
reduced her speed to match the far smaller velocity of Mars. The manoeuvring and the final delicate course-corrections took more than twenty-four hours. When it was over, Mars was a dozen times as large as the full moon from Earth, with Phobos and Deimos visible as tiny stars whose movements could be clearly seen after a few minutes of observation.

Gibson had never really realized how red the great deserts were. But the simple word “red” conveyed no idea of the variety of colour on that slowly expanding disc. Some regions were almost scarlet, others yellow-brown, while perhaps the commonest hue was what could best be described as powdered brick.

It was late spring in the southern hemisphere, and the polar cap had dwindled to a few glittering specks of whiteness where the snow still lingered stubbornly on higher ground. The broad belt of vegetation between pole and desert was for the greater part a pale bluish-green, but every imaginable shade of colour could be found somewhere on that mottled disc.

The
Ares
was swimming into the orbit of Deimos at a relative speed of less than a thousand kilometres an hour. Ahead of the ship, the tiny moon was already showing a visible disc, and as the hours passed it grew until, from a few hundred kilometres away, it looked as large as Mars. But what a contrast it presented! Here were no rich reds and greens, only a dark chaos of jumbled rocks, of mountains which jutted up towards the stars at all angels in this world of practically zero gravity.

Slowly the cruel rocks slid closer and swept past them, as the
Ares
cautiously felt her way down towards the radio beacon which Gibson had heard calling days before. Presently he saw, on an almost level area a few kilometres below, the first signs that man had ever visited this barren world. Two rows of vertical pillars jutted up from the ground, and between them was slung a network of cables. Almost imperceptibly the
Ares
sank toward Deimos; the main rockets had long since been silenced, for the small auxiliary jets had no difficulty in handling the ship’s effective weight of a few hundred kilogrammes.

It was impossible to tell the moment of contact; only the sudden silence when the jets were cut off told Gibson that the journey was over, and the
Ares
was now resting in the cradle that had been prepared for her. He was still, of course, twenty thousand kilometres from Mars and would not actually reach the planet itself for another day, in one of the little rockets that was already climbing up to meet them. But as far as the
Ares
was concerned, the voyage was ended. The tiny cabin that had been his home for so many weeks would soon know him no more.

He left the observation deck and hurried up to the control room, which he had deliberately avoided during the last busy hours. It was no longer so easy to move around inside the
Ares,
for the minute gravitational field of Deimos was just sufficient to upset his instinctive movements and he had to make a conscious allowance for it. He wondered just what it would be like to experience a
real
gravitational field again. It was hard to believe that only three months ago the idea of having no gravity at all had seemed very strange and unsettling, yet now he had come to regard it as normal. How adaptable the human body was!

The entire crew was sitting round the chart table, looking very smug and self-satisfied.

“You’re just in time, Martin,” said Norden cheerfully. “We’re going to have a little celebration. Go and get your camera and take our pictures while we toast the old crate’s health.”

“Don’t drink it all before I come back!” warned Gibson, and departed in search of his Leica. When he re-entered, Dr. Scott was attempting an interesting experiment.

“I’m fed up with squirting my beer out of a bulb,” he explained. “I want to pour it properly into a glass now we’ve got the chance again. Let’s see how long it takes.”

“It’ll be flat before it gets there,” warned Mackay. “Let’s see—g’s about half a centimetre a second squared, you’re pouring from a height of…” He retired into a brown study.

But the experiment was already in progress. Scott was holding the punctured beer-tin about a foot above his glass—and, for the first time in three months, the word “above” had some meaning, even if very little. For, with incredible slowness, the amber liquid oozed out of the tin—so slowly that one might have taken it for syrup. A thin column extended downwards, moving almost imperceptibly at first, but then slowly accelerating. It seemed an age before the glass was reached; then a great cheer went up as contact was made and the level of the liquid began to creep upwards.

“… I calculate it should take a hundred and twenty seconds to get there,” Mackay’s voice was heard to announce above the din.

“Then you’d better calculate again,” retorted Scott. “That’s two minutes, and it’s already there!”

“Eh?” said Mackay, startled, and obviously realizing for the first time that the experiment was over. He rapidly rechecked his calculations and suddenly brightened as discovering a misplaced decimal point.

“Silly of me! I never was any good at mental arithmetic. I meant twelve seconds, of course.”

“And that’s the man who got us to Mars!” said someone in shocked amazement. “I’m going to walk back!”

Nobody seemed inclined to repeat Scott’s experiment, which though interesting, was felt to have little practical value. Very soon large amounts of liquid were being squirted out of bulbs in the “normal” manner, and the party began to get steadily more cheerful. Dr. Scott recited the whole of that saga of the spaceways—and a prodigious feat of memory it was—which paying passengers seldom encounter and which begins:

“It was the spaceship
Venus
…”

Gibson followed for some time the adventures of this all too appropriately named craft and its ingenious though single-minded crew. Then the atmosphere began to get too close for him and he left to clear his head. Almost automatically, he made his way back to his favourite viewpoint on the observation deck.

He had to anchor himself in it, lest the tiny but persistent pull of Deimos dislodge him. Mars, more than half full and slowly waxing, lay dead ahead. Down there the preparations to greet them would already be under way, and even at this moment the little rockets would be climbing invisibly towards Deimos to ferry them down. Fourteen thousand kilometres below, but still six thousand kilometres above Mars, Phobos was transiting the unlighted face of the planet, shining brilliantly against its star-eclipsing crescent. Just what
was
happening on that little moon, Gibson wondered half-heartedly. Oh, well, he’d find out soon enough. Meanwhile he’d polish up his aerography. Let’s see—there was the double fork of the Sinus Meridiani (very convenient, that, smack on the equator and in zero longitude) and over to the east was the Syrtis Major. Working from these two obvious landmarks he could fill in the finer detail. Margaritifer Sinus was showing up nicely today, but there was a lot of cloud over Xanthe, and—

“Mr. Gibson!”

He looked round, startled.

“Why, Jimmy—you had enough too?”

Jimmy was looking rather hot and flushed—obviously another seeker after fresh air. He wavered, a little unsteadily, into the observation seat and for a moment stared silently at Mars as if he’d never seen it before. Then he shook his head disapprovingly.

“It’s awfully big,” he announced to no one in particular.

“It isn’t as big as Earth,” Gibson protested. “And in any case your criticism’s completely meaningless, unless you state what standards you’re applying. Just what size do you think Mars should be, anyway?”

This obviously hadn’t occurred to Jimmy and he pondered it deeply for some time.

“I don’t know,” he said sadly. “But it’s still too big.
Everything’s
too big.”

This conversation was going to get nowhere, Gibson decided. He would have to change the subject.

“What are you going to do when you get down to Mars? You’ve got a couple of months to play with before the
Ares
goes home.”

“Well, I suppose I’ll wander round Port Lowell and go out and look at the deserts. I’d like to do a bit of exploring if I can manage it.”

Gibson thought this quite an interesting idea, but he knew that to explore Mars on any useful scale was not an easy undertaking and required a good deal of equipment, as well as experienced guides. It was hardly likely that Jimmy could attach himself to one of the scientific parties which left the settlements from time to time.

“I’ve an idea,” he said. “They’re supposed to show me everything I want to see. Maybe I can organize some trips out into Hellas or Hesperia, where no one’s been yet. Would you like to come? We might meet some Martians!”

That, of course, had been the stock joke about Mars ever since the first ships had returned with the disappointing news that there weren’t any Martians after all. Quite a number of people still hoped, against all evidence, that there might be intelligent life somewhere in the many unexplored regions of the planet.

“Yes,” said Jimmy, “that would be a great idea. No one can stop me, anyway—my time’s my own as soon as we get to Mars. It says so in the contract.”

He spoke this rather belligerently, as if for the information of any superior officers who might be listening, and Gibson thought it wisest to remain silent.

The silence lasted for some minutes. Then Jimmy began, very slowly, to drift out of the observation port and to slide down the sloping walls of the ship. Gibson caught him before he had travelled very far and fastened two of the elastic hand-holds to his clothing—on the principle that Jimmy could sleep here just as comfortably as anywhere else. He was certainly much too tired to carry him to his bunk.

Is it true that we only look our true selves when we are asleep? wondered Gibson. Jimmy seemed very peaceful and contented now that he was completely relaxed—although perhaps the ruby light from the great planet above gave him his appearance of well-being. Gibson hoped it was not an illusion. The fact that Jimmy had at last deliberately sought him out was significant. True, Jimmy was not altogether himself, and he might have forgotten the whole incident by morning. But Gibson did not think so. Jimmy had decided, perhaps not yet consciously, to give him another chance.

He was on probation.

Gibson awoke the next day with a most infernal din ringing in his ears. It sounded as if the
Ares
was falling to pieces around him, and he hastily dressed and hurried out into the corridor. The first person he met was Mackay, who didn’t stop to explain but shouted after him as he went by. “The rockets are here! The first one’s going down in two hours. Better hurry—you’re supposed to be on it!”

Gibson scratched his head a little sheepishly.

“Someone ought to have told me,” he grumbled. Then he remembered that someone had, so he’d only himself to blame. He hurried back to his cabin and began to throw his property into suitcases. From time to time the
Ares
gave a distinct shudder around him, and he wondered just what was going on.