03 Now To The Stars Read online

  But for his genius Mars might have remained a dead world until the end of time. So it seemed that while some men were risking the destruction of one world, another had gone out of his way to save one.

  The Tavona scraped gently on the paving stones and they were back on Mars. Vargo opened the door, and breathing somewhat faster than usual they stepped down. And the odd thing about it was, thought Rex, the feeling of remoteness of which he had been so conscious during the trip at once disappeared. The reason, he decided, was this: had he not known he was on Mars he might well have supposed that they had merely landed in a foreign country on Earth. Clearly, the day would come when the people on Earth, once they became accustomed to the idea, would think no more of a trans-space flight than a trans-Atlantic one.

  He noticed that one of the ships standing near them bore the blue-star insignia of Rolto's Remote Survey Fleet. Indeed, he could see Rolto himself, talking to his crew. He wondered if the man was really to be trusted; if he had really abandoned his project for the conquest of Earth

  - conquest in this case meaning the vaporization of the entire population.

  The day was spent unloading the stores and fixing up one of the many empty houses as a temporary home. Heating, for the cold nights, was a problem, for the Minoans knew nothing of coal and rarely burnt wood, which was precious. For cooking they used the radiant heat of the sun.

  Vargo got the new arrivals out of the difficulty by giving them a solar ray storage battery, a device that accumulated heat by day and discharged it slowly when required.

  The ducks and chickens were released. As the Professor remarked with a twinkle in his eye, they could hardly fly home. They caused a sensation, for the Minoans had never seen anything like them. The effect, mused Rex, had probably been much the same when the first tropical birds, with their highly coloured plumage, had been introduced into England. The chickens at once started pecking about as if to them one world was as good as another. And when the ducks, seemingly by instinct, made for the canal, they were watched by incredulous eyes. Rex freed his kitten, which made itself at home.

  The Professor was soon busy with Vargo, handing over the insecticide and explaining the operation of the spray gun, which was now to be used on the more distant canals where the mosquitoes persisted. This work, it was hoped, could be left to the Minoan crews, for the Professor was anxious to move on to the planetoids.

  Later they all walked over to the wreck of the Spacemaster, which was standing just outside the town. It was found that the steel outer skin, and the ducts of the power units, had so far deteriorated that they could be broken by hand, either as a result of exposure to different atmospheres or by the bombardment of meteoric dust, or cosmic rays. Some of the equipment inside was found to be serviceable, although for the moment it would not be needed.

  As they were near it they went on to examine the freshly dug ground. It appeared to be good healthy loam, and the Professor saw no reason why the seed-planting should not begin forthwith. It could be done by the workmen who had had experience of cultivation on Mino or Lentos. They had, in fact, already planted seeds of their own varieties of grain and vegetables. Some of these resembled closely those of Earth, but others were entirely different, such as the bitter-tasting pods, and the enormous purple roots, which had been found growing near the Pole when the Spacemaster had landed there.

  Just before sundown, while the Earth party were having tea, another ship arrived with supplies and more men. Vargo brought over the Navigator, whom he said was a man of great experience, having served all his life in the Remote Survey Fleet. He had been to nearly every planetoid at one time or another. His name was Borron, and he was, incidentally, Morino's father - as Vargo informed Rex with a meaning smile.

  Rex was on the point of protesting that this meant nothing to him, but remembering in time that Vargo might be reading his mind, he said nothing.

  Borron was, of course, exactly the sort of man the Professor was anxious to meet, and with Vargo acting as interpreter he began asking the questions that were uppermost in his mind. Rex poured each visitor a cup of tea. Vargo who had often drunk tea with them, and knew that it had no ill-effect on him, accepted his cup with a smile; but Borron looked at the beverage suspiciously. However, after one or two cautious sips, he, too, smiled.

  'Good?' queried Rex.

  'Good,' said Vargo.

  'Good,' said Borron.

  Rex suspected that it was the sweetness that appealed to them, for while there was a sugar content in their root vegetables, cane sugar, so much stronger, was unknown.

  Some of the answers given by Borron to the Professor's questions were normal, and might have been anticipated; but others were startling, and somewhat alarming.

  Borron stated that while every planet and planetoid was composed of the same basic elements, primary rock, metals and gases, the amount of each was variable. He knew of one composed almost entirely of iron, and another of igneous rock that had fused to something in the nature of glass. Every planetoid, and every Outer Planet, that he had visited, was in some way different according to size, composition and atmosphere; but the fundamental laws of Nature were constant, everywhere. Supreme control was maintained by gravity.

  It could not, he asserted, be otherwise, or the worlds would always be in collision, with results beyond imagination. Yet no matter what the condition, there was usually some form of life. There was even life on planets where the air was deadly to men. Of what these atmospheres were composed he did not know. Such places were useless, and once they had been recognized as such they were left alone. Exploration without a guide was very dangerous.

  This, Rex thought, was pretty obvious. He also perceived, even before the Professor remarked on it, that the big mistake on Earth, in considering the possibility of life on other planets, was the supposition that in order to produce and sustain life the conditions would have to be exactly the same as those on Earth. It might be true that in order to produce the forms of life found on Earth the conditions would have to be much the same, if not identical. But from what Borron said, and he said it in the most matter-of-fact way as if there was nothing surprising about it, it was evident that any set of conditions could produce its own forms of life. That being so, the possibilities defied the wildest conjectures.

  This was confirmed when Borron tried to describe some of the things he had seen, things which, in the early days of interplanetary exploration, had caused surprise, but no longer did so. Men, or creatures in the general form of men, were common, although they varied in size from dwarfs to giants. Either way, they were usually the dominant form of life on the planet concerned. Otherwise, where there were no men, the chief form of life might be insects, reptiles or vegetation. Remembering the mosquitoes on Mars Rex could understand this.

  Borron went on to say that he knew of one planetoid in habited by primitive shapeless creatures which, from his description, sounded like dry-land jellyfish. This again was not hard to believe, for if jellyfish could occur in water on Earth, why not on land elsewhere?

  As far as men were concerned, continued Borron, he thought their degree of intelligence depended on the time the particular world had been in existence, and how long the type of man had had for development. There was another world, a fairly large one, too, alleged Borron in a tone of deep disgust, where the people were so short of food that they were now eating each other, the victims being selected by a special committee.

  Rex, remembering that cannibalism had persisted on Earth to the present day, saw nothing particularly remarkable in this, either. But to Borron it was evidently a rare vice.

  There was yet another planetoid, a dreadful place, on which war between the tribes had raged for so long that certain flesh-eating animals, to which dead warriors had been cast for disposal, had now so got the upper hand that the surviving human population, faced with extermination, had to live in holes in the ground, only venturing out in numbers.

  Where these people had come from in the first p
lace nobody knew. They were not of Martian extraction.

  'That, some people think, is why man-eating animals occur in certain backward countries on Earth,' put in the Professor. 'Can you do nothing to help these poor wretches?'

  Borron said, in effect, that the policy of the High Council on Mino was one of non-interference. They had problems of their own. It was up to every world to work out its own salvation. If once they, the Minoans, started helping other people there would be no end to it; for some of the things that went on in Outer Space, outside their own Solar System, were beyond belief. But that was to be expected, for the planetoids were, after all, only miniature worlds. He had seen worlds so vast that beside them even mighty Jupiter would be no more than a moon.

  Borron is the very man we need for a guide,' declared the Professor. He knows his way about. He knows the places that are interesting, those that are safe, and those that are dangerous. He could save us untold time and trouble. Could it be arranged, Vargo?'

  Vargo said he was sure it could be arranged, but he failed to understand the Professor's anxiety to rush off into unknown dangers.

  The Professor admitted it was sheer curiosity.

  'When do you want to start?' asked Vargo.

  The sooner the better,' answered the Professor. 'Now you have the things you don't need us here.'

  'You will go first to Mino to speak with the High Council?'

  Of course. If accommodation can be found for us there we should be happy to make it our base while we explore your nearest neighbours.'

  Thus shall it be,' agreed Vargo. He smiled. I have a great mind to come with you myself.'

  That would be capital!' cried the Professor. 'Arrange it like that. Which reminds me, I have something to show you.' He then took from his portfolio a sheaf of photographs taken on previous expeditions, including some of the Moon, Venus, and Earth.

  To say that Vargo, who knew nothing of photography, was amazed, would be to put it mildly. It was obvious that to him a photograph was more in the nature of a miracle than anything the Earthmen had seen on Mars. And, curiously enough, the pictures that held for him the greatest fascination were those taken on Earth. To Rex it was another example of comparative values. Things which in one place were common, were, to those who had never seen them, wonderful to behold. It really amounted to this: different worlds had discovered different things. Thus, the people on Earth had not developed thought-transference as a means of communication; but they had achieved much the same end by means of radio. On the other hand, to the Minoans, who had lost the art of mechanical invention, a radio set, like the camera, would be a thing to wonder at.

  Thinking such thoughts as these, after giving his kitten a saucer of condensed milk, Rex assembled his camp bed and lay down to rest, if not to sleep, for not yet being acclimatized the ratified air affected the action of his heart and lungs, not much, but enough to keep him from the deep sleep he usually enjoyed.

  Through the unglazed window, clear and bright, hardly affected by the thin atmosphere of Mars, gleamed a magnificent double star - Earth and its single moon. Somewhere on it, he pondered, was a heather-covered hill from which, so short a while ago, he had gazed up at the star on which he had just made his bed. It was a sobering, almost terrifying thought.

  Poor little Earth, he brooded sadly: so busy, so well-meaning, so worried by its troubles, so full of its importance, so proud of its learning that really amounted to so little. He wondered what the people would think when they knew, as one day they must know, the Truth; that they were but a speck of dust in a Universe so stupendous that the puny human brain could not even begin to grasp the beginning or the end of it.

  3 To Mino and beyond

  Three days later the Tavona was on Mino, with the Professor in consultation with the High Council, and Rex, having renewed his friendship with Morino, enlarging his vocabulary of Minoan words. Here it may be said, as might be supposed in view of the Minoan mental development, that the girl was learning English faster than Rex was picking up her language, which was the simpler of the two. Both contained words, particularly nouns, for which the other had no equivalent. Thus, as there were no cats on Mino Rex had to draw a picture of one to explain why the kitten intended for Morino had been left on Mars.

  The reason was this. During the morning following their arrival on Mars the animal disappeared, and up to an hour before their departure had not been found. Disappointed, Rex had made a last effort to find it, ending his search on the fringe of the jungle. Calling it by name, Snowball', he was delighted to hear it answer, although its hitherto plaintive mew seemed to have taken on a deeper, more vibrant note. When the creature appeared he recoiled in alarm, for not only was it the size of an ordinary full-grown cat but there was a glint in its eye and a feline stealthiness in its step uncomfortably reminiscent of a leopard. When, recovering, he took a step towards it, saying 'puss-puss' in a coaxing voice, he was presented with such a mouthful of fangs, and a snarl of such menacing quality, that he backed hurriedly away.

  He knew, of course, what had happened. The creature had obviously eaten something which it had found, alive or dead; at all events something impregnated with the Professor's special insecticide, for this was the effect it had on every living thing in the jungle following the spraying of the mosquitoes during their last visit. Fortunately only a few small creatures had survived.

  Hastening to his father he reported what had happened and sought his assistance. But the Professor would not hear of the animal being put into the spaceship, even if that proved possible.

  'Are you out of your mind?' he cried. 'The thing might grow in transit to the size of a tiger and then where should we be?'

  Inside a tiger in a spaceship,' murmured Toby. 'Exactly,' agreed the Professor shortly.

  So the kitten was left behind.

  There had been one other incident even more disturbing than this - at any rate to Rex.

  Rolto, finding him alone, remarked, 'I hope things go well on Earth.'

  'Very well, thank you,' Rex had answered politely and automatically. Then he started. '

  How did you learn to speak English?'

  Rolto had smiled, the sort of smile that is intended to convey more than words. 'Why not? It is an interesting language, as one would expect of an interesting world.'

  Nothing more was said on that occasion but it was enough to make Rex think hard. He went to Vargo and asked him if he had been giving lessons in English to Rolto. Vargo, looking surprised, said no. Whereupon Rex had repeated the conversation to his father. '

  I didn't like the way he said it,' he concluded. 'It was almost a hint that he had actually landed on Earth. We know he has often looked at it from a low altitude for he made no secret of it.'

  He might have landed,' answered Tiger thoughtfully. There have been rumours of Saucers landing but no one took them seriously. He might have got hold of an English book. Some were left in the Spacemaster when we abandoned it. It wouldn't take a man of his intelligence long to work out a language from a book, particularly after hearing us talking.'

  That's true,' agreed Rex. 'Morino already speaks English quite well. It's mostly a matter of memory. I never have to tell her the same word twice.

  But to come back to Rolto. I have a feeling that although he has given his word to the High Council he hasn't given up hope of helping himself to Earth.'

  'I wouldn't worry too much about it,' said Tiger.

  Rex tried not to worry, but he thought about it, and later, seeing Rolto standing by his ship he went over to him. `By the way,' he said, I think I ought to warn you not to get too close to Earth.'

  'Why?' Rolto arched his eyebrows.

  'Because some of the nations there are experimenting with things like high altitude rockets and guided missiles, with the result that explosions in the upper atmosphere are now fairly common and you might collide with one. Besides, with our new radarscopes nothing can approach Earth without being seen.'

  Thank you for the advice,' an
swered Rolto suavely. 'I will give back the compliment.

  When you go home say to your College of Science that one step larger with a hydrogen bomb, or should they make a nitrogen bomb, as they now consider, they may surprise themselves by finding no air to breathe, and no water in the big seas. Remembering Kraka, it was to save us all from such a disaster that I wished to go to Earth.' Rolto turned on his heel and would have walked away; but Rex caught him by the sleeve of his tunic.

  'How do you know we have made the hydrogen bomb?' he cried.