The Red Journey Back Read Online Free Page A

we were virtually without weight—could float in the
little living cabin in any direction in which we cared to push ourselves—had to
contrive all movement by means of foot straps and magnetic boots.
    And even as I
did float clear of the mattress—grabbed chucklingly at Doctor Mac to steady
myself, thence levering my way to the “floor” and a point of comparative
stability—even at that moment I saw (in my mind’s eye only, of course) the
floating, astonished shapes of the three young people who had accompanied us on
the first voyage. I glanced at the massive metal door of the food store in
which they had concealed themselves on that occasion—half expected it to waver
open as it had done then and the three young bodies come drifting, plunging,
soaring toward me! But on the second Martian flight of the good ship Albatross there were no stowaways—we had checked on that most
carefully before our departure. Paul, Jacqueline and Michael were already many
hundreds of miles away from us—somewhere beyond the milky mistiness we could
see through the portholes. And so the first amused thought was followed by the
wistful reaction: would we ever see our three first traveling companions
again?—would we ourselves ever return through the white milky mist?—would we
even reach the lost planet toward which we aimed . . . ?

    I took off the
oxygen mask—suffered a moment’s sense of suffocation as my lungs adjusted
themselves to breathing in the synthetically air-filled cabin.
    “We’ve done
it, Mac,” I gasped—articulating with difficulty at first as my “weightless”
tongue seemed to waver helplessly in my mouth. “We’ve done it, heaven be
praised!”
    He nodded
brightly, maskless himself now; then turned his attention once more to the
control panel and pushed forward the lever to shut off all means of mechanical
propulsion.
    And instantly
there was silence—a silence so intense as for a moment to seem nightmarish. We
traveled at a speed far, far beyond that of gravity; yet in the little close
cabin of the spaceship it was as if everything was still, more still and
tranquil than it is possible to describe. (I have always believed that we, on
Earth, even in our quietest moments, are strangely aware, deep within
ourselves, of the constant swift movement of the great globe which we inhabit.
Now, in the rocket, it was as if that very knowledge had gone, so that the
stillness and silence were beyond all comparison to you who have never left
your mother world. . . .)
    Behind—there
are, of course, no directions in space, and so I use such terms as “before” and
“behind” only comparatively—behind, the milky mistiness had resolved and
seemingly dispersed. It was as if there hung in the sky above us a gigantic
relief map in brilliant color, in startling greens and blues, vivid yellows  . . . a map constantly
shrinking, elongating, flattening itself out as if reflected in a huge
distorting mirror: a map first—recognizably—of Scotland, the ragged West Coast
outflung into the green-blue sea, the Lion’s Head of the far north cut off from
the main body by the straight silver knife line of the Caledonian Canal . . .
then, later, as the whole curving surface seemed to wheel and steady itself, a
map of the whole of Britain, the whole of Europe as more and more recognizable
outlines came into view: then Norway, the white gleam of Greenland, the
brilliant sweep of northern Canada—the immense but shrinking bulk of the United
States (New York as a dark vague clustering at the start, growing smaller and
smaller to a veritable pin point and lost at last altogether in the whole
sparkling panorama of the curving globe) . . . all, all merged
and flowed to a blinding, moonlike phosphorescence, a great ball hung in the
dark luminous velvet of the void. . . .
    I had seen it
all before—have attempted to describe it before; yet I was awed, moved to very
tears by the gigantic spectacle all over again. What