The Red Journey Back Read Online Free Page B

should such creatures as I
do, crawling between heaven and earth? What signified now all
human pride and wretchedness?
    Far, far
beyond, farther and still farther from the huge stark orb of the ever-burning
sun—one little star among the myriads clustering brilliantly against the
pall—lay the world we sought to revisit. As we went on into space, all thoughts
of Earth herself were gradually left behind—we thought only of the marvels that
perhaps were waiting for us, the old friends and enemies from our first brief
sojourn whom perhaps we would re-encounter, the new mysteries to be explored in
those remoter corners of the Angry Planet we had not had time to reach.
    We remembered
the last great battle between the Beautiful People and the Terrible Ones—the
slim shapes of the delicate plant people overwhelmed under the brutish attack
of their subterranean enemies—who were also a species of plant, according to
Dr. McGillivray’s theory, but of a different nature: squat and
fungoid—descendants, he believed, of an earlier group of carnivorous plants
which had flourished in the long-dead days when Mars had supported animal as
well as vegetable life.
    We remembered
the violence of the great volcanic eruption and earthquake which had forced us
to leave the battlefield ourselves on our first Martian visit, lest the Albatross be swamped by the seething lava, be shattered by the
falling red-hot boulders from the blazing mountain above us. . . .
We remembered it all indeed—the crumpling, melting domes of the immense glass
bubble houses in which the Beautiful People passed the cold Martian nights and
long bitter winters; the final mortal duel between the leaders of the two great
species—the creature we knew as the Center slicing with his long crystalline
sword at the vestigial jaws of the malignant chief of the Terrible Ones; above
all, the last heroic gesture of Malu, our first and last friend in all that
alien world, as he leaped to save Mike Malone from destruction at the very
moment of the take-off.
    His “voice”
had come to us through the raging din of conflict—that thin strange “sound” we
heard within our very minds as a manifestation of the telepathic communication
we had formed with the Martians (so that creatures of all languages, or even
none, could understand each other on the dying planet—the very static plants on
the red sandy plains themselves, in some primitive measure).
    “Farewell,
strangers!” So Malu’s thoughts had come into us in that last moment. “Farewell—and
good journey! Remember Malu the Warrior—Malu the Tall, Prince of the Beautiful
People. . . .”
    His slender
shape had fallen back then—back to the edge of the saucer which seethed with
the lava. He had moved swiftly around on the long rootlike tendrils at the base
of his trunk by which the plant people achieved movement—had swung up in his
side tendrils the great silica sword which that day had wrought such havoc in
the ranks of the Terrible Ones.
Our last glimpse of him had been of two more of the monsters advancing toward
him, their great white crouching shapes aglow from the flames surrounding.
    Had
he survived? Would we see him again?—now?—at the end of our new journey?
    So
we wondered as the days sped on—and yet there were no “days” only such
calculations of days as we were able to make from the revolutions of the
rapidly diminishing sphere which had been our world and on which, hard as it
was to believe, our friends, our enemies, our millions of human brothers and
sisters labored, fought, died, were happy or miserable—ate, drank and were
merry (at least we knew that that was what the indomitable young Mike Malone
was doing—eating and being merry!).

    Throughout
the journey, as we came so closely into contact in the small cabin of the Albatross, I found myself nearer to Andrew
McGillivray as a person than I had ever been before. We had shared much
adventure in the past, it is true; but then we had