Mars Tumlin

“ Mars! oh, dreadful, tremendous, unexpected! With a cry of affright, and bringing my fist down on the table till all the cups upon it leapt, I told him he lied—lied like a simpleton whose astronomy was as rotten as his wit—smote the table and scowled at him for a spell, then turned away and let my chin fall upon my breast and my hands upon my lap.
And yet, and yet, it might be so! Everything about me was new and strange, the crisp, thin air I breathed was new; the lukewarm sunshine new; the sleek, long, ivory faces of the people new! ”

“ The Martians immediately replied to this renewed attack, and again the cloud covered globe bristled with lightning, which flashed so fiercely out of the blackness below that the stoutest hearts among us quailed, although we were situated well beyond the danger.
But this sublime spectacle rapidly vanished from our eyes when, having attained a proper elevation, we began our course toward the opposite hemisphere of the planet. ”

“ A viridescent fog ran quickly over the enormous azure globe.
Mars melted away.
The planet dissolved in a huge, madly spinning cloud of brilliant green mist that shone with an odd light—with a light of life! A world faded into a nebulous spiral of green. Mars became a spinning cloud of dust as if of malachite.
A tiny lever flicked over, under the Prince's fingers. And the green light went out.
Where Mars had been was nothing! The stars shone through, hot and clear. A machine no larger than a camera had destroyed a world. Bill was dazed, staggered. ”

“ The gallant Martians, when they saw the princess saved, came swiftly down upon us. Over the lapping of the water in my ears I heard their sigh—like cries of admiration and surprise, the rattle of spray on the canoe sides mingled with the splash of oars, the flitting shadows of their prows were all about us, and in less time than it takes to write we were hauled aboard, revived, and taken to Hath's barge. ”

“ As we drew nearer the mysterious little planet revealed itself to us as a perfectly formed globe not more than five miles in diameter.
"What is that upon it?" asked Lord Kelvin, squinting intently at the little world through his glass. "As I live, it moves."
"Yes, yes!" exclaimed several others, "there are inhabitants upon it, but what giants!"
"What monsters!"
"Don't you see?" exclaimed an excited savant. "They are the Martians!"
The startling truth burst upon the minds of all. Here upon this little planetoid were several of the gigantic inhabitants of the world that we were going to attack. ”

“ But has life appeared in Mars? Tyndall, in graphic words, pictures the rounding of worlds from nebulous haze, and then says, "For eons, the immensity of which overwhelms man's conception, the Earth was unfit to maintain what we call life. It is now covered with visible living things. They are not formed of matter different from that around them. They are, on the contrary, bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh." Mars must come in the same category. ”

“ Where was poor Heru? Where pink-shouldered An? Where those wild men who had taken the princess from us? Lastly, but not least, where was I?
All the first stars of the Martian sky were strange to me, and my boat whirling round and round on the current confused what little geography I might otherwise have retained. It was a cheerless look out, and again and again I cursed my folly for coming on such a fool's errand as I sat, chin in hand, staring at a landscape that grew more and more depressing every mile. To go on looked like destruction, to go back was almost impossible without a guide ”

“ Suppose all of our anticipations about Mars should prove to have been wrong, after all?
There could be no longer any question that it was a world which, if not absolutely teeming with inhabitants, like a gigantic ant-hill, at any rate bore on every side the marks of their presence and of their incredible undertakings and achievements.
Here and there clouds of smoke arose and spread slowly through the atmosphere beneath us. Floating higher above the surface of the planet were clouds of vapor, assuming the familiar forms of stratus and cumulus with which we were acquainted upon the earth. ”

“ By then the close, damp air of that cavity far beneath Mars' surface was sinking Randall and Lanier deeper into a half-consciousness. The Martian beside them never moved or spoke. The upstretched tentacles of the leader and of the great worm horde before him never ceased swaying rhythmically from side to side. ”

“ My spies have been busy for years and our plans are all laid. There is one planet which all the forces of Jupiter have never been able to conquer; from which their ships have ever retreated in defeat."
"Mars!" exclaimed Damis.
"Exactly," replied Turgan. "The Martians are a peaceful and justice-loving people, yet they know [376] that peace is given only to those who are ready and able to fight for it. Ages ago they perfected weapons before which the Jovians fly, if they are not destroyed. I have communicated with the Grand Mognac of Mars and laid our plight before him. ”

“ This was our earth—this was the planet we were going to defend—our home in the trackless wilderness of space. And it seemed to us indeed a home for which we might gladly expend our last breath. A new determination to conquer or die sprang up in our hearts, and I saw Lord Kelvin, after gazing at the beauteous scene which the earth presented through his eyeglass, turn about and peer in the direction in which we knew that Mars lay, with a sudden frown that caused the glass to lose its grip and fall dangling from its string upon his breast. Even Mr. Edison seemed moved. ”

“ Then, taking a deep breath, as of a swimmer preparing to dive into icy water, Sarka gave a new command.
"Dissolve! Reform on the roof of the world in globes! Roll over the face of the Earth, destroy the fire-balls of Mars—and take prisoners, inside the globes, the attackers from Mars!"
Instantly the gleaming cubes vanished, and darkness as of a mighty pit possessed the crevasse of destruction. Then, at the lip of the great crevasse, the cubes swept into form—myriads of globes which gleamed with the cold blue brilliance of the Moon! ”

“ Faintly, fearfully, came the answer.
"We hear, O Sarka!"
"Shift the blue column away from the Earth! Do not interfere as we return to our orbit about the sun! Obey, or I combine the total knowledge of Mars, the Earth, and the Moon in an attack against you and your Martian ally! Inform your ally that their people will not return, that the Earth has need of them—but that two Gens of Earth will be received by Martians in perfect amity, and these Gens allowed biding places on Mars! ”

“ If you plan to go to Venus, the weapons will remain on Mars."
"We will go to the Earth and rid her of her oppressors," replied Damis, "but first we must go to Venus and rescue Lura."
"Venus lies beyond the sun," was the Martian answer, "while your planet and Mars are on the same side. It will take you five times as long to go to Venus as to go to the Earth. Meanwhile the Jovian fleet will have landed and your efforts will be in vain to dislodge them. Even now you must fly at your best speed to reach your planet before them." ”

“ The Martian considers our year too short. In his reflections he says: "During the period in which one of us attains the middle age of fifty years those on Earth have become decrepit old men of ninety-four, if, indeed, they are not already dead."
Seriously, if there is an intelligence in Mars, it must have evolved along the same general lines as intelligence has developed on the Earth. Being an older planet, it must have outgrown many of the vagaries and illusions which still hamper man in his progress here. ”

“ And the dreamy splendor of the moons of Mars by night?
To look on a race perhaps superior to our own,
A type of our first created, ere man was o’erthrown
By sin—a calamity, the direful deed of Eve,
For which our benighted world hath ne’er ceased to grieve?
Tumultuous thoughts and strange, beyond our weak control,
Flood o’er the startled mind and agitate the soul,
As, gliding by Mars’ shores on our tour outward bound,
Assured by thoughts prophetic, almost profound,
That a nobler race of beings abideth there,
More blest, perhaps, and sinless—a world supremely fair. ”

“ One of each set of such induced identical twins was early selected to go to Mars, the other to remain on Earth. Thus Earth lost nothing, yet had its potential Martians, ready for conditioning and training in special seminaries for lifetime work on the red planet. When one of a pair of twins was a girl, the other a boy, the boy was the one sent out—since life on Mars was still a rugged affair. Thus it was that Lynne had been reared for an Earth-career while her brother, Revere, had been educated and coached for a Mars-life. ”

“ The Martians Returning.
Amid this stir of renewed life came the fatal news that Mars was undoubtedly preparing to deal us a death blow. The sudden revulsion of feeling flitted like the shadow of an eclipse over the earth. The scenes that followed were indescribable. Men lost their reason. The faint-hearted ended the suspense with self-destruction, the stout-hearted remained steadfast, but without hope and knowing not what to do. ”

“ Realizing what has been accomplished, not only regarding the constitution of the Sun, but of the most remote stars, we are encouraged to ask: Is Mars inhabited? Shall we ever know? To what groups of students are we to appeal for an answer? If we want to know the diameter of Mars, its weight, the form of its orbit, the inclination of its axis, the period of its revolution around the Sun, and its rotation period, its ephemeris and its albedo, we ask the astronomer, for he has the instruments with which to observe and measure, and the mathematical knowledge necessary to reduce the measurements. ”

“ Overhead stars of unearthly brilliancy were coming out in the frosty sky, while on either hand the banks were high and the shadows under them black as ink. In those shadows now and then I noticed with a horrible indifference other rafts were travelling, and presently, as the stream narrowed, they came out and joined us, dead Martians, budding boys and girls; older voyagers with their age quickening upon them in the Martian manner, just as some fruit only ripens after it falls ”

“ The consolation is all too brief, the sleep intermittent, and I awake to fly back to the companionship of Mars.
He is such a splendid officer! Always on guard—at sea and over the desert. He seldom shows himself resplendent in crowded cities. He dislikes company and turmoil. He is always alone, now and then racing [357] with the moon and always leaving that gentleman to the left as he smilingly beckons the wary miner of the desert and the patient mariner of the sea to the right. Mars knows the road—a magnificent, reticent soldier—and I pray ere long my friend Tesla will make him better known. ”

“ The Martian Princess should be turning around for the return to Earth.
Then out of the corner of his eye he saw it. A trace of movement. A gleam of light. Like a small moon it edged up the distant curvature of the hull. Then there were more—a nest of quivering satellites.
Without thought, Mel pressed the jet control and hurled himself into space.
The terror of his first plunge was multiplied by the presence of the searchers. Crewmen of the Martian Princess, he supposed. The absence of the space suit had probably been discovered. ”

“ There was a roar as if wild beasts of the forests for miles around had been captured, and the earth trembled as it did when the giants were thrown out of the home of the gods, for Mars had fallen and was crying about it. He had thought himself invulnerable, but whether an arrow from some unseen hero had hit him or whether his steeds had stumbled over one of Terminus' boundary posts, the invincible Mars lay prostrate on the field he had himself invaded, and before he could pick himself up, something else happened. ”

“ With Mars, on the other hand, no such false modesty balks us at the outset. The planet named after the old God of War—satirically, it would seem, since he turns out to present characteristics quite the reverse of warlike—lets himself be seen as well as thirty-five millions of miles of separation will allow.
Now, to all forms of life of which we have any conception, two things in nature are vital, air and water. A planet must possess these two things to be able to support any life at all upon its surface. ”

“ He supports this by his observation that the canals begin to appear in the neighbourhood of the polar caps, and gradually grow, as it were, in the direction of the planet's equator.
It is the idea of life on Mars which has given this planet such a fascination in the eyes of men. A great deal of nonsense has, however, been written in newspapers upon the subject, and many persons have thus been led to think that we have obtained some actual evidence of the existence of living beings upon Mars. ”

“ But let us hope that the astronomer has seen true, that Mars is not a cold grave, but the abode of happy intelligent creatures, from whom we may learn. In the light of this glorious possibility, signalling to that planet presents itself as a preeminently practical proposition which, to carry out, no human sacrifice could be too great. ”

“ For a long time the ruddy planet had been growing larger and more formidable, gradually turning from a huge star into a great red moon, and then expanding more and more until it began to shut out from sight the constellations behind it. The curious markings on its surface, which from the earth can only be dimly glimpsed with a powerful telescope, began to reveal themselves clearly to our naked eyes.
I have related how even before we had reached the asteroid, Mars began to present a most imposing appearance as we saw it with our telescopes. ”