Arthur Zagat - The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume IX

“As we regain our weight we shall feel the need of sleep again,” he said. “But on Mars we may need but one-third as much as we had on Earth, unless we exert ourselves proportionately more.”

Then I told him about the circular spot which had seemed to slip off the upper edge of Mars, and asked his explanation of it.

“That must have been Phobos, one of the moons of Mars,” he said.

“One of his moons!” I exclaimed; “I didn’t know he had any.”

“You are an American, and say that!” he answered in surprise. “It is one of the astronomical glories of your people that they discovered the two moons of Mars, during the favourable opposition of 1877.”

“This is the first case I remember where we have left it to a foreigner to tell us how great we have been!” I laughed.

“These two moons of Mars also furnish a most interesting example of how fiction may forestall and pre-figure actual scientific discovery. Dr. Swift made Gulliver, in his wonderful travels, discover two moons of Mars, revolving at a speed which he must have thought ridiculously fast. Many years afterward the American telescopes really found two moons, but actually revolving more rapidly than Dr. Swift had dared to boast! If your white circle was really Phobos, you have seen the freak among satellites. She is the smallest, swiftest moon ever discovered, and travels so much more swiftly than the revolution of her primary that she appears to go opposite to everything else in the Martian sky, rising where the Sun sets and crossing the heavens from west to east!”

“What I saw did travel in the same direction as the rotation of the planet, and much more rapidly,” I exclaimed.

“Then it was Phobos without a doubt, and she is due to appear again in the west in three hours and fifty minutes after she sets in the east. We must watch closely, for I wish to land upon her and make a flying trip all around Mars with her. Do you realize what a glorious view we shall have of the great planet, sailing around him on this satellite in a period of a little over seven and a half hours, and at a distance of only about four thousand miles? There will be no night, for if one side of the little moon is heavier than the other, the heavier side will always be turned toward Mars. Therefore, when the Sun does not shine on Phobos, Mars will do so, and keep her continually illuminated, except for the brief period of the regular eclipse during each revolution. And one-fourth of the entire heavens, as seen from Phobos, will be filled with the glowing orb of Mars! The great planet will exhibit to us at a near range all the configurations of his surface, his oceans and his clouds. We will survey and photograph him to our hearts’ content.”

The doctor was justly enthusiastic on this subject, and I felt that such a landing would, in some measure, compensate for my disappointment in not being able to visit the Moon.

As I watched carefully, the satellite finally came into view, but very much more distant from Mars than before. Also, it moved very slowly now, and seemed to grow larger as it approached the disc. I pointed it out to the doctor, and remarked that it was acting quite differently. Just as it entered upon the orb of Mars, another moon, somewhat smaller, mounted hurriedly from the under side of the planet and began hastily ploughing her way over the ruddy disc.

“That last one is the one I saw before, that is my Phobos!” I cried excitedly.

“Then the other slow one is Deimos, the outer moon. She appears the larger to us now, because her greater distance from Mars makes her nearer to us, but she appears to the Martians as the smaller. We must observe closely, and we may discover some new and lesser satellites which Earthly telescopes have never found.”

“Time enough for that when we land on Mars,” I answered. “If we get in past these two without being hit, I shall be satisfied. You dare not venture in front of that Phobos, and I don’t see how you can ever overtake her if you approach from behind.”

“That reminds me to slacken speed, for we must be getting very near,” he said. “Please weigh yourself every few minutes and note your increasing weight. You should weigh seventy-two pounds on Mars, and eight pounds at the distance of Phobos.”

He immediately reversed currents, and when I reported that I weighed almost a pound, it frightened him, and he turned in the full power of the negative currents to overcome our momentum. And it proved that the repelling power of Mars at the distance of 15,000 miles, which this indicated, was not at all strong against the great velocity we had been daily acquiring. I hung upon the scales every few minutes, and reported a steadily increasing weight up to three pounds.

“That shows a distance of eight thousand miles,” he figured. “Almost exactly in the orbit of Deimos, but she has safely passed, and will not return for thirty hours. We must turn the rudder hard over to the right, and sail around the planet in a circle until Phobos overtakes us; then, if we approach her travelling in the same direction at almost the same rate of speed, her gravitational attraction will pick us up and draw us safely ashore.”

Mars was already an enormous orb ahead of us, and many of his features, such as oceans, ice-caps, and continents, could easily be distinguished; but we paid little attention to them, being occupied with making a safe landing on Phobos, and expecting to make a systematic study of him from there.

“We must not attempt a landing on the outer side of the satellite,” the doctor reflected, “for we should have no way of getting around to the inner side to make our observations. We must go within her orbit, and then as she comes past allow her attraction to draw us gently toward her.”

We had quickly overtaken and passed Deimos, far within her orbit. I was keeping a close watch for Phobos out of the rear window as we circled about Mars at a distance which we calculated, from my weight on the scales, must be within the path of the satellite. We were circling in the same direction that the great planet was rotating, and yet we passed by things on his surface, which proved that we were travelling faster than his rotation. The doctor noticed, with his telescope, a brilliant snow-capped peak of a great mountain towering up from a small island. The contrast of the snow peak, with the darkish green waters all around it, was the most pronounced thing visible on the great planet, and he decided this must be the white spot detached from the polar ice which our astronomers have frequently observed at about twenty-five degrees south latitude, and to which they have given the name Hall’s Island.

“I am afraid we have not appreciated the speed at which we have been travelling,” remarked the doctor. “Phobos is very slow in overtaking us;” and he was just beginning to slacken speed still more, when he suddenly cried out,—

“Here she is ahead of us now! We have overtaken her, instead of waiting for her to catch us!”

And, true enough, we were gradually approaching a small brownish mass, feebly illuminated on its outer half by the sun, and more faintly still on its inner half by reflected light from Mars.

And how shall I describe that queer little toy-world which we were gradually overtaking? Imagine, if you can, a little island, less than a third the size of the Isle of Wight, tossed a few thousand miles into space, and circling there rapidly to avoid falling back upon the greater sphere. Imagine that flying island devoid of soil, of trees or vegetation, of water or air, of everything but barren, uncrumbled, homogeneous rock, and you have some idea of the unadorned desolation of Phobos, into which we were slowly sailing, or falling. There was not even the slightest trace of sand or scraps of rock, such as time must have abraded from even the hardest surfaces, but the reason for this soon became apparent.