Arthur Zagat - The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume IX

“Yes, if they will leave us alive to breathe it,” I added, counting out seventeen cartridges for each rifle.

“The air outside shows a pressure of only eleven, while we have eighteen inside,” he said. “I will bring in the discharging cylinder full of the outer air, and by keeping it upside down the lighter air will remain in it. Then, if a candle flame will burn steadily in it, the oxygen we need is there.”

Suiting the action to the word, he carefully drew in the inverted cylinder, and cautiously brought a lighted candle into it. To our great delight the flame burned for a moment with a brighter, stronger light than it did in the air of the compartment.

“Hurrah!” cried the doctor, as happily as if he had just earned the right to live. “It seems to have more oxygen than our own air, which will make up for the lesser density.”

Then he put the lighted candle in the cylinder, and quickly discharged it outside upon the ground where we could see it. The flame had almost twice the brilliancy that it had had inside.

“Our scientists who have sneered at the possibility of life on Mars, because of its rare atmosphere, have overlooked the simplicity of the problem. They delight in propounding posers for Omnipotence. If a Creator dilutes oxygen with three parts of nitrogen on one planet where conditions make a dense atmosphere, why should He not dilute oxygen with an equal part of nitrogen on a planet where the air is rare? Air is not a chemical compound, but a simple mixture. When a stronger, more life-giving atmosphere is needed, let there be less of the diluting gas. The nitrogen is of no known use, except to weaken the oxygen.”

“Let me out into it, if you say it is all right,” I cried. “I am tired of this bird-cage.”

“Put on the diver’s suit and helmet, and I will weaken the pressure of the air gradually, to prevent bleeding at the nose and ears which a sudden change might cause. When you are used to the low pressure, you can throw off the helmet and try the Martian double-oxygenated air.”

I hurriedly donned the queer, baggy suit and the enormous helmet with the bulging glass eyes, and then connected the two long rubber tubes which sprang from the top with the air pipes which led to the doctor’s compartment. He put in the bulkhead, and I went to the port-hole to unseal it. As I glanced out the little window, I thought I saw a light very near the mica. Was it our candle flame that something had lifted? The thick glass of the helmet blinded me a little, and I approached the window and peered out, coming face to face with a Martian, whose nose was pressed against the mica! What a rounded, smooth, and expressionless face! But what large, deep, luminous eyes!

I sprang back from the window in surprise, but not more quickly than he did. Just then the projectile rolled over slightly with a crunching noise, and I hear the thud of a heavy muffled blow on the doctor’s end. Suddenly he pulled away the bulkhead and whispered to me excitedly:—

“They are all about us outside—dozens of them! They are examining the projectile and trying to break it open. If they strike the windows, it will be too easy.”

The projectile tottered a little again. There was a heaving noise, and one end rose a little from the ground.

“They are trying to carry us off, Doctor,” I cried. “You must turn in the currents and fly away from them.”

The projectile was just then lifted awkwardly, and wavered a little and pitched, as if it were being carried by a throng struggling clumsily all about it. The doctor sprang to his apparatus and turned in four batteries at once. We shot up swiftly in a long curve, and from my window I could see the circle of amazed Martians, standing dumbly with their hands still held up in front of them, as they had been when the projectile left them, while they gazed open-mouthed into the sky at us.

“They must have thought the projectile was another chunk fallen from Phobos!” I exclaimed; “and now they can’t make out why it should fly back to the satellite again.”

“The more we mystify them, the more they will fear us,” said the doctor. “I am going to make a swift downward swoop now, as if we would crash through the midst of them. Then perhaps they will let us alone till we are ready for them.”

He had scarcely finished speaking when we shot down in a long curve, like the swing of a pendulum, apparently making directly for the group of Martians. They were not seized by any quick panic; they were too phlegmatic for that. But just as the projectile threatened to smash into them, they seemed to realize the danger, and to grasp the idea that it was being operated and directed by some power and mind inside. Then they turned, scrambling clumsily over each other, and fled with the awkward precipitation of a rhinoceros in a hurry. Our pendulum motion swung us up a little before we would have struck them, but they had scattered and were scurrying to hiding-places behind the walls of the masonry telescopes. We continued our flight to the edge of the plateau, whence we could get a better view of the city and hold a more commanding position.

“None of these who have seen our aerial evolutions are likely to trouble us again,” remarked the doctor. “But they will quickly spread the news to the city, and we must be where we can watch everything that goes on there, and hurriedly prepare for the worst they can do to us. We will seek the principal approach to the plateau and defend it.”

His ideas had suddenly become altogether warlike. I liked the excitement of it so far, and hastened to agree with him. We came to land in a sheltered part of the main road leading to the plateau, and prepared to emerge and set up our telescope where it would sweep the city.

“Shall we try this air on the dog before you go out?” inquired the doctor in all seriousness.

“Try it on the rabbit if you wish, but not on Two-spot.”

He put Bunny into the discharging cylinder and pushed him out. The meek little animal seemed quite delighted at being released. He hopped about playfully, skipping much higher and farther at each hop than I had ever seen him do before.

This reassured me, and I put on the helmet again, and opened the port-hole. As the rarer Martian air swept in, my suit swelled and puffed to its fullest capacity, by the expansion of the denser air within it. I was so blown up that I could scarcely squeeze myself out of the port-hole. It was like a red misty day outside, though there were no clouds. The sky was a perfectly cloudless dull red, and the coppery sun was shining almost overhead. His orb looked less than two-thirds the size it did from the Earth, and one could look at its duller light fixedly without hurting the eyes. Phobos was also faintly visible, steering his backward course across the ruddy sky. The thermometer showed a temperature just above freezing, but I was perfectly warm within the diver’s suit and its envelope of air. The red haze and utter lack of breeze added a deceptive appearance of sultry heat.

I was gazing back toward the Gnomons, when suddenly a group of the Martians we had first seen came around a turn of the road and over a knoll into full view of us. They were plainly surprised beyond all measure by my strange appearance. My puffed and corpulent figure, my bulging face of glass, my two long rubber tentacles extending back into my shell, must have made them think I was a very curious animal! Also they were probably surprised at seeing any living thing come out of the mass, which they must have thought had fallen from their moon, for she was always shying things at them. And I now had my first chance to study their appearance closely.

“Doctor,” I said softly, to see if he could hear me through the connecting tubes. As I had hoped, they proved to be very good speaking-trumpets, and I heard his answer noisily.