Stephen Baxter - The Massacre of Mankind

‘The north,’ Joe Hopson said. ‘That’s always been obvious, yes; they would seek the north, the coldest lands. But the Arctic is the roof of the world – Canada and Asia – it’s a damned big place. Are you saying they’ve been found? ’

He answered mildly, ‘I’m saying there have been reports to that effect. There’s an expedition planned next year. Weather permitting. Julie, fancy a trip? There we can confirm what the Martians are doing up there – or rather, what I believe they’ve been doing…’

To the Arctic, searching for Martians! Well, I wasn’t about to say no. Would you?

That winter passed slowly for me, in a daze of expectation. Then in early March 1937, I boarded the LZ-138 Vaterland , at Murmansk.

That city is about as far east as you can go in the northern Russian empire and still find something resembling civilisation.

And we would be travelling in the late Arctic winter, about as inhospitable a time and place as our dear old earth offers you, although, as Walter Jenkins never tired of pointing out, to a Martian it would be like the balmiest of summers. We privileged few, however, a multinational party, would travel in a flying hotel.

We gathered in a chilly aerodrome outside the city. Here was Walter himself, seventy-one now, frailer than ever. Joe Hopson was with me; he had kindly volunteered for the trip to serve as a general companion, assistant and guide. Like most military veterans he was a supremely competent chap, and I was glad to have him with me.

And Eric Eden was there too, aged fifty-five, now officially retired from the British Army but still serving as a paid advisor to various government departments on all things Martian – he bore his own burn scars, but he was another survivor whose presence reassured me.

All told there were fifty passengers of a dozen nationalities, most of whom were scientists unknown to me, but I had no doubt of their relevant expertise – at least as judged by some committee or other in the Federation embassy in Paris. And such a high-profile jaunt, with a lot of attendant publicity, naturally attracted the famous and the rich. It was rather fun to do some celebrity-spotting as we stood on that windy platform.

I thought I recognised our expedition leader: Otto Yulevich Schmidt, well over six feet tall, a scholar and outdoorsman famed for leading expeditions into the Russian Arctic over a decade. I was not surprised to learn that, in addition to Schmidt, there were heroes of polar exploration among our crew, such as Richard Byrd, first to fly to the North Pole. I was told that our newly crowned King Edward’s American wife was on board. Their union had been seen a symbol of a new age of transatlantic amity despite a mild controversy over her previous divorce. But I did not see Queen Wallis. There was even a rumour that the Kaiser Wilhelm III was aboard, taking part in this ambitious flight of the most prestigious of his country’s aerial vessels. If so, I never glimpsed him either.

‘Even more aggressive than his unlamented father,’ Eric murmured to me. ‘If we come within biting distance of a real, live Martian we may need to muzzle the man.’

When the time came for our boarding, however, I soon forgot my companions, for I was enthralled by our great craft itself. I first saw the Vaterland in bright morning light. Even penned in its hangar it was a tremendous sight, a huge cylinder lying flat on the concrete apron, dwarfing the buildings and service vehicles which attended it. Its great belly rested on wheels and rails, and there were huge stabilising fins on its flanks and at the tail where a vast engine block was fixed. Then came the call: ‘Airship forward!’ A kind of netting was fixed over the ship’s pale grey surface, and workers like ants dragged the vessel from its shed by hand.

As we passengers walked towards the craft – there was a sickly-sweet smell which I was told was associated with the replenishment of hydrogen – the airship became only more impressive, more towering. It was no less than a third of a mile long from bow to stern, with the capability of carrying a hundred tons of cargo, driven by its Daimler-Benz engines at a top speed of ninety miles per hour. But it was the symbolism of the craft that struck me most. A new age of global federations we might be living in, but you wouldn’t know it from a glance at the Vaterland . Everywhere were the colours of imperial Germany, strong yellow and black, and a mighty eagle, all in black, was emblazoned on the nose – that design alone must have been a hundred feet tall. And Eric pointed out to me the three great compartments which the ship carried slung under its belly. The front was the passenger gondola, the rear was for engines and fuel – but the middle section, Eric said, was essentially a bomb bay.

The passenger gondola, I observed on boarding, was split into two decks, the upper for the kitchens and stores and quarters for the crew, and the lower for our cabins and the lounges and dining rooms. There is always an enormous amount of room on a big airship. Even as we boarded, a player at a grand piano treated us to selections from Wagner. It did not take us long to find our rooms and get settled. Later I would explore the cabin’s own ingenious features: the padded walls, the fold-away bunk and table, the telephone, the electric lights.

For now, though, I hurried back to the main lounge for the takeoff.

I sat with Eden and Hopson – Walter had retired to his room, intent on his note-taking, his endless studies. I could already hear, indeed feel, the throbbing of the great engines transmitted through the ship’s frame. The lounge was fitted out in the most modern styles, all beige colours on the walls and uplighting on the ceiling, and glass-topped tables and chairs with chrome rails. There was even a small vase with fresh flowers set on our table. It all made the dear old Lusitania , fond in my memory, seem shabby.

‘Cast off!’ came the cry.

And then we rose.

On an airship, you know, the windows are all in the walls and floor, so one can look down at the landscapes that slide silently below, while above your head the sky is shielded by the great bulk of the lift envelope. And the moments of launch offer perhaps the most spectacular views of all. The aerodrome shrank below us, the workers standing by the mooring tower and waving, turning into tiny dolls. The sprawl of Murmansk itself was soon visible to the south, and to the north the Barents Sea opened up, blue open water close to the shore but with ice floes scattered not far out. On the horizon the ice merged into a solid mass that, I knew, stretched all the way to the pole. Not far out to sea I saw a small convoy, a couple of icebreakers and some low-slung cargo ships. The Russians’ Great Northern Sea Route, a six-thousand-mile passage all along the northern coast of Eurasia, is open for only a few months of the year – mere weeks in a bad season – and it pays to set off early if you don’t want to spend a winter trapped in the ice.

Even as we lifted small aircraft jumped into the sky to see us off. Monoplanes, with hulls of glittering aluminium and the sigils of the imperial Russian air force bright on their wings, they ducked and darted around us, making what seemed impossibly tight curves.

Eric Eden was impressed. ‘Those must be reaction-engine flyers – following the principle of the Martians’ flying-machines, and a product of the German-Russian war, of course. Our

planes still use screw propellers to drag themselves through the air.’

‘Silly asses,’ muttered Hopson, puffing on an unlit pipe smoking was not allowed aboard our hydrogen-lifted craft.

‘Flies buzzing an elephant.’ But despite this languid dismissal he craned to see the feisty little craft as much as any of us.