The Alternate Martians Read online

  He paused significantly.

  “How many of us carry memories of past existences, of the different worlds upon which we have lived, from coil to coil?”

  “What do you mean, exactly?” asked Wilkinson.

  “Just what I say.” He moved away from the bookshelves, half turned toward them, gestured with his right hand. “Here are some of the people who, just perhaps, had such memories.”

  From where he was sitting Wilkinson could read some of the titles on the spines of the books, the old, old books, their covers patched and preserved with transparent plastic. “A Princess of Mars,” he read aloud. “Carson of Venus….” Then, on another shelf, “The First Men in the Moon. The War of the Worlds.”

  “Science fiction,” said Titov. “Twentieth century science fiction. Written long before the first unmanned probe rockets orbited Mars and Venus, crash-landed on the Moon. Stories in which human beings could gallivant around on the surfaces of Mars and Venus — and even in the caverns honeycombing the Moon — without so much as the protection of even a simple oxygen mask.

  “Bad guesses, Wilkinson? Or — memories?”

  “I’ve never read any of those books,” admitted Wilkinson. “But I’ve read about them. I’ve read Clarendon’s The Great Martian Canal Myth …”

  “Yes. A myth on this Coil of Time. But is it a myth on some of the others?” He resumed his chair, signaling to Natalie to pour some more brandy. “Take Venus, for example. Take Venus as we know it — the torrid, poisonous gale that howls outside the domes, the all-devouring dust. Take Venus as you and Vanessa knew it — an uncomfortably hot world, humid, but not unpleasant once you got used to it and dressed for the climate; a Venus whose indigenous fauna was not unlike that existing on Earth in the remote past. A Venus that was described, in some detail, by Burroughs, and Heinlein, and Bradbury, and dozens of others. Were they guessing — or were they remembering?

  “Or Mars — the Mars of Burroughs, Leigh Brackett, John Wyndham. A breathable atmosphere, a climate warm enough to permit the minimum of clothing during the day although chilly enough after sunset. And the canals. Don’t forget the canals. There are canals now — but we cut them. There weren’t any canals at the First Landing; neither were there Burroughs’ Red Martians, Green Martians and all the rest of ‘em. Neither were there Wells’ octopoid Big Brains, with the handling machines and fighting machines that were extensions of their feeble bodies, nor were there Stapledon’s intelligent clouds.

  “But when it came to Mars — with assorted Martians complete with a canal system — were Wells, Burroughs and all the rest guessing, or remembering? Was there a Wellsian or a Stapledonian Martian Invasion on some other Coil of Time? Was there a John Carter who married the Princess Dejah Thoris?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Wilkinson, “but it seems fantastic.”

  “You should talk. You’d have drowned in a good, old-fashioned Venusian swamp if it hadn’t been for your suit.

  But, on this Coil of Time, such swamps exist only in fiction.”

  “Dr. Titov,” asked Vanessa sharply, “just what is it that you want Christopher to do?”

  “Skipper the Discovery. Take her to Mars, that’s all — assuming, that is, that Central Government grants us permission. The ship will be, to all intents and purposes, no more than a mobile, spaceborne laboratory, with Dr. Henshaw’s apparatus installed on board in its own special compartment. After the landing has been made I, as I’ve already told you, will make the Time Jumps.”

  “Jumping, he hopes,” said Natalie, “straight into the welcoming arms of Dejah Thoris.” She turned to Titov. “You’d better watch out that John Carter doesn’t skewer you with his sword.”

  “But isn’t your assumption that Central Government will grant permission for a landing on Mars, or even for the establishment of a closed orbit about the planet, rather optimistic?” asked Wilkinson. “As I understand the setup, all you people have been virtually exiled to Venus because your experiments are too dangerous to be carried out on any inhabited world.”

  “Yes, that is the case, but the Director hopes to persuade the authorities that Henshaw’s tinkering with time is dangerous only to whoever is the guinea pig.”

  “But if we can make the trip from one Coil to the next, what’s to stop something or somebody unpleasant from that Coil making the trip in the opposite direction? After all, Vanessa did.”

  “You don’t flatter your fiancée, Wilkinson. I should not describe her as something or somebody unpleasant.”

  “You know what I mean, Doctor.”

  “Yes. That point, as a matter of fact, has already been considered. Central Government raised it. They were told to dig Burroughs’ Martian novels out of their library. I don’t think that they’d consider Burroughs’ Martians much of a military menace.”

  “What if some bright bureaucrat should stumble on Wells’ The War of the Worlds?” asked Natalie.

  “And so what?” asked Titov. “Wells’ Martians were more than a match for the armies of the late Nineteenth Century but, after all, by our standards they were nothing marvelous. Being shot off their planet by a huge cannon for a start, and making uncontrolled crash landings on Earth in their projectiles. Their famous Heat Ray was no more than laser, and their Black Smoke was only a poison gas, effective only against people utterly ignorant of scientific warfare.”

  “So you think we’ll be permitted?” asked Wilkinson.

  “I’m pretty certain of it,”

  “But there are still Department of Spacial Navigation Regulations to contend with,” pointed out Wilkinson, with a certain glum satisfaction.

  “Such as?”

  “Such as the manning scale. A Master — which you have. At least two watchkeeping officers, which you haven’t. Radio Officer. Engineers …”

  “That point has already been considered. Discovery is classed as an experimental ship, fully automated. The Department is satisfied that our watchkeeping gadgetry is of such a high standard that only a Master and an Engineer need be carried. Clavering, of course, will be the Engineer.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?” asked Wilkinson.

  “Don’t be in such a hurry,” admonished Titov. “We still have to obtain permission to carry out experiments on Mars — and, come to that, Discovery has yet to be declared spaceworthy. Legally speaking, you, as the only Master Astronaut presently on Venus, are qualified to act as a Surveyor. And, since both you and Vanessa will be shipping out in Discovery, I’m reasonably certain that the surveys will be thorough ones.”

  “They will be,” promised Wilkinson.

  IV

  SO WILKINSON and Vanessa were married, but there was no honeymoon. Wilkinson was far too busy seeing to it that Discovery was made spaceworthy. Clavering was of very little assistance to him. The Master Mechanic was harboring a grudge, complaining that he had accepted his post at Science City on the understanding that it was to be a shore job. But Wilkinson coped. As the holder of a Master Astronaut’s Certificate of Competency he had been obliged to satisfy the examiners that he possessed some rudimentary knowledge of engineering principles. He could read a meter, could test a circuit as well as the next man. He could see to it that things that should be greased were greased, that things that should be oiled were oiled, and that the right kind of grease and oil was employed in every case. When it came to the re-establishment of the ship’s air-conditioning equipment he relied heavily upon Titov and his staff, reasoning (correctly) that the biologists would know at least as much about hydroponics as the generality of ship’s biochemists. And the bright boys of the Physics Laboratory made short work of putting the vessel’s communications and electronic navigation equipment into first class trim.

  Even so, in spite of his early command (and the strong hints that it might be a permanent one) Wilkinson felt a growing sense of disappointment. He knew that Vanessa felt as he did. He had hoped that they would be married on Earth, and that their honeymoon would be spent in places and cities that he kn
ew and loved — that she, with him as her guide, would come to know and love. But now the honeymoon would have to be deferred until the landing on Mars. It would not be the same, with the cities under pressurized domes, with no outdoor life at all apart from the occasional walk over the desert muffled up in heavy clothing and wearing an oxygen mask. And there would be too many memories — the memories of the other Vanessa, the dead Vanessa.

  Still, there would be compensations. There would be the voyage itself, from Venus to Mars. There would be the opportunity for him to strut (discreetly, subtly) before his female, Master under God, monarch of all he surveyed. (But he could not imagine the notoriously independently minded Mad Scientists taking a Master’s pretensions too seriously.)

  Venus Queen came — and, after her usual short stay, went. Wilkinson accepted the congratulations of his old shipmates upon both his appointment and his marriage. The first was regarded by them as being a matter of luck; he had been Johnny-on-the-spot when the vacancy occurred. The marriage they found somewhat more puzzling, inasmuch as many of them had met the first Vanessa before she had died. It is a well-known fact that both men and women tend to team up with a succession of carbon copies of their first loves — but the living Vanessa was more, much more, than a mere carbon copy. And she even had the same given name as her predecessor. (Had Venus Queen’s officers known that her second name had also been the same they would have been even more puzzled.) They assumed that she had been one of the female staff of Science City, and that Wilkinson’s meeting her had been, like his being given command of Discovery, just another piece of luck. At the somewhat wet party prior to the Queen’s departure the bride and the bridegroom were toasted, and the hope expressed that Wilkinson’s luck would continue to hold.

  Wilkinson was not sorry to see the ship go — and he was glad, now, that the original arrangements had fallen through. He could see that a voyage to Earth in the Venus Queen would have been awkward for both Vanessa and himself. Too many old wounds would have been reopened, too many new ones inflicted. The way things were now, it would be a completely new start for both his wife and himself.

  Meanwhile, there was work, and more work. First of all Discovery was rendered spaceworthy after her long lay-up. And then there were the structural modifications to be made for the accommodation of Henshaw’s apparatus. And then the ship had to be rendered spaceworthy all over again.

  But the Science City people worked long hours, efficiently and cheerfully. There was none of the irritating unionism that was such a fruitful source of delay on Earth, Mars and the Lunar Colony. If one of the biologists working on the hydroponics system picked up and used a screwdriver there was not a general walk-off. There were no demands for dirt money, danger money or any other kind of additional payment on dubious grounds. Clavering did unearth from among his effects a dog-eared copy of the Spacial Engineers’ Award and started to leaf through its clauses — but Wilkinson, having already made a few inquiries, was able to tell him that he was already being paid far in excess of the ruling Award rates and that his accommodation aboard Discovery more than conformed to the minimum standards laid down.

  And then came the day when the ship was ready for her trials.

  Overriding his protests, Vanessa accompanied Wilkinson. He had told her that in space one could never be certain of anything, and that in a ship recommissioned after years of idleness anything could go wrong and probably would. She had said, “So it’s risky, Chris. And what about the life that I was leading on the other Venus — the life of a hunted animal. Wasn’t that risky?” He had been obliged to admit that it had been so. “All right. I’m coming along. If anything goes wrong, seriously wrong, I want to be with you. I lost you once. If you’re killed again, I want to be killed with you.” He had said that she was a morbid little lady dog and that, in any case, he hadn’t been killed on the other Coil of Time. It was, of course, entirely the wrong thing to say. And so Vanessa came along.

  Titov was there, naturally, and his Natalie. There was Clavering, as Chief Engineer, technically in command of the bright young scientists and technicians who infested his engineroom. In fact, as Wilkinson remarked rather sourly, if he were the Owner and the Science City boys and girls fare-paying passengers, this one short hop would make his fortune.

  Before the takeoff he made a personal check of everything. He did not trust all the prettly little pilot lights that made a Christmas tree of his control panel, that were supposed to compensate for the lack of skilled, qualified officers. He knew that Lloyd’s of London were, and always had been, the main stumbling block in the way of complete shipboard automation. He remembered what a Lloyd’s Surveyor had once told him: “Don’t forget, Mr. Wilkinson, that a human being is a robust, multi-purpose robot — and, furthermore, one with imagination and prevision. We, as the underwriters, should never be happy to see a ship at the mercy of a single fuse….”

  At last he was satisfied.

  Every piece of machinery was either functioning or ready to function. Airlock doors were hermetically sealed. The hydroponics room was a mass of broad-leaved greenery, and the fans were maintaining air circulation through the hull. Chemical purifiers had been installed for emergency use, as had been bottles of oxygen.

  He returned to the Control Room and strapped himself into the pilot’s seat, sparing the time to smile briefly at Vanessa, who was keeping well out of the way in a spare chair, then at Titov and Natalie.

  The red-haired girl, who seemed to have appointed herself communications officer, asked quietly, “All ready, Captain?”

  “Yes, Miss Weldon. You know the procedure?”

  “I think I do, Captain. I’ve been studying hard to qualify myself for the job.”

  “I didn’t know that you were getting it, even,” grumbled Wilkinson, then took the sting out of the words with another smile. He pressed the Stand By button set in the center of the lower half of the panel, that devoted to engine controls. He watched the pilot light change from red to amber — and then, after a slight time lag, to green.

  Natalie Weldon was speaking into her microphone. “Your attention, please. Your attention, please. Secure for Space. Secure for Space.”

  And no departmental heads to report all secure, thought Wilkinson. That’s one thing that the automation experts forgot.

  He said, “We shall have to use the Countdown technique. Tell them takeoff in five minutes; then four, then three, and so on. On the final half minute, switch to seconds.”

  “Ay, ay, Captain.”

  “Before you start, get the usual permission from the Spaceport Manager.”

  “Will do, sir.”

  Wilkinson looked around his Control Room. He was on his own, now. There was nobody to whom he could turn for advice, nobody to give him orders, And, just to improve matters, this would be an instrument takeoff. The metal screens were down over the viewports, and would remain in place until the ship was well clear of the swirling clouds of gale-driven abrasive dust. He stared at the radar display, at the blob of light that was the dome housing the spaceport offices, at the other blobs that were the domes of Science City. He tried to memorize their relative positions. This was the way that he wanted them to look on the screen when he came in for his landing.

  “Permission granted, Captain,” announced Natalie Weldon.

  “Thank you. Please start the Countdown.”

  He heard her say, “Takeoff will be in exactly five minutes’ time. Please see to it that all is secure.”

  Wilkinson started the Inertial Drive, initiating the normal warm-up procedure. He heard the whine of the Drive Unit, felt the vibration, felt too the odd sensation of lightness that would persist until the ship actually lifted, until acceleration became a substitute for a gravitational field.

  He was aware that Vanessa was saying something, her voice little more than a whisper: “Not … not like a rocket....”

  He smiled at her, then held his finger to his lips warningly.

  “Three minutes….”

/>   Time was dragging.

  “Two minutes….

  “One minute….

  “Thirty seconds…. Twenty…. Ten….”

  I hope this crew of planet-lubbers has secured everything….

  “Nine… Eight… Seven….”

  No trouble lights on the panel?

  “Four…. Three…. Two….”

  No.

  “One…. UP!”

  His finger stabbed the correct buttons. Abruptly the whine of the drive became almost supersonic, the sensation of lightness was replaced by one of weight, and the needle of the altimeter quivered and then started to climb. On the radar display the blobs of fluorescence diminished, then began to drift off the screen. The gale had hold of them. Hastily, Wilkinson brought the Auxiliary Drive into play to compensate. He knew that this was bad spacemanship, that a really competent pilot could correct lateral drift merely by juggling his Main Drive and his gyroscopes. But, until he had the feel of the ship, his motto was Safety First. The only one who would know what had been done, who would be able to guess why it had been done, would be Clavering. But the Engineer could be told that it was a necessary testing of all propulsive machinery.

  It was a leisurely climb, a long climb. Wilkinson had no desire to break records. At long last he was able to lower the shutters so that the others could stare out at the blackness, at the shining points of light that were world after world, sun after sun, at the huge half-moon below them that was the planet from which they had lifted. He actuated the polarizers, then turned the ship so that the sun, with its corona and one great solar prominence, came into view.

  Finally, using Main Drive and gyroscopes only, he made an orbit of the planet, homing at last on the Science City beacon.

  When the ship grounded gently at her berth he knew that she was his.

  V