11
“Hurrah we’re here!” shouted Taggert, executing a hand-spring, and narrowly missing the incandescents in the ceiling because of his unaccustomed light weight.
Robert and Professor Palmer accepted their triumph more quietly.
To Robert the remarkable trip already seemed as a nightmare. As he looked out on the quiet, desolate scene in the deepening twilight, he could scarcely realize that they were not still on the Earth. For despite the desolation of the vast Martian desert stretching before his eyes, and the fact that he had never before even seen a desert except in pictures, his imagination balked when he tried to believe himself on a strange planet, millions of miles from the Earth. The idea was preposterous, absurd! Robert’s more deliberate self persisted in half suspecting that they had simply miscalculated, and had actually returned to the Earth at some remote spot.
“Boys, I’m going to try a whiff of our new atmosphere,” said the professor, unlatching one of the small portholes.
Before either of the others could interfere, he had swung the heavy glass slightly inward, and sniffed the Martian atmosphere speculatively.
Whatever fears they held were quickly dispelled by the look of relief which came over Professor Palmer’s countenance as he swung the port wide open and eagerly inhaled the outside atmosphere.
“It’s all right,” he cried. “The regular stuff! Come on and enjoy some fresh, Martian desert air.”
Robert and Taggert did not need to be urged. The air within the Sphere seemed suddenly to have grown unbearably stale. With one accord they opened the other ports and filled their lungs with the sweet, cold air outside.
“We’ll have to close up again to keep warm tonight,” shivered Taggert.
“Thirty-four degrees above zero,” read Robert from the Fahrenheit thermometer outside.
“The air on these deserts cools very rapidly after twilight,” said the professor. “Even in the Sahara, on our own globe, the temperature frequently drops below freezing at night. However, the temperature in the canal belts should be more uniform.”
“Let’s get outside and look around a bit,” suggested Robert.
“Good idea,” echoed the reporter. “I’d like to see what some of these oafs look like.”
“Not likely to be any of them strolling around in the desert at night,” said Robert.
“Can’t tell; I’ll bet they didn’t fail to see the Sphere when we slid over here. We’re likely to have an army down on us tonight.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” said Professor Palmer. “The Martians are obviously a people of much intelligence. I expect they will act just about as our own people would, should some curious machine land upon the Earth. They will probably wait till daylight, then come out and satisfy their curiosity.”
“And ours,” added Robert, remembering his dream.
As they stepped out upon the sand, buttoned into warm coats, a brilliant spectacle was presented to their gaze.
Low in the southeast Phobus hung like a glowing orange. Its now apparently smooth, bright disk was a decided contrast to the dark, threatening, cavernous face which had frightened them but a few hours earlier. All round them the indigo sky was studded with stars of the great brilliance that is reserved for travelers of the deserts. Behind them the comfortable flood of illumination from the Sphere spread its friendly radiance over the sand.
“Look over there!” cried Taggert suddenly, pointing toward the east.
Far away on the horizon’s edge a diffused white glow shone steadily.
“A city,” guessed Robert quickly.
“A group of cities—a Martian oasis,” suggested the professor.
“Why, there are some lights along the canal, too,” said Robert, becoming aware of a number of lights stretching along the endless strip of fertile land to the south of them.
“Well, I’ll be damned!” cried Taggert. “Say, let’s run over to town tonight!”
But however sanguine the professor might have been regarding the existence of an intelligent race upon the planet, he balked at a precipitate invasion of their haunts right then. So it was decided to wait till morning for developments.
The lantern which Robert carried was almost superfluous in the bright starlight. They enjoyed the novelty of trudging about through the sand, after their extended confinement within the Sphere. In spite of the looseness and depth of the sand, they walked over it with amazing ease because of the decreased gravity on the smaller planet. Robert, for example, who weighed 150 pounds on earth, now weighed less than sixty pounds. Yet he retained his full strength, so that the task of walking was tremendously reduced.
“Run you a race, Robert,” called Taggert, starting out abruptly at a great pace.
The temptation was too great. Robert was a good runner and reveled in the sport. He dashed after the reporter.
His feet scarcely seemed to touch the sand as he raced after the fleeting shadow ahead of him. With giant strides, twenty feet long, he steadily reduced the distance between them.
Suddenly there came a dim shout ahead, followed by a dull thud—then, silence.
Robert slowed up as quickly as possible and looked round him. The reporter had disappeared!
Far in the rear the Sphere shone brightly, like a beacon. Between it and himself he could see the professor’s lantern bobbing up and down as he strode along.
As he continued bewilderedly to search the sands for some sign of Taggert, his eyes became better accustomed to the semi-darkness.
Suddenly he descried a long dark shape lying in the sand several rods away.
He approached it cautiously, only to discover what seemed to be a large log. But as he looked up another dark object ahead caught his eye. Surely that looked like the figure of a man sprawled upon the sand. Even as he looked, it moved and struggled to a sitting posture.
“Hello—that you, Taggert, old fellow?” he sang out, approaching.
“It’s me all right,” came Taggert’s voice, weakly.
“What happened to you?”
“Fell over that dashed boulder back there. About knocked the wind out of me. I must have been going about forty miles an hour,” he explained, getting to his feet with Robert’s assistance.
“What are you two up to?” cried Professor Palmer, coming up with them.
“Our stowaway just tried to break his neck over a log back there.”
“A log?” incredulously from the now recovered reporter. “Say, this is a desert, not a jungle! That was a rock I fell over.”
They walked over to the object of their discussion, and examined it in the rays of the lantern.
“A petrified log,” pronounced Professor Palmer.
“Well, who brought it out here?”—belligerently.
“It grew here many centuries ago, my boy. This is a relic of a dead forest, of which we are probably on the edge. See, there are others scattered about over that way. I have seen the same thing out in Arizona.”
Their discussion ended, they decided to go back to the Sphere and get a good night’s rest.
“Suppose some of these oafs have taken possession during our absence,” suggested Taggert, persisting still in so calling the as yet unseen Martians.
“If it hadn’t been for you young scamps it wouldn’t have been left unguarded,” retorted Professor Palmer.
But they found the Sphere as they had left it, and no one in sight.
With lights out for greater safety, they spent a quiet night. All three were up again with the dawn.
The warm sunshine streamed in at the windows cheerfully. Soon the thermometer on the shady side registered forty-one degrees and was rising rapidly. It had dropped to twenty-five the night before when they retired.
An appetizing breakfast was prepared by Taggert, who had insisted upon being the official cook. The keen Martian air and a good night’s rest had brought them all ravenous appetites, and they did the simple repast full justice.
“Come to think about it,” mused Taggert, “the night passed mighty quickly. Professor, how long are the nights and days on Mars?”
“The night seemed to pass quickly because you slept soundly. It happens that a Martian night and day together consume just about twenty-four hours and forty minutes, our time. In other words, by an odd coincidence, Martian days and nights are each approximately but twenty minutes longer than those of the Earth.”
The professor’s last words were interrupted by Robert’s abruptly rising to his feet and pointing mutely out the window!