Chapter 1
An Unexpected World
We were totally alone in space, at
a much greater distance from our planet than men had ever reached, or at
least so we believed.
Our Soviet Souyez moved slowly among
the stars, in a meticulously governed orbit, the final stage before bearing
us to our final objective. Before us, occupying all the viewing ports,
was the red planet Mars, enormous and majestic, covered with small clouds
of sand in one of its zones, riddled with meteorite impacts, dark and lifeless.
Mars! For many years the name had
given rise to the most extraordinary fantasies in the mind of man.
Only a few decades ago some cosmonaut might have attempted to discern the
famous canals of Schiaparelli. Canals, the engineering efforts of
an extraterrestrial race, that of the fabled Martians, possible invaders
of our world, even, as the Englishman Wells had dreamed.
But there were no Martians. Our
probes and those of the Americans had resolved the question with merciless
perfection, indicating that the Fourth Planet was as devoid of life as
the moon itself. We could say good-bye to the fantastic futuristic
cities where the second Tolstoy would place his princess Aelita.
Today the planet Mars was simply a mere objective in the space race, an
objective that we had succeeded in reaching before our eternal rivals of
the starry flag.
I was calculating the initial impulse
parameters that would carry us to the surface of the planet, when my second
and only companion in the ship, Lieutenant Maksim Ivanovich Miliutov, approached
me and drew my attention, touching me lightly on the shoulder.
"Igor Nikolaievich, we have problems."
"What problems?" I turned toward
him. He gestured toward the instrument panel.
"There is a magnetic perturbation that
is growing rapidly," he explained. "It indicates that we are approaching
a strong electromagnetic field."
I confirmed the anomaly, and then moved
to the view screen corresponding to the prow. The ship was following
its orbit correctly, with nothing alarming to be seen.
"Check the meters," I said. "There
could be an error...."
But at that very moment a terrible shudder
seized the ship. We were hurled like dolls against the walls, while
the entire craft vibrated as if shaken by the hand of a giant.
"What is this?" shouted my companion.
"Has there been a meteorite?"
I did not answer him, although I knew
full well that it could not be what he said. I got to my feet as
best I could, approaching the instrument panel. The needles of all
the indicators were dancing crazily, as if seized by an attack of madness.
"We are falling, we are falling!"
shouted Maksim.
I leaped toward the screen. It
was true, the ship had been torn from its orbit by the strange phenomenon,
and was now falling dizzyingly toward the planet around which we had previously
been rotating.
"Quick, to the seats!" I ordered,
as I adjusted my safety belts. "I am going to fire the rockets."
But half the tubes had been affected
by the mysterious catastrophe. My fingers dashed here and there over
the controls, succeeding in making some of the engines function.
The acceleration seized our bodies.
"We are entering the Martian atmosphere!"
my companion informed me in a breathless, strained voice.
"So soon?" I could not help but
ask.
But I was too occupied to give too much
importance to the anomaly. We had to somehow check that dizzying
fall, otherwise we would both die upon crashing into the Martian surface.
I feverishly dismantled the instrument panel and saw that some of the cables
appeared to be burned.
I cut and spliced here and there, and
succeeded in getting some other engines going. We were burning fuel
that we should have employed to blast off from Mars once the mission was
completed, but there was no other alternative.
It was not sufficient, however.
A brief glance at the view screen showed me that the surface of the planet
was apparently hurtling toward us. I pressed the firing controls
to the maximum, braking with all the available energy. There was
a shudder, a slip, and then the ship struck, with tremendous force.
I lost consciousness as the vehicle slid
and skidded, enveloped in the last flames of the engines, over the surface
of the heavenly body that we had come to conquer.
I could not say if I was unconscious
for a second or several days. Pain awakened me, a searing pain emanating
from an ugly wound on my forehead. With a great effort I succeeded
in opening my eyes.
Everything was destroyed around me.
The crash seat had been torn from its base, crashing with me against one
of the walls. But, nevertheless, its protection had saved my life.
Not so poor Miliutov, my good friend
and companion. He lay among the remains of his own seat, his neck
twisted at a horribly revealing angle. His bulging eyes gazed without
seeing, and a small trickle of blood issued from his mouth. There
could be no doubt that he was dead, and that I myself was alone on the
surface of Mars.
For a moment I remained still, full of
bleak thoughts. I knew that I would not be long in rejoining my companion,
and that perhaps my death would be much more difficult than his.
The Soviet Souyez would never fly again,
of course. The supply of air was abundant, it being provisioned for
the return voyage of two persons; but although my unfortunate companion
would not share it with me, I knew full well that there was no ship at
Baikonur or Cape Canaveral that could reach Mars in time to save me.
I would remain inside the ship for long days, but finally the air would
be exhausted and I would die of asphyxiation.
Inside the ship? A vague idea arose
in my mind. After all, dead, alive or condemned to death, I was the
first man on Mars. There were space suits in the ship and, if they
had survived the crash, nothing would prevent me from carrying out a small
exploration of the terrain, even a more prolonged one than was initially
planned. I would go out, yes, and raise the flag of my country on
the Martian surface. Then I would bury my late companion, as there
would be no one else to do so with me when my hour arrived.
I rose, striving to undo the straps that
still joined me to my shattered chair. I took a new look at my surroundings,
searching for the repository of the space suits, and stopped short, as
if paralyzed.
There are sights that, defying logical
explanation, arrest all mental activity in the one who has them, causing
him to doubt the function of his senses. And now I found myself faced
with one of them.
In the aft portion of the ship could
be seen an enormous rent. The whole side had given way, opening up
like a gigantic can of food. Through the gap, the starry nocturnal
sky could clearly be seen. There could be no doubt; the vehicle in
which I found myself was completely open to the outside air.
But that was impossible! The air
inside had to have dissipated almost instantaneously in the tenuous Martian
atmosphere, and I should now be dead, as dead as my companion was.
And yet I was alive and breathing without any difficulty.
A thousand confused thoughts raced through
my mind, without me being able to focus on any of them. There could
be only one explanation, but it was completely fantastic as well; in some
way or another I had returned to Earth. Within the solar system,
only on our native world could a man breathe the natural atmosphere without
perishing almost instantaneously.
I was on Earth, then, although I could
not form any idea of how I had reached it. Perhaps the entire journey
had been a gigantic simulation, similar to the many to which we had been
subjected in the course of our training?
I knew that it could not be. Then?
I freed myself from the last restraints
and set myself in motion, crawling through the maze of loose wreckage and
torn plastic. I felt strangely light, and a little dizzy. Foot
by foot I approached that rent that could not exist.
But it did exist, nevertheless.
I reached it and peered out, in search of an impossible explanation.
But what I saw on the other side did nothing but increase my confusion.
Thousands of stars, many more than are
visible on Earth, although less than can be observed in the interplanetary
vacuum, glittered over my head. I recognized the old constellations,
such as could only be visible from our solar system. I reasserted
myself in the belief that I was on Earth, although without having any idea
how the return had been effected.
Once accustomed to the starlight, I directed
my gaze to the ground before the demolished ship. I could scarcely
see anything other than a flat terrain covered with a strange moss whose
nature I was unable to identify. At a few meters distance all was
lost in the darkness. I asked myself in which part of the Earth the
capsule had fallen.
And in that very instant, it happened.
An intense silvery light sprang up suddenly
from the horizon, increasing by the moment. A luminous ball then
made it appearance, launching itself across the nocturnal sky like a mortar
shell, tracing a rapid orbit over my head.
For a moment I thought it was a flying
craft, perhaps an airplane that was searching for the remains of the wrecked
capsule. But in the next moment the truth burst into my mind in a
devastating fashion. That flying object was a moon.
Under the restless light of the unknown
satellite, the entire countryside seemed to leap into motion, acquiring
life in a chaos of changing shadows. I could see a great flat expanse,
bordered by distant hills. The moss that I had noted previously,
and that I now saw had an ochre color unlike any terrestrial vegetation,
covered the entire steppe, punctuated in a few places by clumps of equally
unknown flowers. The entire surreal plain resembled a sea covered
by a heavy swell, as the incredible moon passed over it and the shadows
changed and lengthened with its passage. The satellite crossed over
the capsule in whose opening I crouched, totally paralyzed by stupor, and
then began to descend on the other side, in search of the opposite
horizon. I followed its path with my gaze, in a sea of perplexity,
and then I could see a new luminous circle emerging in the opposite direction,
much more calmly than the previous one. This world, whatever it might
be, had two moons.
Mars has the same number of satellites,
but, of course these moons could not be Phobos and Deimos. I knew
full well that those two spatial bodies could not be seen from the Martian
surface except as mere stars in motion, in the best of cases. There
was no way they could ever present the extraordinary spectacle full of
beauty to which I had been witness.
Then? My head spun as I sought
a possible explanation. I began to wonder if perhaps the priests
had it right after all, if I had not died when the ship had collided with
the Martian surface, and this strange world was not the paradise or the
hell of the astronauts.
But I felt very much alive, and I even
ached from the impact of the landing. And the ship and Maksim's body
were there, which did not conform to any idea that I might have of crossing
over to a spiritual world.
Another star? And how the devil
had I ended up light years away, in the small space of time between my
entrance into the atmosphere of Mars and the collision with its surface?
I now directed my gaze toward the stars, and the constellations that I
knew so well from having studied them in detail in my astronautics course.
No, they were all there, and in the same positions. I was in the
solar system, or very close to it.
And it was as I was gazing at the shining
stars from the same breach in my space ship, that I suddenly realized I
had company.
Chapter II
The Red Warrior
