A Honeymoon in Space
down now and see if we can make ourselves understood in any way? You can
have the guns ready in case of accidents, but I don't think they'll try
and hurt us now. Look, the gentleman with the red sash is making signs."
"I think we can go down now all right," replied Redgrave, "because it's
quite certain they can't use the poison-guns on us without killing
themselves as well. Still, we may as well have our own ready. Andrew,
get that port Maxim ready. I hope we shan't want it, but we may. I don't
quite like the look of these people."
"They're very ugly, aren't they?" said Zaidie; "and really you can't
tell which are men and which are women. I suppose they've civilised
themselves out of everything that's nice, and are just scientific and
utilitarian and everything that's horrid."
"I shouldn't wonder. They look to me as if they've just got common
sense, as we call it, and hadn't any other sense; but, at any rate, if
they don't behave themselves, we shall be able to teach them manners of
a sort, though we may possibly have done that to some extent already."
As he said this Redgrave went into the conning-tower, and the _Astronef_
moved from above the air-ship, and dropped gently into the crimson grass
about a hundred feet from her. Then the ports were opened, the guns,
which Murgatroyd had loaded, were swung into position, and they armed
themselves with a brace of revolvers each, in case of accident.
"What delicious air this is!" said her ladyship, as the ports were
opened and she took her first breath of the Martian atmosphere. "It's
ever so much nicer than ours. Oh, Lenox, it's just like breathing
champagne."
Redgrave looked at her with an admiration which was tempered by a sudden
apprehension. Even in his eyes she had never seemed so lovely before.
Her cheeks were glowing and her eyes were gleaming with a brightness
that was almost feverish, and he was himself sensible of a strange
feeling of exultation, both mental and physical, as his lungs filled
with the Martian air.
"Oxygen," he said, shortly, "and too much of it! Or I shouldn't wonder
if it was something like nitrous-oxide--you know, laughing gas."
"Don't!" she laughed; "it may be very nice to breathe, but it reminds
one of other things which aren't a bit nice. Still, if it is anything of
that sort it might account for these people having lived so fast. I know
I feel just now as if I was living at the rate of thirty-six hours a
day, and so, I suppose, the fewer hours we stop here the better."
"Exactly!" said Redgrave, with another glance of apprehension at her.
"Now, there's his Royal Highness, or whatever he is, coming. How are we
going to talk to him? Are you all ready, Andrew?"
"Yes, my Lord, all ready," replied the old Yorkshireman, dropping his
huge, hairy hand on the breech of the Maxim.
"Very well, then, shoot the moment you see them doing anything
suspicious, and don't let any one except his Royal Highness come nearer
than a hundred yards."
As he said this Redgrave went to the door, from which the gangway steps
had been lowered, and, in reply to a singularly expressive gesture from
the huge Martian, who seemed to stand nearly nine feet high, he beckoned
to him to come up on to the deck.
As he mounted the steps the crowd closed round the _Astronef_ and the
Martian air-ship; but, as though in obedience to orders which had
already been given, they kept at a respectful distance of a little over
a hundred yards away from the strange vessel which had wrought such
havoc with their fleet. When the Martian reached the deck, Redgrave held
out his hand and the giant recoiled, as a man on earth might have done
if, instead of the open palm, he had seen a clenched hand gripping a
knife.
"Take care, Lenox," exclaimed Zaidie, taking a couple of steps towards
him, with her right hand on the butt of one of her revolvers. The
movement brought her close to the open door, and in full view of the
crowd outside.
If a seraph had come on earth and presented itself thus before a throng
of human beings, there might have happened some such miracle as was
wrought when the swarm of Martians beheld the strange beauty of this
radiant daughter of the earth.
As it seemed to the space-voyagers, when they discussed it afterwards,
ages of purely utilitarian civilisation had brought all conditions of
Martian life up--or down--to the same level. There was no apparent
difference between the males and females in stature; their faces were
all the same, with features of mathematical regularity, pale skin,
bloodless cheeks, and an expression, if such it could be called, utterly
devoid of emotion.
But still these creatures were human, or at least their forefathers had
been. Hearts beat in their breasts, blood of a sort still flowed through
their veins, and so the magic of this marvellous vision instantly awoke
the long-slumbering elementary instincts of a bygone age. A low murmur
ran through the vast throng, a murmur half-human, half-brutish, which
swiftly rose to a hoarse screaming roar.
"Look out, my Lord! Quick! Shut the door, they're coming! It's her
ladyship they want; she must look like an angel from Heaven to them.
Shall I fire?"
"Yes," said Redgrave, gripping the lever, and bringing the door down.
"Zaidie, if this fellow moves put a bullet through him. I'm going to
talk to that air-ship before he gets his poison-guns to work."
As the last word left his lips Murgatroyd put his thumb on the spring on
the Maxim. A roar such as Martian ears had never heard before resounded
through the vast square, and was flung back with a thousand echoes from
the walls of the huge palaces on every side. A stream of smoke and flame
poured out of the little port-hole, and then the onward-swarming throng
seemed to stop, and the front ranks of it began to sink down silently in
long rows.
Then through the roaring rattle of the Maxim sounded the deep, sharp
bang of Redgrave's gun, as he sent ten pounds weight of Rennickite, as
he had christened it, into the Martian air-ship. There was the roar of
an explosion which shook the air for miles around. A blaze of greenish
flame and a huge cloud of steamy smoke showed that the projectile had
done its work, and, when the smoke drifted away, the spot on which the
air-ship had lain was only a deep, red, jagged gash in the ground. There
was not even a fragment of the ship to be seen.
This done, Redgrave went and turned the starboard Maxim on to another
swarm which was approaching the _Astronef_ from that side. When he had
got the range he swung the gun slowly from side to side. The moving
throng stopped, as the other one had done, and sank down to the red
grass, now dyed with a deeper red.
Meanwhile, Zaidie had been holding the Martian at something more than
arm's length with her revolver. He seemed to understand perfectly that,
if she pulled the trigger, the revolver would do something like what the
Maxims had done. He appeared to take no notice whatever either of the
destruction of the air-ship or of the slaughter that was going on around
the _Astronef_. His big, pale blue eyes were fixed upon her face. They
seemed to be devouring a loveliness such as they had never seen before.
A dim, pinky flush stole for the first time into his waxy cheeks, and
something like a light of human passion came into his eyes.
Then, to the utter astonishment of both Redgrave and Zaidie, he said
slowly and deliberately, and with only just enough tinge of emotion in
his voice to make Redgrave want to shoot him:
"Beautiful. Perfect. More perfect than ours. I want it. Give Palace and
Garden of Eternal Summer for it. Two thousand work-slaves and fifty----"
"And I'll see you damned first, sir, whoever you are!" said Redgrave,
clapping his hand on to the butt of his revolver, and forgetting for the
moment that he was speaking in another world than his own. "What the
devil do you mean, sir, by insulting my wife----?"
"Insulting. Wife. What is that? We have no words like those."
"But you speak English," exclaimed Zaidie, going a little nearer to him,
but still keeping the muzzle of her revolver pointing up to his hairless
head. "No, Lenox, don't be afraid about me, and don't get angry. Can't
you see that this person hasn't got any temper? I suppose it was
civilised out of his ancestors ages ago. He doesn't know what a wife or
an insult is. He just looks upon me as a desirable piece of property to
be bought, and I daresay he offered you a very handsome price. Now,
don't look so savage, because you know bargains like that have been made
even on our dear old virtuous Mother Earth. For instance, if you hadn't
met us in the middle of the Atlantic----"
"That'll do, Zaidie," Redgrave interrupted almost roughly. "That's not
exactly the question, but I see what you mean, and it was a bit silly of
me to get angry."
"Silly? Angry? What do those words mean?" said the Martian in his slow,
passionless, mechanical voice. "Who are you? Whence come you?"
"I'll answer the last part first," said Redgrave. "We come from the
earth, the planet which you see after sunset and before sunrise."
"Yes, the Silver Star," said the Martian without any note of wonder or
surprise in his voice. "Are all the dwellers there like the gods and
angels our children read about in the old legends?"
"Gods and angels!" laughed Zaidie. "There, Lenox, there's a compliment
for you. I really think we ought to be as civil to his Royal Highness
after that as possible." Then she went on, addressing the Martian, "No,
we are not all gods and angels on earth. There are no gods and very few
angels. In fact there are none except those which exist in the fancy of
certain prejudiced persons. But that doesn't matter, at least not just
now," she continued with American directness. "What we want to know just
now is, why you speak English, and what sort of a world this Mars is?"
The Martian evidently only understood the most direct essentials of her
speech. He saw that she asked two questions, and he answered them.
"Speak English?" he replied, with a little shake of his huge head. "We
know not English, but there is no other speech. There is only ours.
Cycles ago there were other speeches here, but those who spoke them were
killed. It was inconvenient. One speech for a world is best."
"I see what he means," said Redgrave, looking towards Zaidie. "The
Martian people have developed along practically the same lines as we are
doing, but they have done it faster and got a long way ahead of us. We
are finding out that the speech we call English is the shortest and most
convenient. The Martians found it out long ago and killed everybody who
spoke anything else. After all, what we call speech is only the
translation of thoughts into sounds. These people have been thinking for
ages with the same sort of brains as ours, and they've translated their
thoughts into the same sounds. What we call English they, I daresay,
call Martian, and that's all there is in it that I can see."
"Of course," laughed Zaidie. "Wonderful until you know how, eh? Like
most things. Still I must say that our friend here speaks English
something like a phonograph, and if he'll excuse me saying so, which of
course he will, he doesn't seem to have much more human nature about
him."
"I'm not quite so sure on that point," said Redgrave, "but----"
"Oh, never mind about that now!" she interrupted, and then, turning
towards the Martian, who had been listening intently as though he was
trying to make sense out of what they had been saying, she went on
speaking slowly and very plainly----
"Tell me, sir, if you please, do you know what 'angry' means? Are you
not angry with us for destroying your air-ships up there in the clouds,
and the one that came down, and for shooting all those people of yours?"