The Red Stuff
John Wyndham
(Note: The Government is of the opinion that in the present critical situation the widest possible publicity should be given to the facts of the case and the events which gave rise to it. It is, therefore, with official approval and encouragement that the proprietors of WALTERS SPACE-NEWS here reprint in pamphlet form the account first published in both the printed and broadcast versions of the issue of that journal dated Friday, 20th July 2051)
Here is an official Government emergency warning:
“From now until further notice Clarke Lunar Station will be closed to traffic. No vessel of any kind at present on the Station may put to space, nor will any local craft be permitted to take off from there. All vessels now in space, whether earthward or outward bound, scheduled to call at Clarke must make immediate arrangements to divert to Whitley. Outward bound craft will ground at the normal Whitley Lunar Station base; earthward bound vessels will be directed to the emergency field and must ground there. Any vessel ignoring this instruction will be refused grounding and be dealt with severely. It is emphasized that any vessel grounding at or near Clarke for any reason whatsoever will be refused permission to leave. This warning is effective immediately.”
It is likely that only a few of the millions who heard that announcement, or the versions of it in other languages, broadcast on the evening of Monday last, 16th July, took any great notice of it, in spite of its seriousness of tone. After all, though we call this the Space age, only a fractional percentage of us have ever been or ever will be in space.
Readers of this journal cannot fail to have been troubled, more likely alarmed, by the order, but they think of space in a specialized way as something directly affecting their calling or livelihood.
But to the average man, what is the Moon? It is an airless, cheerless cinder, the scene of some mining, useful as a testing ground for space conditions, but chiefly notable as a way-station apparently designed by providence for the convenience of space-voyaging humanity. He knows that it is important, but he does not know how important, nor why.
He knows, perhaps, that the Clarke Lunar Station was first opened over fifty years ago, and that it was so named in honour of the octogenarian Doctor of Physics who did so much to further space-travel, but he does not realize what, in terms of mathematics, of power and pay-load, the existence of such a Station and fuelling base means. Nor that its absence would entail suspension of space-travel almost entirely for a very long time, until we could completely organize our methods — if we could.
Luckily we are not altogether denied use of the Moon by the closing of Clarke; we can still operate through the Whitley Station — at present. But if that cannot be maintained in use, the question of continued space-travel ships of the present types becomes grave to the point of hopelessness.
To our regular readers parts of the account which follows will not be new, but it has seemed to the editors desirable that at this critical juncture all the information available should be collated and presented to the public in the form of a narrative giving as honest a picture as possible of the present situation, and its potentialities.
CHAPTER I
At 20.58 G.M.T. on the 6th January 2051 the radio-operator of the Madge G. reported to the Captain that he had picked up a message globe and asked for further instructions.
The Madge G. after a cautious route well out of the elliptic to hurdle the asteroid belt had corrected course and was now in fall towards her destination, Callisto, Moon IV, of Jupiter. Her Captain, John G. Troyte, was not pleased by his operator's report. The passage of the asteroids is always a strain for a conscientious man; even at wide berth there is still the chance of lonely outflyers from the main swarm which will go through a ship as if she were a paper hoop. There is not a lot to be done about it: should the outflyer be anything above the size of a football, it is just too bad; if it is smaller, prompt action can save the ship, providing no vital part is hit. Alertness sustained for the long period is extremely tiring and Captain Troyte felt that he had earned a period of repose and relaxation during the fall towards Callisto.
What was more, he was pretty certain it would not turn out to be a message-globe after all. He had had such a report half a dozen times in the course of his career, and it had always turned out to be untrue. In the whole of his time in space he could only recall five being picked up at all. They were a good idea, only they didn't come off: they'd have been all right if there hadn't been quite so much space for them to get lost in, but, practice being so different from theory, it was little wonder that the clause for their compulsory carriage had been struck out of the shipping regulations. They stood, in his opinion, as little chance of being picked up as a two-ounce bottle in mid-Atlantic, probably less. He went along to the radio-cabin himself. The operator was humming in rhythmic harmony with the High-Shakers broadcast from Tedwich, Mars, when he entered.
“Turn off that blamed racket,” said Captain Troyte shortly. “Now what's all this about a globe?”
The operator clicked out the High-Shakers, and touched a switch to bring in the pre-set receiver. He listened a moment and then handed over the head-phones. The Captain held one to his ear, and waited: after a few seconds came an unmistakable da da, da da di. He looked at his watch, timing it. Exactly ten seconds later it came again —da da, da da di. He waited until it had repeated once more.
“Good heavens, I really believe it is,” he said.
“Can't be anything else, sir,” said the operator, smugly.
“Got a line on it?”
The operator had. He gave the angles. The Captain considered. The globe was ahead. By rough clock-face placing, at four o'clock 30 degrees oblique on the last reading, and widening. There was no likelihood of colliding with it.
“Is it coming towards us, or are we chasing it?” he demanded.
“Can't say, sir. At a guess I should say we're more or less chasing it. It's signal strength had improved, but only slowly.”
“H'm,” said the Captain thoughtfully. “We'll have to get it in. Keep an ear on it. Don't do anything until you're sure the signal strength is past maximum, there'd be a nasty mess if we were to hit it head on. When it's begun to fade get the activator going, and we'll fish it in. But for God's sake do it gently, we don't want the thing hurtling at us like a cannon ball. Better let me know once you've got it started.”
The Captain returned to his own cabin more interested than he admitted. The message-globe was an ingenious contrivance which had looked like being more useful than it had proved. The problem had been to provide a ship with some means of communicating its trouble in case of radio failure or wreck. In theory it was to be discharged in the direction of the nearest spaceline where its signal could scarcely fail to be picked up; in actual use very few had been picked up and it had progressively less chance of being found as the area of space operation increased. The general opinion which had led to its omission from the statutory list of equipment was that the majority of the globes sent off continued to tick out their signals undetected until their power gave out whereupon they floated about in space as additional hazards. There was a feeling that the hazards of space were quite numerous enough without them.
The radio operator hung his phones on a hook where he could hear the intermittent signal from the globe conveniently, pondered whether he should try to listen to the High-Shakers at the same time, decided against it, and hunted for the sealed box in which the activator had lain ever since the Madge G. was launched. After study of the instructions which he had not seen since the day when he'd mugged them up for his final examination, he got it set up. Then there was nothing to do but wait.