Lost Race of Mars

Chapter 2

The next five days were the most hectic the Chambers family had ever known. Many of the preparations for the trip had been made quietly in the past few weeks, ever since Dr.

Chambers had known definitely he was getting the grant, but there was still plenty of last-minute work—packing to do, letters to write, bills to pay. Relatives kept coming in person or calling by visiphone to wish the spacefarers a happy blast-off. Reporters came calling. It was a good human-interest story, “Professor and family off to Mars,” and every paper wanted to run something about it.

Although the reporters were a nuisance, the newspaper stories came in handy on the final day of school. Jim and Sally had told all their friends and classmates, of course. But not until the papers came out with the headlines about their trip did everyone really believe it. Suddenly Jim and Sally became the most important people in their school. Fore the first time in their lives Jim and Sally learned what it meant to be a celebrity. They weren’t sure they liked being at the center of so much noisy fuss and attention.

Packing was a hard job—not because they had so much to pack, but because they were allowed to take so little. The regulations allowed them only seventy pounds of baggage apiece, which was not very much at all for a years stay. But it wasn’t necessary to take clothes for different seasons because the artificial air of the Mars Colony dome was kept at the same temperature all year round, sixty-nine degrees. So spring clothes were all that they needed. And nothing fancy, either, since the colonists didn’t go in for frills and formalities.

Spaceships left for Mars only once a month. They carried mail for the colonists and supplies that were not being produced on Mars, like mustard and grapefruit and other items that were not strictly necessary but made the diet a little more interesting. The monthly spaceship also carried new colonists, if there were any, as well as anyone visiting temporarily.

The trip would take three weeks. The first unmanned spaceship that had ever gone to Mars had required almost nine months to get there, but that had been back in the 1960’s.

Spaceships were much more efficient now, more than half a century later. They could attain a much greater initial thrust, and the new fuels allowed a longer period of acceleration that reduced flight time tremendously.

The night before they left, Jim and Sally took Chipper down the street to the home of their friends, Ned and Edna Robinson. Ned and Edna were twins, a little younger than Jim. They were in Jim’s grade at school. They had a cat of their own, a fluffy Persian named Xerxes, and also a noisy terrier called Jupiter. Ned and Edna knew how to take care of animals, and Jim and Sally knew that Chipper would be in good hands.

Chipper was suspicious at first. He sniffed at Xerxes and hissed warningly at Jupiter.

“I hope they’re going to get along,” Sally said anxiously.

“Don’t worry,” Ned told her. “Give them two days, and they’ll be old friends.”

“We’ll take good care of him,” Edna promised. “But it’s too bad he can’t go with you.”

“I wish he could,” Jim said.

“What time do you leave tomorrow?” Ned asked.

“Blast-off is at noon,” answered Jim.

“Nervous?” Edna wanted to know. “I’d be, if I were going to Mars!”

“That’s because you’re a girl,” her brother snorted. “I wouldn’t be nervous. Not at all.”

Jim chuckled. He was very nervous, himself. But he didn’t want to say that in from of Ned and Edna. “Come on,” he said to Sally. “We’re not supposed to stay out late tonight, remember?”

So they said good-by to Chipper, and were told for the fiftieth time by Ned and Edna how lucky they were to be going to Mars, and then they hurried back home. When they came in their father was on the phone, as usual. It seemed he was on the phone all the time, talking to important people, making arrangements.

Everything was packed. The house looked as it did just before a vacation, with everything put away and tidied up and the furniture covered. There was nothing more to do but wait until morning.

Jim and Sally went into the living room. Their mother was there, checking a list. “Cancel visiphone service . . . stop the milk delivery . . . turn off the electricity . . . that’s about it, I guess.” She looked up. “Oh, there you are! Is Chipper happy in his new home?”

“Not very,” Sally said. “But he’ll get used to it.”

“I feel like a traitor, taking him down the block and just leaving him there,” Jim said.

Mrs. Chambers smiled. “But you told him we were coming back, didn’t you? After all, you claim he understands what you say to him!”

“I know, Mom, but still—” Jim shrugged. “Well, nothing to do but wait, now.”

“It’s going to seem like ages till blast-off,” Sally put in. “And only seventeen hours from now we’ll be on our way!”

“And this is such a terribly important trip for your father,” Mrs. Chambers said quietly. “It can mean so much to his career.”

“Nobody’s really told us what he’s going there to study, Mom,” Jim said.

“All we know is that he’ll be studying Martian life,” Sally added.

“Well,” Mrs. Chambers explained, “he’s been planning this trip for years. Naturally we couldn’t afford it ourselves, but Dad’s been applying for research grants, seeing people, making contacts. It took him almost a year of steady arguing before he was given enough money to make the trip. You know that no native life bigger than a rabbit has ever been found on Mars.”

“That’s right,” Jim agreed. “All that the colonists have discovered is small animals and plants and bacteria and little things like that.”

Mrs. Chambers nodded. “Your father is officially going to study the biology of Mars—how life can exist on a planet that has practically no water. But he’d rather study the was large animals live in the Martian desert than the way small ones live.”

“There are all sorts of rumors that the Old Martians are still alive, hidden in the desert,” Sally said.

“Sure,” said Jim, “but no one’s ever seen one. All we have is their bones and their ruined cities. The Old Martians have been extinct for thousands of years.”

“Maybe not!” Mrs. Chambers suggested. “What your father hopes, anyway, is that while he’s there the surviving Old Martians will be found. He has a theory about them, and how they lived, but he needs to find them alive to prove it. And if he does, not only will we know a good deal more than we do know about why Mars is so dry, but we may discover some clues on how to change it’s climate to make it more comfortable for humans.”

Jim frowned. “I don’t get that. How—”

“Dad thinks that Mars was once a planet with as much water as Earth has today. But over the centuries something happened to make it dry up, and the people adapted to the new conditions. We don’t know how. If we could only get hold of some Old Martians and examine them—at least, that’s what Dad hopes.”

“Suppose he doesn’t find them?” Sally asked.

Mrs. Chambers shrugged her shoulders. “In that case he isn’t going to have very interesting results to show the government in return for all the money they’ve given him to make this trip.

The government science agency is going to be unhappy about that.”

“And the next time Dad wants a research grant,” Jim said, “they’ll think twice before they give it to him. Is that the story?”

“That’s about the way it is.”

“So he’s go a year to find what he’s looking for, or else,” Sally said. “Golly! I hope he does!”

“So do I,” their mother answered softly. “So do I.”

Bedtime came early that night, but neither Jim nor Sally got much rest. Jim tossed and turned sleeplessly, his mid wide awake and active. He was thinking about what it was like to travel in a spaceship, about what life in the Mars Colony was going to be like—and whether his father was going to succeed in finding the Old Martians. Thoughts whirled half the night in Jim’s head. He got out of bed finally—the clock near his bed said it was past once in the morning -

and walked to his window, looking out into the night.

There was Mars, glowing dull red against the black velvet backdrop of the sky. Jim felt chills run down his backbone. Tomorrow at this time he would be in a tiny metal cylinder, coursing through the heavens toward that red planet.

He heard someone moving around across the hall in Sally’s room. Tiptoeing over, Jim peered in.

Sally, too, was out of bed, staring at the sky.

“It’s after one!” Jim whispered.

“I know. I can’t fall asleep.”

“Neither can I. I’m too keyed-up about tomorrow.”

“We better get back into bed,” Sally said. “Otherwise we may fall asleep at the spaceport.”

There wasn’t much chance of that, Jim thought. But he returned to his bedroom, climbed back into bed, and screwed his eyes tight shut. Finally, sleep came.

The alarm went off very early the next morning. Although blast-off was at noon, they had to be at the spaceport by nine, and that meant getting up before seven. All four of them were strangely hushed and untalkative as they went through their morning routine. No one seemed to have much of an appetite for breakfast, either. Mrs. Chambers made no complaint at all, even though Jim left nearly half his bacon and eggs on the plate, and Sally ate even less.

The ride to Long Island Spaceport was made in virtual silence, too. They went by helicab, which was the quickest way; the cab picked them up at the cabport a few blocks from their house just after eight, and deposited them at the arrival-and-departure building of the spaceport fifty minutes later after a smooth flight through light morning traffic.

The spaceport was more than a dozen years old, but it still had a raw, unfinished look to it.

There was not much commercial space traveling yet. One ship left every three days for Moonport, and one ship every month for Mars. There was also the monthly excursion trip that was very popular in the billionaire set—it traveled from Venus to Saturn, taking a whole year, circling each planet and giving the passengers a look.

That was all—a total of twelve ships leaving the spaceport each month. Later on, of course, the number would grow much greater. There were plans to build Mars-type colonies on Venus and several of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, such as Titan, Ganymede, and Callisto.

Although it was exactly sixty years since Sputnik had begun the Age of Space, space travel was still very much in its infancy.

The passengers for the Mars ship were clustered together in the arrival-and-departure depot when the Chambers family entered. A smiling man in the uniform of the Space Corps told them,

“Take your baggage over to the weighing counter to check in.”

At the weighing counter, the Chambers luggage was put in the scale to make sure the family quota of two hundred and eighty pounds was not exceeded. When all of the baggage had been weighed the man said, “All right. Now you get on the scales, one at a time.”

“Us?” Mrs. Chambers asked. “Is there a maximum weight limit for passengers as well as their baggage?”

“No, but we have to know down to the ounce how much weight the ship is carrying at blast-off.”

So they were weighed. Their baggage was ticketed and carted away. Then they finished checking in. It was about twenty past nine.

At nine-thirty, a loudspeaker announcement was heard telling all passengers to report to Gate One for boarding. A Space Corps man was there to lead them out onto the field.

As they passed through the gate Jim and Sally could see the spaceship standing in the middle of a bare field. It stood upright, balanced on its tail, looking like a great gleaming fish as it glittered in the morning sunlight. At its base technicians bustled around, checking the ship as the countdown entered its final hours. Everything had to be just right before the ship would be allowed to leave.

The passengers rode an elevator in a tower next to the ship to reach the entrance, which was nearly twenty feet off the ground. Jim and Sally filed in slowly, following their parents.

Crewmen showed them to the quarters where they would spend the next few weeks. Then all the passengers were called together in a large cabin near the nose of the ship for a briefing session.

There were only twenty-eight passengers. Besides the Chambers family, there were twenty new colonists, two site seers going to Mars for a look around, and two reporters.

For the next hour the crewmen explained what life on the ship was like—how long the trip would take, where and what they would eat on board, and so on.

At eleven-thirty came the signal for all passengers to go to their quarters. The Chambers family settled down in their small but fairly comfortable cabin. At another order from the loudspeaker overhead, they lay down and fastened their safety belts. They were now securely strapped down and padded against the strain of blast-off.

The countdown was proceeding on schedule. Every five minutes a new announcement came:

“Twenty minutes to blast-off ... fifteen ... ten ... five ...”

After that, the count was by minutes, and when it got down to “One minute to blast-off” it continued by seconds. The calm voice counted down the final seconds. “Five... four... three... two... one... mark! ”

Jim felt as if someone had punched him in the stomach. He was flattened back against his seat. The whole cabin seemed to be shaking. He wrenched his head to the left so he could look out the porthole. There was nothing but darkness out there. They had already made the leap into space. The journey was under way.