The Secret of the Martian Moons Read Free Page B

shielding and massively heavy piles. That final discovery did not occur until space flight was already well under way.
    The trip to Mars now, while the planet was at its nearest orbital point to Earth, was a matter of about three weeks. In that time one had to amuse oneself as best one could. Space on a ship, even the largest liner, is limited. The grand sight of interplanetary space as seen through the ship's thick but crystal-clear portholes was always breathtaking, but essentially unchanging.
    Nelson, like the others aboard ship, made a point of looking toward Mars the first thing on arising each ship’s morning. The red dot grew slowly, taking on a disk-like appearance that gradually became larger and began to show surface markings. The orange-red “star” became a russet-yellow disk with a visible white spot that was the icecap of the North Pole, the frozen surface of the ancient world’s last two large bodies of water—the South Pole being the other.
    In time, faint bluish-green discolorations could be noted against the surface. These were the fertile lands, the large oases where the land of Mars had not yet dried and where grew the prairies and forests. The explorers of Mars had come to consider these regions as the “continents” of the world, separated from each other not by seas of water but by seas of desert. By far, most of Mars was desert—endless reaches of rusty rock, barren waterless plains, great stretches of slowly shifting yellow sand or reddish dry dust, and occasional very low stumpy lines of mountains, worn down to be little more than ridges above the general flatness, for there were no true mountains on Mars. No mountains, no lakes, no rivers, no rains. Once in a very great while, so rarely that Nelson had seen only two in his dozen years of life there, there were clouds, white clouds moving slowly across the deep blue sky.
    And there were the Martian structures, the means by which the continents of vegetation kept alive. But they could not be glimpsed from space, not until perhaps the very last day.
    The ship decelerated and Nelson was no closer to the solution of his problem. There were strange characters among the crew—but then there always were. The silence and eeriness of space flight always produced quirks of character among the professional sailors of space. Nelson could see nothing in this to arouse real suspicion.
    On the last day there was too much excitement to pay any further attention. The ship was decelerating fast, under full engine power. Gravity was thus being simulated and it was hard to get around, for the drive was often against the normal setup of the compartments and rooms. Passengers were packing. The crew was tightening up the ship for the landing. Then the order was boomed through the liner to buckle into safety seats, the pressures grew, and the ship battled its way down.
    About the hull arose a thin hissing and then a roaring as they tore into the Martian atmosphere. The ship heeled and jerked as the pilot kept it steady. Finally after an hour’s breathless fall the ship eased to a complete stop and settled softly to the surface of the Martian world.
    Nelson unstrapped himself from his seat. As he stood up, he suddenly felt a surge of strength. The four years on Earth had built up his muscles to resist a far heavier gravity. Yet something in his body reacted with pleasure. This he felt was home. His body relaxed into the familiar patterns of his boyhood and he knew what he had been missing for so long—the gravity of Mars was the pull of his own world, the planet to which he had been born.
    He packed his possessions into his valise, left his compartment and made his way to the exit lock, before which other passengers were waiting. As he caught sight of them, his hand thrust once more underneath his shirt to pat the envelope that was safely there.
    The exit opened at last and Nelson made his way through, down the metal