Part 14

I was rather horrified to learn that slavery is common among them, which will account for the almost constant warfare between them and the ape-men. The herculean task of building their fortifications, which covered many centuries, was made possible by the employment of the ape-men as slaves. The process of evolution seems to have slowed up in the Martian tropics, leaving black, hairy creatures, in form and in intelligence intermediate between the highest ape and man. These ape-men worship the enormous wolf of the deserts, a war-like beast, in peculiar rites of sacrifice and the blood-covenant, which is an outspring of totemism, a stage in all human development.

In retaliation for the slave raids of the whites in the jungles, these ape-men move against them in vast armies, and with surprising agility, over the dead regions of the planet. When they leave their natural location, they live upon the fruits and berries which grow in the many oases scattered over the deserts, where thermal springs are found.

I could well imagine the frightful and devastating effect of these ape-men armies once they were victorious over the whites. The picture showed them attacking the fortifications, and being driven off with showers of bombs filled with deadly gases. When they succeed in plundering the temples, they carry off the cloistered white women as captives to their jungle lairs.

Besides the ape-men and the hazards of climate, the white population is also harassed continually by the foraging beasts, reptiles, birds and insects from the waste regions and the jungles, who destroy the plantations and devour the horses and cattle. To meet the perils of the marauders, the whites maintain a standing-army, scientifically-equipped. Quartered in the canyon fortifications, the army uses a system of wireless-signaling from the watch-towers, to warn the people when in danger of attack.

Getting a first view of these monsters of the Martian deserts and tropical zone, a chill ran down my spine. Many of them were what we term prehistoric monsters--the tapir, tree sloth, and dinosaur. I gasped in horror at the sight of the insects from the jungles--beetles having the bulk of baby elephants, and ants big and strong enough to carry a man on their backs. And what at first I believed to be an airplane, turned out to be an enormous, monstrous bat.

As the film moved swiftly onwards to its completion, the breathless interest of the assembled scientists and explorers was concentrated on the last episode, which proved to contain the most amazing revelation of all.

The rays from the motion picture projector now seemed to flash upon the silver screen like messages of hope. Hope for our white brethren, on a faraway star, beset on all sides by danger, and threatened with extinction. With increasing excitement, I watched, through a happy haze of light, the great transformation that was now taking place in that bright point of light that studs our darkling sky--the planet Mars.

XXI

There, fast unreeling before our eyes, were undeniable evidences of the changed conditions that our radio broadcasts had wrought on Mars. I had no misgivings now about our short wave programs reaching that planet. We saw the Martians listening in to our daily broadcasts, and becoming not only quite in sympathy with our American ideas but benefitting therefrom.

Intercepting musical and talking programs from New York, London, Paris, Rome, Bombay, Tokyo and Melbourne, and out of the strange babble of voices and senseless prattle, soon, presto! evolves a translation of the English language. Think of it!

But how, out of all this jumble of unintelligible words, which meant nothing to them at all, did they succeed in translating the English language? We shall see!

When the group of American scientists sent a message to Mars, in the International Morse code, by directing a powerful beam of light on the planet from the summit of the Jungfrau, in Switzerland, the beam was brought into the range of the telescope of a young priest-astronomer in one of the Martian temples. Having already made superficial translations of the English language, as it registered on the temple radio receiving set, this youthful Martian incarnation of an earthly Marconi, succeeded in deciphering the code as registered by this beam of light. The result was a rather crude transcription into the English language, but sufficiently intelligible to exchange radio communications, in code, with the earth.

Our short wave programs and code messages, it seems, have long been registering on Mars, but their source was unknown until this beam of light from the Jungfrau was picked up and decoded. The belief, long persisting among the priest-scientists, that there were human beings on the earth, known to them as the Blue Sphere, as intelligent as themselves, it was perfectly natural that they should begin at once to try and contact, by wireless, the planet from which they had caught the beam of light.

For some reason or other, not made clear, they had failed. Perhaps their signaling was mistaken for static on our radios, and was unrecognizable among the weird chattering and apparitions, which scientists claim are caused by the auroras and echoes of radio signals sent from the earth. Certainly no one had the sense, or intelligence, to pick them out of the static, and decode them, until Henry and Olinski began their experiments.

It amazed me to learn that the radio had been developed by the priest-scientists on Mars long before it became generally used on the earth. But it had never been popularized. Its use there had been confined solely to the temples in religious ceremonies, to awe the superstitious masses, as the voice of their unseen gods, and in linking up the various governmental and military outposts. The idea of making it an instrument of popular education and entertainment first came from the earth's music broadcasts, with the result that life on Mars has become almost completely revolutionized.

It was my theory, then, that this clever, young Martian priest-astronomer, who had first decoded the beam of light signals into English, was the originator of the rocket-to-earth idea, and the author and transmitter of the radio message, which had thrilled the world, on the night of the public demonstration in Radio Center. There was every likelihood, too, that he had composed and penned the cuneiform message contained in the scroll, which had been so skillfully translated to the screen for our entertainment and edification.

My amazement grew beyond bounds as the last episode of the travelogue progressed, and I realized how completely Americanized the Martians were becoming through the medium of our radio broadcasts. The short waves from the American stations seemed to register stronger on Mars than those of any other broadcasting stations in the world. And there was the stark truth, galvanized into life on the screen.

Martians flocking in thousands to the temple areas, to listen in, by means of loud speakers, to our educational broadcasts and national programs, as interpreted by their priests. Our school curriculum, talks on farming, science, finance and politics being discussed at symposiums. Applications of American rules of health and hygiene already in force, and largely decreasing the death rate.

Symphony orchestra concerts and grand opera broadcasts relayed from the temples to loud speakers in all public squares of the various communities. The younger generation learning to dance, with partners, to jazz music. Martian youngsters hearing bedtime stories for the first time in their lives--and learning of such important, earthly make-believe characters as Mother Goose and Mickey Mouse. Baseball rapidly displacing chariot racing and gladiatorial combats as a popular amusement.

Furthermore, the masses were beginning to enjoy luxuries hitherto unattainable; the Martian markets being flooded with soaps, tooth-paste, perfumes, hair dressings, cold cream, face powder and cigarettes, all patterned and manufactured after the American products, advertised so extensively in all short wave broadcasts reaching that planet. Martian women were being amazingly transformed into pinkly powdered persons, smartly rouged and lipsticked, slender lined, and giving out a fascinating scent.

The most astounding revelation was contained in the fact that the whole political, social and economic order of the planet was being threatened by the new ideas caught from the American short wave broadcasts. Armed with this new knowledge, the political order of the planet, a form of despotism, was facing disruption, the people actually demanding a democratic form of government, patterned after the American plan.

Even the State religion, the idolatrous worship of fire and water, and the twin moon goddesses, was being undermined. Flashing across the sidereal abyss that yawns between the earth and Mars, had come the first message of Christ. Christian cults were springing up in all parts of the planet despite the drastic action on the part of the State, to forestall the accomplishment of the people's designs, and the overthrow of their ancient religion. Hundreds of pagan priests had become converts to Christianity; they were deserting the temples, and sallying forth to preach a new gospel of salvation.

The slavery of the ape-men was being attacked by the Christians as inhuman. Thousands of slaves owned by the whites had actually been freed. Christian missionaries were penetrating the jungles. A truce had been declared in the warfare that had long been raging between the white race and the ape-men. Mediation was already in progress. A movement for peace and good will among men, and charity for all, was sweeping the planet. Better days were coming to Mars....

The picture was over all too soon; enthusiasm ran high and oratory flowed freely. It marked the close of a great day in the life of Henry. The toastmaster moved his fellow-diners to thunderous applause when he declared: "This event will go down in scientific history as one of the greatest achievements of man." Subsequent speakers showered flowery encomiums on Henry, whose courage and capital had made the occasion possible. Even the sceptics conceded that it all seemed feasible.

The startling disclosures, together with the pictorial creation and grandeur of their interpretation, had held me spellbound. I was impressed as never before in my life; convinced now, in fact, that the information contained in the scroll of life on Mars, extraordinary and incredible as it seemed, was genuine. "Henry's a great man," I thought. My faith was pinned on him now; I didn't care what any one else thought. Transplanted for more than an hour, into a region of wide spaces, as I watched the film unroll, and grasping ultimately the idea that order and efficiency, among human beings like ourselves, could reign on another planet as well as our own, it took me several minutes to come out of my trance, after the close of the picture.

When I did, finally, just as the lights were turned on, I no longer saw a populous planet, with its strange and romantic people being dominated by American ideas, but Pat and McGinity hurriedly disengaging hands. I pretended to take no notice of them. Yet I smiled to myself. While the procession and pageantry of life, in a faraway world, had been weaving their patterns on the screen in astonishing illumination, these two had been holding hands under the table. New worlds might be created, and others grow dim and crumble, I thought, but love would go on just like that--holding hands under the table.

Maybe I was wrong. Perhaps McGinity was just patting Pat's hand to soothe her. She hadn't been well lately; her face had grown pale and anxious from the strain and excitement under which we were living.

McGinity turned to me. "Well, what d'you make of it?" he asked.

"Wonderful!" I replied.

"Oh, I wouldn't have missed seeing this, not for worlds!" Pat chimed in. "I feel as though I'd been up in the clouds, among the stars. It was so thrilling, so overpowering, I don't really feel let down yet. How do you feel?" she added, looking at McGinity.

"Me?" McGinity answered. "Oh, I feel as if I'd fallen down a couple of flights of stairs."

"I've seen great revelations in my time," I remarked, "but this is the most triumphant--" I stopped. The reporter's rather cryptic remark was puzzling me. I glanced at him quizzically. He did not look right, somehow; too much gravity and anxiousness in his pose and countenance, considering this crowning moment in his life. "Something displeased you?" I inquired. "You look worried."

His reply, though vague, immediately aroused my curiosity. "I'd like to see you, alone--tonight--after we return to the castle," he said, in a low voice. "I want to talk over something with you."

That ended our conversation. He excused himself, and hurried away to telephone to the Recorder. Newspapers, not only in New York but throughout the country, and the rest of the world as well, were prepared to devote columns to the momentous event; far more important, to my mind, than the radio message from Mars, and the landing of the Martian rocket, with its strange passenger, for here were actual revelations direct from the planet, proving conclusively that it was inhabited by human beings, who were subject to the same laws, the same temptations and passions which affect ordinary humanity.

It was amusing to see the small regiment of reporters present, rushing off to their different papers to write their stories, as soon as the picture had faded from the screen. McGinity, being more advantageously placed, was ahead of the rest of them in that he had filed his story for the Daily Recorder earlier in the evening. After he had telephoned to his office, and given word for its release, and told what had happened at the banquet table, excerpts from the speeches, etceteras, he was free to accompany us to Sands Cliff.

He had something to tell me. What? It might be nothing, and it might be a good deal. The time of surmising came to its end. Within a few minutes after our arrival at the castle, we were closeted together in his apartment. Middle of the night though it was, I felt excited and bouyant, and filled with a sense of adventure. Lighting a cigar, I settled down in an easy chair, and waited.

The reporter walked up and down the room with his hands plunged deep in his trousers' pockets, and his head bent downwards. He appeared to be tracing the designs in the rug beneath his restless feet. Suddenly, he pulled himself out of his concentrated mental effort, stopped dead, and turned to me.

"Mr. Royce," he said, "do you believe all this stuff that's been happening?"

"Yes," I replied, promptly. "That is, in a way. Why, what do you think?"

For a moment he stood gazing at me in silence, intently. Then he asked: "I wonder if you think what I think?"

"Well," I answered, "if you want to know, I think that if all this that's been happening was contrived and worked out by a human mind, then a human mind can discover what it's all about."

He stared thoughtfully at me a moment before he spoke. "It wouldn't surprise me a bit if you've hit on something," he said at last.

"Yes?" I said. "I'm afraid I don't see it yet. I'm just telling you what I think."

"Exactly," said McGinity. "Now, you think something, and I think something. Very good. If we're both convinced on one point, why not join hands, and follow a new line, which may lead us out of all this mystery to something in the way of solution?"

"That," I replied, instantly, "is just the very thing we shall do!"

"Of course, you must know, as well as I do, that it's all highly improbable, utterly impossible," the reporter observed.

"I suppose it is," I answered, "yet the Science Editor of the Times declared only last Sunday that radio signaling to Mars was 'technically possible.'"

"Granted," agreed McGinity; "but that's another question. What concerns us now is what has already occurred--to prove that it isn't true, without injuring your brother's standing as a scientist."

"I've never known a man so positive as Henry is on this Martian radio signaling and rocket business," I said. "He believes it's all true, and I see no reason whatever to think that it isn't. While there's considerable scepticism in the outside world, no one has yet come forward with a clue--not a single clue--to prove that Henry and Olinski are all wrong, or are being duped."

"Would it surprise you very much if I produced--a clue?" McGinity asked.

"It certainly would," I replied.

The reporter then did a most surprising thing, which gave a startling and dramatic turn to our conversation.

"I've been convinced all along," he said, as he walked over to a secretary, in which he unlocked and opened a drawer, "that there was a human agency--a master mind--at the bottom of all this. In what way, I didn't know--couldn't guess. But, now, I'm sure of it."

From an inner receptacle of the drawer, he produced the scroll, which was found in the rocket, the contents of which Olinski had so skillfully decoded, and he had put into scenario form. He laid it on the table before me.

"Take a look at that," he said.

Carefully unrolling the scroll, I inspected it closely through a reading glass. The tiny cuneiform writing was no more intelligible to me than the hieroglyphics on Cleopatra's Needle in Central Park. It was inscribed on what I judged to be papyrus, the writing-paper of the ancient Egyptians. No doubt the papyrus-plant also grew on Mars. As I looked it over carefully, I detected a curious, subtle scent, like some rare perfume. The roller, I took to be ebony.

I smiled dryly, and made a move to hand it back to the reporter. "I'm afraid I can't make anything out of it," I said; "at least, nothing suspicious, or in the way of a clue."

He waved it off. "You're not finished with it yet," he said. "Try holding it up against the light. Study it again--carefully."

I did as he directed, unrolling the scroll a little at a time, and looking through it, against the bright light of the reading lamp. Suddenly, I stopped--startled; my eyes seemed to pop.

McGinity's voice broke in on the silence.

"You see it?" he asked.

"Yes," I answered, my voice trembling. "I see it."

"Very well," he said. "Now, we know where we are."

XXII

There was not much to see when I unrolled the scroll, and inspected it against the lamplight, as McGinity had directed, but what there was assured me that the reporter was right when he said that he had made a find. Now, we knew something.

For a moment, the discovery completely overwhelmed me; I felt a little giddy. It affected me personally, more closely than anything I had ever had to deal with, mainly because of Henry. A sort of vision rose before my eyes. I saw the whole thing about Mars exposed, and my brother crushed in ignominy.

What the reporter had found was in line with what had been running in both our minds, the conviction that a superior intellect was at the bottom of all this Martian mystery, and its various resultants. It revealed a carefully conceived, highly ingenious conspiracy; a cruel and cold-blooded fraud, done in such a fashion as to leave no clue, which would make the tracing of the adroit and utterly unscrupulous perpetrator concerned, very difficult, if not impossible.

But here was a clue, thanks to McGinity's power of observation and reportorial inquisitiveness, even if it was only the ghost of one, that might put us on to the track of the perpetrator. A water-mark, a small translucent design, appeared in the body of the parchment paper, which proved that the scroll had not been made on Mars, but on earth. There it was, as plain as day: "Royal Bond--Made in U. S. A."

McGinity's reportorial and detective instincts combined--all newspaper reporters seem to have been born with a detective complex--quickly sent him again to the secretary, this time to look for a Manhattan telephone book; and while he was thumbing hastily through its pages, I took another squint at the water-mark, in the parchment scroll. I could hardly believe my eyes.

"What we want to find out now," the reporter said, "is the name of the manufacturer of that particular brand of parchment paper. Hello!--here it is. 'Royal Parchment Paper Company, 158 Beekman Street.'"

"Indeed?" I said, as calmly as I could.

"Now, one of us must take the scroll, and call on this firm, the first thing in the morning," he suggested. "They may be able to throw some light on the matter."

"I'll go," I quickly volunteered.

"Good," said McGinity. "Our job now is to find and bring to light the actual perpetrator of this fraud. This water-mark in the parchment may put us on his trail. That's about the situation, isn't it?"

"As far as I'm concerned," I replied, "that is the situation. But I'm afraid we're facing a many-sided problem. You must remember that we are dealing with events so stupendous that they can hardly be conceived by the human mind."

"But we're in possession of one thread now that may guide us through the maze," said McGinity, settling down finally in a chair opposite me. "I admit that what we have to deal with is most extraordinary--almost inexplicable--" he went on; "but here's this much to remember--your own idea, by the way--if this mystery was contrived and worked out by a human mind, then a human mind can discover what it is."

"Quite right," I agreed. "And if the person who made the scroll is the same one who sent those Martian radio messages, and dropped the rocket--"

"Dropped?" McGinity exclaimed, interrupting me. "Of course, that rocket was _dropped_ on the water-front. Dropped! That idea had never occurred to me before. It wouldn't surprise me, Mr. Royce, if you've hit on another clue."

"Yes?" I said, a little bewildered. "Anyway," I began again, "if it is the same person, then I'm sure we can trace him."

"I'll tell you what I think, Mr. Royce," McGinity said; "we shall have to go back--and go back a long way, and find all we can about--Olinski."

"Olinski?" I exclaimed. "Surely, you don't suspect him?"

"He's a radio wizard, isn't he?" the reporter said. "He may have sent those alleged messages from Mars himself. He may have directed them to the moon, round ten o'clock, each night, during the experiments, and they were echoed, or bounced, back to earth. I understand he's quite an inventor besides. Now, he may have invented that rocket--everything--"

"You're forgetting, McGinity," I interrupted. "He couldn't possibly have invented Mr. Zzyx."

"That's so--I'd forgotten Mr. Zzyx," the reporter admitted. "All the same, just to be on the safe side, I think we'd better trace Olinski's career."

"We must remember this," I suggested, "that whoever is at the bottom of this fraud--if it is a fraud--had a definite purpose in putting it over. In criminology, that is called motive. Once you have the motive, the rest comes easier."

"I agree on that, Mr. Royce," said McGinity. "But the thought has just come to me that the perpetrator of this hoax--and I'm convinced now it is a hoax--has got nearly three months' start. Let's suppose, as you suggested, that he's a man who had some definite purpose in putting it over, the man we want to find. Very well, he pulls his two big tricks late in August, the Martian radio message in code, and the rocket from outer space, both occurring on the same night; and from that time, he passes into the unknown. No more messages from Mars. Everything cleaned up in one night."

"On that supposition," I said, "we shall, of course, have to eliminate Olinski, for which I shall be very glad."