The Angry Planet by John Keir Cross

far as I could see, to consist of huge porous red rocks—rather like
sandstone as we know it on earth. I seemed to perceive, on the lower slopes,
patches of green—possibly, I thought, mountain varieties of the plants
immediately in front of us. Only once did I have any impression that I might be
looking at something connected with human life. Just as I was lowering the
binoculars from my eyes, I saw, behind the shoulder of one of the lower hills,
a sudden brilliant flash. My first impression was that the sun was reflecting
from a hill lake, but I soon saw that this was impossible — the flash was half-way up the
hill, and seemed, as far as I could see, a sort of crescent—not lying
horizontally, as a lake would, but at an angle along the hill-slope. I swept
the glasses along the range to see if there might be any other such flashes,
but there was nothing; and when I moved them back to the original spot, the
bright crescent had gone. It had not been in my field of vision long enough for
me to be able to form any real opinion as to what it had been.
     
    Description of plants at close
quarters—write up in some detail. Extraordinary episode of far-off screaming
noise, seemingly in our heads , as Mac cut into one of them. What
can it have been? Plainly nothing immediately near us that could have caused
it— except the plant itself!
    A bizarre, extravagant notion—but
in a sense the only one that offers any real explanation. Could it possibly be so? Write up whole theory at some length.
     
    Various remarks—conversations,
etc., as we move back to the Albatross. The party in excellent
spirits—Mike enjoying his high-jumping hugely. Various points mentioned by
Mac—his intention to take some photographs of the scene etc. Work in this way
towards end of chapter. End chapter thus:—
     . . .and
within a very short time, the boys had the Primus working (how
extraordinary to see such a homely thing as a Primus here on Mars, with
all its associations of picnics and alfresco outings of all sorts on earth!),
and Jacky was busying herself with cooking the bacon and eggs that Mac fetched
for her from the refrigerator. Soon, drifting out on the thin sharp air, there
came the delicious smell of real, freshly-cooked food—real food, after all our
weeks of vitamin pastes and sieved vegetables! Mike turned a good half-dozen
huge cartwheels in sheer ravenous excitement.
    Jacky insisted that we did
things properly, and so we set out a clean bed-sheet as a tablecloth. There
were not enough plates, knives, forks, and so on, to go round (after all, we
had reckoned on only two travelers in the Albatross ) , but since the
food had to be cooked piece-meal in our one small frying-pan anyway, that did
not worry us a great deal—we took our viands in turns. When the meal was
eventually over, we sighed deeply and contentedly and lay back in the
sand—which was now quite warm from the sun. I lit a pipe and passed my tobacco
pouch over to the Doctor.
    “Well, Mac,” I said, smiling, “we’re
here. We’ve made it, after all. I don’t mind confessing to you now, that in the
old days back on earth, I often had my doubts—I thought sometimes that maybe
your lab assistants were right and you were just a little bit mad!”
    “To tell you the truth, I
thought so myself at times,” he said with a warm chuckle.
    So we puffed contentedly in the
sunshine, watching the fumes of the Virginian tobacco, grown so many millions
of miles away, go drifting lazily up to disperse in the clear air. I felt
deeply satisfied with myself—one of the very first human beings to land on
Mars! Think of it—I, Stephen MacFarlane, a writer of books, a weaver of dreams,
creator (in my head) of fantastic adventures!  . . . and here I was, actually engaged in the flesh in an
adventure more wild and fantastic than any I could possibly imagine!
    As I lay there in the sun,
relaxed and comfortable, I felt a curious drowsiness coming over me. After all,
it was a long