The Angry Planet by John Keir Cross Read Free Book Online Page A

exclamation came as he suddenly floated away from
the ceiling and collided with Paul, who was moving in a gentle glide diagonally
across the cabin. Jacky simultaneously drifted past me and I made a grab at
her. But the movement she made to grab at me in return sent her shooting off at
an angle, and next thing I saw she was right up in one of the corners of the
cabin looking as if she was about to burst into tears.
    By this time Mac had recovered from his amazement at
seeing the children.
    “Steve!” he cried, “for heaven’s sake get hold of them—do
something! They’ll smash up my instruments!”
    He made a wild lunge at Paul, who was hovering just
over his head, and as he did so his feet came away from the floor-straps. And
he—Andrew McGillivray, Ph.D., F.R.S., of Aberdeen, Scotland—went soaring up to
join the human balloons in the air of the cabin! I alone of the party remained
on my feet. And, surveying the fantastic scene, I burst into laughter. It was,
undoubtedly, the funniest thing I have ever seen.
    The Doctor was the first to get back to normal. He suddenly
cried: “The motor, Steve—shut it off! It’s past time—if we don’t stop it we’ll
develop too much speed, and we’ll use more of the fuel than we ought to, and
won’t have enough for the return flight.”
    This sobered me. I started to plod across to the control
panel. Before I got there, however, Mac managed to push himself down from the
ceiling to one of the handrails, and groped his way by means of that to the
motor switch and put it off. The children, too, by this time, were beginning to
get some slight control into their movements. Paul had come to earth, so to
say, and was clinging to one of the mattresses on the floor I have already
mentioned. Mike had got hold of the top of the open door of the store closet
and was swinging gently to and fro with it. Jacky had pushed herself down from
her corner towards me, and this time we both managed to grab properly. She
clung to me very tightly, and I could feel her trembling and hear her breathing
in deep excited gasps.
    “Get me a pair of boots, Steve, for heaven’s sake,”
cried Mac. “There are a couple of spares in the locker too—you can give those
to two of the children—they’ll be able to tighten the straps up so as to make
them fit reasonably well.”
    With Jacky still round my neck I moved over to the
locker for the boots. I gave the Doctor his pair, strapped a pair on Jacky, and
handed the third pair to Paul. Mike worked his way down the closet door and we
got him across the cabin to a pair of floor-straps. Then we all looked at each
other in silence.
    “Well!” said the Doctor at length, his face set and
grim. “I suppose you children realize what you’ve done? Have you any idea how
serious a situation you’re in? Do you know where we’re going?—to Mars!”
    They looked at us with white scared faces.
    “We didn’t mean it, sir,” said Paul tremulously. “Honestly
we didn’t.”
    “How did you get in here at all?” asked the Doctor in
some exasperation. “That’s what I can’t understand.”
    “We were  . . . exploring, sir. We saw your rocket in the enclosure
up at your house last Sunday, and then we heard of it from old Mr. McIntosh,
the gamekeeper, and we—we thought we’d like to have a closer look at it. We
didn’t mean to do any harm, sir—really we didn’t. And we’re very sorry if we’ve
upset you.”
    And then out it all came, the whole story as you
already know it—how they arranged to get back from the picnic early, how they
got over the stockade wall, how they hid in the store closet when they saw us
approaching the Albatross.
    “... And, of course, we went unconscious for a time,”
finished Paul. “And then, when we came round, we went all light-headed. The
door must have got jammed in some way, because we couldn’t open it for a bit,
and we had to knock on it and call to get out. We were floating about in there,
and then the door