You know, don’t you, like everyone else, that James came to Yorick Garden by airplane every evening, and that that concession made to the mores of the time delighted all the regulars of the theater. Then again, everyone knew that James had a curious mind, infatuated with strangeness, always in search of singular adventures, and that his actions were never those of vulgar individuals.
Given that he had already spent ten years transforming the simple airplanes of which you and I still make use every day, one can imagine that the effects that he was able to obtain were out of the ordinary. Thus, no one was unduly astonished on the day when he was seen to arrive from Paris with his new machine, at least four hours before the doors of the theater opened.
James, you will remember, manifested some impatience that evening. No one was there yet, and the scenery had not even been set up. Four hours of waiting was, for James, something utterly impossible, and he resolved, as you know, to take a little trip in order to try out the new machine that he had just invented.
It was, you will doubtless recall, a redoubtable engine of ninety-two powers, directly fueled by the combustion of air, the speed of which could increase in an indefinite fashion, thanks to the pipe-cylinder, rifled turbine-fashion, which plunged in a spiral fashion into the air, bringing into the motor an ever-increasing provision of liquefied ozone.
When he left the square in front of the Yorick Theater, James, without any preconceived plan, set his flight compass in a westerly direction and bounded forward with such rapidity that he disappeared from sight like one of those soap bubbles that rises up and vanishes in a sunbeam.
With tranquilly maintained in the central cabin, James darted a glance behind him, but, to his great regret, could not see anything. Invigorated by his speed, chimneys, small cottages and entire sheepfolds, ripped from the ground, rose into the air in the wake of the aerovortex and obstructed his view. James amused himself for a moment contemplating a bleating ewe that was still suckling her lamb as she flew, and then set his turbines on full and looked toward the sun.
To his great astonishment, he observed that the coasts of England had already disappeared and that he was flying over the Ocean.
Feverishly, he consulted his chronograph; three minutes had gone by since his departure from London. The time in the Scilly Isles being twenty-eight minutes behind that of London, James had already gone back in time by twenty-five minutes. Having left London at four o’clock, James set out to sea at three thirty-five.
That initial success intoxicated him. He moved his lever directly to sixty-fourth gear, raised the firescreen against the inflammation of the air, and the airplane set off over the Ocean like a meteor.
Fifteen minutes later James passed over New York like a comet, at exactly eleven-eighteen in the morning, the time in New York being five hours behind Greenwich time.
From then on, there was a mad dash in pursuit of the past. Well before San Francisco, James caught up with the preceding night, and then the previous evening’s sunset, and then the previous day, and then the preceding days of the past.
He saw England again, and the public queuing the day before at the doors of the Yorick Theater, as he was skidding over the clouds, still traveling at top speed and full ozone, with the magnetic currents behind him.
Sometimes, he checked the direction of his flight-compass, took a liquefied beef pill and a few grams of lead somnoline. Then, regenerated, he looked down again at what was happening on Earth.
As he caught up with the months and the years, James became more interested in people and things, and his eyes never quit the guiderope-telephone-amplifier.
Indignantly, he saw himself at the age of six, stealing gin from his poor grandmother, and furiously cut the ignition. He only stopped after two further tours of the Earth, and scolded himself rudely on the eve of the sin. The child laughed at him and called him an old madman. James understood then how many young people make the mistake of not believing in the predictions of old men, and set off again sadly. In addition, he could not understand why he did not remember meeting himself once at the age of six, and that anguishing question earned him a partial seizure of the second frontal circumvolution on the left.
Soon, James felt out of place. The execution of Charles I left him cold, and the discovery of America scarcely excited him anymore, having just discovered it so many times.
Once he stopped in order to have a chat with some Roman generals. He wanted to astonish his listeners, to predict their future; he bluffed, but gave himself away. He was taken for a simple fortuneteller and given a few drachms in exchange for a gold Napoléon, which was accepted without difficulty.
Ever more anxious, James went back through history furiously. He passed over ancient Greece like a shooting star, and disturbed the astronomical observations of Chaldea.
Soon, humans disappeared, volcanoes ignited and the ground was convulsed. James crossed the limits of history and carried on toward the origins of the world.
One day, when he was flying over a virgin forest, listening in amazement to the animals talking, as they still had the right to do before the creation of humans, James suddenly felt a sharp pain in the extremity of his vertebral column, while the aerovortex suddenly stopped, as if jammed by an unusual object.
Astonished, James tried to discover what had happened, and, feeling the injured spot, was utterly amazed to observe, behind his back, the presence of the commencement of a tail. James Stout Brighton was going back to the ape!
“My God,” he said, “I believe that it’s time to stop, or else I’ll soon be in the skin of a zoophyte.”
With difficulty, James then retraced his route eastwards, but in first gear this time, the engine having been seriously damaged, and he scarcely got back to history without breaking down.
Fittingly, he returned in time for the creation of man, and God used him as an anonymous worker to avoid incest.
Some say, my dear Monsieur, that he perished lamentably in prehistory, under the pseudonym of Prometheus, others that he returned to his own century on foot, under the name of the Wandering Jew, and yet others that he married the daughter of Seth, by whom he had Enos, who lived for seventy-five years and engendered Lamech, who lived for ninety-two years and engendered Noah, who lived for five hundred years and engendered the Shamrock, the first boat worthy of the name. But the future alone will inform us in a certain fashion of that which is true in the human past.
Michel Epuy: Anthea; or, The Strange Planet
(1918)
Prologue
Stories of adventure, particularly so-called “interplanetary” fiction, are fashionable. That is one of the reasons that has led the editors of the Bibliothèque de la Plume de Paon to introduce into this collection the short novel Anthée, which a master of the genre, J. H. Rosny aîné, greeted on its publication in a literary periodical with vigorous eulogies and a testimony of keen admiration.
The author of Anthée, the laureate of one of the most important prizes of the Societé des Gens de Lettres de France (the Prix Jean Revel) has published numerous works in another genre: Le Sentiment de la Nature, Petite âme, Le Nouvel homme, etc. Let us also mention his translations; Oeuvres choisies de Rudyard Kipling, Anthologie des humoristes anglais et américains, Daphné by Mrs. Humphry Ward, Rien que David by Eleanor H. Porter and ten other novels.
But where Michel Epuy seems to have obtained the greatest success is with his books for children, such as Petite Princesse, Jacqueline Sylvestre, etc.
The short novel Anthée allies the qualities of an adventure story—originality and fecundity of imagination—with those of the literary novel—a sentiment of beauty and descriptive artistry—and by virtue of that, it is destined to please young readers as well as adults.
To J. H. Rosny aîné,
with admiration and
respectful affection.
Now that my mind has gradually recovered its vigor, lucidity and tranquility after several years of meditation and reflection, I feel a str
ong urge to describe in detail all that I saw, felt and experienced during the few weeks that I spent on another world.
It was my ambition that was the manifest primary cause of the entire affair. I was an assistant astronomer at the Observatoire de Paris; I was twenty-seven years old; I was impatient to arrive, to make a name for myself—and in order to do that, I didn’t spare myself, but until then, my observations and my work had only obtained a rather chilly welcome on the part of my superiors.
I remember very clearly the day on which the great scientist Lador announced that he had discovered a new comet, which was advancing toward the solar system, with a prodigious velocity. There was a tremendous excitement in our small society of young astronomers, infatuated with glory, and as soon as it was asserted that the unknown body would pass even closer to the Earth than Halley’s Comet in 1910, everyone did his utmost to obtain some kind of mission, a particular detail to observe, photographs to take or calculations to make. The luckiest, in my view, were those who were appointed to go to a particular point on the equator, because it was from the equatorial line that the passage of Lador’s Comet would probably be most clearly visible.
Personally, in spite of my previous work, in spite of the urgent steps I took and the solicitations of my friends, I obtained nothing…less than nothing, since I was obliged to surrender the ocular of my telescope to an aged Swedish scientist who was staying in Paris.
On the evening of the comet’s passage, I was wandering sadly through the streets. Deeply affected by my bad luck, I decided to go to a cheerful theater and then to supper—in brief, to numb myself in order to forget my ennui—and not even to raise my eyes to perceive the milky tail of the astral voyager.
I held firm until one o’clock in the morning, but when I came out of the restaurant, all my chagrin returned, and all of a sudden, as if to reduce its force slightly, an idea occurred to me: why did I not go to see my old master Artemion at the Eiffel Tower? He had shown me so much sympathy once. He would certainly be sorry to hear about the injustice of which I was the victim, and would doubtless permit me to glance at the heavens with him.
I took a cab to the Eiffel Tower. I found Artemion beside the wireless telegraph apparatus. His eyesight was poor, as he was not observing himself. He was waiting for dispatches that one of his friends, an illustrious American astronomer, was going to send him from Quito. Because of the difference in longitude, it was scarcely six o’clock in Quito. It was at seven o’clock that the Comet was due to pass close to the Earth. Thus, assuming that the observations would take an hour and the telegraphic transmissions another hour, it would be necessary for us to wait three hours to obtain news. We spent that time pleasantly smoking cigarettes and remembering good times at the École Polytechnique, where Artemion had taught me the elements of the differential calculus.
The hours went by very quickly. I was no longer sad; it seemed to me that somewhere, in the shadow or the mystery of things that are yet to be, a triumph was in preparation for me. I was, at any rate, full of a new ardor and already planning to write a magazine article about my nocturnal conversation with the great scientist. He only incidentally talked to me about the Comet.
“It will probably be the same as it was with Halley’s,” he said. “All the threats of catastrophe and all the pessimistic anticipations are more or less fantastic. These comets are nothing but masses of very rarefied gases.”
“But might we not find one that will impregnate us with deleterious gases?”
“Obviously,” Artemion replied, “anything’s possible, but these gases, even if they’re deleterious, can hardly penetrate the terrestrial atmosphere, which is impermeable as marble to substances of such feeble density.”
At this juncture I saw that the wireless telegraph apparatus was functioning. I signaled the fact to the master, and we leaned over the operator’s shoulder. The man wrote: From Quito (Ecuador) relayed via New York: Very good observations. Weather fine. Passage of Comet accompanied by high winds….
At this point there was a brief interruption, but before I had time to resume my conversation with the scientist, the apparatus began to function again. I leaned over once more.
Very curious phenomenon, the dispatch continued. Star of apparent diameter equal to the moon static overhead. Seems immobile in our telescopes….
This time the communication stopped completely. The operator in Quito must have gone to look at the new star, because nothing more reached New York that night—or, in consequence, us.
Personally, I was exultant. Finally, I had my chance. I had no intention of going to bed. At daybreak, I ran to wake up my Aunt Adeline and explain to her precipitately that my glory was ensured if I could lay my hands on twenty thousand francs.
Still half-asleep, the dear old lady, frightened, did not believe a word of what I was saying, but, fearing some tragic story of gambling, signed a blank check for me.
On returning home I piled a few instruments and a few underclothes into a valise and leapt into a cab.
I departed for my conquest. I was going to see the new star, study it, explore it at the closest possible range, make it mine….
It really was a new star. The morning newspapers published the dispatch that I had been the first to see. Others had arrived during the morning, and at midday, special editions gave a few details of the marvelous event. Already, a few precise observations had been made by the astronomers in Quito, who reported that the star abandoned in their sky by the Comet was nowhere near as large as the moon, but that its apparent size was due to its excessive proximity to the Earth.
I didn’t wait to find out any more. The same day I took the train to Le Havre, wanting to take advantage of the departure of a fast transatlantic liner. Seven days later I disembarked in New York. Just taking time to buy the last week’s newspapers, I leapt aboard a steamer that would transport me to Panama. Four days of sailing, and then across in isthmus by railway; two more days aboard a very comfortable boat, and I found myself in Guayaquil, the port of Quito.
Already, since the second day I had spent on the Pacific waves, I had perceived an enormous round mass on the southern horizon, above the high summits of the Andes, milky white in color, which resembled the moon seen in daylight, and which grew larger the closer we came to the equator. That was the unknown star, the new world that Lador’s Comet had been able to pick up in the unexplored regions of space and abandoned there, in close proximity to our Earth.
As I emerged from the railway station in Quito, with my nose in the air, looking for the star, I suddenly heard the jovial and encouraging “Hi there!” by which every good American announces his presence. It was my old friend Merryman, of Harvard University, whom I had met in Australia during the last transit of Venus over the solar disk. He greeted me warmly, and then, divining my intense curiosity, immediately cried: “Interrogate me, my friend. I can give you all the latest details while we go to the hotel.”
“Bravo!” I replied. “And thanks. Well, what about this asteroid?”
“It’s a tiny planet that has come from God knows where. It has become our satellite. Its name is Anthea…in accordance with the desire expressed by yours truly….”
“You were the first to see it?”
“Yes, and as one generally gives planets mythological names, I thought of the name Anthea, with which the Greeks labeled a number of goddesses.38 It fits quite well, for our celestial Anthea certainly has the look of a big flower blossoming up there….”
“My felicitations,” I replied. “So we’ve got a grip on an unknown world, and we’re holding it firmly?”
“Exactly. Anthea is motionless above Quito—which is to say that it’s orbiting around the Earth in precisely twenty-four hours, so that it doesn’t move relative to us.”
“Good—and its dimensions?”
He replied volubly: “Radius of fifty kilometers. Surface area eight hundred and twenty-seven square kilometers. Volume fourteen thousand one hundred and thirty cubic kilometers.
Circumference at the equator ninety-four kilometers. Density considerably less than that of Earth, but about equal to that of the moon, about three grams per cubic centimeter.”
I didn’t flinch under that avalanche of figures, but said: “That gives us a very small planet. Less than a hundred kilometers around! And how far is it from the Earth?”
“Three hundred and eighty-one kilometers.”
“But that’s no distance at all. Are you sure?”
In fact, compared with the formidable distances that separate the nearest planets, that figure of three hundred and eighty-one kilometers appeared to me to be ridiculously small.
My interlocutor replied: “We’re absolutely certain. The planet Anthea is no more than three hundred and eighty-one kilometers away; nevertheless, it hasn’t fallen onto the Earth’s surface because, compared to the moon, it has a mass a million times lighter…and I dare say that it needs to be, because, being a thousand times closer to us than the moon, it’s subject to an attraction a million times greater. There is, therefore, an equilibrium.”
Accustomed as I was to the mathematical precision of astronomical observations, I remained nonplussed momentarily before all these certainties acquired in such a short time. Truly, science is a beautiful thing. But I began to question him again.
“You say that Anthea is orbiting the Earth above the equator?”
“Yes, in a plane parallel to the equator. Its orbit is forty-two thousand three hundred and ninety-two kilometers.”
“Its velocity?”
“One thousand seven hundred and sixty-seven kilometers an hour. It also rotates on its axis in one hour.
The Revolt of the Machines Page 30
