An Inhabitant of the Planet Mars

by Henri de Parville

  “In my turn, I shall say that the facts ascertained by Monsieur Pasteur prove absolutely nothing, and I would be able to demonstrate that if time were not lacking. I will add that Mr. Haughton, like Monsieur Pasteur, attributes the production of inferior organisms to impalpable germs. One does not see them, one merely presumes them, he says; I do exactly the same myself. There is no longer a germ; there are organic molecules so tiny that they evade the eye; these molecules, in aggregation, form the organism.

  “Here the point of departure is the vital germ, the issue of the animal; there it is the similarly invisible corpuscle formed directly by organic matter in decomposition. All Monsieur Pasteur’s experiments support my interpretation just as well as his, and I have several other experiments which, while remaining favorable to my views, contradict his theory. Mr. Haughton and I, however, could argue about these infinitesimal entities for a long time; I prefer to pass on today, to an experiment that will permit me to tighten my argument further. This time, Mr. Newbold will not reproach me for my developments.”

  (Laughter and other noises.)

  Mr. Newbold: “The inhabitant of Mars, gentlemen!”

  Mr. Rink: “I would like to point out to the assembly that the preceding discussions also show that because creatures are dependent, in terms of their structure and superiority, on the state of matter on each planet, they follow its evolution. In that aspect, they are not irrelevant to the question before us.”

  Mr. Greenwight: “Mr. President, we are very close to a conclusion; all that remains, in fact, is to establish how the aerolith was able to reach the Earth from a neighboring planet. Mr. Owerght is scheduled to speak, and I claim the floor on his behalf, in the name of astronomy. Tomorrow, though—tomorrow!”

  Mr. Owerght: “I thank my honorable vice-president, and I shall put myself at the assembly’s disposal tomorrow.”

  LETTER XIII

  Mr. Owerght’s speech. What an aerolith is. The part and the whole: bolide and asteroid. Collisions between heaven and earth. An unexpected cannonball. Vassal and suzerain. Can the Moon hurl stones at the people of Earth? Absolute negation of astronomers. Can a more powerful planet bombard the Earth? How we are imprisoned on each world. Nothing outside. External forces. How everything can be explained. The bolide is a mountain. How the Earth robs Mars.

  Mr. Newbold: “Mr. Owerght has the floor. I must remind you, gentlemen, that I am obliged to close our discussions tomorrow; I cannot therefore recommend too insistently that you must each be brief.”

  Mr. Owerght: “Mr. President, I will only need a few moments. My illustrious colleague, Mr. Greenwight, has established perfectly that only one planet, in the extremely remote epoch of the aerolith’s fall, was physically able to retain a creature conformed like the one we have before our eyes.

  “The mummy cannot be terrestrial in origin; it comes from space, and all the data of physical astronomy agree in identifying the planet Mars as its source. My present role is very simple; it is a matter of checking that result and seeing whether it is mathematically possible.

  “Now, I shall not hide the fact that, at first glance, it seems impossible—and all the astronomers will share my opinion.

  “What, in fact, gentleman, is an aerolith? Is it to a part or a whole that we give the name bolide? What is a bolide? That question is no easier to answer. I shall not list all the hypotheses made by scientists here; I shall give the most generally-accepted opinion.

  “A bolide is a planet in miniature. If you return to the considerations developed, you will see immediately that they are extremely primitive planets, of a relatively great age, long incapable of any evolution of living beings. Life has doubtless arisen there, but so briefly that only the most primitive organisms were able to appear.

  “These bolides, or planetesimals, move through space in obedience to the same laws as large planets. Created at the same time, governed by the same forces, they describe their closed trajectories around the central world, the Sun.60

  Now, let us suppose that the path the bolides follows around the Sun might cut across the one that the Earth follows, and let us suppose, too, that our planet might be passing through the junction point at the moment when a bolide is heading towards it from its own direction. In industrial parlance, they are two railway trains threatening to engage the same track, which they are approaching at a slant. There will inevitably be a collision. The bolide, which is a mere fly by comparison with the terrestrial mass, will crash into the ground without the Earth’s inhabitants experiencing the least shock.

  “If the Earth passes before or after the bolide, but at a relatively small distance, it can still have an effect on it, attracting it in exactly the same way that a piece of wood placed on the surface of the water in a draining bath is drawn towards the plug-hole. The Earth attracts the bolide, which is deflected from its path and, instead of turning around the Sun, begins, like an obedient vassal, to go around the Earth until it is precipitated on to its surface.

  “Finally, it might be the case that even though the bolide passes too far from our planet for the latter to take possession of it, the Earth will influence it; it might even draw it into the atmosphere, but it will end up escaping.

  “We should consider these bolides as similar to planets and not as enormous projectiles launched, as some would like to believe, by lunar volcanoes, because the velocity with which the move excludes any question of lunar origin. The Moon would never have enough power; its volcanoes could never constitute artillery sufficiently powerful to hurl such cannonballs at such a speed. A projectile launched from the Moon would arrive on Earth with a velocity of 11 kilometers per second. Now, the smallest bolides progress with a speed of about 30 kilometers per second.

  “When a bolide grazes the Earth it penetrates into its atmosphere, and the resulting friction warms its surface enough to make it red hot. That high temperature modifies its structure; unequal expansion causes it to break up, or, at the very least, obliges the mass to hurl forth fragments which fall to the ground. These are aeroliths.

  “The meteoric mass discovered by Messrs. Paxton and Davis presents all the physical appearances of an aerolith. However, none so voluminous has ever been found before. Its existence in the midst of ancient strata, although very remarkable, has absolutely nothing extraordinary about it, and is not at all discordant with what we know. This block, detached by the Earth at the moment of a bolide’s passage, has been covered up by recent deposits. What makes it extraordinary, however, is this mummy, whose form is so bizarre, and these relatively well-fabricated vases, which have been found within its mass.

  “Either the bolide had inhabitants, and everything can thus be explained, or it did not, and the block must have been torn away from an inhabited planet—which is much more difficult to imagine.

  “Now, it has been proved that a bolide of this sort could not be inhabited. Life cannot arise, or, at least, perpetuate itself on such infinitesimal worlds. Furthermore, it has also been demonstrated that the planet Mars is the only one that could have possessed similar inhabitants. Thus, it is necessary to come back to this proposition: the mummy and the aerolith have come from the planet Mars. How? It is here that the difficulty of finding an answer becomes considerable.

  “That a bolide circling the Sun might fall to Earth is a fact and is explicable, but that a block of stone belonging to another planet might escape that planet to travel to another would be absolutely inadmissible, as everyone will quickly see.

  “Is not a planet merely the result of all the forces that draw atoms in space towards a given center? There are as may planets as there are targets to aim at and attain. In addition, everything that exists around planets tends to be concentrated there from the moment of their origin. This property of matter is very familiar; on Earth, we call it gravitation; in consequence, far from having any tendency to escape, any body placed on a planet tends to remain there, and to remain there without any effective ability to leave.

  “But, you mig
ht object, why could not some volcanic force succeed in throwing a block of stone far enough from a planet for it to enter the field of action of another world? Why could a Martian volcano not have hurled this enormous projectile high enough for it to be attracted by the Earth?

  “Evidently, those who have put this hypothesis forward, with respect to the Moon or Mars, have not taken the way in which worlds are generated into consideration.

  “What kind of force can launch an aerolith into space? Could it not come from the reactions of internal matter that is still incandescent? Now is not this force the transformation, with a certain diminution, of the primitive force that condensed the atoms in space? How could that diminished force be capable now of pushing the atoms further away than whence they came? The equivalence of the mechanical force in each case demonstrates the absurdity of the hypothesis.

  “No, it is impossible that any sum of atoms placed on a planet could, under the action of that planet’s own forces, travel to a neighboring planet. I posit that proposition as fundamental.

  “So, gentlemen, we still have to ask ourselves how the inhabitant of Mars arrived on Earth.

  “It is as well to observe that, in the preceding theorem, it is clearly specified that a planet cannot lift anything from its surface by means of its own forces. But I see absolutely nothing impossible in admitting that a planet might lose mass under the action of extraneous forces. Here, and here only, I believe I can see a solution to the puzzle of the marvelous transportation of the aerolith and its mummy.

  “Let us suppose, in fact, gentlemen, that the aerolith we now possess constituted the summit of one of the highest mountains on Mars. Let us suppose that a bolide like those which intersect the Earth’s field of action passed very close to Mars in a remoter epoch—close enough to brush the summit of a mountain.

  “The bolide has to be a cannonball of enormous force, which breaks and carries way anything that gets in its way. It encounters the peak of a mountain, breaks it, and carries it away, pushing it in front of itself and communicating its own speed to it. Note that there is nothing mathematically impossible in this. The shock, with respect to the mass of the aerolith, is quite insignificant; this bolide was considerable. Perhaps slightly deviated from its route, the enormous globe would nevertheless have continued on its way into space.

  “It would be a great mistake to consider it strange that the detached mountain-peak did not fall back after the impact. Not at all: throw a piece of paper into the path of a moving wagon, and the paper will remain stuck to it, and the same is true of increasingly heavy objects if the speed of the wagon or the projectiles is increasingly great. There is nothing extraordinary about it. The peak of the Martian mountain and the bolide will soon be no more than a single whole; the mountain peak would have been a veritable aerolith for the bolide’s inhabitants, if it had any.

  “It now remains to explain the block’s fall to Earth.

  “The bolide, deviated by Mars, doubtless eventually adopted a trajectory cutting across the orbit of Earth closely enough to be influenced by its mass. The Martian bolide would have become the Earth’s bolide. The block would have leave the bolide’s field of action to enter that of the Earth, and would have finished up falling to the surface like a contemporary aerolith.

  “As for the inhabitant found inside the meteoric mass, it is evident that he did indeed belong to Mars. Buried on the summit of a mountain with his ornamental objects, this inhabitant of our neighbor was undoubtedly an important person. A great savant, perhaps, who asked to be interred far from the world, above his peers? Who can tell? Perhaps he was an astronomer, a geometer to whom his compatriots were indebted for the discovery of the laws that regulate the universe. The inhabitants of Mars certainly never imagined that we might one day have their Newton or Kepler on our world!

  “Thus, gentlemen, for my part, it does not appear to be impossible that, by virtue of entirely fortuitous circumstances, a block of stone might be torn away from one planet by the passage of a bolide and thrown back on to another. From this specialist viewpoint, although I cannot prove absolutely that this was the case, I can no more deny absolutely that it could have occurred. In the presence of the curious proofs accumulated by my colleagues, that result is almost as a confirmation.”

  (Murmurs. Considerable applause. Individual conversations.)

  The president’s hand-bell has some difficulty in re-establishing silence.

  During the last part of the session, the floor was taken, in turn, by Messrs. Wintow, Rink, Ziegler, G. Mitchell, etc. The discussion ranged from the ethnology of planetary races to comparative physiology and the bizarre form of the inhabitant of Mars. I am not sending you the details, which I had a great deal of trouble grasping, and which, moreover, will not be of any interest to your readers. Suffice it to say that the assembly finished by reaching agreement on the point that the triangular form of the mummy’s head must have resulted from the pressure to which it had been subjected, compressed as it was in its calcareous envelope. As for the little trunk hanging from the forehead, it is evidently the nose; it communicates with the back of the mouth. The more precise drawings that I am finishing at this moment will give you a good idea of the details.

  LETTER XIV

  Don’t trust newspapers. Uproar at Paxton House. Who presides by night in Mr. Newbold’s stead? Salamec on trial. The infusoria of Mars. In which we resuscitate on Earth the animals of other worlds. Mr. Wintow must be dreaming. Sensation. Mr. G. Mitchell of Frankfurt. The key to the plate. Mr. Owerght’s mountain is found. What the inhabitant of Mars is. A tour of inspection. American generosity. Good news. The inhabitant of Mars arrives in France. Conclusion.

  The debates have been brought to a conclusion by of a new discovery and a striking confirmation of the theoretical views expressed in this arena. This has, of course, nothing to do with the absurd rumors that have probably reached you in advance of my letter, and which owe their source to a rather amusing adventure.

  Five or six days ago, at a moment when all Paxton House was sound asleep, and Mr. Newbold was snoring as loudly as the east wind rattling the logs of the cabins—I was in the room next door—there was a sudden loud noise downstairs. Windows shattered, all the dogs started barking, and red flames illuminated the recently-constructed buildings.

  Everyone immediately got out of bed, thinking that we were under attack.

  I was one of the first ones down, and, to my great astonishment, I saw absolutely nothing out of the ordinary except for a great fire burning outside the door of the conference hall, which shed a sinister light upon the trees and the buildings.

  “What’s that?” I said to Mr. Paxton

  The dogs were yapping increasingly loudly, and hurling themselves furiously at the entrance door of the conference hall.

  “Here’s a clue that will doubtless help us,” he answered, as he went into the hall, kicking out right and left to clear away the dogs.

  We followed him. Everything appeared to be in order, and the most complete silence reigned in the room. We were about to leave when we heard a hoarse cry behind us.

  At the same time, Mr. Paxton drew his revolver from his belt and turned round.

  We had not gone far enough the first time. Like him, we retraced our steps.

  At the conference-table, in Mr. Newbold’s chair, a small, hunched black creature was majestically seated, grimacing frightfully in the light of the torches. It was writhing madly, stretching out its arms, twisting its body and shaking its head with incredible vigor. This fantastic individual was evidently imitating president Newbold.

  We were stupefied.

  In front of the conference table, the mummy had disappeared. The coffin, placed almost vertically during the day, had fallen over, coming to rest upside-down.

  What could possibly have happened? Had the mummy woken up? Did we have the resuscitated inhabitant of Mars before our eyes? What would the academies say? Fallen from Mars, resuscitated on Earth!

  The individu
al continued gesticulating, no less furiously, and surveyed us disdainfully. The torches only startled it slightly, and it addressed its singular mimicry preferentially in our direction.

  I can still see it in the semi-darkness, its eyes flashing fire. We were a long way from the mummy’s dark cavities!

  Our error could not last long. The pretended inhabitant of Mars, seeing us advance, suddenly jumped several meters, releasing another cry more strident than the first, and leapt unceremoniously on to the secretary’s table, overturning Mr. Newbold’s hand-bell, which began tinkling immodestly, in spite of the late hour.

  Mr. Paxton put his revolver back in his belt and burst out laughing.

  The inhabitant of Mars was a large monkey of which he was particularly fond, and which he had an awful habit of taking everywhere with him.

  Salamec had seen Mr. Newbold and his colleagues agitating since the beginning of the debates through the windows of the hall, and he had been determined to have his turn presiding over the assembly.

  He had broken a couple of windows, knocked over a few benches, set the plate from the aerolith rolling over the ground along with the fossilized tomb, and installed himself, in the midst of the hubbub, in the president’s seat, doubtless demanding the profoundest silence.

  As for the fire, it is probable that, by way of imitation, he wanted the festival to be complete, and had lit a big bonfire in the middle of the courtyard. That morning, in fact, the workmen had been burning patches of dry grass that were encumbering the borders of the habitation.

  How had Salamec lit the grass? That was the one thing we were unable to determine, and which caused considerable anxiety to his owner. He is, in fact, fearful on that account that Salamec might take it into is head one day to set fire to Paxton House and all its outbuildings.