Edison's Conquest of Mars

by Garrett Putman Serviss

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  _THERE WERE GIANTS IN THE EARTH_

  Deimos proved to be, as we had expected, about six miles in diameter.Its mean density is not very great so that the acceleration of gravitydid not exceed one-two-thousandths of the earth's. Consequently theweight of a man turning the scales at 150 pounds at home was here onlyabout one ounce.

  The result was that we could move about with greater ease than on thegolden asteroid, and some of the scientific men eagerly resumed theirinterrupted experiments.

  But the attraction of this little satellite was so slight that we had tobe very careful not to move too swiftly in going about lest we shouldinvoluntarily leave the ground and sail out into space, as, it will beremembered, happened to the fugitives from the fight on the asteroid.

  Not only would such an adventure have been an uncomfortable experience,but it might have endangered the success of our scheme. Our presentdistance from the surface of Mars did not exceed 12,500 miles, and wehad reasons to believe the Martians possessed telescopes powerful enoughto enable them not merely to see the electrical ships at such adistance, but to also catch sight of us individually. Although the cloudcurtain still rested on the planet it was probable that the Martianswould send some of their airships up to its surface in order todetermine what our fate had been. From that point of vantage with theirexceedingly powerful glasses, we feared that they might be able todetect anything unusual upon or in the neighborhood of Deimos.

  Accordingly strict orders were given, not only that the ships should bemoored on that side of the satellite which is perpetually turned awayfrom Mars, but that, without orders, no one should venture around on theother side of the little globe or even on the edge of it, where he mightbe seen in profile against the sky.

  Still, of course, it was essential that we, on our part, should keep aclose watch, and so a number of sentinels were selected, whose duty itwas to place themselves at the edge of Deimos, where they could peepover the horizon, so to speak, and catch sight of the globe of ourenemies.

  The distance of Mars from us was only about three times its owndiameter, consequently it shut off a large part of the sky, as viewedfrom our position.

  But in order to see its whole surface it was necessary to go a littlebeyond the edge of the satellite, on that side which faced Mars. At thesuggestion of Colonel Smith, who had so frequently stalked Indians thatdevices of this kind readily occurred to his mind, the sentinels allwore garments corresponding in color to that of the soil of theasteroid, which was of a dark, reddish brown hue. This would tend toconceal them from the prying eyes of the Martians.

  The commander himself frequently went around the edge of the planet inorder to take a look at Mars, and I often accompanied him.

  I shall never forget one occasion, when, lying flat on the ground, andcautiously worming our way around on the side toward Mars, we had justbegun to observe it with our telescopes, when I perceived, against thevast curtain of smoke, a small, glinting object, which I instantlysuspected to be an airship.

  I called Mr. Edison's attention to it, and we both agreed that it was,undoubtedly, one of the Martian's aerial vessels, probably on thelookout for us.

  A short time afterward a large number of airships made their appearanceat the upper surface of the clouds, moving to and fro, and although,with our glasses, we could only make out the general form of the ships,without being able to discern the Martians upon them, yet we had not theleast doubt but they were sweeping the sky in every direction in orderto determine whether we had been completely destroyed or had retreatedto a distance from the planet.

  Even when that side of Mars on which we were looking had passed intonight, we could still see the guardships circling above the clouds,their presence being betrayed by the faint twinkling of the electriclights that they bore.

  Finally, after about a week had passed, the Martians evidently made uptheir minds that they had annihilated us, and that there was no longerdanger to be feared. Convincing evidence that they believed we shouldnot be heard from again was furnished when the withdrawal of the greatcurtain of cloud began.

  This phenomenon first manifested itself by a gradual thinning of thevaporous shield, until, at length, we began to perceive the red surfaceof the planet dimly shining through it. Thinner and rarer it became,and, after the lapse of about eighteen hours, it had completelydisappeared, and the huge globe shone out again, reflecting the light ofthe sun from its continents and oceans with a brightness that, incontrast with the all-enveloping night to which we had so long beensubjected, seemed unbearable to our eyes.

  Indeed, so brilliant was the illumination which fell upon the surface ofDeimos that the number of persons who had been permitted to pass aroundon the exposed side of the satellite was carefully restricted. In theblaze of light which had been suddenly poured upon us we felt somewhatlike malefactors unexpectedly enveloped in the illumination of apoliceman's dark lantern.

  Meanwhile, the object which we had in view in retreating to thesatellite was not lost sight of, and the services of the chief linguistsof the expedition were again called into use for the purpose ofacquiring a new language. The experiment was conducted in the flagship.The fact that this time it was not a monster belonging to an utterlyalien race upon whom we were to experiment, but a beautiful daughter ofour common Mother Eve, added zest and interest as well as the mostconfident hopes of success to the efforts of those who were striving tounderstand the accents of her tongue.

  Still the difficulty was very great, notwithstanding the conviction ofthe professors that her language would turn out to be a form of thegreat Indo-European speech from which the many tongues of civilized menupon the earth had been derived.

  The learned men, to tell the truth, gave the poor girl no rest. Forhours at a time they would ply her with interrogations by voice and bygesture, until, at length, wearied beyond endurance, she would fallasleep before their faces.

  Then she would be left undisturbed for a little while, but the momenther eyes opened again the merciless professors flocked about her oncemore, and resumed the tedious iteration of their experiments.

  Our Heidelberg professor was the chief inquisitor, and he revealedhimself to us in a new and entirely unexpected light. No one could haveanticipated the depth and variety of his resources. He placed himself infront of the girl and gestured and gesticulated, bowed, nodded, shruggedhis shoulders, screwed his face into an infinite variety of expressions,smiled, laughed, scowled and accompanied all these dumb shows withposturings, exclamations, queries, only half expressed in words andcadences which, by some ingenious manipulation of the tones of thevoice, he managed to make expressive of his desires.

  He was a universal actor--comedian, tragedian, buffoon--all in one.There was no shade of human emotions to which he did not seem capable ofgiving expression.

  His every attitude was a symbol, and all his features became in quicksuccession types of thought and exponents of hidden feelings, while hisinquisitive nose stood forth in the midst of their ceaseless play like aperpetual interrogation point that would have electrified the Sphinxinto life, and set its stone lips gabbling answers and explanations.

  The girl looked on, partly astonished, partly amused, and partlycomprehending. Sometimes she smiled, and then the beauty of her facebecame most captivating. Occasionally she burst into a cherry laugh whenthe professor was executing some of his extraordinary gyrations beforeher.

  It was a marvelous exhibition of what the human intellect, when all itspowers are concentrated upon a single object, is capable of achieving.It seemed to me, as I looked at the performance, that if all the racesof men, who had been stricken asunder at the foot of the Tower of Babelby the miracle which made the tongues of each to speak a languageunknown to the others, could be brought together again at the foot ofthe same tower, with all the advantages which thousands of years ofeducation had in the meantime imparted to them, they would be able,without any miracle, to make themselves mutually understood.

  And it wa
s evident that an understanding was actually growing betweenthe girl and the professor. Their minds were plainly meeting, and whenboth had become focused upon the same point, it was perfectly certainthat the object of the experiment would be attained.

  Whenever the professor got from the girl an intelligent reply to hispantomimic inquiries, or whenever he believed that he got such a reply,it was immediately jotted down in the ever open note book which hecarried in his hand.

  And then he would turn to us standing by, and with one hand on hisheart, and the other sweeping grandly through the air, would make aprofound bow and say:

  "The young lady and I great progress make already. I have her wordscomprehended. We shall wondrous mysteries solve. Jawohl! Wunderlich!Make yourselves gentlemen easy. Of the human race the ancestral stemhave I here discovered."

  Once I glanced over a page of his notebook and there I read this:

  "Mars--Zahmor

  "Copper--Hayez

  "Sword--Anz

  "I jump--Altesna

  "I slay--Amoutha

  "I cut off a head--Ksutaskofa

  "I sleep--Zlcha

  "I love--Levza"

  When I saw this last entry I looked suspiciously at the professor.

  Was he trying to make love without our knowing it to the beautifulcaptive from Mars?

  If so, I felt certain that he would get himself into difficulty. She hadmade a deep impression upon every man in the flagship, and I knew thatthere was more than one of the younger men who would promptly havecalled him to account if they had suspected him of trying to learn fromthose beautiful lips the words, "I love."

  I pictured to myself the state of mind of Colonel Alonzo Jefferson Smithif, in my place, he had glanced over the notebook and read what I hadread.

  And then I thought of another handsome young fellow in theflagship--Sydney Phillips--who, if mere actions and looks could make himso, had become exceedingly devoted to this long lost and happilyrecovered daughter of Eve.

  In fact, I had already questioned within my own mind whether the peacewould be strictly kept between Colonel Smith and Mr. Phillips, for theformer had, to my knowledge, noticed the young fellow's adoring glances,and had begun to regard him out of the corners of his eyes as if heconsidered him no better than an Apache.

  "But what," I asked myself, "would be the vengeance that Colonel Smithwould take upon this skinny professor from Heidelberg if he thought thathe, taking advantage of his linguistic powers, had stepped in betweenhim and the damsel whom he had rescued?"

  However, when I took a second look at the professor, I became convincedthat he was innocent of any such amorous intentions, and that he hadlearned, or believed he had learned, the word for "love" simply inpursuances of the method by which he meant to acquire the language ofthe girl.

  There was one thing which gave some of us considerable misgivings, andthat was the question whether, after all, the language the professor wasacquiring was really the girl's own tongue or one that she had learnedfrom the Martians.

  But the professor bade us rest easy on that point. He assured us, in thefirst place, that this girl could not be the only human being livingupon Mars, but that she must have friends and relatives there. Thatbeing so, they unquestionably had a language of their own, which theyspoke when they were among themselves. Here finding herself among beingsbelonging to her own race, she would naturally speak her own tongue andnot that which she had acquired from the Martians.

  "Moreover, gentlemen," he added, "I have in her speech many roots of thegreat Aryan tongue already recognized."

  We were greatly relieved by this explanation, which seemed to all of usperfectly satisfactory.

  Yet, really, there was no reason why one language should be any betterthan the other for our present purpose. In fact, it might be more usefulto us to know the language of the Martians themselves. Still, we allfelt that we should prefer to know her language rather than that of themonsters among whom she had lived.

  Colonel Smith expressed what was in all our minds when, after listeningto the reasoning of the Professor, he blurted out:

  "Thank God, she doesn't speak any of their blamed lingo! By Jove, itwould soil her pretty lips."

  "But also that she speaks, too," said the man from Heidelberg, turningto Colonel Smith with a grin. "We shall both of them eventually learn."

  Three entire weeks were passed in this manner. After the first week thegirl herself materially assisted the linguists in their efforts toac-quire her speech.

  At length the task was so far advanced that we could, in a certainsense, regard it as practically completed. The Heidelberg professordeclared that he had mastered the tongue of the ancient Aryans. Hisdelight was unbounded. With prodigious industry he set to work, scarcelystopping to eat or sleep, to form a grammar of the language.

  "You shall see," he said, "it will the speculations of my countrymenvindicate."

  No doubt the Professor had an exaggerated opinion of the extent of hisacquirements, but the fact remained that enough had been learned of thegirl's language to enable him and several others to converse with herquite as readily as a person of good capacity who has studied under theinstructions of a native teacher during a period of six months canconverse in a foreign tongue.

  Immediately almost every man in the squadron set vigorously at work tolearn the language of this fair creature for himself. Colonel Smith andSydney Phillips were neck and neck in the linguistic race.

  One of the first bits of information which the Professor had given outwas the name of the girl.

  It was Aina (pronounced Ah-ee-na).

  This news was flashed throughout the squadron, and the name of ourbeautiful captive was on the lips of all.

  After that came her story. It was a marvelous narrative. Translated intoour tongue it ran as follows:

  "The traditions of my fathers, handed down for generations so many thatno one can number them, declare that the planet of Mars was not theplace of our origin.

  "Ages and ages ago our forefathers dwelt on another and distant worldthat was nearer the sun than this one is, and enjoyed brighter daylightthan we have here.

  "They dwelt--as I have often heard the story from my father, who hadlearned it by heart from his father, and he from his--in a beautifulvalley that was surrounded by enormous mountains towering into theclouds and white about their tops with snow that never melted. In thevalley were lakes, around which clustered the dwellings of our race.

  "It was, the traditions say, a land wonderful for its fertility, filledwith all things that the heart could desire, splendid with flowers andrich with luscious fruits.

  "It was a land of music, and the people who dwelt in it were veryhappy."

  While the girl was telling this part of her story the Heidelbergprofessor became visibly more and more excited. Presently he could keepquiet no longer, and suddenly exclaimed, turning to us who werelistening, as the words of the girl were interpreted for us by one ofthe other linguists:

  "Gentlemen, it is the Vale of Cashmere! Has not my great countryman,Adelung, so declared? Has he not said that the Valley of Cashmere wasthe cradle of the human race already?"

  "From the Valley of Cashmere to the planet Mars--what a romance!"exclaimed one of the bystanders.

  Colonel Smith appeared to be particularly moved, and I heard him hummingunder his breath, greatly to my astonishment, for this rough soldier wasnot much given to poetry or music:

  "Who has not heard of the Vale of Cashmere, With its roses the brightest that earth ever gave; Its temples, its grottoes, its fountains as clear, As the love-lighted eyes that hang 'oer the wave."

  Mr. Sydney Phillips, standing by, and also catching the murmur ofColonel Smith's words, showed in his handsome countenance someindications of distress, as if he wished he had thought of those lineshimself.

  The girl resumed her narrative:

  "Suddenly there dropped down out of the sky strange gigantic enemies,armed with mysterious weapons, and began to slay and b
urn and makedesolate. Our forefathers could not withstand them. They seemed likedemons, who had been sent from the abodes of evil to destroy our race.

  "Some of the wise men said that this thing had come upon our peoplebecause they had been very wicked, and the Gods in Heaven were angry.Some said they came from the moon, and some from the far-away stars. Butof these things my forefathers knew nothing for a certainty.

  "The destroyers showed no mercy to the inhabitants of the beautifulvalley. Not content with making it a desert, they swept over other partsof the earth.

  "The tradition says that they carried off from the valley, which was ournative land, a large number of our people, taking them first into astrange country, where there were oceans of sand, but where a greatriver, flowing through the midst of the sands, created a narrow land offertility. Here, after having slain and driven out the nativeinhabitants, they remained for many years, keeping our people, whom theyhad carried into captivity, as slaves.

  "And in this Land of Sand, it is said, they did many wonderful works.

  "They had been astonished at the sight of the great mountains whichsurrounded our valley, for on Mars there are no mountains, and afterthey came into the Land of Sand they built there, with huge blocks ofstone, mountains in imitation of what they had seen, and used them forpurposes my people did not understand.

  "Then, too, it is said they left there at the foot of these mountainsthat they had made a gigantic image of the great chief who led them intheir conquest of our world."

  At this point in the story the Heidelberg professor again broke in,fairly trembling with excitement:

  "Gentlemen, gentlemen," he cried, "is it that you do not understand?This Land of Sand and of a wonderful fertilizing river--what can it be?Gentleman, it is Egypt! These mountains of rock that the Martians haveerected, what are they? Gentlemen, they are the great mystery of theland of the Nile, the Pyramids. The gigantic statue of their leader thatthey at the foot of their artificial mountains have set up--gentlemen,what is that? It is the Sphinx!"

  _"Gentlemen," exclaimed the Professor, "these mountains ofrock that the Martians built are the Pyramids of Egypt. The giganticstatue of their leader is THE GREAT SPHINX!"_]

  The professor's agitation was so great that he could not go on further.And indeed there was not one of us who did not fully share hisexcitement. To think that we should have come to the planet Mars tosolve one of the standing mysteries of the earth, which had puzzledmankind and defied all their efforts at solution for so many centuries!Here, then, was the explanation of how those gigantic blocks thatconstitute the great Pyramid of Cheops had been swung to their loftyelevation. It was not the work of puny man, as many an engineer haddeclared that it could not be, but the work of these giants of Mars.

  At length, our traditions say, a great pestilence broke out in the Landof Sand, and a partial vengeance was granted to us in the destruction ofthe larger number of our enemies. At last the giants who remained,fleeing before this scourge of the gods, used the mysterious means attheir command, and, carrying our ancestors with them, returned to theirown world, in which we have ever since lived.

  "Then there are more of your people in Mars?" said one of theprofessors.

  "Alas, no," replied Aina, her eyes filling with tears, "I alone amleft."

  For a few minutes she was unable to speak. Then she continued:

  "What fury possessed them I do not know, but not long ago an expeditiondeparted from the planet, the purpose of which, as it was noised aboutover Mars, was the conquest of a distant world. After a time a fewsurvivors of that expedition returned. The story they told caused greatexcitement among our masters. They had been successful in their battleswith the inhabitants of the world they had invaded, but as in the daysof our forefathers, in the Land of Sand, a pestilence smote them, andbut few survivors escaped.

  "Not long after that, you, with your mysterious ships, appeared in thesky of Mars. Our masters studied you with their telescopes, and thosewho had returned from the unfortunate expedition declared that you wereinhabitants of the world which they had invaded, come, doubtless, totake vengeance upon them.

  "Some of my people who were permitted to look through the telescopes ofthe Martians, saw you also, and recognized you as members of their ownrace. There were several thousand of us all together, and we were keptby the Martians to serve them as slaves, and particularly to delighttheir ears with music, for our people have always been especiallyskillful in the playing of musical instruments, and in songs, and whilethe Martians have but little musical skill themselves, they areexceedingly fond of these things.

  "Although Mars had completed not less than five thousand circuits aboutthe sun since our ancestors were brought as prisoners to its surface,yet the memory of our distant home had never perished from the hearts ofour race, and when we recognized you, as we believed, our own brothers,come to rescue us from long imprisonment, there was great rejoicing. Thenews spread from mouth to mouth, wherever we were in houses and familiesof our masters. We seemed to be powerless to aid you or to communicatewith you in any manner. Yet our hearts went out to you, as in your shipsyou hung above the planet, and preparations were secretly made by allthe members of our race for your reception when, as we believed, wouldoccur, you should effect a landing upon the planet and destroy ourenemies.

  "But in some manner the fact that we had recognized you, and werepreparing to welcome you, came to the ears of the Martians."

  At this point the girl suddenly covered her eyes with her hands,shuddering and falling back in her seat.

  "Oh, you do not know them as I do!" at length she exclaimed. "Themonsters! Their vengeance was too terrible! Instantly the order wentforth that we should all be butchered, and that awful command wasexecuted!"

  "How, then, did you escape?" asked the Heidelberg professor.

  Aina seemed unable to speak for a while. Finally mastering her emotion,she replied:

  "One of the chief officers of the Martians wished me to remain alive.He, with his aides, carried me to one of the military depots ofsupplies, where I was found and rescued," and as she said this sheturned toward Colonel Smith with a smile that reflected on his ruddyface and made it glow like a Chinese lantern.

  "By God!" muttered Colonel Smith, "that was the fellow we blew intonothing! Blast him, he got off too easy!"

  The remainder of Aina's story may be briefly told.

  When Colonel Smith and I entered the mysterious building which, as itnow proved, was not a storehouse belonging to a village, as we hadsupposed, but one of the military depots of the Martians, the girl, oncatching sight of us, immediately recognized us as belonging to thestrange squadron in the sky. As such she felt that we must be herfriends, and saw in us her only possible hope of escape. For that reasonshe had instantly thrown herself under our protection. This accountedfor the singular confidence which she had manifested in us from thebeginning.

  Her wonderful story had so captivated our imaginations that for a longtime after it was finished we could not recover from the spell. It wastold over and over again, from mouth to mouth, and repeated from ship toship, everywhere exciting the utmost astonishment.

  Destiny seemed to have sent us on this expedition into space for thepurpose of clearing off mysteries that had long puzzled the minds ofmen. When on the moon we had unexpectedly to ourselves settled thequestion that had been debated from the beginning of astronomicalhistory of the former habitability of that globe.

  Now, on Mars, we had put to rest no less mysterious questions relatingto the past history of our own planet. Adelung, as the Heidelbergprofessor asserted, had named the Vale of Cashmere, as the probable siteof the Garden of Eden, and the place of origin of the human race, butlater investigators had taken issue with this opinion and the questionwhere the Aryans originated on the earth had long been one of the mostpuzzling that science presented.

  This question seemed now to have been settled.

  Aina had said that Mars had completed 5,000 circuits about the sun sinceher p
eople were brought to it as captives. One circuit of Mars occupies687 days. More than 9000 years had therefore elapsed since the firstinvasion of the earth by the Martians.

  Another great mystery--that of the origin of those gigantic andinexplicable monuments, the great pyramids and the Sphinx, on the banksof the Nile, had also apparently been solved by us, although theseEgyptian wonders had been the furthest things from our thoughts when weset out for the planet Mars.

  We had traveled more than thirty millions of miles in order to getanswers to questions which could not be solved at home.

  But from these speculations and retrospects we were recalled by thecommander of the expedition.

  "This is all very interesting and very romantic, gentlemen," he said,"but now let us get at the practical side of it. We have learned Aina'slanguage and heard her story. Let us next ascertain whether she can notplace in our hands some key which will place Mars at our mercy. Rememberwhat we came here for, and remember that the earth expects every man ofus to do his duty."

  This Nelson-like summons again changed the current of our thoughts, andwe instantly set to work to learn from Aina if Mars, like Achilles, hadnot some vulnerable point where a blow would be mortal.