“Well, in my opinion, it’s a great imprudence to permit Madame Xavière to accompany you. You alone, the Nyctalope, are invulnerable, because the darkness protects you and serves you. Madame Xavière might only be a hindrance to you—an impedimentum, as the Romans put it.”
“That’s right,” Saint-Clair replied, gravely. He was thoughtful for a moment; then he got up. “I’ll go tell her.”
“Unnecessary, Leo,” said a firm voice from the shadows of the cabin. “I was here; I heard everything. Klepton is right. I’ll stay.” She appeared in the light of the electric lamp that was illuminating the table. Her beauty took on a tragic significance. “I’ll stay,” she continued, “not on the Franc, but on the hydroplane that will be waiting for you. Thus, without hindering you, I’ll be close to you, in a situation that shares a little of the danger that you’ll be running.”
The husband and wife—it would be more correct to say “the two lovers”—looked at one another silently. They understood one another. She did not want to survive him, and if he were to die in this crazy and necessary expedition, she would die in much the same place shortly afterwards.
“As you wish, Xavière,” he said, simply—and, followed by Klepton, they went up to the platform of the Franc, where Damprich, Flammarion, Reclus, Verneuil and a number of crewmen were already gathered.
Saint-Clair was rapidly equipped with clothing and a helmet resistant to the heat ray. A small electro-mirror was suspended from the right-hand side of his belt, while a long, broad knife with two cutting edges hung from the left. An extremely sturdy canvas sack, rolled up and slung over his shoulder, was intended to serve as a temporary prison for a Martian.
The night, very mild although a trifle cool, was quite dark; the two moons were not due to rise until after 1 a.m. In the distance, a little above the horizon, a luminous star was slowly emerging from the last glimmer of twilight; it was the Earth, which had a similar appearance to Venus as seen from some location in France on a clear evening—but the Earth and the stars only spread a diffuse half-light in the Martian sky. Saint-Clair supposed that down below, beneath the trees on the islands, the darkness would be absolute.
“Verneuil!” he cried.
“Master!”
“Embark!”
Having rapidly shaken hands with Klepton, Damprich and the others, he leapt into the rear seat and took Xavière in his arms. “Cast off!”
Piloted by Verneuil, the fly released its grip on the Franc and fell away, then glided into the darkness.
“Land on a hydroplane!” said Saint-Clair.
“Which one?”
“The first one you see.”
Verneuil used the whistle attached to the engine to make a call-signal to the hydroplanes. Almost immediately, 106 settled gently on to the stern of one of the strange machines, which slid over the water with the rapidity of an arrow.
A hydroplane was merely a large flat-bottomed boat furnished with a propeller in the bow, an engine in the center, two torpedo-tubes on the deck and a rudder at the stern. Each hydroplane carried a crew of ten men, including two officers of equal rank who commanded it alternately in six-hour shifts. In the boat’s interior, about two meters above the water-level, there was a bridge, a galley, the officers’ cabin and a torpedo-store. Each man was individually armed with an electro-mirror. Each hydroplane was shaped like a large cigar cut in half longitudinally, the flat part reposing on the sea.
The officer of the watch recognized Saint-Clair as the fly settled, stood up straight and gave the military salute.
“To which submarine are you linked?” The Nyctalope asked, as he jumped down on to the cambered deck after Xavière.
“602.”
“Good! Put out your light, close the hatch, take me into shore and land me without making a sound.”
The officer gave out orders in a low voice. The lantern placed in front of the propeller was extinguished, and the hatch was closed.
“Madame will remain with you,” Saint-Clair murmured. “You will obey her as you would me.”
The officer bowed.
Rapidly, with no other noise than the wind from the propeller—for the hum of the engine could not be heard once the hatch was closed—the hydroplane glided into the darkness over the mirror-calm water, unrippled by any breeze or wave.
When it slowed down, Saint-Clair took the handle of the rudder and guided the hydroplane in such a fashion that it put into a clear space invisible to anyone but the Nyctalope, beneath an arbor of enormous branches. They projected horizontally from the straight trunks of trees bordering the shore, and then hung down, dipping their outermost subsidiary branches and their leaves in the water.
The hydroplane stopped. Beneath the surface, three hundred meters away, submarine 602 also stopped.
“See you soon, Xavière!”
“Leo!”
They embraced for some time, quite invisible to the officer standing next to them, so profound was the darkness beneath the branches. After securing the helmet on his head, with the two little portholes for the eyes open, the Nyctalope leapt on to the shore between two tree-trunks.
Xavière heard dead leaves crackling under rapid footfalls, and then nothing more. She shivered violently, and then sat down on the hydroplane’s deck, peering into the darkness.
As for Saint-Clair, piercing the darkness with his nyctalopic eyes, he headed towards the Martians with a capacious but prudent stride.
IX. A Night of Horror
The island on which Saint-Clair had landed was round and flat. According to Damprich’s evaluations, it measured about eight kilometers in diameter. An uninterrupted belt of forest surrounded an open space in the center, which formed a clearing with a radius of some two kilometers, with only a few clumps of trees. The Nyctalope had, therefore, 2000 meters of woodland to cross before arriving at the open space occupied by the Martians.
It’s unthinkable, he said to himself, as he marched rapidly over ground devoid of grass, as hard and dry as that found in Earthly pine-woods, that the Martians haven’t scattered sentinels, or even solid guard-posts, through the forest belt.
Saint-Clair was by no means unaware of the terrible danger he was running in marching thus against an enemy about which he knew little or nothing, but he went forward without hesitation, guiding himself by means of a little compass fixed on a metal bracelet beside the chronometer on his left wrist. He was firmly resolved to capture a Martian or die, for in the present state of affairs he saw no other means than such a capture of achieving victory for is army, or merely preserving it from an irreparable disaster. He was no longer thinking about Xavière now; his heart, intelligence and strength were solely devoted to the mission he had undertaken.
No path was visible, nor any trace of any passage whatsoever. The densely-paced trunks of the trees, whose branches mingled overhead in an inextricable thicket, limited his field of view with a disquieting wall full of holes, alcoves and dark outlets. The Nyctalope could see it as in broad daylight, but if that permitted him to march without hesitation, it also made him wonder whether the Martians might perhaps be nyctalopes too.
He knew, moreover, from Wells’ narrative and the observations of the XV, that the Martians did not sleep—that the brains that made up their entire being never rested. Since there was neither intellectual nor physical respite for them, it seemed probable that their visual sense was adapted to both day and night—and the nyctalopia that was for Saint-Clair an enormous superiority among men might not constitute anything of the sort among the Martians.
These reflections made the bold explorer gradually slow his pace and walk more carefully, trying to prevent dead leaves and branches from crackling beneath his feet. The forest seemed to be deserted, though. The silence there was absolute. No noise came from the clearing that was already close at hand.
After walking for 20 minutes, Saint-Clair had had no occasion or reason to stop, and no thought of doing so. In a quarter of an hour, he said to himself, I’ll be on the
edge of the clearing.
He went on for another three minutes—but as the second-hand of the chronometer, which he consulted at the same time as the compass, consumed the fiftieth second of the fourth minute, he stopped dead.
He held his breath. A sudden, subconscious, all-powerful horror made his hair stand on end—and for the first time, he felt the weight of the insulating helmet bearing down on his skull.
Some distance in front of him, in the darkness, in the middle of a little circle of trees, three strange creatures—three Martians—were doing something that seemed at first to be inexplicable, but which he suddenly understood, as if the silent darkness had suddenly been split by a simultaneous flash of lightning and roll of thunder.
The task in which the three Martians were engaged was illuminated by a sort of fixed spotlight set on the tip of a stake planted in the ground. Saint-Clair was momentarily subjected to a disturbance that diminished and extinguished all his intellectual and physical faculties—but the moment was brief. The frisson of horror passed, will-power returned, and the Nyctalope became himself again—and his first conscious thought gave him enormous pleasure: the Martians used artificial lighting in the darkness, so they could not be nyctalopes!
He crouched down slowly, lay on his belly and, supporting his helmet with his two clenched fists, he observed.
The three Martians were upright, their body-heads sustained by eight tentacles set directly on the ground. In front of each of them, a bizarre creature, half-humanoid and half-birdlike, bipedal and naked, was sitting, its short arms hanging down by its sides. These creatures, white in color, with visibly soft and plump flesh devoid of musculature, were leaning their heads forwards. At a certain point of each of their necks, beneath the ear, a thin trickle of blood emerged from a short appendage. Each Martian was collecting this blood in a sort of pipette held and manipulated by one of its tentacle-hands.13
One of the Martians, more advanced in its task than the others, abandoned its nameless creature, whose appendage retracted, no longer letting blood flow. The Martian injected the blood collected by the pipette into itself, by means of that same pipette, by means of an opening placed to the left of its cartilaginous beak. Then, having replaced the pipette in a little sheath that the creature carried over its shoulder, the Martian set its 16 tentacles on the ground, closed its eyes and remained motionless, taking on the appearance of an immense mushroom.
Meanwhile, the creature raised its head, slowly stood up on its thin legs, went to the trunk of a tree, climbed up it and disappeared into the foliage. Saint-Clair saw then, for the first time, that the creature’s fingers and toes were linked by extensible membranes which served as suckers with respect to the tree-trunk.
The other two Martians finished their meal almost immediately and, while their living nourishment fled into the foliage, they set their 16 tentacles on the round and fell into the most absolute immobility.
If the Nyctalope had not been monopolized at that moment by a multitude of thoughts and the tyrannical grip of his reflections, he would have guessed that the Martians were “digesting” the injected blood, and that the extension of all the ramifications of their organism necessary to that digestion made their rigid immobility obligatory. He could have leapt forward immediately and taken all three of them prisoner—but by the time the progress of his reflections had allowed him to draw this conclusion and form the intention to accomplish the action, it was too late.
The Martians straightened their body-heads, hopping rapidly to the right on their tentacles. One of them picked up the pole furnished with the spotlight, and they all climbed on to something that the petrified Saint-Clair had not yet seen. It was a black machine, low and long. It was rounded and articulated like a serpent on its flanks and underneath, but flat on top. As soon as the three Martians had jumped on to it and taken a grip on the platform of a vertebra, the machine moved off, gliding sinuously over the ground between the tree-trunks at a fantastic velocity, and disappeared.
For a minute, the Nyctalope was dumbfounded. Between his teeth, he murmured: “They nourish themselves by night on the blood of bipeds! The bipeds live freely in the forests. Perfectly domesticated, no doubt, they respond to a simple summons by the Martians. That serpent-machine is a very curious automatic vehicle.” He realized that he as alone. He leapt to his feet. “But what am I doing? They’re getting away!”
And he ran, recklessly—but he suddenly stopped dead, leapt backwards and swiftly hid himself behind a tree-trunk. The large clearing was extended before him, lit by an enormous central source of green light, set high in the air, which radiated in all directions. Why had he not seen that light sooner? His mental preoccupation had nullified the control of his senses—but then he saw the Martians coming and going. He saw them leaping in large numbers from serpent-machines that were emerging from the forest, converging on the center of the clearing, saw them greeting one another, gesticulating with their tentacle-feet and taking their places in tripods crouching there, which soon stood up without a sound, so that their turrets surpassed the tops of the trees. He saw others activating three mechanical arms, which, with hands equipped with fully-articulated pincers, hammers, vices and so on, were each capable of replacing a hundred human workmen, and he saw these mechanical arms, each controlled by a single Martian, directing skywards one, two, three and then four enormous cannons, whose breeches disappeared into a single excavation. When he saw all that, he was immediately convinced that the Martians had infinite resources, in terms of their universal intelligence and their specialized mechanical science.
As he gazed at all these things, for a time whose rapid flight he did not even think to measure, he felt horribly small and feeble by comparison with the formidable Martian power—a typical weakness of human nature, in which the flesh often neutralizes the brain and always hinders it and slows it down; but there is also a divine force in human nature, by means of which the brain sometimes reacts against and occasionally dominates the flesh! Saint-Clair’s demoralization lasted exactly 48 minutes, for he had arrived at the edge of the clearing when his chronometer marked 9:30 p.m., and when he thought to look at it again it was 10:18 p.m.
He shook himself like a dog emerging from cold water. Mechanically, he made as if to pass his hand over is forehead, which was covered with sweat, but his hand encountered the cold metal of his helmet—and that abrupt, unexpected sensation woke him from his absorbing observation and the trance that had drained his strength.
Come on, he said to himself. I have to do something. Those cannons are intended to destroy my aerial fleet. Before sunrise, the Martians must know that one of them is in my power. Besides, I am the Nyctalope!
The immense clearing was filled with a confused buzz, produced by the functioning of machines of every sort. Sometimes, a strident screech cut through the continuous noise. Puffs of smoke sprang up here and there, amid the mechanical arms and the tripods’ turrets, and sometimes—more rarely—from the excavation from which the four cannons protruded.
I have to do something, the Nyctalope repeated. How?
There was a long whistling sound to the right. Saint-Clair turned his head, just in time to see a flying-machine of huge dimensions rise into the air from a part of the clearing in which there had seemed, a little while before, to be a black sail laid out on the ground. The “sail” was a mechanical bird.
They have aircraft! Saint-Clair thought, anxiously. Why didn’t the Fifteen know that? In all probability, the Martians let them establish themselves in Argyre in order to be able to study humans, get to know them. Here and now, perhaps, they intend to capture some of us and destroy all the rest.
The Martian aircraft turned around in mid-air, and suddenly disappeared in the direction of the Terran army. Anxiety invaded Saint-Clair’s mind—but, instead of overwhelming him, it fortified is determination.
I have to do something, he repeated, for the third time.
And then his brain experienced a great enlightenment. The Nyctalop
e knew what he had to do.
Whether it was to obtain their nourishment or for some other motive, Martians mounted on serpent-machines were going into the woods. On reflection, Saint-Clair deduced that the Martians were working in shifts, for the activity in the clearing never diminished however many individuals were going into the forest or returning from it.
Jumping from tree to tree, go to the point over there where the greatest number of Martians is going into the forest. Position myself in the path of one of those serpentine automobiles, blast all the Martians except one and take possession of that one.
While indulging in this internal monologue, the Nyctalope moved—or rather, given the prodigious lightness that the Martian atmosphere gave his body, leapt—from tree to tree, calculating his impetus in such a manner that each jump landed him just behind a tree-trunk, which hid him from the Martians scattered throughout the clearing.
Fortunately, the Martian natives, deceived by the tactics of the XV—which were guided more by cunning than boldness—had a rather scornful opinion of human courage. They had never imagined that one of these Terran bipeds, apparently quite similar to the Martian bipeds on which that race of great scientists and warriors fed, would have the audacity to emerge from an aircraft, hydroplane or submarine to venture upon the soil of their planet alone, so they were not keeping a close watch on the borders of their encampments. They were also working to prepare for a battle that they probably expected to be joined on the following day, without being distracted by any hint of suspicion. That, more than anything else, ensured that no Martian caught sight of the Nyctalope—or, that if any of them did catch a glimpse of him, it mistook him for one of the biped livestock with which the forest was swarming. The semi-darkness in which the Terrans was moving would have aided that illusion.
When he thought he was in an appropriate spot, Saint-Clair hid himself behind an enormous tree-trunk and waited, electro-mirror in hand. Then it occurred to him that the auto-serpents were plunging into the forest rather rapidly. Move further back, he said to himself. The darker it is, the better chance I’ll have…
The Nyctalope on Mars 2: The Triumph of Love Page 17
