View from Another Shore : European Science Fiction
Page 25
reverse: because they were so popular, they longed to be able to
return over and over again as conquering heroes. Finally even the
raven-skinned girl in Timbuctoo began to think of setting up house
as the necessity for heroic journeys began to dwindle: even this
adventurous young lady wanted to bind Nemo with love, just as
the geologist from Zatec had managed to do once upon a time. But
that was not what the captain wanted at all. That would mean the end
of adventure, and the beginning of old age and illness. He could not
imagine what he would do with a happy marriage; he would have to
upset it so as to have a reason for flying off again and risking his life, just as a drunkard invents a reason for getting drunk. Nemo knew the
stories of all the great adventures of the past, he knew how to build up
a convincing argument, and he used to say that in the end humanity
would realize that this vast technical progress that kept them living in
ease required, demanded an equally vast contrast; that man must give
rein to his aggressive instincts; that men need adventure in order to
remain fertile—in other words, that risking one’s life in the universe
(or anywhere else) was directly bound up with the fate of future
generations. It was an odd sort of philosophy; very few people took it
146
Josef Nesvadba
up, and as time went on there were fewer and fewer arguments in its
favour. In fact, for the last five years Nemo and his men had simply
been idle. The men were discontented. And so they were all delighted
when one night quite suddenly their captain was called to the chief
ministry, just like in the old days of alarms.
Pirates
‘This time, Captain Nemo’, the minister addressed him ceremo-
niously, ‘we are faced with an unusual and dangerous mystery. For
this time it is apparently not only Earth that is threatened, but the sun itself, the source of all life in our solar system, the source of all we see around us.’ The minister solemnly signalled to the assistant secretary
of science to continue. Nemo and his adjutant were sitting facing
them on the other side of the conference table. The four men were
alone in the room. The assistant secretary walked over to a map of the
Universe.
‘Of course we didn’t believe it at first, but we were wrong, gentle-
men. The facts you are about to be given are well founded. About a
year ago, one of the universities sent us a paper written by a young
scientist about the incidence of novas. The papers quoted old Egyptian
astronomical maps as well as recent observations in the constellation
of Omega Centauri and the galaxy of Andromeda. The writer con-
cluded that novas do not simply explode of their own accord, but that
they are touched off according to a plan. Like someone going along
the hilltops who lights a beacon to signal back to the valleys below.
Some sort of rocket seems to have been entrusted with the task—or a
satellite with an irregular course, something moving independently
through space and destroying the stars one by one. It is interesting to
note that a similar idea occurred to the writers of antiquity. Since
according to this paper the next victim of these cosmic pirates would
be the immediate neighbourhood of our own solar system, we quickly
set up a secret telescope near Jupiter, without the knowledge of the
public, in order to observe the regions in which this body appears to
be moving. Today we reviewed the information provided by that
telescope.’ The assistant secretary picked up a long pointer and turned
back to the astronomical map. The minister could control his excite-
ment no longer. He leapt to his feet.
‘They’re coming!’, he shouted. ‘They’re coming closer! We’ve got to
catch them!’ He was so excited that his chest was heaving, and he had
Captain Nemo’s Last Adventure
147
to wipe his brow with his handkerchief. ‘Damn them’, he said and sat
down again.
‘If the reports from ancient Egypt are reliable, this body has been
wandering around the universe for about nine hundred thousand
years’, the assistant secretary of science went on. ‘We’ve managed to
calculate the precise course it has followed to date. It cannot possibly
be the satellite of some distant sun—it’s a body that moves under its
own power.’
‘Its own power? Then it is a rocket’, Nemo’s young adjutant
breathed.
‘But seven thousand times the size of any rocket we are presently
capable of constructing’, said the assistant secretary. ‘And it detonates the stars from an immense distance. In one year our sun will come
within its orbit. In one year, it can cause an explosion of our solar
system.’
‘What are our orders, sir?’, said Nemo briefly, taking out his
notebook as though it were all in a day’s work to tackle cosmic
pirates seven thousand times his own size.
‘Orders? Don’t talk nonsense’, the minister burst out. ‘How could
we send anyone to attack it? You might just as well send an ant to
deal with an elephant.’
‘Why not, if the ant is clever enough and you give it enough
oxygen?’, Nemo laughed.
‘There’s no question of building a miracle missile for you’, the
minister went on.
‘We can give you the latest war rockets equipped with radioactivite
missiles, but of course they’re over a hundred years old’, the assistant
secretary said. The young officer at Nemo’s side frowned.
‘Haven’t you got any bows and arrows?’ Nemo savoured his joke.
He was notorious for telling funny stories when things were really
dangerous.
‘This is a serious matter, Captain Nemo’, said the minister.
‘I can see that. Your automatic pilots are no good to you now, are
they? You can’t send them out that far because they’d never be able
to keep in touch with you, I suppose. Only a human crew can fly that
kind of distance.’
‘Naturally.’ The assistant secretary looked grim. ‘That’s why it’s a
volunteer’s job. Nobody must be allowed to know anything about it.
We don’t want to frighten the public now, when people have only
been living without fear of war for a few generations. We’ll issue a
communiqueónly if your mission fails.’
148
Josef Nesvadba
‘You mean if we don’t manage to render them harmless?’
They explained that it was not a matter of rendering the aliens
harmless. It would be far better if they could come to terms and avoid
making enemies in the universe unnecessarily. But they did not want
to tell Nemo what to do: they appreciated to the utmost not only his
heroism, but his common sense as well. The moment the pirates
turned away from our solar system, they assured him, everything
would be all right.
‘We shall send in a report, I suppose?’, the adjutant asked.
‘I hardly think so’, said Nemo.
‘Why not?’ The adjutant was just over twenty. The other three
looked at him—the minister, his assistant secretary, and Ca
ptain
Nemo.
‘My dear boy, there’s such a thing as relativity, you know. By the
time you get anywhere near that thing, you’ll have been moving
practically at the speed of light, and more than a thousand years will
have passed on Earth.’
‘A thousand years?’, the adjutant gasped, remembering that a
thousand years earlier Premysl Otakar had been on the throne of
Bohemia.
‘It’s a job for volunteers only, Captain Nemo.’
‘It’s a magnificent adventure—’
‘And I’m afraid it will be our last’, Captain Nemo replied, getting to
his feet and standing at attention. He wanted to get down to the
details of the expedition.
‘What do we tell the folks at home?’ His adjutant was still puzzled.
‘Surely you don’t want to upset them by suggesting that in a year or
two somebody’s going to blow our Sun to bits? You’ll set out on a
normal expedition, and in a month we’ll publish the news of your
death. Or do you think it would be better for your loved ones to go on
hoping for your return, until they themselves die? Your grand-
children won’t know you, and in a thousand years everyone will
have forgotten you anyway.’
‘If we get the better of the pirates’, Nemo laughed. ‘If not, we’ll all
be meeting again soon.’
‘Do you still believe in life after death?’, the minister smiled.
‘An adventurer is permitted his little indulgences’, Captain Nemo
answered. ‘But if you really want to know—no, I don’t believe in it.
That’s precisely why I love adventure: you risk everything.’
‘But this isn’t an adventure’, his adjutant interrupted in an agitated
voice. ‘This is certain death. We can’t destroy an entity that has
Captain Nemo’s Last Adventure
149
detonated several suns in the course of the ages from an enormous
distance—and even if we managed to do it, we’d be coming back to a
strange land, to people who won’t know us from Adam . . .’
‘You will be the only human beings to experience the future so far
ahead’, said the minister.
‘And it is a volunteer expedition’, added the assistant secretary
pointedly.
‘If you can suggest any other way out, let us hear it. The World
Council has been racking its brains for hours.’
‘And then they remembered us. That’s nice.’ Captain Nemo felt
flattered. ‘But now I’d like to know the details . . .’ He turned to the
assistant secretary like the commander of a sector ready to take orders
from the commander in chief of an offensive.
Farewell
‘Can’t they leave you alone?’, Mrs Feather grumbled crossly as she
packed her husband’s bag. ‘Couldn’t they find anybody younger to
send? You’d think they could find somebody better for the job when
you’re getting to fifty . . . I thought we were going to enjoy a little
peace and quiet now, in our old age, at least. We could have moved to
the mountains, the people next door are going to rent a cottage, and
we could have had a rest at last . . .’
‘There’ll be plenty of time to rest when we’re in our graves’,
Captain Nemo yawned. Ever since he’d come home he’d been
stretched out on the couch. He always slept for twenty-four hours
before an expedition. He used to say it was his hibernation period, and
that the only place he ever got a decent rest was in his own house.
And his wife knew that whenever he came home he would drop off
somewhere. In the last few years, though, he’d been stopping by on
Sundays and at Christmas as well.
‘For Heaven’s sake, Willy, are you going to carry on like an
adolescent for ever? When are you going to settle down?’
He got to his feet in anger. ‘I wish I knew why you never let me get
a bit of rest. If you had any idea how important this expedition is—’
‘That’s just what you said before you went to Jupiter and Neptune,
and then there was the moonstorm business and the time those
meteors were raining . . . It’s always the most important expedition
anyone’s ever thought of, and it’s always a good reason for you to run
away from home again . . .’
150
Josef Nesvadba
’Do you call this home?’ He looked around. ‘I haven’t set eyes on
the boy since morning.’
It appeared his son had finally found a music group that was willing
to perform one of his symphonies, and they’d been rehearsing ever
since the previous day.
‘You mean he isn’t even coming to say goodbye to me? Didn’t you
tell him?’
‘But he’s getting ready for his first night at last, don’t you under-
stand?’ His mother tried to excuse him.
‘So am I’, answered Nemo, who did not quite know how to describe
his gala last performance. But in the end he tried to find his son. To
listen to the rehearsal, if nothing else.
The concert hall was practically empty; one or two elderly figures
were dozing in the aisle seats. The orchestra emitted peculiar sounds
while young Feather conducted from memory, absorbed in the music
and with his eyes closed, so that he did not see his father gesticulating at him from one of the boxes. He heard nothing but his own music; he
looked as though he were quite alone in the hall. Nemo went out and
banged the door in disgust. An elderly attendant came up.
‘How do you like the symphony?’, he asked the old man.
‘It’s modern, all right; you’ve got to admit that.’
‘Yes, but I wanted to know whether you liked it.’ At that moment, a
wave of particularly vile noise came screeching out through the door,
and Nemo took to his heels.
In front of the hall, the girl from Timbuctoo was waiting for him.
She had flown over that morning by special rocket. He recalled how
she had wept the last time he’d refused to marry her.
‘We’re off to repair some equipment between Mercury and Venus’,
Nemo laughed. ‘We’ll get pretty hot this time. When I get back,
Timbuctoo won’t even look warm by comparison.’
‘I know you’re not coming back, Captain.’ She had always called
him Captain. ‘I was the one who passed the report on to the
authorities.’
‘What report?’
‘About the cosmic pirates seven thousand times our size’, she
smiled. ‘I thought it would be an adventure after your own heart at
last. I could have sent the whole thing back, you know—a very young
student submitted it. I could have won a little more time for us to
spend together. But we have our responsibilities, as you’ve always
told me.’
‘You’re perfectly right.’
Captain Nemo’s Last Adventure
151
‘But we must say goodbye properly. I’m not coming to see you off; I
want to be alone with you when we part . . .’
So once again Nemo did not go home to Mrs Feather, nor did he see
his son again before he left. His adjutant brought his bags to the
rocket, since he hadn’t found the captain at home. Nemo turned up<
br />
looking rather pale and thin, and the crew commented on it, but he
had always been like that whenever they were about to take off, and
he was used to their good-natured jokes.
This time the ministry prepared an elaborate farewell. No expense
was spared. The World Government Council turned up in a body,
together with all the relatives of the men, and crowds of admirers:
women, girls, and young boys. Enthusiastic faces could be seen
between the indifferent countenances of relatives, who were used
to such goings-on, and the serious, almost anxious faces of those who
knew the secret behind this expedition. The minister’s voice almost
shook with emotion as he proposed the toast. He did not know how to
thank the crew enough, and promised that their heroism would never
be forgotten. His hand was trembling by the time he gripped Nemo’s
in farewell, and he actually began to weep.
Once the relatives and curious onlookers had vanished, the crew
had a final meeting with the leaders of the world government.
‘All our lives are in your hands—the lives of your families, your
children and your children’s children, for generations to come. Men
have often died for the sake of future generations, and often the
sacrifice has been in vain. You can rest assured that this is not the case today. That’s the only comfort we can offer you. I wish I were going
with you myself, but it would cause too much talk, and we can’t risk a
panic. Still, it’s better to fight than to wait passively in the role of
victim.’
Then they played famous military marches in honour of the crew—
itself an international team—but the gesture fell a bit flat; not a tear
was shed at the sound of Colonel Bogey or the Radetzky March. With
sudden inspiration, the bandmaster struck up the choral movement
from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and the band improvised from
memory as best it could. In those few moments, everyone present
realized that for more than a generation man had been living in the
age of true brotherhood, and that fear had suddenly reared its head
again.
152
Josef Nesvadba
The Flight
In half an hour they had gained the required speed—the rocket had
been adapted for its job after all. When sixty minutes had passed, the
adjutant brought a telegraph message to the commander. On Earth,