The Navigators of Space

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  He stopped periodically to study the rocks, and also by reason of prudence; the disturbed ground was full of pitfalls. A strange exaltation gripped him. He thought that, if a route to water existed, there was a good chance that it might be revealed in such a profoundly altered place as this.

  Having lit the torch that he was never without while he was traveling, he ventured into various fissures and corridors. All of them narrowed rapidly, or terminated in dead ends.

  Finally, he found himself in front of a mediocre cleft at the base of a tall and very broad rock, into which the quakes had only eaten slightly. It was sufficient to look at the crack, sparkling in places like crystal, to deduce that it was recent. Targ, judging it negligible, was about to draw away when two scintillations attracted his attention. Why not explore it? If it were not very deep, he would only have a few steps to take.

  It turned out to be more extensive than he had hoped. Nevertheless, after thirty paces or so it began to narrow; soon, Targ thought that he could go no further. He stopped, and scrupulously examined the details of the walls. The passage was not yet impossible, but it was necessary to crawl. The watchman scarcely hesitated; he wriggled into a hole whose diameter scarcely exceeded the breadth of a man. Sinuous and strewn with sharp stones, the passage became narrower still; Targ wondered whether it would be possible for him to go back.

  It was as if he were wedged in the depths of the ground, a captive of the mineral: a small, infinitely weak thing that a single block of stone could reduce to particles—but the fever of an enterprise begun was palpitating within him; if he abandoned his task before it became utterly impossible, he would hate himself and scorn himself afterwards. He persevered.

  His limbs bathed in sweat, he advanced through the entrails of the rock for a long time. In the end, he was on the point of fainting. His heartbeat, fluttering like loud wing-beats, began to weaken. He was no longer anything but a paltry palpitation; courage and hope fell away like discarded burdens. When his heart recovered some force, Targ judged it ridiculous to have embarked on such a primitive adventure.

  Would I not be a madman?

  He began to crawl backwards. Then, an atrocious despair overwhelmed him; the image of Erê appeared to him so vividly that she seemed to be with him in the fissure.

  My madness would be worth more than the fearful wisdom of my peers…forwards!

  He recommenced the adventure. He wagered his life savagely, determined only to stop when confronted by the insurmountable.

  Hazard seemed to favor his audacity. The crevice broadened; he found himself in a deep basalt corridor whose vault seemed to be sustained by columns of anthracite. A sharp joy gripped him; he began to run. Anything seemed possible—but stone is as full of enigmas as the green forests used to be.

  Suddenly, the corridor came to an end. Targ found himself in front of a dark wall, from which the torch scarcely drew a few reflected gleams. Nevertheless, he did not cease exploring the walls—and he discovered, at a height of three meters, the opening of another crevice.

  It was a slightly sinuous crack, inclined at about forty degrees from the horizontal, large enough to admit the passage of a man. The watchman considered it with a mixture of joy and disappointment. It attracted his chimerical hope, since the way was not, after all, definitively closed; on the other hand, it seemed discouraging because it would take him in an upward direction.

  “If it doesn’t go down again, there’s more chance that it will take me back to the surface than into the underworld,” the explorer muttered.

  He made a gesture of insouciance and challenge—a gesture that was foreign to him, as to all present-day men, and which echoed some ancestral gesture. Then he set about scaling the wall.

  It was almost vertical, and smooth—but Targ had brought an arcum-fiber ladder, which aviators never forget. He took it out of his tool-bag. Having served for several generations, it was as flexible and solid as in its earliest days. He unrolled the light and delicate structure and, seizing it in the middle, gave it the necessary impulsion. It was a maneuver that he executed to perfection. The hooks at the end of the ladder griped the basalt without difficulty. In a few seconds, the explorer reached the cleft.

  He could not retain an exclamation of annoyance—for, although the crevice was perfectly practicable, it climbed up at a rather steep slope. All his efforts would therefore have been in vain!

  Even so, having rolled up the ladder again, Targ set off along the fissure. The first stages were difficult; then the floor leveled out and a corridor developed in which several men could have marched abreast. Unfortunately, the slope was still upwards. The watchman reckoned that he must be about 50 meters above the level of the exterior plain; the subterranean voyage had become an ascent!

  He marched towards the denouement, whatever it might be, with a tranquil bitterness, reproaching himself for his mad adventure. How could he expect to make a discovery more important than anything humans had found for hundreds of centuries? Would it suffice for him to have a chimerical character, a soul more rebellious than others, in order for him to succeed where collective effort, employing admirable equipment, had failed? Did not an attempt like his demand resignation and absolute patience?

  Distracted, he did not notice that the slope had become gentler. It had become horizontal before he awoke, with a start. A few paces in front of him, the tunnel began to descend.

  It descended smoothly, over a length of more than a kilometer. It was broad, deeper in the middle than at its edge; walking there was generally comfortable, only occasionally interrupted by a block of stone or a fissure. Doubtless, in some distant epoch, a subterranean watercourse had eroded a passage here.

  Debris accumulated, however, some of which was recent; and then the exit seemed to be blocked again.

  “The tunnel doesn’t stop here,” the young man said. “It’s the realignments of the Earth’s crust that have interrupted it—but when? Yesterday… 1000 years ago… or 100,000 years ago?”

  He did not pause to examine the rubble, among which he recognized the traces of recent convulsions. All his perspicacity was concentrated on discovering a way through. It did not take him long to spot a fissure. Narrow and high, hard, bristling and awkward, it did not betray him; he found his tunnel again. It continued its descent, ever more spacious; eventually, its mean breadth was in excess of a hundred meters.

  Targ’s last doubts vanished. A veritable subterranean river had once run here. The conviction was encouraging a priori, but on reflection, it worried the oasis-dweller. It did not follow from the fact that water had once been abundant that it was nearby. On the contrary! All the springs presently utilized were far from places where the liquid of life had once flowed…it was almost a law.

  Three times more the tunnel appeared to end in a cul-de-sac; each time, Targ found a way through. It did end, though; an immense gulf appeared before the man’s eyes.

  Weary and sad, he sat down on the stone. This was a moment more terrible than when he had been crawling through the stifling tunnel higher up. Any further attempt seemed bitter folly. He had to go back! His heart rebelled against his mind, though. The soul of adventure rose up, increased by the astonishing journey he had just made. The gulf no longer frightened him.

  “What if it is necessary to die?” he exclaimed. Already, he was in search of granite projections. Abandoned to rapid inspiration, he had descended, miraculously, to a depth of thirty meters when he made a false step and lost his balance.

  “Finished!” he sighed.

  He fell into the void.

  V. The Abyssal Depths

  An impact stopped him—not the rude impact of a fall on granite, but an elastic impact that was nevertheless violent enough to stun him.

  When he recovered consciousness, he found himself suspended in darkness and, by groping, he discovered that a ledge had hooked his tool-bag. The bag’s straps, attached to his torso, were retaining him. Like his ladder, they were made of arcum fiber; he knew that they w
ould not give way. On the other hand the bag might become detached from the ledge.

  Targ felt strangely calm. Unhurriedly, he calculated his chances of doom and salvation. The bag was looped over the projection close to the attachment of the straps, in such a way that it had a strong hold. The explorer felt the rocky wall. Apart from the ledge, his hand encountered smooth surfaces, then emptiness. His feet found a support to his left—which, after groping around somewhat, he judged to be a little platform. By gripping the upper ledge with one hand and bracing himself on the lower one, he was able to shift his weight to the other support.

  When he had found what seemed to be the most comfortable position, he succeeded in detaching the bag. Freer in his movements then, he shone the beam of his radiator in every direction. The ledge was wide enough for a man to stand up on it, and even move about slightly. Above him, there was a crack in the rock that would permit the hooks of the ladder to be firmly fixed; after that, an ascent seemed practicable, back to the place from which the oasis-dweller had fallen. Below him, there was nothing but the gulf, with vertical walls.

  I can climb back up, the young man concluded, but descent is impossible…

  He was no longer thinking about anything but escaping death; nothing agitated his mind but resentment of the vain effort. With a long sigh, he let go of the upper ledge and, hanging on to the cracks, he succeeded in establishing himself securely on the lower ledge. His head was buzzing; torpor was overtaking his limbs and his brain. His discouragement was so great that he felt himself succumbing gradually to the vertiginous appeal of the abyss. When he collected himself, his hands instinctively wandered over the granite wall, and now perceived that it curved away at about waist height. He bent down then, and released a feeble exclamation. The ledge was at the entrance of a cavity, which the beam of the torch revealed to be considerable.

  He laughed silently. If he was bound for defeat, at least he would not have had an adventure that was not worth the trouble of attempting!

  Having assured himself that he was not missing any equipment—especially that the arcum ladder was in good order—he went into the cave. It displayed a ceiling of rock crystal and gems. At every movement of the lamp, mysterious and magical flashes were ignited. The hearts of the countless crystals awoke in the light; it was a subterranean twilight, furtive and dazzling, an infinitesimal hail of scarlet, orange, jonquil, hyacinth and emerald light. Targ saw a reflection of mineral life there—the vast and minuscule, menacing and profound life that had had the last word with men, and would one day have the last word with the ferromagnetic realm.

  At that moment, he was not afraid of it. However, he studied the cave with the respect that the Last Men owed the muted existences which, having presided over the world’s Origins, retained their forms and energies intact.

  A vague mysticism stirred within him—not the hopeless mysticism of the fallen oasis-dwellers, but the mysticism that had once guided hazardous hearts. Although he still mistrusted the traps of the Earth, at least he had the faith that succeeds successful efforts and transports the victories of the past into the future.

  After the cave came a corridor of capricious slopes. Several more times it was necessary for him to crawl in order to pass through. Then the corridor resumed; the slope became steep, to the point that Targ feared a new gulf. That slope became gentler; it was almost as comfortable as a roadway—and the watchman descended safely, until the traps took hold again. Without the corridor narrowing in height or in width, it was closed off. There was a wall of gneiss, gleaming slyly in the lamplight. The oasis-dweller sounded it in every direction; no substantial fissure was revealed.

  “It’s the logical conclusion of the adventure!” he groaned. “The abyss, which has toyed with the efforts, the genius and the apparatus of humanity entire, cannot be favorable to a tiny solitary animal!”

  He sat down, worn out by fatigue and sadness. The road would be hard now! Beaten down by defeat, would he even have the strength to follow it to the end?

  He stayed there for some time, crushed by his distress. He could not make the decision to go back. Periodically, he shone his lamp on the blank wall. Finally, he got up—but then, seized by a sort of fury, he stuck his fists into all the slender fissures, tugged desperately at all the projections…

  His heat began to beat faster. Something had moved.

  Something had moved. A section of the wall oscillated. With a muted grunt, and with all his strength, Targ attacked the stone. It pivoted; it almost crushed him. A triangular hole appeared. The adventure was not finished yet!

  Breathless, and full of suspicion, Targ went into the rock, bent double at first, and then upright, for the fissure expanded with every step. He was going forward in a kind of somnambulistic state, expecting new obstacles, when he thought he saw another gulf.

  He was not mistaken. The fissure ended in a void—but to the right, an enormous sloping mass stood out. To reach it, Targ had to lean out and pull himself along by the strength of his wrists.

  The slope was practicable. When the watchman had covered 20 meters, a strange sensation gripped him. Taking out his hygroscope, he held it out over the gulf. Then, he positively felt the pallor and the chill settle in his face…

  In the subterranean atmosphere, vapor was floating, as yet invisible to the light. Water was nearby!

  Targ uttered a yell of triumph; he had to sit down, paralyzed by the surprise and joy of victory. Then, uncertainty took hold of him again. The living fluid was undoubtedly there, about to appear; but the disappointment would be all the more unbearable if it were only an insignificant trickle or a small pool. With slow steps, full of dread, the watchman resumed the descent. The evidence multiplied; gleams became perceptible at intervals…

  And abruptly, as Targ went around a vertical projection, the water appeared.

  VI. The Ferromagnetals

  Two hours before dawn, Targ found himself back on the plain, on the edge of the crevice where his voyage to the land of shadows had begun. Terribly tired, he studied the scarlet moon on the rim of the horizon, like a red furnace ready to go out. It disappeared. In the immense darkness, the stars were reanimated.

  The watchman wanted to get under way again then. His legs seemed to be made of stone, his shoulders sagged dolorously, and such languor spread through his entire body that he let himself collapse on a block of stone.

  With his eyelids half-closed, he recalled the hours that he had just spent in the abyssal depths. The return journey had been frightful. Despite the fact that he had taken care to leave evidence of his passage, he had gone astray. Then, already exhausted by his previous efforts, he had almost fainted. The time seemed immeasurably long; Targ was like a miner who might have spent long months within the cruel Earth.

  Even so, here he was, back on the surface where his kindred lived; here were the stars that had exalted the dreams of humankind throughout the ages; soon, the divine dawn would reappear in the expanse.

  “Dawn!” stammered the young man. “Daylight!”

  He extended his arm toward the east, in a gesture of ecstasy; then his eyes closed again, and—without being conscious of it—he lay down on the ground.

  A red light woke him up again. Raising his eyelids with difficulty, he perceived the immense orb of the sun on the horizon.

  Come on! Get up! he said to himself—but an invincible torpor nailed him to the ground; his thoughts drifted numbly; fatigue preached renunciation to him. He was about to go to sleep again, when he felt a slight prickling sensation over his entire epidermis—and he saw on his hand, alongside the scratches that stones had inflicted on him, characteristic red dots.

  “The ferromagnetals,” he murmured. “They’re drinking my life!”

  In his lassitude, he could barely recall the adventure. It was like something distant, foreign, almost symbolic. Not only did he not feel any pain, but the sensation became almost pleasant; it was a sort of dizziness, a slow and shallow drunkenness that must have resembled euthanas
ia…

  Suddenly, the images of Erê and Arva traversed his memory, followed by a surge of energy. “I don’t want to die!” he moaned. “I don’t want to!”

  He vaguely relived his struggle, his suffering, his victory. In the distance, in Redlands, life attracted him, fresh and charming. No, he did not want to die; he wanted to see the dawns and dusks for a long time yet; he wanted to fight the mysterious forces.

  And, summoning up his dormant will, with a terrible effort, he tried to stand up.

  VII. Water, Mother of Life

  In the morning, Arva had no suspicion of Targ’s absence. He had worked hard the day before; doubtless, worn out with fatigue, he was sleeping late. After two hours of waiting, however, she became anxious, and ended up knocking on the door of the watchman’s chosen room. There was no response. Perhaps he had gone out while she was asleep? She knocked again, then pressed the door-switch; as it rolled back, the door revealed an empty room.

  The young woman went in, and saw that everything was in good order: the arcum bed was lifted back against the wall; the washstand was tidy. There was no evidence of the recent presence of a man. A certain apprehension gripped the visitor’s heart.

  She went to find Mano; they both interrogated birds and humans alike without obtaining any useful reply. That was abnormal, and perhaps worrying—for the oasis, after the earthquake, was full of pitfalls. Targ might have fallen into a fissure or have been caught up in a collapse.

  “It’s more likely that he’s gone out in the morning sunlight,” said the optimistic Mano. “As he’s an orderly fellow, he’d have tidied his room first. Let’s go find him.”

  Arva was still anxious. Communications having become uncertain, and many radiolinks having been broken, their research made no progress.

  As midday approached, Arva was wandering sadly through the rubble in the borderlands of the oasis and the desert when a flock of birds appeared, calling loudly: “Targ is found!”