The Nyctalope on Mars 1: The Mystery of the Fifteen

by Jean de La Hire

At 6:50 a.m., Saint-Clair gave the foreman of the construction-workers a check drawn on the Bank of Barcelona for the sum necessary to make all the payments he had agreed with Klepton, and it was agreed that the foreman and the workers would remain at the factory, as if Klepton were still there.

  At 7 a.m., everyone was aboard: the eight crewmen, plus Klepton, the captain; Saint-Clair, the commander of the expedition; Flammarion, the scientific director; and Pary O’Brien, steward. The crewmen having taken up their respective posts, Flammarion, Klepton and Saint-Clair went into a vast cabin furnished with profound divans, above which instruments of aviation and navigation were suspended from the wall, attached at head height, along with panels of electric switches. Two telephones mounted on mobile feet could be rolled from one end of the room to the others. Terrestrial and celestial maps were displayed on a circular table placed in the center. At certain points on the walls, between round portholes that were presently closed, aluminum shelves supported rows of books.

  A box of cigars stood open on top of a map at the edge of the table. Phlegmatically, Klepton took a cigar, lit it, let himself fall on to a divan, drew one of the telephones towards him and flicked one of the six switches disposed around and beneath the body of the apparatus. A bell sounded. “As it should be,” he said to Saint-Clair, who, seated next to him, drew the second telephone between his knees. “It’s all right, isn’t it? I never occupy myself with the direction, only with the maneuvering.”

  “Perfectly,” said Saint-Clair, presenting a lighted match to Monsieur Flammarion’s cigar.

  “Let’s go, then!” Klepton put his mouth to the transmitter: “Hello? Hello? Dirving? Is everything in order? Good! Speed 200 kilometers an hour… Height 1000 meters… Let’s go!”

  By his side, Saint-Clair spoke into his own apparatus: “Hello? Hello? Johnson? Listen! Set a course due south-east until you receive further orders…”

  At the same instant, the three men felt a slight tremor, and a sort of vast thrumming sound, accompanied by a continuous cadence of deep bass notes, reached their ears. This combination of sounds never ceased, by day or night, while the aeronef was in flight.

  “We’re off!” said Klepton. “I shan’t leave until we’ve arrived.”

  “Nor I!” said Saint-Clair.

  “Nor I!” announced Monsieur Flammarion.

  And, doubtless to hide their formidable emotion, the three men set about smoking their cigars with a sort of bizarre gluttony. Without exchanging a word, they smoked in this fashion until 8 a.m.

  When the control-room’s electric clock had sounded eight crystalline notes, Klepton threw his cigar-stub into an ash-tray and said: “Let’s go up on to the platform.”

  “Let’s go,” said Saint-Clair.

  “This will be interesting,” murmured Flammarion.

  They went out of the control-room, crossing the cabin, and a few strides along a narrow corridor brought them to the steps of a ladder. A hatchway opened; followed by Flammarion and Saint-Clair, the inventor went through it.

  They found themselves on the Condor’s back. A platform, 20 meters long by four wide and surrounded by a guard-rail, extended from the rear porthole, which let daylight into the pilot’s station, to the forward porthole, which illuminated the watchman’s post.

  “Watch out for the wind!” Klepton howled.

  The three men immediately grabbed hold of the forward guard-rail and looked down towards the ground. They could not see it, because thick clouds separated them from it.

  The aeronef’s immense wings were extended horizontally, agitated by a rapid quivering similar to that of birds when they are hovering above a fixed point. Below them, by the light of the setting Sun, was something at first reminiscent of a vast billowing grey sheet—but that illusion was dispelled, and the clouds presented undulant grey surfaces, silvered in the west, to begin with, by the invisible Sun. Then, enormous anfractuosities opened in the mass of the clouds, and the Mediterranean Sea appeared far below, quite distinctly, as if seen through a curtain of heavy rain. Suddenly, a ray of light short forth a little to starboard, above the immense horizon, then others, then an entire firework display: the Sun! The clouds lit up with gold and the sky was filled with bright light while, as the sun set, the blue infinity gradually deepened.

  The three men experienced a formidable sensation of power and pride in telling themselves that they were on an aeronef, where one did not have to worry about the expansion of the gas, ballast, winds, and the thousand other things on which the life of ordinary aeronauts depends. Saint-Clair, in particular, breathed more deeply; an inexpressible joy animated his entire being, and he gazed for a long time, admiringly, at the engineer Klepton standing next to him in the frightful current of air that made the platform sway.

  “Where are we?” asked an emotional voice.

  The two commanders turned round. Pary was there, pale-faced, his eyes gleaming with naïve joy and his large hands solidly clamped to the guard-rail. “Where are we?” he repeated.

  Klepton smiled, and Flammarion replied benevolently: “An hour’s travel, at 200 kilometers per hour; we’ve only gone a little further than 200 kilometers, so we’re still over the Mediterranean Sea, about 100 kilometers north of the Algerian coast.”

  Pary leaned over the guard-rail. The clouds were breaking up, and a keen wind was carrying them eastwards in dismembered masses. Far below, the sea was a grey, indefinite expanse.

  “We’d better go back in,” said Klepton. “Pary, to your post!” The engineer headed towards the mouthpiece of a voice-transmitter attached to the guard-rail. “Hello? Hello? Dirving? Adopt the angle necessary to climb to 6000 meters in two hours. Speed 300 kilometers per hour… Good!”

  Pary had already disappeared through the hatch.

  “Hold tight,” Klepton said to Saint-Clair. “Our speed is increasing rapidly. In three minutes, we won’t be able to stay on the platform—we’d be suffocated and carried off by the wind!”

  Saint-Clair saw the immense wings lower themselves, then raise themselves, then lower themselves again with a loud metallic creak; their movement soon became so rapid that his eyes could not follow their precipitate beating; they seemed to be up, down and in the middle all at the same time, between the two extremes of the third of a circle that their tips described relative to the flanks of the aeronef. At the same time, the Condor leaned slightly backwards, its bowsprit tilted visibly towards the sky; the propulsive airscrew roared more loudly, and a violent wind swept the surface of the platform. Even so, as there was not a single cloud nearby that could serve as a reference point, Saint-Clair could have believed that the airborne vessel was immobile. He was trying to take account of the rapidity of their progress when Klepton grabbed him brusquely by the arm and pushed him towards the hole where the ladder was, which Flammarion had already reached. At the same moment, he heard a dry click; it was the guard-rail, automatically folding back on to the platform. Then he could no longer see the sky, and found himself in a corridor lit by electricity.

  “Let’s go visit our crew.”

  They followed the corridor forwards to the end, and a little door opened, revealing a circular enclosure two meters in diameter. At the center of the enclosure, the watchman was seated on a fixed stool. Obedient to his orders, he did not turn round. In front of him was a large porthole furnished with thick crystal glass; by this means, the man could see what was ahead of the aeronef within a vertical and horizontal angle of 45 degrees. Beneath his feet, another porthole provided a view of the ground.

  Klepton gave Flammarion and Saint-Clair an informative account of everything; then the three commanders returned along the corridor and visited the barracks, where superimposed bunks were provided for the crew. They went from there into the engine-room, where Dirving, the chief mechanic, was seated in front of the body of the machine, watching, oiling and greasing.

  “Everything in order?” said Klepton.

  “Everything in order, sir,” the man replied.

 
; A single mechanic was, in fact, sufficient to operate and regulate the liquid-air engine and the electrical apparatus. The levers, drive-shafts and piston-rods were all in motion, turning and sliding noiselessly with marvelous regularity. Two portholes, one to the right and one to the left, illuminated the machinery, which was as shiny and neat as a showcase of delicate apparatus.

  Once again, Saint-Clair could not help expressing his admiration to Klepton. Flammarion went one better, saying: “You’re a man of genius, Monsieur. Who could believe that the prodigious force necessary to provide the wings and the two airscrews with the rapidity of movement indispensable to the sustenance of the Condor’s forward progress through the atmosphere is produced, captured and directed within those cylinders.”

  Was it an illusion, or had the astronomer—as it seemed to Saint-Clair—put a hint of irony into his words? But the impression was immediately effaced from the Nyctalope’s mind, so slight was it.

  “Bah! It’s quite simple,” Klepton said. “I obtain the liquid air by submitting ordinary air to a pressure of 80 atmospheres with a critical temperature of minus 180 degrees. Now, a cubic meter of liquid air produces 20 cubic meters of gaseous air; the simple return of the liquid air to the gaseous state thus produces an expansion and a formidable force. I store that force; I maintain it, if I might express it thus, at a temperature sufficient to nullify the terrible glacial effect of the minus 180 degrees and I release it into a milieu heated by electricity, where the expansion drives the Condor’s wings and airscrews with an inconceivable power. But I’ve already explained all that to you… It only required a little research to discover it. It’s just child’s play now. Look—it only needs a little oil, grease, and surveillance by a man who knows the machinery thoroughly.”

  “What if something breaks?” asked Saint-Clair, laughing.

  “That’s improbable, you know,” Klepton replied, “because the material of every component was forged without any defect. The mechanisms of the wings and each of the airscrews are independent. In the event of an accident to one of the mechanisms, the other two continue to function—and the wings can still be extended horizontally, no matter what happens. The most serous risk would merely be falling, like a parachute. The faulty component would be replaced before we had touched the ground; we have a stock of spare parts. Everything has been anticipated. Even if the repair proved impossible, the fall would not be dangerous; on solid ground it would be softened by discharges of compressed air; on water, the Condor floats like a dinghy.”

  “I know all that,” said Saint-Clair, “but every time you repeat it, it seems new, and I admire you…”

  They went out of the engine-room. They went to see the pilot, Johnson, in the rear cockpit. He was sitting down, with both hands on the helm. In front of him, in a frame placed on a large box fixed at the intersection of two overlapping columns whose crossed branches were embedded in the walls, was a mirror-reflector of Klepton’s invention, whose four faces reflected everything surrounding the Condor, to the right and the left, above and below. A second mirror, placed above the first, reflected everything in advance of the aeronef. Finally, a third, underneath the second, reflected what was behind the vessel, at the prow of which was a large porthole furnished with a crystal lens. The net effect was that the helmsman, while moving the helm in the lateral dimension or the levers in the vertical one, knew by glancing at the mirrors whether any obstacle was above, below in front, behind, to port or to starboard. In addition, in order for the helmsman and the mechanic to be able to co-ordinate their maneuvers, all the orders sent to the engine-room were automatically echoed in the helmsman’s cockpit, and vice versa. It was understood that, in grave circumstances, Klepton would take over as pilot. Besides, a system of transmission wires put the helmsman’s cockpit in communication with the engine-room and the armory, so that Klepton could send orders instantaneously to all parts of the aeronef without leaving his post.

  “Johnson,” Klepton said, “you can lock the controls as soon as we’ve reached as height of 6000 meters. The Condor will fly dead ahead, without any deviation, and you can read if you wish. Pass the order on to your colleague Dirving. You needn’t take control again until I give the order.”

  “Understood, Captain.” Johnson darted a glance at a barometer fixed in the wall, which measured the altitude. “We’re at 3000 meters,” he said. “Good.”

  Two minutes later, Flammarion, Saint-Clair and Klepton went back into the chart-room. Flammarion slumped into a chair and put his head in his hands, apparently carried way by the vastest scientific dreams that an astronomer can entertain.

  As for Saint-Clair, he sat down at the table, saying: “I’ll calculate the time of our arrival at one degree south latitude and 20 degrees east longitude.”

  “Calculate away!” said Klepton. “Me, I’ll smoke.” And he lit a cigar, while Saint-Clair consulted a map and scribbled figures on a piece of paper.

  After a quarter of an hour Saint-Clair said: “Messieurs!”

  “What’s up, my friend?” said Klepton, as Flammarion, as if waking up with a start, raised his head.

  “From Algiers to the mysterious base of the Fifteen,” Saint Clair said, “I make it, as the bird flies, a distance of 4500 kilometers. Will the Condor continue flying at 300 kilometers an hour?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then the journey from Algiers to the station is 15 hours.”

  “Exactly!”

  “We’ll pass over Algiers at a few minutes past 9 a.m., and we’ll arrive above the station tomorrow, October 12, shortly before 1 a.m.”

  “Theoretically, yes,” said Flammarion, “but it’s necessary to take account of the fact that we’ll slow down progressively as we approach. We shall therefore arrive, if you please, at exactly 1 a.m.”

  “A good time,” said Saint-Clair. “It will be pitch dark… We’ll be able to see, with the aid of our binoculars, without much risk of being seen.”

  “Evidently,” said Klepton. “But what about Admiral de Ciserat? Aren’t we going by way of Brazzaville?”

  “Ah!” said Saint-Clair, striking his forehead. “The Fifteen’s mysterious base hypnotized me to the point that I forgot about the Admiral. Very well, we’ll stop above Brazzaville; I’ll go down to the ground and talk to the Admiral—who’ll be quite astonished to see me so soon…”

  “And we’ll set out again for the Fifteen’s base after an hour’s pause,” said Flammarion.

  “Perfect!” said Klepton—and he took up his cigar again, while Saint-Clair, unfolding a large map of the Independent State of the Congo, marked it with little red and blue dots and covered a blank sheet of paper with figures. As for Flammarion, he returned to the planet Mars and the means that the kidnappers had used to transport themselves there with their prisoners.

  In the empty sky, beneath the rising Sun, whose rays were setting it on fire, the Condor flew with its wings working flat out, filling the immensity with the powerful and rhythmic noise of an enormous human machine, bearing a handful of audacious men towards extraordinary dangers and all the horror of the unknown. But those men were superior to those of all previous generations by virtue of a double determination: to find and liberate the 15 young women enigmatically imprisoned by the enigmatic abductors, and to elucidate the hallucinatory mystery of the XV—in a word, to go to Mars! Calmly, but impatient to reach their goal swiftly, the modern aeronauts allowed themselves to be borne along by the beating wings and vertiginous airscrew of the Condor.

  That same day, a little after midnight, the Condor passed slowly over Brazzaville at an altitude of 1000 meters. With the aid of powerful night-binoculars, Klepton discovered a large clearing in the middle of an isolated wood, not far from the capital of the French Congo. At midnight exactly, the Condor was hovering 100 meters above the ground. Pary O’Brien descended in the gondola, explored the clearing and then climbed back up. In the gondola’s docking-bay, at the rear of the aeronef, Flammarion, Klepton and Saint-Clair were waiting for him.
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  “It’s agreed, then,” Klepton said to Saint-Clair, when the gondola reappeared with O’Brien aboard. “We’ll wait for you here.”

  “Yes,” the Nyctalope replied. He shook hands with the astronomer and the Englishman and, saluted by O’Brien, climbed into the gondola. Three minutes later, he set foot on the ground. The empty gondola went back up; the Condor fluttered its wings, made a rapid ascent and vanished into the starry sky.

  Unintimidated by the profound darkness, thanks to his nyctalopic eyes, Saint-Clair marched along a path that, according to be observations made from the Condor, led directly to Brazzaville. The explorer had long been familiar with the Congolese city. He went to the governmental palace. A sentinel was marching up and down in front of the door.

  “Summon your commanding officer for me, my friend,” said Saint-Clair.

  The soldier shouted, and an NCO appeared on the threshold almost immediately.

  “Sergeant,” said Saint-Clair, “Go tell Admiral de Ciserat that Monsieur Dutot from Paris wishes to see him—and give him this.”

  His tone was so authoritative that the Sergeant took the card that the nocturnal visitor held out to him and hurried into the palace.

  Five minutes later, Saint-Clair was shaking hands with the Admiral and his orderly.

  The explanations on both sides were rapid and precise—but the more Saint-Clair said, the wider the Admiral’s and Ensign Damprich’s eyes became. The presence of the astronomer Flammarion on the Condor made them smile, so amusing was the idea that he might be able to verify his discoveries and conjectures regarding Mars empirically.

  The Admiral was delighted because, whatever immense difficulties their enterprise might face, destiny seemed thus far to have declared itself in their favor, and he was able to cherish the hope of liberating Xavière, Yvonne and their companions from captivity. Never before, it is true, had a father found himself in the exorbitant situation of being obliged to pursue the kidnappers of his daughters across the 5.6 million kilometers of interplanetary space that separate the Earth from Mars. Never before had a man found himself in the truly frightful situation of being able to consider it possible for him to do so, now that other men had accomplished that fantastic voyage! Never had dolorous reality been mingled with such an unimaginable possibility! And yet, it existed; it was, so to speak, a tangible truth, one of those enormous things which, from time to time, confound human reason and turn the world upside down, like barbarian invasions, the discovery of America, the existence of the Hictaner, the invasion of England by Martians, wireless telegraphy and telephony, the remote control of torpedoes, aerial transport companies and 100 other prodigies to which Science and Destiny were pleased to give birth beneath the investigative feet of humankind in progress!