Decisions were quickly taken. The Governor of the Congo, summoned by the Admiral, assumed the responsibility of putting the prearranged expeditionary troop on a combat footing, in order to be prepared for any eventuality. Meanwhile, the Admiral, Damprich, Bontemps, Tory and Maximilien Jolivet would go with Saint-Clair to board the Condor, and, after having discovered as much as possible from the exploration of the mysterious terrestrial base of the XV, would act as circumstances demanded.
It was 2 a.m. when Saint-Clair launched a signal rocket from the clearing near Brazzaville. A few moments later, two by two, the six adventurers—for that word, in its precise meaning, is the appropriate one—were hoisted up in the gondola to the aeronef. Introductions were made in the chart-room. Then Klepton was brought swiftly up to date.
“Good,” he said, after having consulted a map. “From here to the target is about 900 kilometers. At 300 kilometers an hour, we’ll be there at 6 a.m.”
“That’s perfect. Let’s go!”
Seizing the telephone, Klepton gave the order to the mechanic on watch. “Hello? Hello? Gaynor? Altitude 1000 meters, speed 75 leagues per hour.”
Beside him, Saint-Clair telephoned the pilot on duty. “Hello! Hello! Merlak? Steer towards one degree south latitude, 20 degrees east longitude. Direct route. Understood? Good.”
For two hours, the leaders of the aerial expedition—Bontemps, Tory and Jolivet having been sent with Pary to the crew’s quarters—chatted about the extraordinary recent events, although their impatience and, it must be admitted, emotion was such that he conversation was singularly disjointed.
As 5 a.m. chimed, Saint-Clair said: “It would perhaps be as well to slow down, so that we can go up on to the platform and observe the lie of the land.”
“The land and the sky,” said Klepton, “for if Bastien has given an accurate indication, it’s not impossible that we might encounter some enemy aircraft in the vicinity of this mysterious station.”
“Well then, let’s go up to the platform.”
“Agreed. I’ll wait until you’ve given Gaynor the order to slow down.”
Saint-Clair immediately took up the telephone and, pressing the engine-room switch, said: “Hello? Hello? Gaynor? Slow down to 30 kilometers an hour. We’ll descend diagonally to 500 meters... Understood? Good.” Then, releasing that switch and activating the one to the helm: “Hello? Hello? Merlak? Descend diagonally to 500 meters… Good!”
He took up a map, which he attached by means of drawing-pins to a square board; then, putting two pairs of binoculars under his arm, he headed for the stairway, followed by the Admiral, Flammarion and Damprich. Klepton was waiting for them, with colonial helmets in hand.
“Put these on your heads,” the engineer said, already wearing his own. “In a few hours, the Sun will be very hot; it’s not a good idea to be bare-headed on the platform.”
Disencumbered of his binoculars, Saint-Clair put the helmet on. The five men went up to the platform. The view drew a cry of enthusiasm from them.
In the dawn, the sky was scarlet, striated with long ribbons of molten gold. A few little clouds floated in the splendor of the light, pale blue on top, silver underneath, and the rays of the as-yet-hidden Sun transpierced them like luminous arrows. At the zenith, the stars were fading in the increasing light of day, and the air was infinitely pure, perfumed with al the balsamic scents of the night.
Beneath the Condor, which was angling towards the ground, there was an ocean of verdure, which extended to infinity in all directions: the virgin forest, unexplored by man; the wild forest, where the elephant, the hippopotamus, the rhinoceros, the panther and the leopard drank at the river which, flowing towards the distant Congo, extended its sinuous crocodile-infested streams everywhere.12 The virgin forest, domain of mystery and dread, through which men could only clear a path with extreme difficulty with hatchet-blows, often succumbing to the multiplicity and enormity of obstacles of every sort—but the Condor flew over these perils and obstacles, the dread and the mystery! It flew in the open sky, rapidly and unassailably, the all-powerful conqueror of the rude nature against which, ever since they had attained self-consciousness, men had stubbornly fought!
Sitting on the platform with their backs to the guardrail and the map between their feet, the binoculars within arm’s reach and the mouthpieces of the telephonic transmitters within range of their lips, Saint-Clair and Klepton followed their progress on the map, while Flammarion, the Admiral and Damprich, leaning on the guard-rail, were lost in admiration. The virgin forest, jungle everywhere! Indigenous villages were doubtless hidden in unknown clearings, where those ferocious dwarfs of which Stanley had spoken dwelt: the innumerable Vouatoua dwarfs, violent and bloodthirsty cannibals whose customs and habitual retreats were still unknown.13
Sometimes looking at the map, sometimes the horizon, where the glorious Sun was rising, and sometimes the somber forest 500 meters above which the Condor was flying, Saint-Clair and Klepton let themselves drift into a reverie, without precise images for the engineer, but populated, for the Nyctalope, with charming faces, in the midst of which the vivacious and noble smile of Xavière proudly stood out. And the young man, leaping over obstacles with a single bound in his impassioned imagination, saw a future radiant with love and happiness…
“Let’s not forget the most important thing of all,” Klepton said, suddenly, after coughing briefly.
“What’s that?” said Saint-Clair, surprised by the recall to reality.
“The weapons, of course!”
“Damn! You’re right. Has Varet, the armorer, been alerted?”
“No.”
Klepton grabbed the mouthpiece of the telephone. He pressed an ivory button set, among others, in an aluminum panel in the platform, and waited thirty seconds. “He’s woken up!” he said. Then, into the mouthpiece: “Hello? Hello? Varet? Wake your companions and get everyone to his post: the spare watchmen will help you in the armory. Hello? Arm the fore and aft tubes with shells loaded with grapeshot, explosive at 500 meters, and the keel tube with shells loaded with bullets, explosive on impact. Prepare the helicopter-torpedoes, and tell your assistants to be ready to launch then from the awning of he platform… Hello? We’re about to face the enemy… Good!”
The aerial fleets of the Fifteen can show themselves now, Saint-Clair said to himself, pressing electric switches at each of these commands. Varet will destroy the airplanes as a skillful hunter shoots skylarks with a mirror, one by one. And he stood up, enervated by his dreams, by the agony of knowing that Xavière was a prisoner of his enemies, and by the thought that the mystery of the XV might soon be elucidated.
“Where are we now, exactly?” asked the Admiral.
Klepton was hunched over the map. “At 30 kilometers an hour, we’re not going very fast,” he replied. “We won’t arrive at the desired point until 9:30 a.m. or 10 a.m…”
“Right!” said Saint-Clair unconscious of the contradictory nature of his desires. “Better to go slowly and see everything.” He went to lean on the forward guard-rail and, with sharp eyes, set about examining the ocean of verdure extended 500 meters below him.
An hour passed in silence. Klepton watched from the rear; Saint-Clair never quit the forward position. The Admiral, Flammarion and Damprich were grouped to port. There was nothing in the sky but the phantasmagoria of fluffy clouds fleeing from the Sun, nothing on the ground but the uniform virgin forest, sometimes punctured by large deserted clearings, sometimes cut through by a scintillating stream, sometimes hollowed out by rocky ravines.
At 8:30 a.m., they exchanged positions. Klepton went forward and Saint-Clair took his place in rear. As the spectacle of the jungle had become monotonous, the explorer let himself drift again into a reverie in which Xavière and Yvonne, hand in hand, were smiling at him…
Suddenly, while he was in mid-dream, an exclamation from Klepton reawakened him and made him turn round abruptly.
“Saint-Clair! Up there—fore and starboard!”
&nb
sp; He raised his head and released a sort of howl of joy, to which the exclamations of Flammarion, the Admiral and Damprich replied.
Up in the sky, perhaps 300 meters above the Condor, a fantastic bird was flying. It had something akin to two large dazzling white wings, but an elongated rectangular form with a very long tail terminating in a triangle—and in front of it, a propeller was whirling at top speed.
“An airplane,” said Saint-Clair, hoarsely, losing his ordinary impassivity momentarily.
The fantastic bird was advancing rapidly towards the Condor. It was soon overhead, and it then began to describe great circles, without retreating but also without descending. Evidently, the airplane was observing and studying the Condor.
Suddenly, it ceased its circling movement, headed north-west, and flew away. Its appearance diminished, becoming almost immaterial by virtue of its lightness and rapidity. It was no longer anything more than a point, and it was about to disappear when a ray of light was seen to spring forth from its faint whiteness, like a rocket. With dizzying velocity, the rocket hurtled at the Condor, and abruptly flared up, with a sharp whistling sound, a meter away from the motionless Saint-Clair and Klepton. It had passed by, everyone following it with their eyes, when it suddenly flickered and faded. With a frightful detonation, it burst beneath them, producing an intense white fireball, like a frightful tangle of lightning.
There was a puff of smoke, then nothing.
Saint-Clair and Klepton looked at one another, pale-faced, with sweat on their brows. “If that had burst 20 seconds sooner, my friend,” said the former, “we would have been blown up.”
“Yes,” said the other. “Carbonized, annihilated.”
“That’s one of their weapons…”
“It must be terrible!”
They fell silent, and looked at one another as if they knew that they were both seeing the same thing, by virtue of their instinctive terror. Then they turned to the Admiral and Damprich, who were as pale as they were, their eyes bulging. Their imaginations had extrapolated within a second the military consequences of a device like that rocket launched from an airplane—and those imagined consequences surpassed everything they knew about the terrible art of killing, destruction and annihilation.
In that moment of tumultuous anguish, however, Saint-Clair unfortunately did not notice that Monsieur Flammarion alone seemed quite calm…and a harsh, strange vertical wrinkle striped his ordinarily gentle and serene forehead.
Far away, to the north-west, the phantom bird had vanished.
Then, with a single movement, Saint-Clair and Klepton shrugged their shoulders brutally. Still pale, but cold, dry and resolute, their voice clear and their eyebrows furrowed, they said:
“Are we going on?”
“Yes, to the intended destination.”
“It’s exactly one degree south latitude?”
“And exactly 20 degrees east longitude.”
“We’ll be there in 20 minutes.”
“Good.”
“Will you take the helm, Klepton?”
“Yes, and you’ll follow me…”
“Perfect. We have to find out…”
“And I’ll have the hull, wings and airscrews electrified, in order to repel any electrical discharge by the enemy.”
“Yes, we’ll be invulnerable then.”
“At least unless they have other weapons even more terrible,” said Klepton.
“Perhaps, Klepton—but the only way to find out is to go there.”
“That’s my opinion!”
“It’s ours,” said the Admiral, gravely, gesturing inclusively towards Damprich, who was standing next to him.
“Evidently!” added Flammarion.
Already, Saint-Clair was disappearing into the hatch. He did not perceive that the word “evidently” was hissed like the threat of a viper.
They went below, closing the hatchway behind them, and separated in the corridor at the bottom of the ladder. Saint-Clair and Klepton went aft; the Admiral, Flammarion and Damprich went to the forward observation-post.
Two minutes later, the mechanics Dirving and Gaynor, on duty together in view of the grave circumstances, received the following order from Saint-Clair: “Hello? Hello? Climb vertically to 3000 meters, then move forward, speed 350 kilometers an hour… Watch out! We’re going to meet the enemy!”
And, shuddering along the entire length of its electrified metallic hull, the Condor leapt into the sky.
V. Saint-Clair’s Little Sister
At 10 a.m. on October 11, Franz Montal, the director of the Aéro-Garage Universel in Paris, was in his office, in the process of opening the day’s voluminous correspondence with the aid of a secretary.
The shops, offices and platform of the Aéro-Garage Universel were located at the top of an enormous 12-story building at the corner of the Avenue de Paris in Neuilly. In that era, the fortifications that had formerly encircled the City of Light no longer existed. They had been razed and the ditches filled in; large boulevards had been constructed on the vast quasi-circular emplacement, planted with eight rows of trees. Thus, as one turned towards the Arc de Triomphe at the Etoile, the Aéro-Garage loomed over the encircling boulevard and, to the right, the Bois de Boulogne.
The light of a fine October Sun came into the office through vast Roman bay windows, directly overlooking the large platform where the airplanes landed and took off. Franz Montal dictated brief notes in reply to the letters as he read them, rapidly and dryly, and the secretary inscribed these notes in shorthand as rapidly as they were given to him. His face illuminated by the glare of the Sun, the director displayed thin, bony features with no trace of a moustache or beard. His short-cropped hair was red. His eyes were pale green, small and cold, his nose slightly aquiline, his lips thin and scornful, his chin and cheek-bones brutally forceful. The man must have been 40, but he was athletic and wiry.
Montal was reading the last letter when a bell sounded. He pressed one of the ivory buttons aligned on his desk; immediately, the office door opened and a servant came in.
“A telegram,” the servant said. He presented the piece of blue paper to the director, then withdrew.
Montal ripped open the little band securing the paper with an abrupt gesture and unfolded it; immediately, his features became fixed in a bizarre expression of respect mingled with severity. “You may go, Monsieur Louis,” he said. “Reply yes to that”—and he threw the last letter to the secretary, who took it, assembled the others into a pile, got up and left.
Then Franz Montal pressed a second ivory button. A loud, strangely staccato ringing resounded in the offices and shops; it signified that the “boss” should not be disturbed, on any pretext, for a quarter of an hour. Montal got up and went to draw the white curtains over the bay windows, so as to keep out curious gazes but not the light. He returned to his desk and read the telegram, without any apparent emotion. Then he took a notebook from his pocket, selected a blank page, and wrote:
Telegram from Thoth, from Palma, Balearics, Oct.11, 10:25 a.m. Translation:
Greetings. Am with Saint-Clair, dangerous. Put his sister in a safe place and tell African station immediately to post a threat of her death on the esplanade. Thoth.
Having done that, Franz Montal re-read the translation carefully. Then he tore the page from the notebook, pinned it to the telegram, folded it and put the whole thing into a white envelope, which he sealed with wax, with a seal bearing the interlaced initials F.M. Afterwards, he got up, walked to an enormous stolid strong-box that stood in a corner of the office, and spent two minutes manipulating its delicate locking mechanism. There was a brief squeaking sound and a metal lid lifted up on the top of the strong-box, revealing a cavity hollowed out in the thickness of one of its walls. Montal threw the envelope in, and brought the mechanism into play again; the lid closed, sealing the cavity hermetically, without the slightest crack being visible.
The director went back to his work-desk. On a piece of paper bearing the Aéro-Garage�
�s heading, he wrote eight lines in the same unknown language as the telegram from Thoth beneath the address: Félix Numa, Brazzaville, Congo. When he had finished, he pressed another call-button. The office door opened and the servant came in.
“Take this to the radiotelegraphic office at the Eiffel Tower,” Montal said, giving him the piece of paper. “My monoplane IV on the platform, right away! Malteste will be the pilot.”
The servant bowed and went out.
Five minutes later, seated in the passenger seat of a seemingly ordinary two-seater monoplane, secretly equipped with a special engine that allowed it to travel at 200 kilometers per hour, the director of the Aéro-Garage flew over the Bois de Boulogne in the direction of Saint-Germain. The second seat was occupied by the pilot, Malteste, a strongly-built man with the somber black face of a fanatical monk.
As the airplane passed over the Seine at Chatou, Montal said: “Land at the Neuf-Routes crossroads in the forest, Malteste. According to the Saint-Clair file, Mademoiselle Christiane, his sister, has the very regular habit of sitting by the crossroads between 11 a.m. and noon on fine days, sometimes accompanied by her governess and sometimes not. The file provides a detailed description of the young woman.”
“Are we kidnapping her from there?”
“Yes. Wide roads meet at the crossroads; taxi on to one of them as you land, as if to take off again. We’ll disguise ourselves and change the plane’s number. If there are witnesses to the abduction, they’ll give a number and descriptions that aren’t ours.”
The Nyctalope on Mars 1: The Mystery of the Fifteen Page 10
