They were still coming closer, and the multiplicity of plants was flattened beneath their mass. The sunlight glinted on our projectile without appearing to disturb them—and the troop reached the river, heavy, massive and formidable. Dense dispositions hastened towards us.
In their rudimentary brains, they doubtless thought of us as a rock more regular than the others; they passed by, minute after minute, piling up on the river bank. Then the entire mass precipitated itself into the water, with a unanimous surge. Their bodies, suddenly agile, acquired a new, unsuspected vigor, and the monstrous herd reached the other bank, scaled it, and continued on its way. A sonorous bellowing rent the air.
When they had disappeared, we came out and advanced towards the river. A pool extended its shining waters. They suddenly became troubled, and forms reared up: a band of monsters! Laggards!
We hesitated momentarily. We could have exterminated a dozen in an instant, but that would bring back the furious horde. A unanimous assault on the Sirius would exhaust our ammunition, and if other herds were wandering around the planet, innumerable and watchful, it would be war!
But the creatures did not seem hostile. They came forward awkwardly. Golden eyes glistened in the moist flesh, while their thick hands beat the air. Then they squatted down on their palmate feet and began bellowing like bulls. Afterwards, they fell silent, but one continued in isolation. Hauchet replied, bellowing as the other did.
The scene was as comical as it was distressing. Abruptly, our friend, continuing his cries and gestures, retreated towards the Sirius. We did likewise, slowly. Suddenly, he began to sing. His loud voice took flight into the heavy air. The silent and motionless creatures seemed to be listening. He fell silent. They croaked noisily. He started again. They closed their wide mouths. And he dared to do what no man would have believed. He advanced towards the great brute who seemed to be the leader of the horde, met the gaze of the golden eyes, and took a viscous paw in his strong hand, still singing. And he held out a handful of thick grass.
The monsters crowded around him, open-mouthed, their gestures parodying his, attentive and suddenly mute. Then he came back, slowly. And the creature came forward, fearlessly. He thought we were similar to him, sons of his race. And that, undoubtedly, is why they did not attack us.
At close range, his body-structure was initially reminiscent of that of a frog, but the gaze was different and the skull was that of a cat. Between the soft lips, to either side, a sharp canine tooth projected. His enormous hand, gold and sticky, touched ours. Fearlessly, he waited.
We climbed up into the Sirius. He waited for us at the bottom of the ladder.
“We’ll have to tie him up to keep him,” said von Reinhardt.
“No,” said Hauchet. “I’ll give him a drink in this cup.”
That was what he did. The creature howled in delight, his eyes shining—and he assembled his kin with raucous cries. From their gaping mouths and their cavernous breasts rose a horrible hymn. Then they went away.
“Gentlemen,” said Hauchet, “we have studied the future human being of the planet, which would have given Venus a master if our humankind had not dreamed my Dream! If the batrachians lost their chance on our Earth, it was because of their feeble stature, but the marshes here permitted them to grow.
“Their race has multiplied vastly in the temperate regions as well as the equatorial and the great reptiles of yesteryear as well as the Pseudosaurians have done them the service of forcing their association. Besides, they are not limited, as fishes are, to a homogenous watery environment. They can and must be familiar with the shore, pouring over the hills and the edges of woods as well as the soft mud of lagoons. Did you see their teeth? There’s no doubt in my mind. By claw and by jaw they distribute poison, perhaps extracting it from the putrid mud. Are they viviparous, oviparous or asexual? We don’t know. At any rate, they’re carnivores. That will permit them to compete successfully against the Rhinoforms and Tridens, and eliminate them one by one. Once the herbivores have disappeared, goodbye carnivores.
“They have hands, Gentleman—that hand that seems so indispensable, with which Huyghens endowed all the inhabitants of all the planets! And this changing planet constrains them to change. The Pseudosaurs are better than the Reptiles, but they count too much on themselves to unite and are adapted to a solitary existence. The birds seem unsociable and voracious here, very far from the African weaver-birds for example. You have seen that they have taught the lesson of terror to everything else and have forgotten it themselves. We have not seen them in our excursions. I presume that their hordes are based near the equator and along neighboring terrains, in the forests of the deep, warm valleys.
“These are lost children. I think the plateaus and the mountains are too dry for these…” He paused. “…Batracanthropes. In any case, they’ll need a million years to reach our level. When we are here…” Laughing, he added: “If communications are established with the Earth, what a task for the Prussian administration!”
“What?” I asked.
“To Germanize them!”
“French frivolity!” said Reinhardt, with a smile.
“It’s because I’m frivolous that I flew here,” said the Doctor.
We drank a toast to everyone.
V. The Valley of Peace
That day, a dense fog enveloped the aerac and the heavy clouds were still thick when a dark form appeared above us. It was gigantic, further magnified by the refraction of the air. I extended my rifle out of a window, but I did not have to make use of it for the creature came down just far enough to be reached and struck by a rotor-blade. It recoiled and fall like a stone, but the aerac spun around and made an abrupt descent; half of the rotor blade ad been broken off.
There were a few fearful moments, and that fall through darkness remains the worst of my memories. Then the motor started spitting out gases and we danced furiously in mid-air. The descent continued, in 30 or 40 meter spasms. Emerging from the fog, we saw bushes heaped up in verdant waves coming to meet us. We bounced, rebounding like a rubber ball, and came to rest 30 feet above the ground.
“You’ve saved us, Hauchet,” said von Reinhardt.
“It was simple enough,” the latter said, smiling, “to remove the tube from the gas turbine and make the reaction work against the fall.”
“It was necessary to think of it,” I said.
We got out the spare rotor-blade and surveyed the undergrowth. Down below, on ground covered with black humus, saturated with carbonic acid, the heat had to be frightful. I thought about the rubber-hunters of Brazil, and then felt a sudden surge of fear, because something was climbing up the tree, more smoothly than growing moss: something large, viscous, powerful and voracious. I took aim at the creature at a range of 20 paces and fired. It immediately became motionless, then flowed into the shadows and disappeared. I kept watch anyway, and there was a slow movement in the darkness. But the rotor-blade was mounted. Hauchet looked down too. He did not say a word. Clenching his teeth, he pulled the lever and we took off.
“I think there are colonies of insects and giant spiders down there,” he said, “with jaws dripping with poison and sharp stings a-plenty in the darkness. We’ll have to make a collection some day.”
The dark selvedge of the undergrowth retreated before us, bordered by cliffs and a savannah extending beyond our horizon: a sea of ground-hugging plants beneath the Sun, replete with fecund vitality, swarming with life.
All of this was constructed on a titanic scale. That peaceful plain extended for leagues. The animals that ran fearlessly beneath the aerac’s flight-path had a different character, closer to familiar types. Here was the reservation of the Future; in this vast space, away from the sheer mountains, unknown species were in competition. The sunlight glinted on a lazy river.
“It’s the Valley of Peace,” said Hauchet. “There was a time on Earth, at the beginning of the Tertiary, which lasted longer than the entirety of human history, in which only herbivores existed
on the face of the Earth. The brutal reptiles had disappeared; the carnivores had not yet been born. Fear was forgotten. Then the carnivores came, terribly: lions, tigers, blood-drinking machairodonts, giant bears. Fear increased, increased further—then Man appeared, worse still. Imagine if the evolution of carnivores had stopped with the marsupials. The human grass-eater and gatherer of nuts might have disdained fresh meat and red blood, remained ignorant of war and hatred! But an obscure mammal, the Cain of his race, killed in order to live—and the Earth was changed forever. But we are bringing peace to this world, the law and justice of humankind supported by the blade of his strength. We are changing the course of evolution, destroying the devourers—fitting out the planet, in brief.”85
I thought about that as we hovered over the river. The very air seemed alive. On and above the ground, in the water, everything was vibrant with invisible or manifest life. The next few hours were exultant for us. We drew nearer to a capricious tributary of the river.
From the bank we saw scintillating waves, in which 1000 iridescent creatures sparkled. These creatures were not confined in the prison of shape. They were changing, ramifying at will—but the phenomena we observed did not stop there. A feverish activity ran through our bloodstreams, flames filled our eyes and the intoxication of their air was like an excessively strong wine. Lichens were growing on the aerac’s runners, while enormous mushrooms burst forth here and there, whose spores immediately began to increase. A thousand creatures, visible and invisible, intoned an immense hymn around us. The transparent water flowed, and our dreams flowed with it, and life in torrents.
Our overexcitement alarmed Hauchet. The aerac took us further away. Plants of a savory appearance grew everywhere, and in the first steam where we stopped we found excellent fish. So many good things put us in a joyful mood and we decided to make camp for a few days. We set down on dry firm ground.
Evening came, the fire burned placidly; there seemed to be nothing to fear, and my poetic soul drew me towards the stars, which came out that night.
Then we discovered a lake bubbling amid gold-splashed marble. The precious metal was glittering in the bed of a dried-up river—but that useless wealth was less important to us than the oil-wells in Hauchet Valley, 100 miles from the Sirius. With the warm water and the masses of gold we made a gigantic Voltaic pile, and our endless call for help rose up into the sky, and beyond.
VI. The Arrival of the Conquerors
The months went by, and the Plain of Sirius was subjected to human law. No creature existed except by our permission. By means of traps and the rifles, we exterminated the Tridens and the Rhinoforms, and we used landslides to seal off the valleys open to the marshes, for Man is strongest when he is only limited by himself. Slowly, we gave that part of the other world a familiar appearance. The deluges of rain and the furious winds became no more than auxiliary incidents. Our recording devices, vigilant sentinels, kept watch on the Heavens, the land and the waters. And one morning, on the sheet of paper on which the radiotelegraph was set, I read the signal emerging from the void. My heart ceased to beat.
Across the immensity of space, our brothers were coming. That minute was the greatest of my life. My friends came running, seeing me so pale, and I showed them the signal, unable to speak. We embraced one another in silence, and we aimed our electric searchlight towards the sky. Our post continued to function, ever vigilant—and we waited.
The recorder stopped in the night. The hours passed. An entire day went by before we received further news. When it came, it intoxicated us like a full-bodied wine, for, beyond the mountains the marshes and the valleys, other men were waiting for us.
How we ran to the aerac! And the hour that followed was decisive, for suddenly, blinded by the enormous Sun, we perceived five projectiles standing up in the masses of soft mud and reeds into which they had sunk on landing. We swooped down like an eagle, and out of an open hatch came the biologist Vornheim, His eyes were shining behind his gold-rimmed spectacles, and our cries rose up to the leaden sky. And there was Hilda, in my arms, exiled from the Earth for my sake. She was the first woman to set foot of the soil of the Star of Love!
When the projectiles, with their powerful engines, had been extracted from the grip of the hospitable marsh, the aeracs deployed their wings. Evening found us back at the Sirius, beneath flapping flags, in the joy of triumph: we modern Teuton knights, conquerors of boundless space.
Here Otto Rosenwald’s journal concludes.
VII. The Washington Conference
and the Division of Space
When the allotted time elapsed without bringing back the Sirius, Germany’s anxiety spread to the entire world. No one knows what hypotheses might have been put forth if the Prince of Monaco had not found one of the messengers a month later, with the three’s dispatch. Then sadness took swing like a breath of wind, and there was no question that a relief mission had to be organized. Was the Wheel not there?
But the Yankees were aroused. One of old Europe’s peoples surpassing young America! Well, if the Germans were investing 100 men and 100,000 marks, they would invest 100,000 dollars and 300 workers—and their own Wheel would be established like a dream in Panama, the center of the world.
Almost simultaneously, Carnegie, d’Estourelles de Constant and Flammarion proposed an international conference.86 Washington was chosen. It was the first diplomatic gathering to carry the full stamp of the Scientific Era, for it required, behind the delegates’ speeches, industrial strength, scintillating gold and the forceful will of crowds.
White and yellow races initially looked at one another in silence. Japan, at least, although tested by a recent financial crisis, conceived limitless hopes. It claimed its place in the Cosmos ardently.
It was necessary not to lose sight of the fact that humankind had taken 100,000 years to secure its domination of the world. How long would it take for other planets? Agreement was absolutely compulsory.
Unlike many conferences, however, the Congress was not long in getting under way, for the Americans were already at work in Panama. Germany’s shipyards started a series of interplanetary vessels with the Adler and the Himmelsgeier, furnished with the latest improvements and machines specially designed for the atmosphere of Venus. Agreement was necessary.
Italy laid claim to a part of Mars, on the basis of the work of Schiaparelli, the great observer of the red planet. She obtained the equatorial zone. Naturally, Germany retained Venus, occupied by its nationals, but in answer to their request, she granted the Yankees preferential tariffs and mining options. Enormous Russia was granted the Moon. She asked for no more than that, estimating its terrestrial power as adequate, but she obtained compensations in Persia and the Far East, and then took advantage of the opportunity of a loan guaranteed by the new colony—at 4½% interest.
Austro-Hungary got her share, not much, on Mars, without anyone knowing why; but the Austrians were secretly thinking of deporting the Hungarians—who were thinking about the Poles, who were remembering the Croats, who…
To silence the weaker states, they were awarded the asteroids between Mars and Jupiter, en bloc. They were probably not content, but they bore it as best they could. The industrious Swiss, however, obtained Eros, a planetoid more than 200 kilometers in diameter, whose orbit passes between Mars and Earth; they were already planning an interplanetary hotel.
For the first time since she had joined a conference, England got nothing. The British were never able to take the matter seriously, because there was no precedent! After Germany and America, Belgium swept up that which remained—mines on the Moon, the Martian poles, various planetoids—reserving the privilege of taking part, at least in the matter of railways.
The French government was unable to proceed with the wise slowness that it cherished. A public outcry and the personal intervention of the Head of State obtained us the concession of the continent Herschel and other Martian territories, an observatory on the Moon and two more on Venus—and a Ministry of Pla
netary Relations was created without delay. It needed an astronomer; it was therefore given to a lawyer. Besides which, the Martian territory—the most important—was put under military rule and attached to the Colonial Office; in consequence, the Hyperavions were attributed to the Ministry of Marine and 7477 speeches were made, only 7473 of which were on secular defense.
Japan was given potential rights to Jupiter, the giant planet equal to 1300 Earths. The Yankee appetite could only be assuaged by annexing to the stars and stripes the distant planets of “Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and those beyond not yet discovered.” But German diplomacy had its compensation: all the satellites of these enormous worlds, with those of Mars, and rectifications of frontiers on each of these immense globes, comprising ten million square kilometers—18,000 times the size of the Empire, almost 20 times the size of the entire Earth—which even contented the Pangermanists.
With Mercury, a minuscule world beneath a flaming Sun, no one seemed concerned at first. Then the Greeks annexed it—which discontented the Italians. The latter wrote everywhere that Mercury had been the god of thieves.
Thus Humanity set to work.
The second expedition was that of Michel de Lursac, to Mars, and if it did not reach the red planet, by design, it resolved nearly all the mysteries of that world.
The occupation and industrial conquest of the Moon was the work of the years that followed.
Another expedition, ten years later, reached Mars, and the improvement of wireless telegraphy in the interim was already sufficient to permit constant communication across the gulf of space.
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