by Theo Varlet
“I’ll tell you shortly why here and not in America. I acquired the south-western part of the island a year ago, and when my plan for planetary emigration took form, I had a wireless station and landing strip constructed there. At the Levant, we’ll have the advantage of an absolute tranquility. Our only neighbors are inoffensive naturists absorbed in their exercises in solar hygiene. For I’ve decided to keep our reconnaissance expedition secret until it’s complete. For one thing, it’s necessary that the means I’m employing to safeguard humankind cannot be captured by the sectarians of war and utilized for their deadly ends. I also want, as much as possible, to maintain a lead of several months, the time necessary to obtain a first result. When I inform the world of the idea I’m pursuing, I want to be able to say: ‘This is what astronautics permits; these are the new fields that it offers to human activity, to distract it from fratricidal wars.’ That’s why I’m also recommending the two of you to maintain the utmost discretion. Not a word of your true destination to anyone, especially journalists!”
I acquiesced. Aurore, smiling, remembered that she had had sufficient involvement with journalists after her pretended voyage to the Moon to be wary of their enterprise. Then, becoming serious again, she asked: “Have you already made an ascent in the Rocket, Madame?”
“No—none. The flight trials will only commence when the pilot…why do you ask me that?”
“Because you’ve resolved to accompany my husband and me. It will be necessary to undertake one or two excursions into space with you, in order to test your resistance to space-sickness.”
“Is that really necessary?”
“Indispensable. No earthbound apparatus is able to give the slightest indication on that subject. Do you suffer from sea-sickness?”
“Yes, alas—far too much.”
“All the more reason not to take the matter lightly.”
“It’s annoying. I was beginning to hope, after what you’ve just told me, that we could leave without attracting attention in the surroundings by preliminary excursions in the apparatus. If it’s necessary, though...we’ll take the risk at the Levant. It’s too late now to go to some more distant coast where I could to carry out the trials of the Rocket in complete freedom; the pilot you’re replacing wanted at least a fortnight to get to the point of real space trials.”
The principal questions had been settled. There was a moment of relaxation during dessert. After ten minutes of chatting about the threat of the international situation, Aurore returned to the subject that preoccupied her.
“If you’ll grant me the favor, Madame, I’d like to know the circumstances that led to the pilot you had chosen...”
“Excuse me, Aurore; your request is quite legitimate. I should have begun by telling you the history of my enterprise. Here it is. At first I thought of buying the Moon Gold astronautics factory from the State two years ago. I assumed that the prohibition on extra-atmospheric flights had fallen into neglect. Having made enquiries, though, the decree not having been abrogated, the veto still existed, in principle. That didn’t prevent the government from envisaging the reopening of the factory for its own purposes, reserving its monopoly on rockets. That should have been done by now. There was tolerance for the trials of small unmanned rockets carried out for purely scientific purposes under the direction of Professor Goddard,21 but I was officiously advised to abstain from any experiment with manned apparatus on the soil and in the skies of America. I was nevertheless left without opposition, thanks to a few judiciously-distributed greenbacks, in constructing my new spaceships, and I carried away the Ad Astra I on my yacht, with the necessary equipment and personnel, in order to launch from somewhere else.
“While buying the patents from Lendor Cheyne under a pseudonym I asked him to give me an introduction to you, Aurore, if you remember, but you refused. It was therefore necessary for me to enroll another pilot, an aviation ace. He requested, as I’ve told you, at least a fortnight of test flights. That would not have gone unperceived. I therefore had to find a country where astronautics had not been prohibited. The most convenient appeared to me to be the republic of Liberia on the Gulf of Guinea. We therefore set off for Africa. When we called in at the Azores, however, my pilot—he had only once vice, but a terrible one: gambling—got into a quarrel with some Portuguese sailors in a local dive, and received a stab-wound that will leave him in hospital, hovering between life and death, for months. That seriously compromised my plans. I set a course for Gibraltar, and came to Paris by air the day before yesterday in order to replace my man. Yesterday, I learned by chance of Professor Nathan’s death, which gave me a second chance with you. I telephoned you, and this time you accepted—thanks to which, we shall still be able to leave on time.”
The billionairess fell silent, as if she had said everything—but Aurore persisted: “Permit me one final question, Madame. I understand that you’re in haste to carry out your plan, but why such a sharp deadline of a week, and the precise date of the fifteenth that you envisage? The threat of war isn’t as imminent as that.”
“No, but it’s between the twelfth and the fifteenth that the planet Mars and the minor planet Eros22 will reach, at an interval of a few days, their closest approaches to Earth, permitting us to commence our exploration in search of a new world with them.”
The maidservant with the woolly hair served the coffee, but when I offered a cigarette to Miss Lat she refused with a smile, and took a minuscule set of Buddhist prayer-beads from her handbag, whose yellow amber beads she never ceased to slide between her fingers, her gaze extended toward nirvana, while her lips sketched the repetition of the sacred syllable aum.
Madame Simodzuki left that same evening on the Pullman to rejoin her yacht at Marseilles and go on to the Île du Levant. She would gladly have taken us with her, but we could not set out on such an adventure without making a few preparations: two days would be only just sufficient. It was agreed that we would take the Toulon express the day after the next, where the Fusi-Yama’s motor launch would be waiting for us at the quayside.
VI. Promises
I spent the next forty-eight hours in Paris in a sort of secondary state: a heroic exaltation that did not succeed in distracting me from the practical necessities of our departure.
It was necessary for me to obtain the lightest possible painting equipment from Waterston & Sons, the great suppliers of equipment for aviation and colonial exploration—for I was resolved to work “up there”—to settle my accounts with my dealer, and to pay a few visits to p.p.c.,23 on the pretext of a holiday on the Côte d’Azur.
My wife—who was determined, she said to quite the Institute in an orderly manner—had to see a couple of official personages and to give her young replacement relative to the late Professor Nathan’s successor information with regard to the latter’s records and laboratory.
In consequence, we did not see much of one another during those two days.
The hours of solitude delivered me without constraint to a vertiginous overexcitement. Forgetting that I was only a subaltern aide in an expedition commanded by my wife, in which I was participating as a virtual supernumerary to her sublime role, I felt invested with an immense, superhuman dignity and savored my triumph as I plunged into the bath of the Parisian crowd that I would soon be leaving behind, perhaps forever.
A nervous impatience was eating away at me. Leaving the automobile at Aurore’s disposal, I went around on foot, mingling with the hallucinatory flow of the streets: the rumble of motor-buses, the gurgling, rumbling and crackling of engines, the whining and grating of brakes, the whistle-blasts of policemen and the whinnying of motor-cycles—the mechanical life of Paris and its hiccups—intercut with the disciplined rush of pedestrians at the junctions.
The problem that had been tormenting me since art had no longer been able to satisfy me and justify my existence was still harassing me.
All those people hastening about their business, people on foot, in taxis, on buses and underground in t
he Metro, the millions of people hurrying around Paris and all the cities of the world: what is their role in the organism of civilization? What are they thinking? What are they doing, or going to do, in order to earn their money? Is any creation within their skulls, susceptible of serving the progress of humankind? What is their sole objective? To make money and be happy…who knows how?
Yes, all these people are only human material, which is born, lives and dies without ever having contributed anything to the progress of the species, with the sole aim of surviving and reproducing; every one of them and interchangeable cogwheel of no utility to evolution. Their global importance is precisely that of a culture medium, in which exceptional representatives of the human species are born from time to time, which enable it to make progress...
But I. henceforth, with Aurore, had emerged from the culture medium; I had become one of those exceptional representatives of humankind!
In truth, I had “caught” megalomania.
And what a pity it was, in that psychological condition, to accomplish the paltry actions I mentioned above…to hear the familiar story, for example, yet again from a picture-dealer: “It’s the crisis, my friend. No one’s buying—not even those who could; there’s a mania for thrift, for cotton underwear.” As I listened to them, though, I got my revenge by saying to myself: You’re staying, clodhopper, and I’m going...if you only knew where!
That secret irony helped me to get through the chores, after which, plunging back into my dream, I imagined my heroic adventure. I saw myself in the spaceship, launched into infinity, among the cream of humankind, playing a positive role in sidereal history.
“Don’t put too much imagination into it,” my wife advised me. “An interplanetary voyage is something much more prosaic than you think, believe me, my love.”
And she smiled with tender indulgence, at my artistic nervousness. But while admiring, deep down, her calm and collected joy, I was rather surprised and almost scandalized by the fact that she did not share my effervescent enthusiasm.
I told her that her straight out during the quarter of an hour of rest we granted ourselves in one of the large boulevard cafés on the morning of the second day, after three hours spent in Waterston and Sons trying on clothes and choosing accessories for both of us.
“Well, my dear, I’m even fonder of science than you are now,” I joked. “Madame Simodzuki’s idea doesn’t seem to be exciting you overmuch. We’re going to be the pioneers of the migration of an elite; we’re going to prepare for the salvation of the purest in human thought and permit it to make a new departure—a fresh departure, so to speak, toward human ennoblement...”
She sucked Neapolitan ice-cream from her spoon thoughtfully and said: “It’s a good thing that Madame Simodzuki imagines that she’s going to save the genius of the world, because without that obsession, she wouldn’t be undertaking the expedition in which we’re going to take part and which will permit me to realize—with you!—the greatest ambition of my life…but her hope is so utopian! Humans will always remain human, and won’t be transformed into angels by virtue of having been transported to another planet. And how will the emigration be limited to an elite? By keeping the flight secret? That’s another illusion.
“That amiable lady, who I’m glad to have as an employer and whose noble inspiration I revere, has her head in the clouds. It’s an effect of her billions; one can’t escape the corrupting power of money. Others become rapacious and wicked; it has rendered her chimerical. She imagines that the distribution of dollars can prevent the inevitable—that because she wishes it, our departure can remain secret. To begin with, what will she gain by it? I don’t share her opinion about the practicality of discretion. Given that it’s impossible to take possession of a planet and to reserve a monopoly on intersidereal navigation, I can’t see that an advance of a few weeks can procure the first arrivals any great advantages. Then again, even if it were desirable to maintain the secrecy of our expedition, it’s impossible! And I fear that pretension might attract more unpleasant consequences than beneficial ones. But there’s no point in trying to tell her that; she doesn’t want to listen to anyone’s advice, I’m sure of that.”
Reading the newspapers that we scanned confirmed those fears. The publication of Oscar’s article had caused a considerable fuss, and put the question of astronautics back on the day’s agenda after two years of dormancy. There was nothing in the dailies but headlines along the lines of: “Astronautics and its terrestrial threat” and “Rockets of war or peace?”
While praising the sagacity of “our talented colleague” and admitting the accuracy of his conclusions, the Intran appeared to see him as a forcer of open doors. The interesting thing was not mounting enquiries into astronautics establishments that were already known, like the Verem, but to discover those that were functioning secretly. And we are in a position to affirm that there are many more than people think. We can also say, without explicit detail, that the covert experiments being carried out abroad have not been ignored by the organs of national defense.
While recognizing that the development of rockets for use in war was an unfortunate consequence of laws prohibiting astronautics properly speaking, Le Serviteur du Peuple affirmed the imminent probability of new space flights. The article revealed that the American government, while refusing its authorization to private experimentation (how could Madame Simodzuki, if she read that, believe that she could keep her secret?) had just reactivated the Moon Gold factory in Columbus, Missouri confiscated during the universal panic due to the Lichen.
The article continued:
The prohibition measures that subsist in principle in all countries have only slowed down the research without preventing the progress of astronautics. If there are governments determined to apply these laws, it is because they want to reserve a monopoly on constructions and interplanetary voyages. Otherwise, it would be extraordinary that they have not yet been abrogated. The Xenobiotic invasion was not an immediate and necessary result of the flight of the MG-17 rocket. It occurred solely because the pilot took it into her head to collect those vagabond seeds. Provided that people abstain in future from collecting them, as many rockets can be launched into extra-atmospheric space as people wish, with no risk of seeing a renewal of the calamitous adventure of the Lichen. It was necessary for the latter to precipitate a panic psychosis for that fact not to be apparent, and that such a radical measure should be taken to palliate a simple and easily-avoidable accessory inconvenience. It is reminiscent of those circus clowns who fire a revolver at the lice in their bed.
The moment has come for the utilization of Rockets, as it came for the utilization of automobiles and aircraft; it is impossible to shackle the march of progress in the search for ever-greater speed. With the backing of banknotes, Mademoiselle Lescure’s realization has anticipated the practical possibilities. Her flight at an altitude of 3,000 kilometers between Columbus and Cassis was a large-scale laboratory experiment. The promise has not been renewed, officially at least, but it is more than probable that, since that era, astronautical science has progressed in the shadows, here and there, and that it is within the compass of present methods to repeat an exploit of the same order, and to do even better.
Inevitably, this discovery will progress in the same way as others. When they are “in the air,” as if arrived at maturity by latent labor, they surge forth in several places at the same time under an irresistible pressure. Or, if the realization has been effected “too soon” in one place, as was the case with the MG-17 Rocket, there is a pause; the new science takes a rest and treads water for the duration of the handicap, and then resumes its forward march. Remember the Wright brothers, who, in 1903 at Dayton, Ohio, flew thirty kilometers in a closed circle, without any result, so to speak, two years before the first pioneer in Europe, Santos-Dumont, covered a few dozen meters at Bagatelle.
It is, therefore, certain that the military utilization of rockets capable of mass production is being actively st
udied in several places; it is no less probable that astronautics will suddenly reappear in broad daylight, in the plenitude of its means, and will be affirmed by some decisive realization.
The entire press and public opinion were on the alert! Our “nephew” had had a big impact with his investigation.
We were a little fearful of running into him when we went to the Frémiets, for his indiscreet questions and professional flair might have put us in an embarrassing situation. With his father and mother, however, the story of the departure for a holiday in the Midi was accepted without the slightest difficulty.
“How long will you be down there?” asked my aunt.
“We don’t know. We haven’t even fixed our itinerary yet.”
“Send us your address as soon as you have one,” said my uncle, adding, with a sigh: “Ah, fortune mortals! How I envy you!”
Eluding an invitation to dinner, the two of us went to dine in private at the Rôtisserie de l’Abbé-Mitré. The meal was unexpectedly cheerful and insouciant.
Having returned to the Rue Cortot in good spirits at about ten o’clock, we decided to pack our bags without waiting until the next day. One of my first concerns was to extract the trunk from the storage-cupboard and attach the label: Gaston Devart, Toulon station.
My wife was emerging from the bedroom with a pile of underwear in her arms when the doorbell rang.
“Great! A visitor at this hour!”
I went to open the door. It was Oscar Frémiet.
He had a slightly embarrassed expression, unusual for him, which I attributed to his fear of disturbing us. He soon recovered his casual manner, however, and spotted Aurore’s profile as she peered around the door-frame.
“Don’t worry, Aunt Rette—it’s only me. A thousand pardons for disturbing you so late, but when I heard that you were leaving on a voyage, I had to...”
