The Mysterious Fluid

by Paul Vibert

  Assuming that it had been read and understood, three hypotheses then presented themselves to the complex minds of the Russian scientists. Either they had already tried to send signals themselves, and would be able to resume doing so in a matter of hours or days, or they would simply undertake a few large-scale excavations, like us—in which case it was necessary not to expect a reply for six whole months. Some, however, opined in favor of a shorter interval, making the observation that they were dealing with very advanced, civilized people possessed of powerful means of execution, as their giant canals seemed to suggest, and that one could therefore hope to have a response before so much time had elapsed.

  The time went by, therefore, in feverish anticipation, the days dragging lamentably.

  In the end, it was the last group who were right; four months later, almost to the night—O truly marvelous and superhuman prodigy!—the inhabitants of Mars sent a response…but let us proceed in an orderly manner, and not let ourselves be troubled by the profound emotion that still grips us by the throat as we inscribe these lines.

  So, one beautiful night, they began to distinguish, vaguely at first and then clearly, a red light and then a huge conflagration on the surface of Mars.

  All their telescopes were aimed as if they wanted to rape the sky. The moment was solemn and unforgettable. Finally, one astronomer suddenly shouted; “It’s definitely in the province of the grand canals—it’s definitely Libya.”

  Gradually, the light became more precise, and our scientists, more dead than alive, no longer feeling their hearts beating, were able clearly to distinguish signs on the Martian surface that they made haste to copy.

  That as all, and the following night, nothing remained. As no one understood them, the mysterious signs were sent to the Academy of Letters in St. Petersburg—which, in its turn, was quick to send them to all the Academies in Europe.

  It was our Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres that had the great honor of finding the key and translating the four previously-mysterious and untranslatable signs. One of its members, a distinguished scientist, remarked very judiciously that it was simply a matter of Hebrew words from which the accents and diacritical signs had been removed, as in primitive Hebrew.

  The signs meant:

  HEU, HEU

  KHEU, KHEU

  Which is to say: thank you, thank you—which meant that the Martians were thanking us and bidding us welcome—and finally: yes, yes, or, if you want it more precisely, that is so, that is so—which, to their minds, must signify: “We are people like you and Mars is inhabited, as Earth is.”

  The conversation continued thus for nearly two years, and to speed things up, the Russian astronomers began conversing on the sands in Hebrew, the words being shorter than in French.

  By this means, they asked the Martians whether they had known that the Earth was inhabited for a long time, and they replied, always after four months or so: Lo—“no.” The diacritical mark that ought to have been at the head of the first letter was still omitted.

  When they were asked whether they fought against one another, making war, they very wisely replied: Shalom—which is to say, “peace,”,or “greetings,” thus giving an important lesson in civilization and humanity to the still-inferior and half-savage peoples of Earth.

  I have no room here to report all the conversations—luminous, it must be said—exchanged between the astronomers of Earth and Mars, but I nevertheless want to extract the two great results obtained in such a striking manner:

  Firstly, that Mars in inhabited, like the Earth.

  Secondly, that a language is spoken there that is very similar to Hebrew, and, and that, in consequence, a unity of language, with respect to origin, exists not only on Earth, as my father has peremptorily and victoriously demonstrated in his works, but probably also on the surfaces of all other inhabited worlds.

  That’s something; admit that science gives considerable enjoyment to those who devote themselves to it without afterthought.

  When will a marriage take place between an inhabitant of Earth and a pretty Martian, thanks to the intermediary of an electric current?

  One should never despair of anything, and in the next chapter I shall explain how I myself have in my possession a very nice photograph, surely a good resemblance, of a young and charming Martian woman!

  III. How photography came to be possible

  between Mars and Earth.

  A portrait of a pretty Martian woman. Curious details.

  Thanks to the long and persist campaign of the Russian mission, regular communication between the two planets had already existed for nearly two years, and there was no longer any communication with Mars except by the simplified intermediary of the Hebrew language—without diacritical marks, as I have already remarked—when the hazards of a mission enabled me to meet the Russian scientists on the very field of their endeavors.

  They knew that I already had an interest in long-distance photography, and how I had had occasion to inform Edison on the subject. They were also not unaware of my profound conviction that electricity, in its triple form of light, heat and fluid, invisible and imponderable, was really the sole and unique agent of all the forces in the universe.

  So, suddenly, very amiably, they asked me point-blank: “Would you like to attempt long-distance photography with Mars?”

  “Yes—but it would require a fixed point, clearly determined. How could we inform the inhabitants of Mars?”

  “Nothing simpler; it will take some time. But leave it to us; we’ll take charge of everything and inform you when you have nothing to do but operate—which is to say, to make the attempt.”

  What was said as done, and those indefatigable scientists began a conversation on the subject with the Martians. Finally, a few months later, they told me that everything was ready, and that they had made the necessary arrangements with their colleagues on the other planet.

  As soon as the latter had a fine night, they inscribed their colossal word:

  KHEU

  Yes, that’s so.

  A young Martian woman stood in the exact center of the immense fiery letter, in the location of the diacritical sign marked by a dot in the letter’s “belly”—with the result that it was possible to fix and restrict my point of observation. If electricity really reaches us through space in the form of dark light, only becoming visible on contact with our atmosphere, there was no reason why my experiment should not succeed. Sat least they sought by that means to give me a confidence that they certainly did not have themselves—but that did not prevent me from having great anxieties and finding myself in a state of perplexity that is very difficult to describe.

  For my part, however, while they were discussing and “negotiating” my procedure with the Martians, I had not been wasting my time. Thanks to some exceedingly rich personal friends in the Ukraine, who put unlimited credit at my disposal, I was able to order the immediate construction in several huge pieces, perfectly cast and welded together by blow-torch, of a giant Crookes tube, according to Röntgen’s design, inside which the Arc de Triomphe cold have danced.

  In order for it not to break under the pressure of atmospheric weight—although it is less heavy at those high altitudes—I had it surrounded by a powerful iron armature, and eventually, by means of a series of machines representing a force of more than seven thousand five hundred horse-power, I succeeded—after great efforts—in evacuating it completely, or very nearly so.

  From then on I was ready, and had nothing more to do but operate it, following the now-well-known Röntgen method, to be able to collect, if possible, the X-rays—which is to say, the invisible fluid—that ought to transmit the images from Mars to me.

  That same night, in clear weather, Mars showed us at the end of our telescopes the colossal KHEU without the central point. I took more than ten successive proofs with different lengths of pose, according to rigorous preliminary astronomical measurements, which permitted me, with an extremely exact precision�
�produced chronometrically, but by means of a powerful steam-engine—to take account of the various motions of the two planets during the procedure and maintain a consistent relationship. My apparatus was thus always on the central axis of the visual ray, maintaining parallax between the center of my apparatus and the center of the luminous letter traced in the immense steppes of Libya—the province of the grand canals of Mars, as you will not have forgotten.

  These calculations had taken me months, with the assiduous collaboration of three astronomers that I had summoned from France. I thought, therefore, that I had taken all humanly possible precautions, and had thought of everything—but my anxiety was nevertheless great.

  I shall pass over in silence the days of labor and anxiety that followed.

  O miracle, O matchless joy, I definitely had an image—but it was a dot, and it was necessary to magnify it several million times.

  Two problems arose then, cruel and obsessive:

  Would I be able to obtain that insensate magnification; and, in obtaining it, would not all the details of the photograph be spoiled—blurred or obliterated?

  I was very familiar with star-charts—quite clear, it’s true—but no similar operation had ever been attempted.

  Again, I shall pass over in silence the long and delicate successive operations, to which my collaborators and I had to devote ourselves for more than a year. All that I can say is that the success was complete, and that when all the magnifying operations were complete, exactly at the central point of the first of the Hebrew letters, where the diacritical mark should have been, the delightful head of a young Martian appeared, as beautiful as the Venus de Milo and Venus-Aphrodite put together.

  That supernatural stellar photograph, that planetary portrait, I will be happy to show to anyone who manifests the desire to see it.

  If it should happen one day that someone asks for the hand of that young beauty, however, I shall not take any responsibility for it, and will simply send them to the Russian astronomers who enabled me to realize this marvel!

  Author’s Note: Since I wrote this succinct and faithful account, scientific discoveries and the progress of science have given me abundant support and helped, in a way, to popularize my initial work.

  To cite only the principle examples, in the month of June 1900, Monsieur Mercier82 has undertaken a dogged campaign to initiate regular communication between Mars and Earth. Again, at the end of the same year, the scientific journals published the following note:

  “There is talk of a new instrument, the telephot, which will permit sight at very long distances.83 A newspaper set on a pedestal-lectern, sat up at a specific height in Paris, might be read in Tours by an individual finished with the new apparatus. A photograph could be taken at that distance. The distance between Tours and Paris is approximately sixty leagues.”

  Then again, at the plenary session of the Institut on October 25, 1900, Madame Cognet84 was solemnly thanked for the 100,000-franc prize that she offered to the inventor of interplanetary communications.

  Finally, on December 27 of the same year, Ch. Malato85 took note of the great scientific movement that had finally taken shape, following my articles, in favor of the research to be carried out in order to institute communication with Mars

  Let all these friends, known and unknown, receive my sincere thanks here. I am only too glad and proud to have had the good fortune to be able to provoke this great scientific movement.

  That said, here is my excellent colleague’s note:

  “It was a long time ago that truly scientific minds repudiated the old fable of life solely limited to our infinitesimal globe. It is only poor people irremediably brutalized by belief in the mystery of the holy trinity who still consider the sidereal worlds as poor lamps it for our convenience by Father Sabaoth.

  “Since spectral analysis has demonstrated the analogy of constitution of these worlds, with one another and with ours, their habitability is no longer envisaged as a dream. It would be an insult to readers of the Aurore to set out to demonstrate at length that organic life, a product of the combinations of matter, may be manifest everywhere that matter exists.

  “We are not unaware that Mars and the other planets of our solar system once drifted, confused with the elements forming our Earth in the state of incandescent dust, through the infinity of space. Thus far, everything has confirmed Laplace’s hypothesis. Then these swirling masses of dust separated out, condensing to form the worlds that gradually solidified and cooled, continuing, under the double action of centrifugal and centripetal force, to gravitate around the solar nucleus.

  “Mars, being smaller than our globe, consequently cooled more rapidly; life must have appeared there sooner; its humankind must therefore be more advanced than ours. Is it necessary to recall the famous rectilinear canals that seem to be the work of conscious design, with the intention of connecting up the planet’s seas?

  “For more than a quarter of a century, intermittent appearances of lights on the Martian surface have encouraged the thought that we are in the presence of appeals made to the terrestrial world by beings probably more powerful than we are. On December 8, 1900—a date which, if the fact is confirmed, will remain immortal in the annals of science—the astronomer Douglas,86 who is no novice, recorded a signal at Flagstaff Observatory in the United States, of which there can be no mistake: a series of fiery straight lines several hundred kilometers long. These lights, having been suddenly lit up, shone for about an hour and ten minutes, and then were extinguished as quickly as they had been lit.

  “Now, nature never proceeds in this manner; it is therefore not absurd to suppose that we are in the presence of an appeal issued by ‘brothers in space.’

  “Monsieur Douglas’ observation has been announced at the central bureau of Kiel by Monsieur Perkering, the director of Harvard University Observatory, a scientist of the first rank; the astronomical publications Nature, in London, and Astronomische Nachrichten have reported it.”

  It would seem that, in the presence of this fact, the most important to be produced in the history of humankind, and which ought to be the glory of our concluding century, the entire press ought only to have uttered a cry of enthusiasm. One could have understood the most extreme excitement or scientific reputation. Well, nothing! With a few proximal exceptions, there have only been articles by ignorant jokers: military brigandage, militaresque clownishness and the affectations of renowned whores—that is what is most likely to excite the enthusiasm of our contemporaries.

  Brave Martians, you are ahead of time! Try again in a few centuries; perhaps humankind will be capable of understanding you. One argument that I have not seen advertised anywhere in favor of the luminous signal is this: the aforementioned signal lasted one hour ten minutes. Now, taking account of the time taken by the light to reach the Earth, that time represents an exact division of the Martian day, one local hour, if you wish.

  Since then, it has been observed that it was simply a matter of the Martian dusk, when the sun setting at its horizon gilds or inflames the summits of its high mountains, but this research is no less interesting and worthy of being encouraged.

  It would, however, be unpardonable if I were not also to report here, in spite of the length of this note, the following lines by Tapernoux, of June 15, 1900, which prove that every day, a new discovery arrives to confirm my own works:

  “Monsieur and Madame Curie, while studying pitchblende—one of the minerals from which uranium is extracted—at the laboratory of the École Municipale de Physique et Chimie Industrielle, have observed that some specimens are more active than uranium itself. From this they conclude, very logically, that a third radioactive substance gave its properties to the studied mineral. They have isolated this substance, by means of a series of procedures, and obtained a new metal, polonium, a near relative of bismuth in its analytical characteristics, but which emits Becquerel rays four hundred times as active as those of uranium.

  “This was a superb result, but ou
r chemists have not stopped there. Long and patient research has allowed them to discover a fourth metal, nine hundred times more active than uranium, to which they have given the well-merited name of radium.

  “Radium is very similar to barium from a chemical viewpoint. It emits Becquerel rays that permit the production of good photographic prints after a pose of half a minute, as a result of which it is possible to obtain radiographs—those beautiful images of skeletons—without Crookes tubes.

  “The rays admitted by radium are powerful enough to render barium platino-cyanide fluorescent—a property associated with the strongest does of X-rays.

  “For centuries, people imagined that only light perceptible to their eyes existed. Crooke and Röntgen probed to them that in a vacuum, an electrical spark gives birth to luminous rays ungraspable by sight, able to pass through certain reputedly opaque bodies, permitting the projection of the silhouette of a human skeleton in spite of the flesh covering it.

  “Monsieur and Madame Curie offer the scientific world a substance that possesses these properties in itself and permanently. X-rays have revolutionized optics. To what will the Becquerel rays of radium lead?”

  There is nothing to do but wait, confidently.

  A Monster Telescope

  In America. How the planet Eros is inhabited. A funny story.

  The Yankees have no suspicion of it, but as they have probably not yet attained the same degree of civilization as old Europe, funny stories sometimes happen there; it’s the most recent of those that I’m going to tell my readers today, with the intention of giving them a good laugh.

  The rich and powerful university of Harvard in the United States has just constructed, with all the desirable care, a telescope 162 feet long and a thirteen-inch aperture—in the starry republic everything is done on a vast scale, and it’s because it’s starry that it devotes such vast sums to studying its heavenly sisters.