The Return of the Nyctalope

by Jean de La Hire

  “You understand,” Maxime d’Olbans had said to Dr. Serres, “that our Terrans might be exposed, on Rhea, to the most bizarre combinations of circumstances; we need to anticipate everything, especially the possibility, much less fantastic than is believed, that the might have to render unconscious a being endowed with intelligence and reason without arousing the suspicions of the being.”

  Thus, on the evening of September 8, on Rhea, Ariste Fageat, while uncorking in the pantry three bottles of a light Vouvray wine—an evening wine—which Vitto then put on the table, was able without any difficulty to charge the wine with a strong dose of a narcotic. The latter had the quadruple property of neither disturbing nor modifying the color of the wine, nor altering its taste, of being undetectable by the sense of smell and, finally, of not producing its effect until two or three hours after ingestion. However, the effect was then massive, and, even in small doses, lasted at least 15 to 20 hours according to temperament.

  When that was done, nothing thereafter was of any importance, or even interest, for Ariste Fageat.

  Oh, they can talk at length about Rhea and Rheans—my role, fortunately, is merely to listen.

  But he did not even listen. He replied from time to time, when a reply was obligatory, with a movement of the head or a monosyllable. He ate a great deal and chewed slowly, as was his habit. And as it was known that he only drank water with the evening meal, with a constancy and severe regularity, no one—not even the observant Gno Mitang—was astonished, or even took any particular note, of the fact that the engineer did not touch a drop of the wine.

  Finally, when the meal was over, it seemed perfectly natural for Fageat to say to the Nyctalope:

  “Monsieur, I request the first watch, for a period of six hours. I slept for a long time, and profoundly, during your absence; I’m fully alert, while your own great fatigue, and everyone else’s, is obvious. After my six hours of guard duty, I’ll wake Margot...”

  “Yes,” Saint-Clair replied. “But tomorrow, we’ll devote the morning to our two Nocturnals—all right, Gno?”

  “Agreed,” said the Japanese, laconically.

  Half an hour later, aboard the Olb.-I, six Terrans were sleep, either in the bunks in their cabins or in their hammocks.

  Three hours passed, and that sleep was no longer a natural phenomenon but a sort of general anesthesia.

  Electric torch in hand, Fageat went from cabin to cabin, and then inspected the hammocks.

  “Bravo!” he said—aloud, so sure was he of the facts and of himself. “Bravo! I can act now. Now for my Nocturnals!”

  Although they resembled one another more closely than humans generally resemble one another, the two captive Nocturnals presented dissimilarities that made them easily distinguishable fro one another. He named them—pronouncing the names in an exceedingly guttural manner—Ggo and Rrou. Ggo was the taller and stouter of the two, with a more prognathous face, smaller dark red eyes and very pale eyebrows, bead and hair, like a terrestrial albino, Rrou was shorter and thinner, with bright red eyes and hair of a bizarre green-tinted color.

  Ariste Fageat’s first concern was to establish throughout the Olb.-I, by means of a few carefully-veiled electric lamps, a pale, lunar light that the Nocturnals could tolerate and which was sufficient for him to do what he wanted to do without having one hand impeded by a portable electric torch—which, even camouflaged like a night-light, would have been less convenient in every way than the moderated but general illumination of the entire vehicle.

  Having done that, the engineer equipped himself.

  “Let’s not forget anything,” he said, with that mania for whispered monologue that many taciturn people have when they are alone, especially when they know that people within range cannot hear them. “Weapons, ammunition, the knapsack that I’ve judiciously equipped, binoculars, electric lamp fastened to shoulder-strap, lasso...”

  He had, of course, dressed himself first, lightly but comfortably; he had a Basque beret on his head and was shod in tight knee-length boots.

  “Yes, I know!” he continued, without slowing down or disturbing his lucid, reasoned, methodical and precise activity. “I know! I’m burning all my bridges behind me. I’m condemning myself to live, separated from the Earth and the human species, on a planet about which, fundamentally, I don’t know very much, and only incoherently.

  “On the other hand, I’m abducting a young woman who will hate me all the more because I’m sealing her from the Nyctalope, with whom she’s in love. And with her, I’ll live in conditions about which I’m almost totally ignorant.”

  He uttered a scornful snigger, as if he were mocking himself, and went on:

  “Bah! As for the second point, given that Véronique, probably by force rather than her own desire, will become my wife; and given that a wife often rapidly becomes a very different person from the young woman she was before; and given, too, that a wife is endowed with faculties of resignation, transformation, adaptation, forgetfulness and renewal, which are mathematically incalculable because they’re practically infinite…oh yes, given all that, it’s quite possible that Mademoiselle Véronique d’Olbans will one day be in love with Ariste Fageat!”

  Again he sniggered, this time more emotionally than mockingly.

  “As for the first point,” he continued, “the hypothesis isn’t excluded that I shall take possession of the Olb.-I and return to Earth, especially if Véronique the wife becomes an element of action unlike Véronique the young woman. And that really would be enormous!

  “Enormous, yes, but possible! For deep down, I’m a great adventurer. Before the construction of the Olb.-I, I dreamed of adventure—of the great adventure. A taciturn steward, solitary and home-loving—of a vast domain—I only committed my intelligence and body to that; but my soul, my imagination, my innate passion…to what prodigies of adventure did they not reach out? Deep down, my true life was the one I lived in my voyaging, adventurous, untamable, rebellious thought...

  “And then, all of a sudden, the adventure arrived: the unimaginable opportunity that I immediately seized. I would have killed Saint-Clair and Véronique, and been killed over their cadavers, if the Nyctalope had refused to take me with him. Now… well, now, I’m following the logic of my soul, my character, my temperament—in sum, my destiny—in doing what I’m doing, which will seem to everyone else to be a foot of madness, but which is for me, I know full well, an act of pure reason.

  “Let’s go—giddy up! I’m ready. Now for the Nocturnals...”

  From then on, Ariste Fageat abandoned his monologue.

  In a few minutes, Ggo and Rrou were unbound, standing up, ready to obey the glances and gestures of the Woo, their Master.

  First, he led them to Véronique’s bunk. He picked up the profoundly unconscious young woman in his arms, and immediately confided her to Ggo—who, comprehending, disposed his right arm as a chair of which the enormous open hand was the seat; with his left hand, he supported the light limp body delicately against his torso.

  Then Ariste Fageat headed toward one of the Olb.-I’s doors, followed by Ggo, who was followed by Rrou. The automatic opening-mechanism functioned.

  With the same elastic stride, the three made their exit, and Fageat carefully closed the door again.

  The Nocturnals’ gait did not consist of long bounds, like that of the winged Diurnals. They took steps like Terrans, but each step, of course, took them at least three meters forward, and they did not want to shorten that stride. Fageat had no difficulty in adjusting his speed to their normal speed, and the three fugitives marched abreast, the Terran between the two Nocturnals.

  Moonlit and starry, cloudless for the moment, the night was bright, but it was a brightness that the Rhean nyctalopes could tolerate. And that caused an idea to occur to Fageat that was very disagreeable, an apprehension of a dangerous future: On that particular phenomenal point, the Nocturnals are inferior to Saint-Clair, since his nyctalopia doesn’t diminish his normal human clear-sightedness a
t all...

  But that was a rapid, fugitive thought, for the Terran had to pay much closer attention to the contingencies of the present.

  With regard to the direction of the march, he left the initiative to his two simian companions. His intention, which they had understood, was to reach, in the shortest possible time, the profound caverns in which the local tribe of Nocturnals lived.

  Soon, Fageat observed that they were heading westwards across the wooded plain, in the direction of the rocky hills, from the summit of one of which the Terrans, during their first excursion, had first made the acquaintance of the Rhean wind and then discovered, after a partial circuit, the Diurnal city.

  When they arrived at the edge of the dense forest, however, at a clearing beyond which a hill rose up, with sparser trees and numerous outcrops of rock, a brutal incident occurred that the Terran had not foreseen.

  The Nocturnal carrying the unconscious Véronique was to his left, the other to his right. The latter, Rrou, struck the Woo’s arm with his hand, proffering the word “Ma!” which signifies, all on it’s own: “Halt; stay here, go no further; wait for me; don’t move; don’t speak; and don’t make any noise”—at least insofar as the Terra Fageat understood the multiple and concordant meanings of the word.

  “Ma!”

  As Fageat and Ggo stopped dead, Rrou made a furious leap forward, which carried him ten meters further on, and immediately leapt back again.

  Yelps burst forth, in which Fageat recognized the cries of the simian quadrumanes that the Terrans had seen during their first sortie after passing through the forested region of the large white birds.

  At the same time, there were sounds of flight and climbing—and Fageat saw several small animals emerge from the undergrowth and hurl themselves on to the trunk of a tree, which they set about climbing rapidly. The Nocturnal, however, came within range of that tree before all the yelping fugitives was far enough up to defy the Nocturnal’s leaps.

  Well, Fageat said to himself, my big fellows aren’t climbers—but the little monkeys are.

  Even so, Rrou had jumped as high as he could, and had snatched two clambering quadrumanes from at least six meters up the trunk—and the carnivore reckoned that a great success, for he laughed like a huge rusty corncrake as he returned to the Woo and Ggo. He was holding the two monkeys at arms length, which were struggling and yelping in vain.

  Then Ggo, in a tone that was ardently and avidly supplicatory, said: “Woo! Woo!”

  “What? What do you want?” said Fageat, mechanically.

  From Ggo’s attitude he understood that the Nocturnal was asking permission to set down his burden on the grass.

  “Yes, yes!” said the Terran, nodding his head and pointing at the ground.

  With infinite gentleness, the Nocturnal laid Véronique on the grass at the Master’s feet. As soon as he was upright again he bounded toward Rrou, who threw him one of his captives.

  “Damn, what carnivores!” Fageat soon exclaimed.

  A few paces away from him, each of the Nocturnals had acted in the same manner. Their stout hands took hold of the monkeys’ thighs and drew violently apart, which had the effect of tearing each animal in two. Then the Nocturnals set about devouring the quivering prey, spurting warm blood. They ate as a Terran peasant might eat an apple, taking large bites and occasionally spitting out a shred of skin that was too thick.

  That feast—hideous to any other eyes but Fageat’s, which were curious and deliberately insensitive—only lasted five minutes. Having spat out the last morsels of excessively tough skin and excessively thick bone, Ggo and Rrou wiped their cheeks with tufts of grass, rubbed their hands on moss with a care that Fageat had not expected, and, satisfied, came over to the Woo, before whom they laughed, showing al their teeth.

  “Very good!” said Fageat. “But I have an idea, chaps! I’ll show you that my power is more rapid and far-ranging than yours! That will increase the enormous respect that you already have for me even more enormously.”

  Having said that aloud, although he knew full well that such statements could not be understood, the engineer made a gesture and pronounced, firmly: “Ma!”

  Rooted to the spot, to the left and right of the recumbent Véronique, by that imperious “Stay there!” Ggo and Rrou watched the Woo’s movement carefully.

  Fageat took the repeating rifle that he had been wearing over his shoulder in his hands, showed it to the two Nocturnals, and repeated “Ma!” in a rude fashion, touching each of them with the tip of his extended index finger and then pointing at the ground at their feet. The red eyes and entire attitude of the monsters were acquiescent, making the promise. Then, sure that they would not run away and that the terror they would experience would nail them even more firmly to the spot, Ariste Fageat went to put his idea into action.

  He headed toward a nearby tree that was more isolated than the others; he had noticed that a good dozen of the quadrumane climbers had taken refuge in its branches.

  The animals must not have lacked intelligence, and their curiosity must have been as keen as that of terrestrial monkeys, for when he arrived a few paces from the tree, Fageat saw the quadrumanes sitting on the lower branches, in the open, clearly in sight, leaning over as if to observe what was happening beneath them. At that height, the most furious leaps of the Nocturnals could not reach them—but for a rifle, the perching animals were almost at point-blank range.

  The weapon was a repeater; Fageat could have fired a dozen bullets without reloading, but he wanted to conserve his ammunition.

  For the demonstration I want to make, he thought, four shots will suffice.

  The lunar and stellar light coming through the foliage, which was not very dense, gave the sniper a clear sight of his living targets, lined up side by side.

  Fageat was a first-class hunter. He raised his weapon and fired four times in as many seconds; four monkeys fell.

  Quickly, Fageat went back to the Nocturnals, while suspending his weapon over his right shoulder by means of its strap. Grabbing hold of them, he dragged them, incapable as they were of obeying him by virtue of their total confusion, and showed them the four dead beasts on the ground.

  Then he took hold of his carbine again with his left hand, and with the right he took the 7.65 caliber automatic pistol from its holster—which was sufficient in size for an intelligent eye, on seeing the object beside the longer-barreled rifle, to establish a certain correlation between the two weapons with regard to the effects of their utilization.

  But Ariste Fageat did not limit himself to showing the Nocturnals, in a parallel fashion, the character of the rifle and the pistol; he wanted to demonstrate to the that with the smaller, more easily manipulable object he could, just as easily and just as mysteriously, achieve results that were just as marvelous.

  He was as good a shot with a pistol as with a rifle, and on the lower braches of the tree, other quadrumanes were still sitting motionless, uncomprehending or paralyzed with terror.

  “Ggo! Rrou!” said Fageat. W

  ith the hand holding the pistol, he pointed to the tree and to a branch—an isolated branch on which a single animal was sitting. Then, extending his arm and taking aim, he squeezed the trigger. The detonation made the two Nocturnals jump, that being their only corporeal manifestation of emotion—and they saw a fifth victim fall to the ground, evidently dead.

  Fageat wanted to recommence the demonstration of his two weapons, so terribly and strangely mortal, but he realized immediately that he had no need to weary himself with mime and explanatory onomatopoeia. The Nocturnals had understood that, by means of the objects he was handling, the mysterious Woo had killed living beings at a distance. They did not seem frightened, and Fageat thought: Is that because mental fear is unknown to them? Do they only know physical pain?

  No, truly, they were not afraid, but, after their initial confusion, they revealed an infinite admiration, respectful and worshipful—if one may employ the latter word to character the attitude of think
ing beings of whom one does not know whether they have any kind of religion, or sense of adoration.

  Immobile at first, Ggo and Rrou manifested their sentiments by a movement and attitude that was quite unexpected to Fageat, who had anticipated kneeling or prostration. Simply, in unison, both Nocturnals bent down, each uprooting from the soil a trailing creeper, straightened up, attached their wrists summarily together, skillfully formed knots with their fingers and the teeth, and, self-bound, so to speak, they closed their eyes and held out their tied hands to Fageat, their arms bent.

  Satisfied, the Terran had to suppress a burst of laughter.

  “Good!” he said. “That’s clear. It means: ‘More than before, you’re our Master; eyes closed and hands at your mercy, we’re yours. You can kill us if you wish, as you’ve killed these animals; we won’t resist in any fashion.’ Well, my word, that’s perfect. I couldn’t have asked for any more. Let’s reward these understanding fellows.”

  First he untied the lianas and freed their hands. Then he said, firmly: “Ggo! Rrou!”

  The Nocturnals opened their eyes. Fageat pointed at the cadavers and used all his fingers to make the gesture of putting nourishment into his mouth.

  Ah! They understood him. The two Rhean monsters hurled themselves on the monkeys. It only took them ten minutes to devour them, as they had devoured those they had captured themselves a quarter of an hour earlier. With as much care as before, they rubbed their jaws, teeth and hands with tufts of grass and moss.

  “Bravo!” concluded Fageat.

  Moments later, the march resumed, but this time it was Rrou and not Ggo who carried the unconscious Véronique.