An Unknown World

by Pierre de Sélènes

  As soon as the part of the Moon where the first signals had appeared was plunged into veritable shadow, the powerful light-source prepared by Dumesnil was illuminated like a star twinkling in the depth of the darkness. The luminous jets, cleaving the night with their dazzling light, lit up the entire region, and within a radius of fifty leagues the surprised inhabitants thought it was some astonishing aurora borealis. There was no doubt that the gigantic beam, traversing the terrestrial atmosphere, would carry all the way to the satellite the signal that the observers of Long’s Peak assumed to be anxiously awaited.

  For an hour the torrent of light traversed space, and when it was extinguished, Mathieu-Rollère already had his eye glued to the ocular, interrogating the dark part of the lunar surface.

  He remained there, attentive and breathless, for an hour, but he did not see anything.

  “Let’s start again,” he said.

  And all night long, at hourly intervals, the 1,500 lamps were switched on again, transmitting their futile appeal through the atmosphere. There was no response.

  “Could you have been mistaken?” murmured Mathieu-Rollère, addressing Burnett.

  “No, no—a thousand times no,” the astronomer replied, with a vehemence that contrasted with his habitual phlegm. “I’m as sure of my eyes as my instrument—and all my collaborators saw what I saw.”

  “Well,” said Mathieu-Rollère, “we’ll try again tomorrow and the following nights. We don’t know what’s happening up there, but we must suppose that our friends are awaiting our signal with an impatience equal to ours, and that they’ll respond to it as soon as they can.”

  But the nights went by, and nothing appeared on the surface of the satellite. The Moon became full again without any manifestation confirming the hopes of the observers. When that negative result was known in Europe, all those who had greeted the American astronomer’s telegram with incredulity were noisily triumphant.

  For some, Burnett had been the victim of an optical illusion; for others, the famous dispatch had been nothing but a gigantic hoax designed to trick the old world. Only the director of the Observatoire de Nice, the eminent Perrotin,16 did not share in his colleague’s jubilation. Without having been able to define the luminous signals that had been produced distinctly, he had been able to determine their regular intermittence, and had seen enough to convince him that they were indeed the effect of an intelligent and reflective will. He too had observed the Moon attentively during its recent phases, expecting the reappearance of the phenomena, and could not understand why they had not been manifest again.

  For him, as for the American astronomers, it was a troubling and redoubtable mystery.

  XVI. Study and Research

  Since the day when they had been solemnly received by the supreme magistrate of lunar humankind, a new existence had commenced for Marcel, Jacques and Lord Rodilan. Having become, in a sense, citizens of that new fatherland, they had undertaken, under the direction of their friend Rugel, a profound study of the mores and institutions regulating the society that as so different from ours.

  In perfect possession of the language, of which they now had a thorough knowledge, they were able to converse with everyone they met, and to see and judge things for themselves. In addition, their renown had penetrated all the inhabited regions of the Moon; thanks to the rapid means of communication, the ceremony of their reception, the speeches that had been exchanged, and the hopes to which their fortunate arrival had given birth, were known everywhere. So, wherever they went they were welcomed with a benevolent enthusiasm; everyone was delighted to receive them and to contribute to their education.

  For them, everything was new and everything was to be studied.

  They shared out the task in accordance with their aptitudes.

  Marcel had the right to the extensive domain of the sciences and their applications; that of physiology, medicine and the natural sciences belonged to Jacques, which offered him an infinite field of observations. Lord Rodilan had reserved for himself the study of the political institutions and history of the unexplored world.

  Profoundly versed in the study of the sciences to which he had devoted his life, and endowed with a rare faculty of understanding, Marcel had soon run the gamut of the new and bold applications ventured by the genius of the scientists of the lunar world. Rugel and a few other elite minds, who had quickly placed themselves at his disposal, were amazed by the facility with which he got to grips with the most arduous problems and, in a sense, divined their solutions as soon as he was provided with a demonstration. He often paused before one of the simple but powerful machines that carried out operations of force or speed, thought about it for a moment or two, and soon discovered the principle of the mechanism, and gave the relevant formula; those who had taken responsibility for his initiation looked at him with approving smiles.

  The optical instruments applied to astronomy attracted his particular attention; astronomy was his passion. In libraries and museums, which he had visited carefully, he had seen models of telescopes whose proportions seemed to him to be colossal. He had often wondered how the inhabitants of the Moon, enclosed by a granite vault, were able to observe celestial space, and one day he interrogated Rugel on that subject.

  The latter replied, smiling: “Patience, friend; we’ll show you our observatory, which will astonish you, I’m sure; leave me the pleasure of reserving that surprise for you.”

  Among the numerous inventions that entered into everyday life, one of those that charmed Marcel the most was undoubtedly the transmission over distance of sensible speaking images. The physicists of the Moon had solved the problem of simultaneously transmitting the image of a living person, the movements that he carried out and the words and the words that he pronounced. The same electric wire served as a vehicle for luminous waves and sonic waves.

  One could thus witness the strange spectacle of a person sitting before a screen on which the person with which he was in communication suddenly appeared; he could see him, hear him and converse with him just as in a face-to-face conversation, and each of the interlocutors thus had the person with whom he was conversing in front of him.

  For that superior humankind, subject to fewer needs than terrestrial humankind, the range of industrial applications that we demand from science seemed rather restricted. Their intellectual activity and ardor for speculative research had not been diminished. All the problems that our scientists have glimpsed and which, at the limits of modern science, excite the spirit of investigation or exalt the imagination of a few precursors, had been tackled and solved by them. A long time ago they had found the electric motor for which our physicists are still searching, and which, developing a great deal of force within a small volume, obtained an applicable power that our rudimentary trials are far from attaining.

  After having passed, like us, in aeronautical matters, via the theory of balloons founded on the lighter than air doctrine, they had not taken long to recognize its radical impotence. The observation of the flight of birds had rapidly led them to the adoption of the opposite principle, that of heavier than air flight, and with the motor at their disposal, they had soon been able to construct the light and resistant aerial craft that we have already mentioned, which had attracted the admiration of the representatives of a less advanced world.

  In a purely scientific interest, without even thinking about practical applications of which they had no need, they had extracted the most mysterious secrets of nature.

  The liquefaction and solidification of gases had been familiar to them for a long time, and Marcel was able to contemplate in their laboratories, maintained under formidable pressures, the various gases contained in their atmosphere.

  They had discovered a long time ago—and it was not the least of Marcel’s astonishments—the transformation of luminous waves into sonic waves for which our scientists are still searching, their attempts so far having been fruitless. They were thus able to collect the music of the spheres rotating in spa
ce and hear the mysterious concert of infinity that Pythagoras had defined and whose melodious effects Cicero, by a kind of prophetic intuition, had described.17

  Delicate and special electrical apparatus disposed on the surface of the Moon received in various notes the sonorous impression produced by each of the heavenly bodies of our planetary system, and those amplified sounds combined in an inexpressible harmony.

  In the domain of all the sciences that proceed from reasoning and observation and in which calculation plays a role, Marcel observed the same progress, the same bold and profound insights. There was enough therein to save all the institutes of terrestrial humanity several centuries.

  Similar surprises were reserved for Jacques in the fields of study attributed to him. He was unable, from the outset, to avoid being struck by the physiological conditions of those beings, so similar to us in many respects, but so different with respect to one capital point. The inhabitants of the Moon were not constrained by the most imperious of our needs, that of nourishment. Among them, in consequence, there was no digestive tract—no esophagus, no stomach and no intestines.

  It was in the gaseous state that elements indispensable to life—oxygen, carbon, nitrogen and hydrogen—penetrated into their organism and, drawn into general circulation, went to renew the tissues.

  Oxygen they took directly from the air by respiration; their lungs, much more developed than ours, presented a larger surface area capable of absorbing a greater quantity of the vivifying gas. Carbon and nitrogen were assimilated by a veritable chemical decomposition of the carbonic acid and ammoniac gases in suspension in the atmosphere. To that effect, the digestive tract and its annexes had been replaced in them by an ensemble of special mucus-lined organs of extreme delicacy, which, under the influence of the nervous system, separated the elements of those gases almost as the green parts of plants do under the influence of solar light, decomposing the carbonic acid and retaining the carbon.

  The large quantity of ammoniac gas existing in the air came from the decomposition of animal bodies. In that world, in fact, where no life was nourished on any other life, maintained as it is by gaseous elements, the existence of the bodies of animate beings was not abridged by the necessity of furnishing other living beings with solid aliments. They all went to the term of their vital evolution; nature operated its work of dissolution and these that death had struck rapidly returned to the living the elements that the latter assimilated in their turn in a perpetual exchange.

  How, finally, was hydrogen found in a free state in the air? It was because the of immense caves was eminently hydrated, and the powerful electric currents that traversed it incessantly, by decomposing the water vapor therein, enriched the air with that gas, so light that it penetrated all partitions. Thus was explained the constant absorption and assimilation of hydrogen by the tissues of the human body in the lunar world.18

  In that physiological life of a superior order, no impure and unassimilable element, like those that nutrition brings to our organs, entered into their economy to be expelled subsequently. It was not necessary for their blood, like ours, to dispose of coarse elements by means of a special path. A particular organ, a kind of gland situated above the respiratory apparatus, filtered the blood, as it were, eliminating the unnecessary molecules that had become harmful. It filled a role analogous to that of the kidney, with the essential difference that the residues of that elimination were expelled in a gaseous state, as much by expiration as by evaporation through the epidermis.

  As their mode of nutrition did not imply any work of mastication, their teeth might have appeared unnecessary. They had them nevertheless, but the ones furnishing their mouths did not play the same role as ours. Smaller and not as dense, they merely served to regulate the passage of air during speech and to produce in association with the movement of the tongue and lips the articulations of pronunciation. Ivory white, they were never deteriorated by any the causes that degrade and destroy them on Earth, their brightness contrasting with the bright red of the gums, where they were set like pearls in a jewel-case.

  In that less complex organism, the function of the liver, instead of being double, as in us, was simple. There was, in fact, no need for any secretion of bile where there was no alimentation or digestion, but the liver conserved its activity of producing the glycogen that gives birth to glucose, the role of which is so important in respiration and the renovation of tissues. The vital mechanism, in that hyperoxygenated environment, was much more energetic, so physical development was more rapid than on Earth and ten of our years sufficed for human beings to reach adulthood. Those physiological conditions maintained a constant vigor, a youth that was prolonged until a very advanced age and a permanent equilibrium of all the concurrent elements of life.

  One did not encounter among them temperaments disequilibrated by the predominance either of the nervous system, the lymph or the blood. One did not find any neuropathic individuals, anemic individuals with pale and wan complexions who only give the appearances of life, or sanguinary and plethoric natures irremediably doomed to congestion or apoplexy. The field of disease was, in consequence, restricted, and only presented rare complications: a few irritations of the respiratory tracts, which were easily remedies by ingenious doses of respirable air; occasional engorgements or inflammations of the abdominal organs; and cephalgias caused by an excessive expenditure of muscular force or cerebral tension composed their entire pathology.

  In those superior beings, therapeutic treatments were very simple. As respiration was for them the unique mode of maintaining life, it was by respiration that all curative agents were transmitted to the organism. Their profound knowledge of chemistry and the means they possessed of acting on various substances permitted them to render such agents into the gaseous state easily and administer them to patients by way of inhalation.

  For a long time, too, they had been in possession of methods of hypodermic injection, to which they had recourse in particularly serious cases, or when it was a matter of rapidly putting certain energetic substances into circulation, prompt and decisive in their action.

  As for the traumatic effects that might result from the accidents inherent in an active and laborious life, especially in the class of Diemides, the science of surgery usually reckoned with them easily. The list of anesthetics and antiseptics, much more complete than ours, furnished them with the means of carrying out the most delicate operations in the greatest security, without having to fear the deadly consequences that often render them so redoubtable among us.

  Everything, in any case, was favorable to them: the air they breathed, supercharged with ozone; a milieu essentially hostile to morbid germs; and, most of all, the simplicity of their organism, which rendered the diffusion of medicament substances easy and devoid of peril.

  One day, when Jacques was telling his friends about the singularities that his observations had revealed to him concerning the physiological constitution of the inhabitants of the Moon, Lord Rodilan interrupted him by exclaiming: “Ah, this is a land where the damned sons of Aesculapius are sure of never making a fortune!”

  “Do you have something against those unfortunate physicians, then, my dear friend, who so often risk their lives to snatch their fellows from the jaws of death?” asked Jacques.

  “Yes, I know, there are some, like you, who are worthy fellows, always ready to soothe the poor world—but I’m talking about those charlatans who brag about being princes of science and have no aim but to sell at fantastic process the slightest words disdainfully emitted by their sibylline lips.”

  “You’ve been skinned, then, by some of my savant colleagues?”

  “Oh yes, and I still remember it. For some time I was racked by stomach pains, with regard to which I consulted a number of physicians, each one with more diplomas than the rest. They competed in drugging me and sending me to the most fantastic bathing stations—and of course, all those peregrinations only profited those who had advised me to go, for everyone knows that
the gentlemen in question don’t disdain to accept a more or less reasonable commission of each patient they send to fashionable establishments.

  “In brief, they ended up sending me to a celebrated specialist who was said to work miracles in such cases. He lived in London; I was then in Calcutta. I made the voyage especially, so keen was I to digest my food like anyone else. Scarcely had I arrived than I went to see him. I went into a splendid house that bore more resemblance to a palace than the abode of a scientist...”

  “Pardon me,” said Jacques, smiling, “but it was a matter of a prince of science.”

  “Indeed—but the cage was worth more than the bird. After having waited for a long time—a very long time—in a sumptuously decorated drawing room heaped with artistic masterpieces and already full of a crowd of devotees awaiting the oracle of their destiny, I was introduced into the sanctuary in my turn. I found myself in the presence of a grand old man with a receding hairline and a red face framed by long white side-whiskers. His cold eyes seemed to be looking into your soul, and perhaps into the depths of your purse; his thin lips could never have opened in a benevolent smile; the first impression he made was antipathetic. With a grave gesture he indicated a chair placed opposite the raised armchair into which he fell himself, looking down at me from a great height.

  “I studied him curiously, for I’ve never let myself be taken in by the solemn expressions of those clowns who always seem to be pontificating and treating as mere livestock the unfortunates whose imprudence puts them within range of their claws. Leaning back in his chair and crossing his legs while he gazed with profound attention at the fingernails of his left hand, he uttered the words: “I’m listening, Milord.’

  “I explained my case, and enumerated the various tortures to which those of his colleagues I’d consulted had submitted me. He listened to me, sometimes nodding his head, and limited himself, when I was about to pause, to saying: ‘Go on.’