An Unknown World

by Pierre de Sélènes

  The stars had disappeared; the electric lamps, in that environment saturated with solid molecules, no longer gave out any but a wan light.

  That spectacle of sublime horror struck all hearts with an indescribable terror.

  In spite of the solid temper of their souls, Rugel and his three companions felt overwhelmed by the terrifying grandeur of that convulsion of lunar nature, of which nothing that occurs on Earth can give any idea. The frightened Diemides gathered tremulously around their leader. It seems, in fact, that in great cataclysms, beings of inferior intelligence instinctively draw nearer to those in whom they have observed a mental superiority.

  After a moment of trouble and hesitation, the four valiant hearts had rallied.

  The ground was trembling underfoot and was threatening to open up at any moment; somber and impenetrable clouds were spreading above their heads; they remained impassive and immobile, their arms folded, opposing to the unchained elements that were threatening their frail existence the tranquil calm, of an indomitable energy. Resigned, having made the sacrifice of their lives, they were entirely devoted to the contemplation of the imposing scene.

  Meanwhile, the matter projected to prodigious heights by the volcano was beginning to fall back on to the shifting ground. There was a rain of ash, with which were mingled blocks of burning rock that were rebounding around them.

  “We need to disperse,” said Rugel, “and get as far away as possible from this deadly place.”

  At a sign from him, the Diemides scattered; they thus offered less purchase to the stones whose fall was becoming increasingly abundant. And they all launched themselves precipitately in a westward direction.

  Like leaders anxious for the survival of those they command, who insist on remained in peril longest, Rugel and the three inhabitants of Earth brought up the rear, to make sure that no one was left behind. But their movement of retreat had hardly begun when two of the Diemides fell to the ground, struck by the incessant rain of stones.

  The other Diemides, who were fleeing, had not noticed them. Rugel and his companions ran forward, but the vital air had already escaped from the breached suits, and asphyxia was complete.

  Obedient to a generous sentiment, Marcel and Jacques bent down to pick up the cadavers and carry them away, but Rugel stopped them with a gesture.

  “The poor fellows are dead,” he said. “No human effort can bring them back to life; let’s not hinder ourselves with such a burden. We have no other chance of salvation than to get away as quickly as possible from the circle in which the ash and scoria are falling. Later, if we’re still alive, we’ll come back to search for their bodies and address a final farewell to them.”

  They resumed their course.

  The Diemides preceding them had not taken long to perceive their absence. Anxious, and neglectful of concern for their own salvation, they came back. Rugel ordered them to keep going and renewed the order to scatter, in order that if some further misfortune occurred, the number of victims would be minimized.

  After a few hours of that hectic flight, the situation became less perilous; the fall of rocky debris had ceased, nothing was falling any longer but fine ash, already cooled, forming a thick layer that slowed their progress down, but they were out of danger.

  They all gathered around Rugel.

  “Friends,” he said to them, “the frightful cataclysm that we’ve just escaped has claimed two victims among us. It will be impossible for us to return their mortal remains to those they have left behind; they will not repose amid their relatives and friends, but their memory will not perish and their names will remain forever engraved in marble in the Temple where we piously maintain reverence for those who have sacrificed their lives in the interest of all. As soon as we can approach the place where they fell, we shall go to render them the final duties, and we shall resume our route toward the goal we have assigned ourselves with a new courage.”

  The eruption continued for several days. At the distance that the voyagers now were, they could still make out the yellow glow of the column of fire vomited by the crater on the horizon. Gradually, however, its intensity diminished. It passed from bright yellow to somber red, and ended up being extinguished completely.

  The ground was still subject to faint tremors, however, and it would not have been prudent to advance over terrain agitated by the final commotions of the interior fire. They were obliged, therefore, to wait until nature, recovering from the shock, had recovered its previous calm and immobility.

  Then they went back, and reached the place where the two unfortunates surprised by death were lying. It was difficult to locate them; the ash escaped from the volcano had extended a sinister shroud over them, and it was necessary to dig down through the thick layer for some time in order to reach them. A hole was hollowed out in the rock; the two cadavers were laid within it side by side.

  Standing up in the middle of all the others, who were kneeling down, Rugel extended his hands and said: “Rest in peace, you who died in the flower of your youth, one this road to which love of science and the sentiment of duty has drawn you in our wake. May the Sovereign Spirit receive your souls in tranquil peace, and reserve a new existence for you in some superior world!”

  Large boulders were heaped up over them, and a funereal monument erected for them such as no mortal eye had ever seen.

  After a few days of rest, the march was resumed, but everyone felt sad. The length of the journey and the shared fatigue had drawn the members of the unprecedented expedition closer together in bonds of fraternal sympathy; they formed a sort of family, and the death of those who had been killed had given birth to an impression in every heart that, without diminishing their ardor, left a profound trace in their minds.

  They could not resume the route they had been following before directly. The agitation in the solid crust was still tangible, and the thickness of the layer of ash rendered the route both difficult and perilous. It was, therefore, necessary to go around that region by heading north, in order to resume an easterly direction after having circled it.

  That part of the journey, accomplished in profound darkness, was particularly difficult. It was necessary to walk with great precaution, for at every moment they saw crevasses opening up underfoot, and sometimes wide precipices, where a fall would have been irremediable, so great was their depth and so many sharp and trenchant asperities protruded from their walls.

  The action of the volcano had made itself felt well beyond the radius in which the matter projected by the eruption had fallen. Everything was disturbed. It seemed that the blocks that rested on the surface, shaken by the commotion, had not yet recovered their equilibrium and were incessantly threatening to crush the reckless individuals who dared to violate the mystery of those solitudes.

  They marched on for a long time, and the lunar day succeeded the night yet again. As far as the eye could see, however, nothing could be seen but an immense plain whose uniformity was unbroken. It was like another Sahara in which immobility, silence and death reigned. The circle of the horizon was rounded out in an inflexible curve, like that of the ocean when the sea is calm, and it retreated incessantly as they walked toward it.

  Where were they going? When would they see an end to that interminable voyage?

  They kept advancing, but it was no longer with the almost joyous ardor of the early days. Gradually, they were all overtaken by the infinite sadness that emanated from those bleak spaces.

  They were marching heavily and pensively now; they only exchanged rare comments; discouragement seemed to be overtaking them.

  Jacques’ soul, perhaps more impressionable than those of his friends, was invaded by a poignant anguish. Thus far, the incidents of the route had interested him and sustained his courage, but now he felt oppressed; one might have thought that all the weight of that dead nature was falling back upon him as if to crush him. He was now only walking with a hesitant stride, sometimes falling behind, and seemed to be following his companions regretfully.<
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  Marcel noticed that. “Friend,” he said to him, “I fear that your strength isn’t a match for your energy. The task we’ve undertaken is more difficult to fulfill than I thought at first, and perhaps I’ve dragged you too far. But no matter how strong my desire is to fathom the unknown of this world that we’ll soon be quitting, I’m ready, if you wish, to retrace my steps.”

  “Thank you, my dear Marcel; I never doubted your heart, and I know that you’d sacrifice your dearest hopes for me without regret. I confess that I feel prey to a depression that astonishes me. It’s doubtless the desperate monotony of this endless desert in which we seem to be lost that’s affecting my mind. I sometimes wonder whether the goal we’re pursuing might not be a chimera, and whether we might be destined to see it fleeing incessantly before our eyes, like those shadows one pursues without ever overtaking.”

  “How can we believe, though, that the traditions on the strength of which we’ve engaged in this adventure can have been transmitted, without any variation, from generation to generation, if they don’t contain a foundation of truth? Do you think that Rugel, so wise and profound, would have consented to serve as our guide if they were nothing but deceptive dreams?”

  “What serious foundation can one attribute to vague indications that seem to be belied by everything that we already know about the lunar world? Have we ever encountered anything whatsoever that resembles traces of life—even vegetable life? No, everything really is dead on the surface of this old world, and it’s folly to believe that there might be anything alive here except imprudent adventurers.”

  “Oh, if that’s what you think, we need to go back!” And Marcel’s voice was pierced with a note of regret.

  “Who’s talking about going back?” said Lord Rodilan. “Have we come this far to retreat shamefully? Are we children, then, who become irritated and discouraged because they can’t grasp the object of their desire at the first attempt?”

  “Oh, I know, Milord, that nothing could stop you. There’s also nothing calling you back. We’ve almost reached the middle of the invisible surface of our satellite, more than a thousand leagues from our point of departure, and we haven’t yet discovered what we came to find. There’s no reason for that to change. Have you resolved, then, to go all around the Moon?”

  “The prospect doesn’t displease me,” said Lord Rodilan. “You can’t deny that the expedition has been sufficiently eventful thus far, and we’re traveling in conditions that, given the world we’re in, aren’t uncomfortable. With the apparatus we have, we’re protected from the cold. I’m beginning to resign myself only to being nourished scientifically, and thanks to the benefits of specific weight, we can undertake journeys easily before which the most intrepid globetrotters would recoil. We climb mountains with the agility of acrobats; falls that would be fatal on Earth are absolutely inoffensive here, and save for the unfortunate accident that befell the two poor devils we buried back there, we’ve accomplished a voyage whose story would make all the Livingstones, Stanleys, Camerons and—meaning no offense, my dear Jacques—Bingers past present and future pale with jealousy.”31

  Rugel had come closer, and had been listening to the three friends’ conversation for a few moments.

  “I understand the lassitude that has gripped you,” he said to Jacques. “We all feel the influence that’s oppressing you. But I think I can reassure you, and affirm that we’re getting close to the objective we proposed. The traditions piously conserved among us do, in fact, mention a vast desert that it’s necessary to cross for several days to arrive at the region whose mysterious depths retain the last vestiges of the life of old. We’ve been walking for a long time already; we must be close.”

  “Well, let’s go on,” said Jacques, rallied by what Rugel had said. “My courage won’t be inferior to yours, and I can’t let you miss out of the fruit of so much effort.”

  They resumed the route with a new ardor.

  Rugel’s assurance had dissipated all doubts. Even Jacques no longer seemed to be feeling the lassitude and depression that had triumphed momentarily over his energy.

  Meanwhile, the ground began to rise in a gradual slope, although nothing was revealed as yet to anxious eyes and the line of the horizon still offered the same implacable rectitude.

  A few Diemides, forming a kind of advance guard, were walking quite a long was in front of the bulk of the caravan, and their silhouettes stood out against the background of the sky. Suddenly, they were seen to stop and make broad gestures of astonishment. One of them soon separated from the little group and ran back to Rugel and his companions.

  “I think we’ve reached the end of our journey, Master,” he said, as he came close.

  They had picked up the pace, and after a few moments the spectacle they had before their eyes drew exclamations of amazement.

  The desert they had just traversed formed an immense plateau, which extended as far as the eye could see to the right and the left, but whose circular form could be distinguished in the distance.

  In front of them there was an immense hole, on the edge of which they had paused, the other side of which was barely visible in the distance, the slopes of which descended steeply.

  In the depths of the yawning hole—O prodigy!—far below the ridge on which they were huddled they could see vapors forming clouds, on which the sun’s rays fell; one might have imagined them to be the fleecy waves of an immobile sea.

  “Clouds! Genuine clouds!” exclaimed Marcel, Jacques and Lord Rodilan, simultaneously.

  “Our traditions haven’t lied,” said Rugel. “Life isn’t completely extinct on the surface of our world. We’re going to explore its last vestiges.”

  XII. The Mysterious Valley

  The descent was effected without too much difficulty. The certainty of having attained the goal of their enterprise, the strangeness of the phenomenon they had before their eyes, of which nothing thus far had given them any inkling, and the hope of enriching science with new discoveries had reanimated all hearts.

  At several points there were perilous passages to tackle; they encountered a few sheer slopes down which it was necessary to let themselves slide, while roped together; there were numerous falls, but without any deadly result. What was all that to men who had accomplished such an audacious odyssey?

  As they got closer to the vaporous layers that had appeared from above to be clouds, the presence of an atmosphere, very rarefied as yet but nevertheless certain began to be detectable. Their sight, which had extended over prodigious distances on the lunar surface, became more limited; the variations in the terrain did not stand out as clearly; the contours were softened, the colors less vivid.

  They finally reached the moving sea that they had contemplated from high above.

  Suddenly, the voyagers found themselves enveloped by a kind of thick milky white fog, sufficiently opaque for them not to be able to see more than two paces ahead. They felt isolated from one another, as if lost in a limitless and bottomless ocean. They hardly dared take a step, not knowing which way to go or where to place their feet, fearing at every moment to be separated from their companions and unable to find them again.

  It was necessary to take new and minute precautions.

  On Rugel’s orders, the electric lamps were switched on again, but their light, rendered ruddy by the thickness of the fog, could only be perceived within a small radius, and only projected a dubious light on the ground.

  Again it was necessary to rope themselves together.

  Two of the most vigorous of the Diemides were placed in the lead; armed with pickaxes, they were to sound out the route, only advancing when they were sure that the ground on which they were about to set foot could support them.

  In such conditions they could only descend very slowly, and the thickness of the cloud layer that they had to traverse was considerable. Rugel explained to his friends that its very thickness gave them the certainty that they would find vegetable life beneath it.

  “These
accumulated vapors,” he said, “which must reign permanently over the inferior region, form a kind of thick curtain, which tempers the torrid heat of the sun while it’s above the horizon, and prevents the heat stored then from radiating into space during the night. Thus, a kind of temperature equilibrium is established, without which life would be impossible.”

  As they plunged more deeply into that wan daylight, into the atmosphere whose density increased incessantly, it seemed to them that their movements became less facile and less free; it was not as easy to walk.

  On perceiving that, Marcel attributed the phenomenon to the pressure of the ambient air operating on the surface of the suits in which they were clad. He told himself that the pressure would inevitably increase as they penetrated further forward, and that a moment would doubtless arrive when the air would become respirable for humans. That prospect, which he hastened to communicate to his friends, filled him with joy. Whatever services the ingenious, complicated and delicate apparatus rendered them, they would not be sorry to take the suits off for a while and live a more human existence.

  Finally, they came through the cloud layer. The voyagers emerged from the vapors that enveloped them, like the Homeric gods suddenly revealing themselves to mortal eyes—but there was no one there to witness their sudden appearance.

  They found themselves on the side of a mountain covered by a few meager vestiges of vegetation. Unknown plants, which offered considerable analogies to Earthly mosses and lichens, extended underfoot, covering the bare rock with a thin layer of yellow-tinted vegetation, in leprous patches. Below them, they could make out stunted bushes with gnarled, rampant branches and discolored foliage: a languid and etiolated flora to which it seemed that the atmosphere from which it sought life was only furnishing an insufficient nourishment.

  In the bottom of the large valley there was an immense lake, whose dull waters were not rippled by any breeze. On its banks, bordered by aquatic plants of a slightly more vivid green, there were a few clumps of trees, whose mossy trunks were denuded, and whose crowns only bore a few twisted branches.