The country into which they set forth only offered the usual accidents that were encountered in the less tormented regions of the lunar surface, and for men who had surmounted so many frightful difficulties, that as mere child’s play.
It was during the night that they doubled the cape formed in the middle of the plain by the basalt massif. The three young people that the voyagers had brought with them had not yet recovered from the astonishment into which the march through the darkness had cast them.
The electric lamps whose brilliant light, cutting through the darkness, projected their blue-tinted light into the distance and lent fantastic appearances to all objects delighted them with surprise and admiration.
The route they followed was free of incident all the way to the visible surface of the Moon. They were all in haste to reach the meridian that marked its limit, in order to see the terrestrial world again, which illuminated the long lunar nights with such a bright and yet gentle light, and of which they had been deprived for such a long time.
They had been marching for some time over extremely hard rocky ground, which had no jutting asperities, when the Sun, suddenly rising behind them abruptly illuminated the most dazzling scene.
As far as the eye could see, before them and around them, extended a plateau of the most marvelous coloration, in which all the colors of the prism were juxtaposed and combined.
The green, yellow and blue marbles, the gray and pink granites, the blinding white limestones, the red and orange sandstones, the black diorites, trachytes and crystalline schists, skimming the surface, mingled their pastels shades, forming a kind of incredibly rich carpet.
To their left, a narrow fissure opened, of unfathomable depth, whose walls plunged perpendicularly into the somber abyss. It extended indefinitely in a north-westerly direction. The sunlight, striking it obliquely, illuminated those formidable walls and made them resplendent with the most varied and unexpected tints. One might have thought that masses of precious stones had escaped in disorder from some giant jewel-case, spread over the ground and caught on all the asperities of the enormous walls.
“I’ve seen something analogous to what you have before your eyes in America,” said Marcel. “It was in Arizona. In the depths of narrow gorges known as canyons, whose meanders the Colorado River follows with its foaming waves, the country it traverses also presents the most singular colorations, but nothing equals the grandiose splendor and infinite richness of the magical region through which we’re traveling.”
“Yes,” said Lord Rodilan, “this lunar world is truly very curious, and I don’t really know what will be able to surprise us or interest us when we return to Earth.”
“But my dear friend,” said Jacques, smiling, “nothing obliges you to leave it. You’re free to stay here, and although we’d be sad to leave without you, we’d resign ourselves to it if you were to find happiness in this new fatherland.” With a vague gesture he designated the young woman whose guardian the Englishman had appointed himself, and added: “And perhaps there are other reasons that might retain you here.”
“Oh, my word no!” exclaimed Lord Rodilan. “When one has the honor of being English, one doesn’t exchange one’s fatherland for another.” In response to Jacques final allusion, he added: “That child interests me. She has stirred in my heart an old residue of tenderness that I had thought extinct. But when I’ve put her in a safe place and she no longer has any need of me. I’ll refrain from imposing any gratitude on her that might become onerous.”
“You speak sagely, and as a worthy man,” said Rugel, who had witnessed the conversation.
The march continued through that host of marvels. For a long time they admired the varied play of the light, the changes of hue that were modified at every step, in accordance with whether the sun’s rays struck the variously colored surfaces directly or obliquely. But there is something in spectacles that impress the sight vividly that is akin to sentiments that agitate the heart. One cannot support excessively vivid sensations for long, and one develops a nostalgia for the simple and the ordinary. The voyagers ended up wearying of the sparkling colors and the eternal kaleidoscope that reflected its continual changes into their eyes.
It was with a sigh of relief, weary of admiration, that they entered a region less richly endowed by nature, whose duller and milder appearance was a veritable rest for them. They rediscovered with pleasure the gray rocks and the craters that had been long familiar to them, and they continued their westward course gladly.
The abrupt invasion of the lunar night surprised them just as they reached the visible surface of the satellite. They reached it in the vicinity of the sixth degree of south latitude.
It was necessary to switch on the electric lamps again and recommence walking in the dark.
They still had many difficulties to overcome before reaching the observatory and a great deal of fatigue to endure, but the important discoveries they had made, and the joy of triumph—for such a voyage seemed a conquest of the impossible—sustained their courage. Then again, they saw the moment approaching when, their task accomplished, they would be able to return to Earth, to see those they loved, deliver to the world the magnificent results of their endeavors, and reap the recompense of their efforts.
They found themselves at the foot of the D’Alembert mountain chain.32 They skirted it, inclining northwards until they reached the vicinity of the crater Riccioli. Then, going around the vast cone, they walked for a long time though the profound valley that separates it from Grimaldi. To their right and left, colossal walls rose up, their bases illuminated by the powerful reflectors that the Diemides were carrying, where their eyes vaguely distinguished confused masses of enormous rocks, heaped up as if by the hands of Titans.
When they had come through that gorge, they came out into a broad plain, but it was not possible to follow the northern rim of the crater Grimaldi, because wide and profound fissures beginning from the foot of the con blocked their path. They were forced to turn northwards in the direction of the crater Lohrmann.
That part of their journey was perhaps the most laborious. In fact, the entire region between the two craters was one of the most chaotic; there was nothing but craters, small in dimension but very close together, between which it was necessary to slide, with difficulty, or sheer and deep crevasses, whose edges it was necessary to follow until some swelling of the ground, forming a kind of bridge, allowed them to be crossed.
The voyagers admired the profound knowledge of the country that Rugel possessed. In spite of the difficulties of the nocturnal march, no uncertainty was ever manifest in their guide’s mind. They progressed slowly and awkwardly, but reliably.
When the obstacles had been overcome, they found themselves on the edge of the Ocean of Storms. From then on, the journey was mere child’s play; a gradual slope led them into the immense plain formed by the bed of the dry sea. The traversal of the broken region had taken a long time, though, and daylight surprised the when they were about a hundred kilometers from the observatory.
The voyagers greeted the return of daylight gladly, and twenty-four hours later they were reunited with Merovar and the other scientists, who had perceived them some time before and who greeted them with joyful enthusiasm.
The sight of the three young people that the voyagers had brought back with them, after having saved them so miraculously, caused profound surprise throughout the laboratory.
“We saw you from a distance,” Merovar said, “And could not understand how your number had increased.”
Rugel gave a brief and rapid account of the events that had marked the course of their exploration. He recounted the unfortunate death of their two companions, explained how they had found the vestiges of a living world of which the old legends spoke, and saved the sad debris of a vanished human race from a horrible death.
Everyone flocked around the three young people, who, now rid of the apparatus they wore, were very surprised to breathe easily and move freely, and delighte
d by the warm welcome of which they were the object.
People looked at them with interest and interrogated them benevolently; emotionally, not knowing how to reply, they looked around anxiously. Everything in that environment, for which nothing had been able to prepare them, was new to them; they went back and forth as if in a dream.
Soon, however, their entry into the lunar world was to provide them with many other surprises.
XV. Humanitarian Dreams
The works undertaken to ensure the return of the three inhabitants of the Earth to their homeland had lasted eight months. Begun in June, they were finished at the end of January. In the meantime, a silent but sustained activity and reigned around the crater chosen by Rugel. Although everyone, Diemides and Meolicenes alike, was sad to see the moment approaching when they would be separated from the guests they had learned to love, everyone did his best to bring the work to a successful conclusion.
The walls of the crater had been smoothed to a depth of 150 meters. That length might have seemed excessive, given that the neutral point of attraction between the two planets was only eight thousand leagues distant from the Moon, but the scientists responsible for the work, in agreement with Marcel, had thought it best to exaggerate it, in order that the projectile could cross the zone of lunar attraction and steer reliably toward the objective to be attained without there being any danger of a deviation that might modify the initial direction.
A cylindrical mold; leaving an empty space between its surface and the rocky wall of 1.35 meters, had been raised from the bottom of the crater to its orifice. Into that interval the metal alloy had been poured that would form the gigantic cannon. Then, after the metal, completely cooled, had become an absolutely homogeneous mass, the interior mold had been broken up and removed, the barrel of the gun had been carefully bored; everything was ready to function.
Before quitting the world that they would never see again, Marcel and his companions wanted to spend the few days before the departure at Rugel’s villa, where their reason had almost succumbed, and where the care of devoted friends had restored them to themselves. However impatient they were to see Earth again, they could not help feeling, as they were about to leave, a sentiment of melancholy and regret.
The conditions in which they had been living for more than two years were so different from everything they had known and seen until then that their souls had, in a manner of speaking, been transformed, as if purified, in a nobler and more perfect environment.
Since they had been in the lunar world, their gazes had become unaccustomed to all the ugliness and misery that terrestrial humankind presents. There, everything was worthy and elevated, everything tended to the pursuit of the beautiful and the good; everyone’s efforts collaborated in the communal endeavor; without competition and strife, without jealousy and hatred, without cupidity and envy, an almost ideal society seemed to realize the type of perfection.
Thus had been removed from their eyes a corner of the veil that hides the divine work of creation. Already, the most elevated minds have glimpsed that superior law of the hierarchy of worlds, which, departing from the most infimal conditions of life, rises by insensible gradations along the path of a limitless advancement. They had had before their eyes one of the steps of that infinite progression, and they wondered to what degree of intellectual and moral superiority the inhabitants of even more favored spheres might rise.
They told themselves that, in returning to Earth, it would be as if they were awakening from a marvelous and magical dream. Everything of which they had had no knowledge for two years would assail them again; they would fall back into the midst of the struggle for existence; they would find themselves mingled with a crowd enslaved to gross needs and harsh appetites. It would be the end of the calm and tranquil life, the serenity of the spirit, the peace of the heart. They would have to reenter the battle, collide with the interests that never disarm, the ambitions that no scruple stops, which do not even recoil before crime in order to satisfy themselves. They would have before their eyes the depressing spectacle of triumphant force, honored injustice, sin crowned in the fact of persecuted virtue, verity shamed and unmerited misery.
If they had only listened to the voice of their reason, they would gladly have remained members of that society whose concord and harmony charmed them, but the memory of the people they had left behind and the love that nature puts into the heart of every man for his native soil, no matter how disinherited he might be, attracted him invincibly. In addition, their magnified souls had conceived noble projects, and even Lord Rodilan, to his great surprise felt gripped by a generous ardor that he had not known before. Already, many times, the three friends had promised themselves, when they returned to the old terrestrial world, to put all their efforts at the service of their wretched brethren, to soothe as much as was possible the evils from which they were suffering.
Those were the subjects they usually discussed with their hosts in the days preceding the separation.
In spite of his desire not to give the inhabitants of the Moon too poor an idea of terrestrial humankind, Marcel had been led to inform those that such questions interested the most about the sad conditions and shocking inequalities of the present existence of humans on Earth.
He had not been able to hide the fact that, even in the most advanced nations and beneath the external appearances of the most brilliant civilizations, profound abysms of vice and misery were concealed. He had told them about the unfortunates who struggled painfully to live in an environment of egotism and indifference, of the abandoned whom no one sustained or encouraged, and whose despair often led them to crime or suicide. He had shown them old people without a hearth, young women without protection, children without families or shelter, wandering in the vast cities, displaying their rags to the gaze of inattentive crowds, soliciting in vain a pity that might save them from dying of cold and hunger.
Thos who had received these sad confidences had been profoundly surprised, and they had been moved by the thought of these evils, and a moral degradation that they found difficult to imagine.
Orealis, in particular, had not been able to hear, without being moved in the utmost depths of her being, the description of such suffering. Her heart had filled with indignation against the injustice, and pity for the unfortunate. One day, when the three voyagers were talking to Rugel about their imminent departure, and plans they were thinking about putting into execution, Orealis appeared before them. Her expression, ordinarily so lively and frank, was veiled by sadness and her voice betrayed a slight embarrassment.
“Friends,” she said to them, “Everything that you have told me about the world to which you’re returning has interested me, and when you have left us, my thoughts will follow you to the places that I have learned from you to know. But my heart is particularly moved by the picture you have presented of the fate of the many unfortunates that terrestrial humanity still includes.
“I know what your plans are; I know that you want to devote yourselves to the relief of so many miseries, and I want to associate myself with your efforts. You will not refuse me, I hope, the joy of aiding you in that task; it will be a link that with connect us across space, which will subsist between us when you have gone. It will seem to me that we are not entirely separated when I think that I am making some contribution to the good that you are doing.
“You have told me that on Earth, someone who possesses certain rare and precious objects can secure more satisfactions and also do more good around him. I know that among the objects that are held in very high value are certain shiny stones that have no other utility for us than to decorate our monuments and increase their sparkle. I have gathered some together, and would like you to take them with you as a souvenir of those who have learned to esteem and love you, and who will never forget you.”
At a sign from her, two Diemides appeared, carrying a coffer in precious metal, curiously shaped and sculpted, on which living figurines, interlaced foliage and delicate ar
abesques were depicted. The imagination of the dexterous artists of the lunar world had made a masterpiece of grace, richness and elegance.
Orealis opened it; there was a dazzling glitter. It was full to the brim with diamonds of marvelous clarity and unusual dimensions; there were also enormous sapphires, rubies, emeralds, opals and topazes, all of them beautiful. At first glance such a treasure evidently represented an enormous, inestimable fortune.
In spite of the detachment from terrestrial things to which they had grown accustomed in two years, Marcel, Jacques and Lord Rodilan felt a frisson, and the old instinct of possession that atavism had put into them reawakened. Their eyes shone with a more vivid gleam, and without their being aware of it, their hands moved toward that treasure, worthy of the Thousand-and-One Nights.
Rugel looked at them, smiling. They soon got a grip on themselves.
“You are the noblest and most generous of souls,” Jacques set to Orealis. “We accept what you’re offering us; we’ll employ the riches that you’re lavishing upon us to render confidence and hope to those disinherited by fate. We shall only be their distributors, and the unfortunates whose woes they relieve will learn from us to bless your name.”
“Such an offering,” said Rugel, “doesn’t merit such thanks. These stones that you call treasures are almost valueless to us, and we would never have thought of utilizing them in this way if you hadn’t told us about the purpose they might serve on Earth. If they can aid you in the accomplishment of your plans, if they can ameliorate a certain amount of suffering, we’re glad to offer them to you, and regret that you can’t take more of them with you.”
An Unknown World Page 33
