The old man started. “A telescope!” he replied.
Gontran bit his lip, furious with himself for the enormous stupidity of which he had just been guilty—but the thought of Selena immediately caused him to pull himself together, and he calmly replied: “That’s what I meant.”
“Of course,” said Ossipoff, shaking his head with an ironic smile.
“Take note,” the young man added, gravely, “that in making use of that expression, which seemed to surprise you, I was only repeating one that had been used in my presence one evening by my illustrious relative, Monsieur Flammermont.”
Ossipoff’s eyes widenened. “Yes,” Gontran continued, imperturbably, “one evening when the celebrated Flammermont was with me and some other people at the Paris Observatory and he was explaining the mechanism of the large telescope that he generally uses for his observations, he compared the telescope to a cannon that sends the observer’s soul to the stars.”
The old scientist nodded his head approvingly. “Quite so,” he murmured. “Quite so.” If Gontran’s ears had been keen enough to hear what the old man was saying to himself, however, he would have heard the private addition: Flammermont only sends souls there, whereas I… Then, turning to Gontran, he said: “I see by your words that you’ve guessed where we are.”
“Of course,” sad the young man, in a breezy tone. “We’re in an observatory…”
“Yes, my friend, we’re in the Pulkova Observatory,21 and this instrument, which my illustrious master so rightly likens to a cannon, is our new telescope, one of the largest, best and most powerful in the entire world.”
Gontran circled the instrument, making admiring gestures.
“Yes,” Ossipoff went on, “its construction required nearly ten years of uninterrupted work, and its installation is a marvel of precision. I make no mention of the many thousands of roubles that its construction cost—that’s a mere detail…”
While speaking, the old man had moved to a lectern on which an enormous volume stood open; it was the Connaissance des temps published by the Bureau of Longitudes in Paris.22 He turned the pages with a rapid finger, and Gontran saw him finally fix his eyes on one and murmur, while tracing lines with his index finger: “Passage of Biela’s comet… eclipses of Saturn’s satellites… occultation of Mars…” Ossipoff released a little exclamation: “Here’s what I need!”
He quit the lectern, came back to the huge telescope, switched on a little lamp that illuminated the meridian circle and, thanks to a powerful clockwork mechanism that could be activated by the simple pressure of a finger, the enormous tube rose up vertically as easily as if it had weighed no more than a few 100 grams. When it was in the desired position in that dimension, Ossipoff pressed another button, and the telescope rotated horizontally, like a marine gun pivoting on its carriage. The scientist lifted his finger, and the gigantic tube became motionless.
Having done that, Ossipoff ran to the cupola and set the entire metallic dome in motion, rolling on its bronze castors, until it was in the desired position. Then, pulling on cords attached to the wall, he opened a trapdoor in the cupola immediately in front of the mouth of the telescopic canon, through which a segment of sky appeared.
Gontran had not missed a single one of the scientist’s movements, but had been sufficiently clever not to manifest any astonishment, as if these various operations were quite familiar to him.
Ossipoff, pointing to the telescope, said: “Look!”
The young man put his eye to the ocular lens. He had to grab hold of the telescope in order to remain motionless and not step back, so great was his surprise and admiration.
“You recognize the Triesnecker Crater and its surroundings, in the equatorial region of the Moon, don’t you?” said the old man.
“Of course,” Gontran replied, briefly, entranced by the spectacle before his eyes. He seemed to be floating a few kilometers above an unknown world; high mountains projected their sharp and shiny peaks into space, betraying their prodigious elevation by the immense extent of the shadows that they extended over the plain. There was an inextricable confusion of pits, crevasses and gaping craters, and the young man felt his throat constrict with an indefinable emotion at the chaotic appearance of that grandiose landscape, seemingly fixed in eternal immobility.
Ossipoff had stopped the movement of the telescopic tube, though, and the Moon—then in its first quarter—successively presented its entire territory to Gontran’s marveling eyes. The eastern region filed slowly past, with its crater-pimpled ground, its mysterious grooves, its abysms and dry seas. Eventually, the edge of the disk also appeared, and the Comte uttered an exclamation of surprise.
“What is it?” asked the old man.
“A star!” the young man exclaimed. “A star, about to pass behind the Moon.”
“It’s not a star,” the scientist replied. “It’s the planet Mars.” Then, gripping Gontran’s arm, he said, with suppressed emotion: “Look hard, and tell me exactly what you see.”
“Certainly!” said the young man, naively. “I see a little reddish ball moving slowly forward, which is about to disappear…ah! Here’s something strange…it’s become slightly fainter…but I can still see it.”
Ossipoff, whose eyes were fixed on the sidereal clock and who was counting the seconds in a whisper, replied, excitedly: “It’s not the planet that you’re seeing, for that disappeared behind the Moon 15 seconds ago, but simply its reflection.”
“Ah!” said Gontran. “I can no longer see anything now.”
He was about to quit the ocular lens, but Ossipoff held him in place, with unexpected force. “Stay there!” he commanded, giving the ocular lens a slight push. “And keep on looking.”
Meekly, Flammermont remained still, widening his eyes. He was becoming impatient with standing still and seeing nothing when he exclaimed: “Ah! Now that’s very strange… I can see the planet again, but it’s on the other side of the Moon now.”
“And yet it has not reappeared at the horizon,” Ossipoff retorted, his eyes still fixed on the clock.
A few minutes ran by.
“There it is…there it is,” the young man repeated. “It’s two thirds visible. My word, the edge of the Moon is very dark at the place where the planet has emerged…”
These were undoubtedly the words that the old man was waiting for, for he uttered a cry—a cry of joy and of triumph—and, grabbing Gontran, he almost dragged him away from the telescope. Drawing him closer, he said: “You saw it, didn’t you? You really saw it…I knew that you’d be convinced by your own eyes.”
Breathlessly, he fixed the young man with staring eyes in which there was a strange gleam. Then, sitting down and indicating that his companion should do likewise, he murmured: “Bless the good fortune that permitted me to show you that this very day.”
Gontran looked at him, quite astonished.
“You have just had, before your very eyes, material and palpable proof that all those who consider the Moon to be a dead star, uninhabited and uninhabitable, are grossly mistaken.”
The young man contented himself with an approving nod of the head, afraid of compromising himself again by some imprudent remark.
“They say that the Moon has no atmosphere! And what do they base that on, I ask you? On the fact that the disk’s surface is never veiled by any cloud and that the disk always presents the same appearance to us…on the fact that any atmosphere produces twilight, and that the bright and dark parts of the Moon are separated from one another by a clear-cut line presenting no gradation of light! Others have examined the spectrum of a star at the moment of its occultation and, not having remarked any change in the color of the spectrum, conclude that the atmosphere, which should have caused such a variation, is absent. Yet others, departing from the principle that lunar radiance is only the reflection of solar radiation, declare that the spectrum formed by the Moon’s light ought to present absorption lines added to the solar spectrum by the lunar atmosphere! Now, all these obse
rvations prove, they say, that the Moon simply reflects solar light like a mirror, without the slightest atmosphere modifying it in any way whatsoever.”
Ossipoff shrugged his shoulders, and added: “All that’s plausible…but it’s not true! You’ve just seen the proof of it yourself. Do you think that you would be able to perceive the planet Mars, even after its disappearance, if its rays had not been reflected—and what could have produced that reflection, I ask you, if not the lunar atmosphere? It’s for the same reason that it was possible for you to perceive it at the other side of the disk before the conclusion of the occultation. Come on, frankly—does what I’m saying to you seem absurd?”
Gontran made a movement suggestive of indignation. “Which is to say,” he replied, vibrantly, “that all of that is as clear and limpid as a rock pool.”
“As for the twilight,” Ossipoff went on, becoming progressively more animated, Schröter23—who was certainly not a donkey—has not only demonstrated the existence of lunar twilight, but has even found that its arc, measured in the direction of the tangential solar radiation, is two degrees 34 minutes, and that the atmospheric layers that illuminate the extremity of that arc must be 352 meters high. Is that conclusive?”
“Marvelously conclusive,” retorted Gontran with magnificent self-composure.
The young man had rested his elbow on his knee and his chin in the palm of his hand; his expression was grave and his eyes were fixed on the scientist. He seemed to be following the other’s explanations with perfect comprehension.
Ossipoff continued: “The astronomer Airy, referring to 295 occultations—that’s not trivial, 295 occultations—concluded therefrom that the lunar radius is diminished by two degrees, in respect of the disappearance of stars behind the dark side of the Moon, and two degrees four in respect of their reappearance, similarly at the dark side. It therefore follows that the radius measured at occultations is inferior to the telescopic radius. To what, I ask you, can that diminution be attributed, if not the horizontal refraction of a lunar atmosphere?”
“As you say,” the young man replied, seriously.
“Furthermore,” Ossipoff continued, “if I were to enumerate all the various proofs gathered in different eras and by scientists who were not just anyone, in favor of the existence of a lunar atmosphere, it would take me several hours, at least. For myself, I can’t explain the phenomenon to which the occultation of certain stars gives rise other than by an atmosphere that exists primarily on the hemisphere that we cannot see, but which is gradually brought toward the edge of the Moon by libration.”
He looked at Gontran, seemingly waiting for his approval, which immediately translated itself into firmly pronounced words: “That’s also my opinion.” Then, resuming immediately: “Or rather that of my illustrious namesake.”
Ossipoff sat up straight, and everything about his attitude testified to a great internal satisfaction.
“Now,” added the young Comte, “it might perfectly well be that the Moon possesses an atmosphere different from ours.”
The scientist seized his hand. “Ah!” he said, enthusiastically. “I see that you’ve read the Astronomie de peuple, for what you’ve just said is one of the suppositions made by Flammermont in favor of the lunar atmosphere. He admits not only that the proportions of oxygen and nitrogen in a celestial atmosphere might not be the same as in ours, but also that the atmosphere might be composed of other gases.”
“After all,” exclaimed Gontran, “what does it matter of what the atmosphere is composed, so long as it exists?” Then, suddenly becoming calmer, he said: “Monsieur Gontran, did you bring me to this Observatory in such great secrecy to talk about the Moon, and that alone?”
The scientist shivered, mistaking the meaning of the young man’s words, and replied excitedly: “No, not at all—for, as I’ve told you, the Moon is, for me, only the first station of a celestial voyage, and I have every intention of taking you through the whole planetary and stellar immensity today.”
Gontran smiled softly. “You haven’t understood me, my dear Monsieur. I was trying to ask you whether we might touch on another question, just as interesting…from another point of view, perhaps, but…”
The old savant’s eyes grew round. “Another question, as interesting as the Moon…” he murmured, doubtfully.
“To be sure, Monsieur Ossipoff,” Gontran replied. “Astronomy is very fine…but love is no less pleasant…and you know that I love Mademoiselle Selena and that I came this evening to ask you for her hand…”
Ossipoff squinted, and fixed the young man with a penetrative stare. “Between the Moon and my daughter,” he said, “there might not be as much distance as you suppose.”
“About 96,000 leagues,” replied Gontran, whose memory had chanced to retain that number—and he added, jokingly: “In astronomy, that distance is trivial, but in love…” A deep sigh completed the sentence.
The scientist remained silent for a moment, enveloping the young man with a piercing and studious gaze, as he had in the carriage. Eventually, he said: “I’ll prove to you that in love, there are circumstances in which distance is trivial.” He paused again, staring fixedly at Gontran, who pricked up his ears. “Monsieur le Comte de Flammermont,” the old man said, eventually, is a serious voice, “do you love my daughter?”
“Profoundly, Monsieur Ossipoff.”
“But have you considered that I am old, and that, once my daughter is married, I shall be alone in this world?”
“You’re so rarely here,” objected Gontran, who wished by this anodyne joke to offer a diversion to the self-pity that had taken possession of his companion.
The latter did, indeed, smile. “You’re right,” he replied, “but scientists have hearts like other men, and mine is filled solely by affection for my daughter…”
The young Comte seized his hands. “If I understand you correctly,” he said, “you dread the solitude in which Mademoiselle Selena’s marriage would leave you.”
“Precisely—and that dread is so great in me that I have decided only to give my daughter to a man who will swear never to take her away from me.”
“You have my oath, Monsieur Ossipoff,” said the young man, with abundant frankness in his voice.
The old man shook his head.
“Do you not dread engaging yourself very lightly, Monsieur le Comte?” he asked, in a slightly ironic tone. “I love traveling, and the whim might take me…”
Gontran interrupted him, exclaiming: “Ah, Monsieur Ossipoff, you insult my love if you suppose it capable of balking at distances, however large they might be.”
“There now!” observed the old scientist, with a little smile. “So you’re of the same opinion as me, that distances are trivial, whether it’s a matter of astronomy or love.”
“Monsieur Ossipoff,” exclaimed the young man, ardently, “I love Mademoiselle Selena with all my heart, and, if necessary, I would follow her to the ends of the Earth.”
“And as far as the Moon?” added the old man, fixing him with a strange stare.
If Gontran had been able to observe the sudden transfiguration that had just overtaken the old man’s physiognomy, he would doubtless have paid more attention to his words, but the thought of Selena filled him entirely, and he lifted his arms to the heavens, exclaiming: “Ah, if only there existed a single audacious soul sufficiently well-equipped to launch into space on the conquest of all those unknown worlds…if Selena’s hand were the price, I would beg him to take me with him, to prove to you that millions, billions and trillions of leagues could not intimidate a love such as mine!”
He was a superb sight, standing up, his face raised towards the cupola of the observatory, through which a bright ray of moonlight then fell directly, his eyes shining, his lips half-open, his nostrils flared.
“Ah, my boy! Ah, my son!” And, uttering these two appellations in an affectionate tone, Monsieur Ossipoff threw his arms around the young man’s neck and kissed him on both cheeks several times.<
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Surprised by this expansiveness, in which he only understood one thing—that it was an indication of the good progress of his matrimonial project—Flammermont looked at the old man, who abandoned the embrace and looked at him warmly. Then the scientist seized his hands, shook them, and shook them again, stammering: “Oh, my boy! My boy!”
“Monsieur Ossipoff,” said the young man, “may I know…?”
“Eh? What?” cried the old man. “Didn’t you just say that, to have Selena’s hand, you’d go to the Moon in search of it…?”
“That’s true…but for that, it would be necessary for your daughter to be on the Moon…”
Then, posing in front of Flammermont with a fiery gaze and his arms folded in a challenging manner, the little old man cried: “And what if this man, audacious enough to have dreamed of the conquest of the unknown worlds that scintillate above our heads, existed…if, not content with having dreamed, this man had resolved to put his dream into execution?”
Gontran looked at Ossipoff in bewilderment. He was beginning to think that his passion for astronomy had unbalanced the poor scientist’s mind.
“Yes,” the latter continued, “if, after 20 years of incessant work, uninterrupted studies and laborious vigils, I had contrived to render practicable that marvelous voyage that so many philosophers, thinkers and poets had made in imagination…if I were to say to you: ‘I’m leaving for the Moon and the celestial immensity; if you love my daughter, come with me!’—what would you reply?”
Gontran examined him attentively—and even, it must be said, with a certain suspicion. This was the first time he had met the old man, and that acquaintance, hardly amounting to a few hours, did not permit him to estimate the exact extent of what he supposed to be Monsieur Ossipoff’s madness. He knew, from having heard it said, that many madmen cannot tolerate contradiction, and that maniacs—even the gentlest and most inoffensive—are to be feared when anyone contradicts them. So, to the question that the scientist had just put to him, he replied without hesitation: “You ask that of me, Monsieur Ossipoff—of me, after what I said to you a little while ago! You ask me if I would follow Mademoiselle Selena to the Moon…but the Moon is too near…I’d rather that she went to the Sun!”
The Extraordinary Adventures of a Russian Scientist Across the Solar System (Vol. 1) Page 6
