“Merely an effect of perspective,” Fricoulet retorted. “Mounts Stadius and Eratosthenes are much more limited in dimension.”
“Are all these mountains, then,” said Gontran, “named after philosophers and astronomers?”
Fricoulet laughed. “If you’d read the work of your namesake, the celebrated Flammermont of Les Continents célestes, more attentively, you’d know that he likens the Moon to an astronomers’ cemetery. ‘It’s there,’ he says, ‘that they are buried; when they have quit the Earth, their names are inscribed on the lunar terrain like so many epitaphs.’ I’ve remembered the sentence, which seemed amusing.”
At that moment, Ossipoff’s head appeared at the top of the ladder leading to the upper part of the shell. “Victory!” cried the aged scientist. “Our speed in increasing…in three hours we’ll be flying over Tycho.”
“Tycho,” cried Fricoulet, in astonishment.
“Yes, Tycho,” the old man repeated. “What’s extraordinary about that?”
“It’s just that the route we’re following,” the young engineer replied, “takes us over the Seas of Clouds and Humors, not in the direction of Tycho.”
Ossipoff relied, a trifle sharply: “You must be mistaken, Monsieur, for I’ve just this instant realized that our route is veering along the arc of a circle and that we’re presently heading due south. An hour ago, we passed directly over the center of the lunar disk, in the middle of the Central Gulf and within sight of the crater Herschel; now we’re passing between Guericke and Ptolemy and along two circuses joined by their circular ramparts, Alphonse and Arzachel.”
While speaking, the old man had slowly come down the steps and handed Fricoulet a pair of binoculars. “Anyway, see for yourself.”
While the engineer studied he configuration of the surface, Ossipoff murmured in Gontran’s ear: “Always the same…that boy gets on my nerves, with his scientific pretensions.”
At that moment, Fricoulet declared, in a humbled tone: “You’re right, Monsieur Ossipoff, “We’re following an unknown trajectory, and we’re about to describe the entire arc of a circle around the Moon, which will lead us God knows where.”
“Surely it will lead us to the Moon,” said Gontran.
Fricoulet shrugged his shoulders.
“Monsieur de Flammermont is right,” the old scientist replied, dryly. And he added, in a slightly disdainful tone: “Have you calculated the angle of our fall?”
“No, I confess.”
“Well, you were wrong to talk without having done so—for you would have established, like me, that we are getting closer and closer to the lunar surface.” He had pronounced these words in a scathing fashion that brought a slight blush to Fricoulet’s cheeks.
“What does that prove?” the latter asked, impatiently.
Ossipoff looked at him for a moment in bewilderment, then said: “What? You ask what that proves? Simply that we can’t turn eternally around the satellite, and that a moment will inevitably arrive when we’ll impact with the ground. For example, at the North Pole there are two very high mountain peaks, Doerfel and Leibnitz, which measure no less than 7610 meters in elevation—who knows whether we’ll run into them? For my part, I can affirm that we’ll land not far from the pole.”
“I expect so,” replied the engineer, frostily, “but I’m fearful, all the same.”
Ossipoff folded his arms. “For what reason, if you please?” he asked, ironically.
“First, because instead of impacting the ground vertically with the bottom of our vehicle, which is furnished with tampons and powerful springs to absorb the force of the shock, we’ll hit the mountains side-on, so that the shock will be formidable…then, because we’ll be more than seven kilometers high on an icy crater, plunging into the void…”
“It’s true,” said Gontran in his turn, “that if a native of the Moon were to disembark on the summit of Mont Blanc or Cotopaxi, he wouldn’t actually have reached the ground. It’ll be the same for us.”
“Assuredly,” Fricoulet went on. “And it’s for that reason, my dear Monsieur Ossipoff, that I hope that your calculations are false, and that we won’t end up perched on the summit of Mount Doerfel.”
The astronomer clicked his tongue—which, in him, was always a sign of irritation. Then, without saying a word, he climbed the steps and shut himself up in his laboratory.
“He’s not happy,” murmured Gontran.
“After all,” the engineer retorted, “am I obliged always to say the same as him? If he doesn’t like contradiction, let him live alone. He annoys me, sometimes…” While grumbling, he resumed his place at the porthole.
The vehicle passed over the craters Walter and Bulialdus; the ground became bumpier and more uneven than ever; long pale streaks extended for hundreds of kilometers, sometimes at the level of the plains, sometimes at the height of the most elevated peaks.
“What are those?” Flammermont asked.
“They’re striae.”
“And what are striae?”
“You can judge for yourself far better than terrestrial astronomers can from their observatories 90,000 leagues away.”
Gontran nodded his head. “But what’s your opinion?” he persisted. “You know very well that I don’t know anything. Are they resolidified lava-flows? Are they walls built by the Selenites? You must have an opinion.”
“My word,” retorted the engineer. “The more I look the more convinced I am of my initial supposition that they’re traces of an earthquake.”
Gontran smiled and replied: “A moonquake, you mean.”
Fricoulet shrugged his shoulders. “A moonquake, if you wish. It must have occurred when the world was still in a viscous state…as it cooled, the crust re-formed, conserving traces of the frightful cataclysm on its surface.”
“A world that demolishes itself and sticks itself back together!” said Gontran, in jest. “In truth, that’s something out of the ordinary. The Selenites must have been terrified by seeing their globe shattered, of course.”
Fricoulet looked at his friend to see whether he was talking seriously, but was reassured by the sight of his smile. “The Selenites!” he said, shaking his head. “There probably weren’t any at that time…otherwise they’d all have perished in the catastrophe.”
At that moment the little door to the observatory opened, and Ossipoff shouted to his companions: “Tycho!” Then his head disappeared.
“Ten minute stop—buffet available!” the engineer murmured, comically. And he took up a position at the window, where Gontran had already preceded him, his eyes growing wide at the sight of the panorama, sublime in its strangeness, that unfolded scarcely 1000 kilometers beneath the projectile.
In the middle of the lumpy ground, dazzling with an intense brightness that the eternal ice with which its sides were covered reflected into space, Tycho, the most monstrous of lunar mountains, loomed up hugely and majestically. At its center, in a vast cavity measuring no less than eight-seven kilometers in diameter, rose a group of mountains, the highest of which rose to 1500 kilometers above the bottom. The mountain that formed the annular ramparts appeared to have an elevation of nearly 5000 kilometers, in the east as in the west. Forming an immense aureole around the crater, luminous streaks extended to all points of the horizon, some of them more than 1000 kilometers long.
“One might think that it was a silver octopus whose tentacles are embracing the lunar world,” murmured Gontran, emotion tightening his throat.
Even the skeptical Fricoulet, overwhelmed by admiration, remained mute, unable to remove his eyes from the sublime spectacle.
“Well,” cried Ossipoff, in a triumphant voice, appearing at the top of the staircase, “What did I tell you? Do you see that we’re veering westwards, while gradually getting lower? Before long, we’ll see the craters Clavius, Logomontanus, Maginus, Fabricius, Maurolycus…”
Et ceterus, thought Flammermont.
The scientist continued: “Finally, we’ll pass over the summit of M
ount Doerfel, at an altitude of a few kilometers.”
“But if we pass over everything you mention,” Gontran pout in, “we’ll end up falling…”
“On the invisible part of the Moon!” said Ossipoff, completing the young Comte’s sentence—fortunately for him, since he would certainly have said something stupid. “Yes, exactly, my young friend.”
Flammermont bit his lips and remained silent.
At that moment, Jonathan Farenheit woke up. “Where are we?” he murmured, in the initial drowsiness of awakening.
“At Tycho station, my dear sir,” Gontran replied. “Perhaps you’d like to get off the train to stretch your legs.”
The American stood up and stretched his limbs lazily, making his joints crack. “Ah, by God!” he mumbled, “I wouldn’t say no, for in the five days I’ve been shut up in here I’d begun to fear that my joints would lose their lubrication.” Simulating the landing of a mighty punch on an invisible opponent, he added: “I’ll need all my strength, though, to flatten that bandit Sharp.”
“That’s right!” cried Gontran. “What’s become of him? While admiring the countryside, we’ve forgotten about him and his cannonball.” He ran to put his face to the porthole on the right and searched the space where Fedor Sharp’s projectile had been. “It’s no longer there!” he exclaimed.
A forceful oath answered him, and Jonathan Farenheit ran to his side. “Oh, the bandit!” he cried. “He’s scared of me and he’s run away!” He had pronounced these words in the heat of anger, without considering the impossibility of flight in Sharp’s situation. The truth was, however, that the cannonball had disappeared.
Ossipoff searched space carefully with his most powerful telescope. There was nothing—nothing but the sidereal desert pricked by the brilliant points of the stars in spite of the solar light illuminating the sky. The vehicle, at that moment, was crossing the Austral Sea; it was about 6 a.m.
As Gontran was about to ask the old scientist for an explanation of this strange disappearance, an intense, absolute darkness enveloped them. As if a curtain had been drawn, night succeeded day and the densest shadow instantaneously replaced, without any transition, the powerful and dazzling solar radiation.
At the cries of astonishment, amazement—and even terror—that Gontran and Farenheit emitted, Selena awoke. Thinking that something terrible had happened, she ran to her father and tremulously wrapped her arms around him.
“What’s happened?” Fricoulet finally asked, having been merely taken by surprise by the phenomenon, without any fear being inspired in him.
Ossipoff kissed his daughter in order to reassure her, and replied: “It’s quite simply as I predicted, Monsieur Fricoulet. We’ve passed over the pole and, in changing hemisphere, we’ve simply entered the one that isn’t sunlit. I’m astonished that you didn’t think of that.” He turned to Flammermont. “You weren’t surprised, were you, my dear Gontran?”
The young man had had time to recover from his emotion. Suppressing a smile, he replied, with an assurance that drew a forceful oath from the American, who had witnessed his alarm: “Given that the visible hemisphere was in daylight, shouldn’t we have expected to find the other in darkness?”
“I think it would be prudent to make preparations for the landing now,” said Ossipoff.
“How far from here do you think we’ll touch down?” asked Jonathan Farenheit.
“If my calculations aren’t mistaken, about 200 leagues from the pole.”
“Ah! We still have time,” murmured Selena.
“Not as much as you might think, darling,” the aged scientist replied. “At this moment, we’re grazing the Moon at a height of 50 leagues, and the further we go the steeper our descent will become. Thus, if you can believe me…”
The electric chandelier was lit; then they checked the cords securing the furniture, tightened the knots, and carefully closed all the hatches. That took an hour.
“Hurry up,” said Ossipoff. “We can’t be far from touching down now.”
As an additional precaution, the metallic plates protecting the portholes had been screwed down again, with the consequence that it was impossible to measure the vehicle’s progress.
The hammocks were rolled up and the travelers placed themselves in the padded drawers that had already protected them from the shock of the departure.
A profound silence reigned, troubled only by the ticking of the clock. Everyone fell silent, their throats tightened by anxiety.
Suddenly, a formidable shock shook the entire vehicle. The chandelier came away and the incandescent lamps and shattered into numerous pieces, which cascaded down with a frightful din, while items of furniture, breaking their moorings, smashed into one another in the darkness. Not a single cry was emitted by the travelers—and yet, if ever there was an occasion to shout a triumphant “hurrah,” this was it, for Ossipoff and his intrepid companions had just arrived at the goal of their voyage.
They were on the Moon!
Chapter XIV
Ninety Thousand Leagues from Earth
“It is very curious to think that, although the Moon is much smaller than the Earth, the inhabitants of that world, if they exist, must be taller than we are and their buildings, if they have erected any, must have dimensions greater than ours.
“Beings of our size and strength, transported to the Moon, would weigh six times less, while being six times as strong as us; they would be prodigiously light and agile, carrying ten times their own weight and moving masses weighing 1000 kilograms on Earth.
“It is natural to suppose that, not being nailed to the ground like us by the shackles of gravity, they would grow to dimensions that would give them both more weight and solidity. If the Moon were surrounded by a dense enough atmosphere, the Selenites would undoubtedly fly like birds, but it is certain that their atmosphere is insufficient for that organic feat.
“Moreover, not only would it be possible for a race of Selenites equal to terrestrial races in muscular strength to construct monuments much higher than ours, but it would also be necessary for them to give those constructions gigantic proportions and to set them on considerable and massive bases, to ensure their solidity and duration,
“Now, although skillful observers such as William Herschel, Schröter, Gruithuisen58 and Littrow59 have believed that they were able to make out traces of constructions ‘made by human hands’ with their keen eyes, more attentive examination with the aid of more powerful instruments has proved that these constructions—ramparts, trenches, channels and roads—are not artificial but purely natural formations. The telescope shows us, in reality, no trace of habitation—and yet, a great city there would undoubtedly be easily recognizable.
“Let us remark, however, that it would be easily recognizable if it resembled ours. But nothing proves that lunar beings or objects bear any resemblance whatsoever to terrestrial beings or objects; on the contrary, everything encourages us to think that there is the most extreme dissimilarity between the two regions. Now, it could very well be that we have lunar villages and habitations before our eyes, and constructions made by their hands—if they have hands—strewn across the landscape, without it ever being possible for us to suppose that these objects and works were the result of lunar intelligence.”
Thus, in one of his books, speaks the French scientist who has done so much for the popularization of astronomy and the diffusion of education throughout the entire world, and with whom Ossipoff, in the first chapter of this story, got Gontran de Flammermont mixed up. How astonished and joyful the illustrious scientist would have been if, like his obscure namesake, he had been able to be transported to the world that he had studied by telescope for so many years and about which he had written so many charming pages.
He would have been able to observe with his own eyes that he was not mistaken in his suppositions, and that his hypotheses, based on well-established scientific data, were justified—in brief, that lunar life was just as he had foreseen and described in the pr
eceding lines.
The Sun had just risen on the hemisphere of the Moon on which Ossipoff’s vehicle had fallen. The peaks and the craters of the mountainous regions situated on the side of the disk forever invisible to terrestrial eyes cast vast shadows over the plains extending to their foothills. In the middle of a vast encircled desert—a sort of deep well filled with shadows into which a pale ray of sunlight slid, as if shamefully—stood a bizarre construction, affecting the form of a gigantic cage whose bars were formed of those tall frameworks of scaffolding that constructors use to support their cranes. This cage, which was about four or five meters tall, was conical in form—which is to say that its bars, deeply embedded in the ground, converged towards their summit. Inside the cage, on ground covered by a thick layer of volcanic dust, five bodies were extended side by side, motionless, as if in rigor mortis.
These bodies were those of Mikhail Ossipoff and his companions. In a corner, piled up at random, were all the utensils and instruments that their vehicle had contained.
Suddenly, the ray of sunlight that darted a soft and timid light into the crater reached Gontran’s face. It required no more than that to extract the sleeper from the profound slumber in which he was plunged. Slowly, his body moved; his stiff limbs extended in a sort of convulsion and his heavy eyelids were raised, uncovering dull and vitreous eyes. He stayed like that for a long moment, lying on his back, his eyes wandering vacantly. Then intelligence reasserted itself, and memory with it, and he was surprised by the spectacle his eyes beheld, so different from the interior of the vehicle in which he had just spent five days and five nights. Perceiving the bodies extended beside him, he uttered a cry of terror.
“Dead!” he said. “They’re dead!” Suddenly coming to his feet, he ran to the nearest one. It was Fricoulet. “Alcide!” he said, in a tremulous voice. “Alcide!” At the same time, he tugged him. Bizarrely enough, he lifted him entirely off the ground, holding him suspended above the ground with one hand, when he had only wanted to shake him in order to wake him up.
The Extraordinary Adventures of a Russian Scientist Across the Solar System (Vol. 1) Page 28
