Lying on the ground there, they found a sort of vehicle, somewhat reminiscent of the cart that had brought them to Chuir, with the difference that it was longer and almost cigar-shaped.
“If that’s his dirigible balloon…” murmured Gontran, completing the sentence by stretching his lips disdainfully.
“My dear chap,” Fricoulet replied, “the experiences we’ve already had should have served to give you better expectations of the Selenite imagination.”
“You have confidence in this machine, then?” asked the young Comte.
“Absolute confidence,” retorted the engineer, climbing over the edge of the “machine”. He then perceived a sort of receptacle in the center, somewhat reminiscent of a cooking-pot.
“Oh, good God!” exclaimed Gontran, who had followed his friend. “Are the Selenites going to make beef stew?”
Ossipoff, his daughter and the American were already seated; the young Comte followed their example.
Telinga bent down and dropped some sort of explosive mixture into the “cooking-pot” through an aperture, which he immediately re-sealed. After a few seconds, crackling sounds commenced. “Hold tight,” he said. “We’re off.” At the same time, he opened a tap. Immediately, a prolonged fizzing sound was heard at the rear and the vessel left the ground, impelled by an invisible force, climbing into the air along a diagonal path.
Gontran leaned over the edge, considered this phenomenon open-mouthed, wondering whether he were witnessing a miracle. Fricoulet—who, in his capacity as an engineer, was in a position to understand many things—broke into a smile. “It’s quite simple,” he said. “The propulsion is obtained by the slow combustion of the mixture. The gases produced escape through a tube situated at the rear, and it’s by virtue of the force of the recoil—the reaction of the gas upon the air—that the apparatus moves forwards, sliding on the layers of air like a rocket…or rather a kite.”69
“It’s the same principle as your steam-aeroplane,” said Ossipoff to the young Comte.
“Oh,” Gontran replied, seriously, with a disdainful shake of the head. “Less complicated…”
Simple as it was, however, the vehicle advanced with marvelous rapidity; the lunar territories passed beneath the travelers before they had time to examine them in detail. For a while, the apparatus followed a long artificially-excavated canal that established communication between two oceans, which Selena jokingly baptized with the name of “the Panama Canal.”70
“Oh!” said Gontran. “They too have their Ferdinand de Lesseps.”
The Central Ocean was succeeded by an immense verdant forest, divided into two equal parts by a broad river, and then by large plains. Then, little by little, the region became more uneven, and the horizon was soon seemingly barred by a chain of high mountains, among which was one particular peak of vertiginous altitude. This was Phovethn, the most formidable active volcano on the entire Moon. The crater of this Selenite Cotopaxi measured no less than a league in breadth and it projected rocks, monstrous lava debris and solid blocks of stone as far as the limits of the atmosphere.
“Here’s a volcano,” said Flammermont, “which would like nothing better than to give us a return ticket to our fatherland.”
“Its force would, indeed, undoubtedly be more than sufficient for us to attain the Earth’s zone of attraction,” Ossipoff replied, “if this face of the Moon did not have the misfortune of never seeing our planet.” So saying, he studied the young man carefully, wondering whether he had been speaking seriously or whether he considered what he had said to be a joke.
Meanwhile, Telinga had set a course northwards and the vessel was now flying over an immense sea.
“Where are we going?” Ossipoff asked.
“To Tough,” the Selenite replied. “The fuel whose combustion produces the boat’s propulsion is almost exhausted, and it’s necessary to replaced it before we launch into Subvolvan regions.
It was only after 36 hours of uninterrupted travel that the travelers reached Tough-Todivaslou—the Queen of the North—an important city of the lunar world’s northern hemisphere, built near a river in an immense drained marsh.
“It reminds me of Pinsk, in Russia,” murmured Ossipoff.
They only stayed in the city just long enough to renew the boat’s provisions.
The journey had already lasted two terrestrial days; the Sun was descending gradually toward the horizon, and in three times 24 hours it would cease to illuminate this hemisphere of the Moon, transporting its light and heat to the visible hemisphere. It was, therefore, important to make haste if they wanted to avoid the 15-day night and cross the pole at the same time as the Sun. The second part of the voyage was bound to be much more difficult and more perilous, and the 354 hours of daylight would not be too many to permit Ossipoff to find his precious mineral and allow Jonathan Farenheit to get his hands on Fedor Sharp.
Chapter XVI
The Mountains of Eternal Light
Seated in the bow of the vessel with a strong telescope in his hands, Ossipoff scanned the horizon; his expression, already grave, visibly darkened as the mountains looming up in the distance displayed their elevated peaks and monstrous ramparts more clearly. A hand fell on his shoulder, and he turned to see Selena standing behind him, looking at him anxiously. “Father,” she said, “is there some frightful danger that’s worrying you?”
“It’s those mountains that frighten me,” the old man answered, anxiously.
“Why is that? Wasn’t that volcano we passed recently just as high?”
“Perhaps—but it didn’t have the same location.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“That those mountains are situated on the boundary between the two hemispheres and that, in consequence, the air must be very rarefied there.”
Selena smiled. “Haven’t we got Monsieur Fricoulet’s respirols?”
The old man pursed his lips disdainfully.
“You don’t trust them?” Selena murmured. “Monsieur de Flammermont has examined them, and has told me that he couldn’t have done better himself.”
“Hmm!” said Ossipoff. “Dear Gontran is indulgent to his friend. I can’t understand how a man as replete with talent and education as him can associate himself with such a mediocre individual.” He turned to Telinga and asked: “Will we be obliged to fly over those peaks?”
“It is necessary,” the Selenite replied. “What other route would you like to take?”
“There must be some less elevated pass, however narrow, between two chains.”
“Yes,” said the other. “We could find a pass without making a considerable detour, but we can only reach Romounhinch by going straight ahead.”
Ossipoff consulted the map that he had drawn up during the long night spent in the volcano. By comparing it with his atlas of lunar geography he established that Romounhinch was the name by which the Selenites designated the Circus of Plato. “But is it necessary to go that far?” he murmured.
“It is the shortest route to get to Notoliders, in the vicinity of which—according to the information you’ve given me—you will find what you are looking for.”
A further comparison of his Terran atlas with his Selenite map told Ossipoff that this new volcano was none other than Archimedes. “But that volcano is a long way into the other hemisphere!” he exclaimed.
“Almost in the center of the Subvolvan region. It, is, moreover, the largest crater on our world after the Circus of Clavius.
Ossipoff consulted his instruments. The barometer indicated just 28 centimeters of pressure; the compass was confused, indicating no fixed direction. The old man’s eyebrows furrowed violently and he looked at his companions anxiously. Meanwhile, to increase the gravity of the situation, the further the vessel advanced, the more the daylight faded and the darkness deepened. “My friends,” he said, trying to keep his voice firm, “I think it’s time to put on these items of apparatus.”
The respirols, as Fricoulet had baptized them, were quite simple. They
had been designed to permit their wearers to venture with impunity into the bosom of the most unbreathable and most rarefied atmospheres. Each one consisted of a sort of rubber cagoule falling to the underside of the thorax, hermetically sealed beneath the arms. Two panes of glass set in front of the eyes permitted the wearer to see as clearly as if he were wearing spectacles, and there was an opening in front of the mouth equipped with a valve opening inside and out, in order to permit the evacuation of the gases of pulmonary combustion. This valve also permitted the adjunction of a copper tube designed to be applied to the ear of anyone to whom he wished to speak, when the rarefaction of the air prevented the transmission of sound. In a side-pocket there was a steel cylinder, with a capacity of a quarter of a liter, containing liquid oxygen; when the tap was opened, gas was released and it arrived via a tube in the rubber envelope, which it inflated without being able to escape. This steel cylinder contained a provision of 3000 liters of gaseous oxygen—which is to say, the equivalent of three days’ consumption.
With the assistance of the inventor, the travelers were rapidly clad in their respirols. Fricoulet checked all the parts of the apparatus one after another, assuring himself that the tubes were firmly attached and that the fastenings were hermetically sealed. Then he opened the taps and the oxygen distended the folds of the cagoule. So far as the upper parts of their bodies were concerned, each traveler soon resembled a lollipop.
While this was accomplished, Telinga had recharged the apparatus of his vehicle with combustible material, and the voyagers rose up into the air, alternately moving very steeply up and down.
Always roller-coasters, thought Gontran, privately, the respirol making it extremely inconvenient for him to communicate his impressions.
Ossipoff’s eyes had not left the needle of his barometer, and he was very glad that his faced was hidden by the rubber cagoule, for his companions would have been veritably alarmed by the alteration of his features. “Damn!” he murmured. “The pressure’s diminishing.”
Fricoulet, who was also keeping watch on the barometer, applied the end of his “speaker”—as he had nicknamed the acoustic tube—to the scientist’s ear. “Before long,” he said, “the pressure will be less than that subsisting at an Earthly altitude of 15,000 meters.”
Ossipoff nodded his head and murmured: “As long as these rubber hoods don’t burst!”
At that moment his gaze fell on Gontran, who was sitting beside Selena, holding the young woman’s hands in his, using the expressive language of his eyes to replace the affectionate words that he found it repugnant to address to her “by tube.” What a man! thought the old scientist, attributing Flammermont’s indifference to the threat of death to courage rather than ignorance. Then, solicited by his anguish, he turned to Telinga, who was attentively supervising the maneuvers. He was anxious that the Selenite should not risk even lower pressure in order to get over the mountains.
Suddenly, however, as the vessel flew over a mass of granite barring the horizon, at a prodigious velocity, Telinga brought about an abrupt 50-meter descent in order to enter a breach curving between two masses of brown rocks. Although it was almost completely dark now, the Selenite pressed on boldly into this corridor, avoiding all the obstacles that loomed up incessantly from the shadows with marvelous assurance.
Finally, after ten minutes—which seemed as long as decades to the voyagers—the rocks suddenly opened up, and an enormous and resplendent star appeared over a jagged mountainous horizon.
The Earth! Selena thought.
“The Moon!” cried Gontran, applying his speaker to Ossipoff’s ear.
Flamermont understood from the old man’s abrupt movement that he had just said something stupid. He hastened to correct himself. “The Moon’s moon, that is—isn’t the Earth lit up like a satellite of the world we’re presently visiting?”
Leaning pensively on the guard-rail, Selena studied the sparkling sphere, 13 times brighter than the full Moon of the most beautiful terrestrial nights. She found it difficult to imagine that she had been born on that distant world, and that a mere five days had sufficed to hollow out an immense and terrifying abyss of 90,000 leagues between her and it.
Even Ossipoff, forgetting the dangers of the situation, glued his eye to his telescope, recognizing the large patches of the oceans, cut across by the brighter tints of the continents. At that moment, it was 2 p.m. in Paris and 4 p.m. in St. Petersburg; the two Americas were emerging from shadow and Asia had disappeared.
While the scientist plunged into contemplation, the boat wound around the buttresses of the monstrous mountains forming a titanic barrier between the two hemispheres. Beyond that barrier, there was a very different region. The panorama offered to the travelers’ view was grandiose, presenting no point of comparison with the most savage location that might be encountered on Earth. The almost total rarefaction of the air at the high altitudes they had reached gave the landscape a monotonous aspect.
What immediately struck Gontran—who, as an amateur artist, was amusing himself by sketching in a drawing-pad—was the absolute lack of perspective, by virtue of the absence of half-tones. A harsh light descended from the sky, and everything that was not directly illuminated by the light of the full Earth remained intensely black, so that the remotest plane surfaces seemed as sharp as the nearest—to the extent that the Comte, wanting to depict these rocks and jagged-rimmed craters, could put nothing but ink-stains on his sheet of white paper. “In truth,” he murmured, “if I sent a painting in this genre to the Salon, the Impressionists themselves would jeer at me—and yet it’s photographically exact!” Sadly, he added: “Sometimes the truth isn’t very plausible.”
O Boileau, you certainly could not have expected to awaken echoes in lunar landscapes!71
The further the travelers advanced into the Subvolvan regions, the more the desolate aridity of the rocky regions increased. Jonathan Farenheit never stopped swearing, Selena felt a desire to weep, and even Fricoulet was afflicted by a mortal sadness. As for Gontran, he became profoundly nostalgic in thinking that, at this very moment, that palace of industry the Champs-Elysées, would be spilling forth a crowd racing to witness the great military tournament mounted for the benefit of the poor.
Closing his eyes to rid himself of the monotonous and dreary spectacle of the lunar wilderness, he crossed the 90,000 leagues separating him from Paris with a single imaginative leap and, for several seconds, dazzled his eyes with bright costumes, the gleam of diamonds and the sparkle of gold and steel, while his ears hummed softly to orchestral strains, punctuated by the whinnying of horse and bursts of applause. Suddenly, he started, snatched from his pleasant vision by a voice that murmured in his ear: “Plato.”
It was Ossipoff, who, forcing himself to lean over the guard-rail, was pointing down from the vessel at the crater of one of the most curious lunar circuses.
Scarcely had the young man directed his eyes at the panorama unfolding beneath him when he cried: “A forest!”
“What did you say?” asked Ossipoff, divining the young man’s astonishment without understanding its cause.
By means of his tube, Gontran repeated the exclamation that he had just uttered.
“Well, what’s astonishing about that?” said the old man.
“I thought that all astronomers were agreed in refusing this region of the Moon the slightest vegetation.”
“All!” Ossipoff protested. “Not all, for photography proves the contrary. The soil of certain lunar plains and the depths of a few craters, such as Plato, are not photogenic. The majority of the astronomers of the last century had attributed the absorption of luminous radiation to vegetation but, as the low density of the atmosphere on the visible surface has now been determined, along with the total absence of rivers or any liquid whatsoever, the present inclination is to deny that vegetation. However, contemporary scientists such as Warren de la Rue, Rutherfurd and Secchi,72 who are specialists in lunar photography, have held to the contrary opinion that these p
hotogenic differences must originate from vegetal reflection. The green tint in question has been observed in the Sea of Crises and in Plato.” Passing Gontran a pieced of paper, he continued: “Here’s a drawing by Stanley Williams73 representing the interior of the circus over which we’re flying. Isn’t it an exact representation of the actuality?”
The flying boat was, at that moment, almost immobile directly above the crater and the voyagers were able to distinguish clearly that the soil of the circus was covered in vast forests cut through by wide roads. There were objects like molehills at certain crossroads, which Telinga declared to have once been dwellings, and a thick, opaque fog rose in spirals from a few subsurface chimneys, spreading like a misty veil from one edge to the other.
“Stanley Williams’ drawing corresponds closely to the actuality,” said Fricoulet.
“But I’ve already seen this map,” Gontran said, seriously, “in one of my illustrious namesake’s books.”
“In Les Continents célestes?” said Ossipoff.
“Undoubtedly.”
The Selenite, thinking that enough time had been lost in the study of the crater, pressed the lever that he used to steer his vessel, and the aerial voyage continued.
It was then that Fricoulet asked Ossipoff: “If I’ve understood the objective of this exploration correctly, we’re going in search of a means of continuing our interplanetary voyage?”
The scientist replied affirmatively by nodding his head.
“You seriously intend to leave the Moon?”
Ossipoff gestured impatiently. “A worldlet scarcely 800 leagues in diameter!” he exclaimed. “On which the five of us weigh no more than I alone weigh on Earth: a decadent—not to say nearly dead—world, only parts of which are habitable and inhabited!”
“But to launch yourself into space again,” Fricoulet objected, “you’ll need an agent of projection even more rapid than Cotopaxi, for in the sidereal desert, the leagues are not counted in thousands, but in millions.”
The Extraordinary Adventures of a Russian Scientist Across the Solar System (Vol. 1) Page 32
