On hearing his fiancée make this offer, Flammermont went slight pale, and his face expressed the most determined opposition. “Monsieur Ossipoff,” he said, turning to the old man, “I beg you not to leave Mademoiselle Selena alone with that man.”
“What are you afraid of?” asked the young woman. “The unfortunate, as you see, is incapable of moving a muscle; if he weren’t breathing, he’d be assumed to be dead.”
“I know that, my dear Selena,” replied the young Comte “but what do you expect? It worries me to think of you staying here alone with him.”
All gazes were turned to the old man. “It’s true,” he said, “that it would certainly be preferable not to deprive ourselves of Mr. Farenheit’s services...but it’s better for him to stay here with Sharp instead of my daughter. I know that there’s nothing to fear, but we shouldn’t tempt the Devil.”
It was with these words that the old scientist, his daughter and their two companions embarked once again in the flying boat to go to Chuir, leaving the American installed at the dying man’s bedside—for it was impossible to consider Fedor Sharp as anything else but moribund. More than a week had passed since the day when Sharp’s enemies had found him in the Mountains of Eternal Light, and, still extended motionless on his bed, he would have seemed dead had not Fricoulet assured himself from time to time that his heart was still beating—feebly, it is true—and if the engineer had not succeeded, every 12 hours, in introducing a half-cube’s worth of Liebig87 dissolved in a little water between his teeth.
This did not prevent Jonathan Farenheit from watching him as closely as if he dreaded some escape attempt on the part of the living corpse. The American’s hatred, apparently soothed over time, had awakened more strongly than ever as soon as hazard had brought him face to face with his enemy. He would not, however, lay a finger on him when he was in this state; he could be rude, brutal and resentful—manifest all the faults in the world, in brief—but in reality, his was an honest and loyal nature. He prayed to God, however, for a miracle that would restore Fedor Sharp to health. If such a thing should happen, oh how different things would be! And as he thought about that, a ferocious rictus pulled back his lips, uncovering his long yellow teeth, while his formidable hairy fists closed in a feverish clench.
Unfortunately for the American’s plans for vengeance, God did not seem at all disposed to work a miracle; when Ossipoff came back after three days with the vehicle, Sharp was in exactly the same state as when he had left. Taking note of that, Farenheit lost patience—not to mention that he did not like to see his companions working while he spent his days wandering around the room where the invalid lay, like a wild beast in its cage—and therefore decided to abandon his sentry-duty and join the others in the crater where they were busy repairing the vehicle.
The shell had suffered somewhat during the terrible fall that had deposited it on the lunar soil. The base, or inferior part, was buckled and deformed in several places and the Terrans required a great deal of effort and many hours of work to restore its former impermeability. Mikhail Ossipoff was so knowledgeable, though, Fricoulet so ingenious, Gontran so adroit and Farenheit so strong, that they achieved this goal quite rapidly.
When the projectile’s exterior had been repaired, they went on to the interior, but that work was trivial compared to what they had already completed; it was simply a matter of reassembling the bookcases, re-securing the floorboards, replacing the broken incandescent lamps, screwing in the chandelier, laying down new conductive wires and putting new zinc plates in the batteries. When all that was done, and the vehicle was restored to its original state, they busied themselves refilling the reservoirs of air by liquefying—by means of apparatus Ossipoff had brought with him—the oxygen contained in the lunar atmosphere.
Now, there was no more to do but furnish the vehicle with its new means of locomotion.
Ossipoff had some carefully nailed-up boxes, whose contents he had kept absolutely secret throughout the voyage, brought from the laboratory. These boxes had been transported to the room put at the Terrans’ disposal. The sacks of mineral gathered in the Subvolvan regions were piled in the corner opposite Fedor Sharp’s bunk and protected from the light by a tarpaulin.
Half a dozen crystal spheres about 50 centimeters in diameter, carefully wrapped in straw and protected from the least shock by rubber tampons, were taken out of the opened boxes.
“Well, Monsieur Ossipoff,” said Fricoulet, “you’re a careful man. These receptacles that you mentioned the other day for the purpose containing your mineral—here they are.”
“Precisely, Monsieur Fricoulet,” replied the old man. Then, observing visible traces of anxiety on the young man’s face, he added: “Have you, by chance, some observation to make to me? What are you thinking?”
“I’m wondering what means we’ll use to land.”
Ossipoff shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing more simple,” he said. “These transparent spheres will be enclosed in other metallic spheres, which you see here. By uncovering these metallic spheres to a greater or lesser extent, by a mechanism operated from inside, the mineral will be exposed to the luminous rays to varying degrees, and we’ll regulate our speed in that fashion.”
Fricoulet shook his head, and was certainly about to raise another objection, but Gontran got in ahead of him. “That’s the question of speed settled, my dear Monsieur,” he said, “but the question of direction remains. If light becomes the motor of our projectile, we’ll never be able to steer in any other direction than sunwards.”
A sly smile lit up the engineer’s face, and he added in his turn: “With the result that we can only visit the planets orbiting between the Earth and the Sun—Venus and Mercury, that is. As for the planets external to the Earth’s orbit, like Mars, Saturn and many others…we won’t be able to think of going there.”
The old scientist reflected, his head on his breast.
“Then again,” Flammermont went on, desirous of showing off his astronomical knowledge, “How long will this new voyage last? Have you considered that it’s more than 20,000,000 leagues from the Earth to Mercury…it will take whole months to cross such enormous distances.” He fell silent.
It seemed that the old man was crushed by the weight of these objections; with his arms folded, his eyes fixed on the ground and his brows violently furrowed, he remained plunged in profound meditation.
“By God!” Jonathan Farenheit suddenly cried, having not so far said anything. “Why don’t you coat the exterior wall of your vehicle with the mineral. The greater the impressionable surface you have, the greater your speed will be.”
Ossipoff raised his head and stared fixedly at the American. Then he hurled himself towards him and grabbed his hands, which he shook warmly. “You’re a genius, Mr. Farenheit!” he cried. He turned to Gontran and Fricoulet.
“No, we won’t be traveling for years, Monsieur de Flammermont,” he said, victoriously. “No, Monsieur Fricoulet, we won’t always be traveling towards the Sun. As dear Mr. Farenheit has just said, we have a sufficiently respectable number of square meters on our vehicle to maximize our speed. As for the direction, we shall obtain that by disposing a large platform around the vehicle, one side of which will be coated by the mineral while the other is painted black. This platform will be composed of plates pivoting in such a manner that by exposing one face or another to the light one can change direction.”88
He took a pencil from his pocket, made a few rapid calculations on the wall of the room, and added: “The maximum speed that we shall be able to attain might be as high as 20,000 meters per second, which is 18,000 leagues an hour. To reach Mercury, therefore, will require a little more than 40 days of traveling.” He looked around in search of approval, but those audacious men found the old man’s project so extravagant that no one responded. “Bah!” he muttered, through gritted teeth. “They don’t understand—but experience will convince them.”
However little confidence Gontran and the American had in th
e theory, and however mistrustful Fricoulet might be, everyone nevertheless set to work doggedly. They prepared a viscous paint to which the precious mineral was added, having first been purified, carefully sifted and purged of the foreign elements it contained. Farenheit, transformed into a plasterer, was charged with extending this preparation over the exterior walls of the vehicle. In the meantime, Fricoulet, aided by Gontran, fabricated a platform composed of 24 sections, each mounted on an axis that cut through the wall and allowed them to pivot on themselves at the travelers’ command, in order to present one face or the other to the luminous rays.
Finally, on the very morning of the day fixed for the congress to meet, the Terrans completed their task and left the shell in the middle of the crater, ready to depart, in order to get a few hours’ rest.
“What are we going to do with Sharp?” Fricoulet asked Ossipoff, when they got back to their temporary lodgings.
A frown informed the engineer that this question was something of an embarrassment to the old man. “I don’t know,” the latter replied, after a few seconds.
“We can’t abandon the poor man in that state, though,” Selena murmured, in a voice full of pity.
“For the moment, he’s certainly not much more than a corpse,” added Fricoulet.
Farenheit extended his hand. “Would you like to entrust the job of looking after him to me?” he asked.
“You!” cried Ossipoff.
“Yes, me. I’ll give you my word of honor to do everything possible to save him—but once he’s up and about, I resume my former liberty, and then….” The glint in his eye finished his sentence more significantly than the most forceful words could have done.
“Are you abandoning us, then?” cried Flammermont.
“My dear sir,” replied the American, “In encumbering you with my presence when the shell left Earth, I had but one objective—to get to the Moon and, once there, to go in search of that scoundrel Sharp. Now I have him, I shan’t leave him. I have no reason to extend my peregrinations any further.”
Ossipoff shrugged his shoulders in a surprised manner. “What?” he exclaimed. “Don’t you care about going to admire at close range all the celestial marvels that solicit your attention even when you perceive them at a distance of millions of leagues?”
The American shook his head. “To be frank, Monsieur Ossipoff,” he replied, “I must confess that I’ve always been much more interested in the raising of pigs and the pork-fat trade than the stars and planets. For the moment, I’d much prefer to contemplate the face of Fedor Sharp, villain that he is, than to admire Mars or Saturn, however magical the spectacles they promise me.” And with these words, pronounced in a tone that admitted no rely, the American crossed the threshold of the room that served as the Terrans’ dwelling. Scarcely had he taken a few paces, though, than he raised his arms to the heavens in a gesture of fury, and a strangle exclamation escaped his lips: “Sharp…Sharp!”
He could say no more, and is mouth remained wide open in the midst of his apoplectic face, in which his round eyes were like two stains shining like furnaces. His companions had come running and were staring, mute with amazement, at the bunk on which Sharp had been lying for a fortnight.
It was empty.
“The clown’s tricked us!” cried Gontran, furiously.
Ospoff turned to Fricoulet and asked him, in a mocking tone: “Well, Monsieur, how ill did you say he was?”
“I’ll run after him, Monsieur Ossipoff,” the engineer replied, “and if I find him, I swear that I’ll bring him back, dead or alive.” So saying, he leapt upon a carbine suspended from the wall and raced outside. Gontran and Farenheit set off at his heels, leaving the old man and his distressed daughter behind.
The three men came back four hours later, exhausted and with heads bowed. They had been unable to find any trace of the fugitive anywhere.
“We must be on our guard,” growled Farenheit. “The bandit is capable of doing us a bad turn.”
As he finished this speech, Telinga came in search of them to take them to the crater in which a vast crowd, under the presidency of the eminent Selenite scientists, was waiting for them.
In the midst of an imposing silence, the director of the Selenite Observatory stood up and made the following speech in a vibrant tone:
“My dear compatriots, all of you who have responded to our call and have traveled enormous distances to gather in this enclosure, know that the space that separates the Revolver from our world has been crossed by audacious inhabitants of that planet, curious to study our humble sphere in the course of their journey.
“Thus, the great veil is torn away, the mysteries of nature are brought into the light, and, before the complete extinction of life on its surface, our world will have received the assurance that another life is developing alongside it, and that, while it continues to roll, inert and frozen, though the infinite space of the heavens, another humankind, younger and superior to ours, will pursue its ascendant march towards progress and perfection.
“What more prodigious fact is there than that to which we are witness? What more moving event has there been in the annals of our planet? From this moment on, we are entering into direct communication with our other brothers in Infinity. Before disappearing, our humankind will have seen them, and obtained the assurance from them that the Worlds of the Heavens are the abode of intelligent and happy beings.”
Here the orator paused briefly, which permitted Gontran to murmur in Fricoulet’s ear: “Strike up the band!”
Turning toward Ossipoff, the Selenite resumed: “And now illustrious scientist, tell us about the Earth and give us a detailed account of your voyage, that our scribes might record it on a special page in our history.”
The old man got up, and began the story of his adventures.
When he got to the point of saying that the most powerful motive for his voyage had been the ardent desire to know whether or not the Moon was inhabited, Telinga asked him: “Do people on the Revolver not believe in the habitability of other worlds, then—and that of the Moon, in particular?”
“To tell the truth,” Ossipoff replied, “nine-tenth of humankind take very little interest in the planets and stars, hardly knowing their names.” So saying, he glanced scornfully at Jonathan Farenheit. “As for the rest—by which I mean the scientific world—in spite of the efforts of our philosophers, they dispute the question of the plurality of worlds bitterly. The most celebrated among us consider the Earth to be the only place where creatures can exist; for them, the other planets are absolutely deserted, for the simple reason that they do not resemble the terraqueous ball that gave birth to them. As to the specific matter of the Moon, this, or very nearly, is the language they use: ‘Long deprived of all liquid and any aerial envelope, the Moon is not subject to any terrestrial meteorological phenomena; it has neither rain, nor clouds, nor wind, nor hail, nor storms. It is a solid and arid mass, desolate and silent, without the slightest vestige of vegetation, where it is evident that no animal could find the means of subsistence. If, however, the Moon has inhabitants, they can only be creatures devoid of all impressionability, sentiment and movement, reduced to the condition of brute bodies, inert substances, etc. etc…’ ”
These words were greeted by a loud clicking of tongues sounded by 12,000 giants. That explosion of gaiety might almost have been heard on Earth.
“This reasoning by terrestrial astronomers,” Telinga retorted, immediately, “proves that they have very poor optical instruments with which to study our planet, and that their understanding is blind to the manifestations of nature. Rather than you, would we not he entitled to claim that your world is uninhabitable, by virtue of the differences it presents from ours: its tumultuous meteorological regime, its heavy atmosphere and its continually agitated oceans? Could we not say, with reason, that your planet has no other reason for existence than to serve the regions of Subvolva as a lighthouse and clock?”
After satisfying his indignation with these f
ew words, the Selenite sat down, and Ossipoff added: “So, it was only after many difficulties that I was able to quit my native planet and launch myself into space…”
Telinga interrupted again. “But what about the two Terrans that you encountered in the Mountains of Eternal Light?”
Ossipoff became red with anger. “One of those two—the one that is dead—is unknown to me,” he said. “The other is a wretch who succeeded in stealing my method of interlunary locomotion…and while a volcano furnished me with the propulsion I needed, he constructed the cannon that I had invented and launched himself toward your world.”
“To exploit its diamond-fields!” cried the thunderous voice of Jonathan Farenheit. “Those precious diggings that only existed in the thief’s imagination!”
As he finished, a long thin silhouette surged from behind a crack in the rock, and a strident voice cried: “Jonathan Farenheit, you’re a liar!”
The man who had spoken was Fedor Sharp, who was standing still in the middle of the circus, not far from the tarpaulin covering the vehicle, looking his enemies up and down with a mocking gaze, seemingly challenging them.
Ossipoff and the American stood up as one. The former was dumbstruck with amazement, but the latter would have hurled himself forward if Fricoulet and Gontran had not thrown their arms around him. “Let me go!” he cried. “Let me go—I want to avenge myself!” But his companions, who wanted to serve justice by taking Sharp alive, felt bound by that obligation to prevent Farenheit from reaching the wretch.
In the assembly, the tumult reached its peak; all the Selenites were standing up, seeing to divine from the Terrans’ gestures what was being said in a language incomprehensible to them.
Suddenly, Ossipoff said to Sharp: “Fedor Sharp, you are a traitor and a thief. I blush for Russia, my fatherland, which gave birth to you, and for the St. Petersburg Institute of Sciences, which admitted you into its ranks. Your infamous conduct calls for vengeance; the very circumstances permit us to punish you. We are departing, never to return, and we shall leave you here, on this unknown world, without a friend, without sustenance, in the midst of a population hostile to deceit, which will hold you in the most profound scorn. May God take pity on you soon and summon you to Him…”
The Extraordinary Adventures of a Russian Scientist Across the Solar System (Vol. 1) Page 38
