Farenheit was presumably taken in by Flammermont’s stroke of genius, for his face visibly lengthened. “Pooh!” he murmured. “When we’ve got rid of our weapons, our clothes, the few remaining instruments and the provisions we still have to eat, we’ll only be 100 kilograms lighter—and then what?”
“The fact is,” said Fricoulet, in his turn, “that it’s not worth the trouble of throwing ballast overboard when we have so little to throw.”
Gontran shook his head. “You haven’t understood me,” he said. “There’s no question, in my view, of getting rid of our weapons, clothes and everything indispensable to our existence.”
“In that case,” said the American, “unless we throw ourselves overboard…”
“I know what you mean!” Fricoulet suddenly exclaimed, examining his friend attentively as if to read his thoughts in his face.
“You do?”
“At least, I think so.”
“Well?”
“It’s bold, but it’s not impossible.” He went over to Ossipoff, who was continuing his studies, careless of the death to which he and his companions were hurtling with vertiginous rapidity. “My dear Monsieur,” he said, “the minutes are too precious to be spent counting the stars. Would you please lend us the assistance of your wisdom and knowledge?”
The old scientist abandoned his telescope, grumbling.
“The situation is grave,” Fricoulet began. “Very grave. In a few hours we’ll land on Mercury, and God only knows what will be left of us after that landing.”
Ossipoff shrugged his shoulders, meaning that there was nothing he could do about it.
The engineer continued. “Staring from the principle that the lighter we are, the less chance our fall has of being mortal,126 Monsieur de Flammermont proposes that we lighten ourselves by 300 kilos.”
The old savant started. “But that’s a third of the weight of the entire apparatus,” he said.
“It is, in fact, the weight of the cabin in which we are presently lodged.”
Ossipoff opened his eyes wide. “You want us to separate ourselves from the cabin?” he asked Gontran.
“But you’re mad!” cried Farenheit.
Completely nonplussed, the young man kept quiet.
“Why shouldn’t we separate ourselves from it?” Fricoulet said. “Isn’t the apparatus constructed in such a fashion that the two parts comprising it can be separated from one another? How did we land on Venus, if you please?”
“The situation isn’t the same,” Ossipoff retorted. “It was the sphere, not the cabin, that we abandoned, and we had a parachute, while at present…”
“At present, it’s a matter of doing on Mercury the opposite of what we did on Venus. Besides, have you another means? If so, we’re ready to examine it and adopt it, if it’s preferable to ours.”
“No, I haven’t,” the old scientist replied, dryly.
“By God!” complained the American. “You might have found one if you’d racked your brains a little, instead of hypnotizing yourself with your eye screwed to your telescope.”
Ossipoff shrugged his shoulders meekly, and was doubtless about to return to his beloved instrument, but Fricoulet stopped him. “No, my dear Monsieur” he said. “Leave the continuation of your studies until later. At the moment, it’s a matter of all of us getting down to work, for time’s pressing.”
The old man released a sigh.
“This is what we’re going to do,” the engineer continued. “You and Mr. Farenheit will package up, as carefully as possible, all the objects contained in the cabin that you think are indispensable. Gontran and I will attach them as we go along to the circular floor that runs along the interior wall of the sphere.”
No sooner was this said than the work was begun; in two hours, the cabin was entirely cleared of everything it contained.
“What about the selenium wires that attached us to the parachute?” asked Farenheit. “Shall we abandon them?”
Fricoulet reflected for a few moments, then replied: “No—they might be useful afterwards.”
“For what?”
“Attaching ourselves securely. Later perhaps, we’ll be able to dispense with them.”
His gaze traced a circle around him; having established that nothing had been forgotten, he said: “Let’s go. Everyone down below!”
One after another they went down and, following the engineer’s instructions, took their places on the floor, to which Fricoulet attached them solidly, as he had said, with the metal wires.
“What about you?” Gontran asked.
“Don’t worry about me,” he replied. “I’m going back up to jettison the ballast when the time comes.”
An hour went by, and then two, while the voyagers, reduced to almost complete immobility, waited with anguish in their hearts for the engineer to rejoin them.
Suddenly, there was a cracking sound; a powerful shock shook the sphere, and Fricoulet appeared on the first step of the stairway, crying: “It’s done! Now, by the grace of God…”
He sat down next to his companions and passed a selenium cable around his body and the central axis, as fishermen tie themselves to the mast of their boat in anticipation of a storm.
They were falling, not in a spin, as Farenheit had dreaded, but vertically, like the lead of a plumb-line. Because all four of them were gathered in the inferior part of the sphere, they accumulated a weight of more than 200 kilograms at a single point, which gave the apparatus an immutable fixity.
They were falling, and through the gaping aperture at their feet they saw the Mercurian panorama approaching them with vertiginous rapidity, filling the entire space. The exact configuration of the ground now appeared to them as clearly as if they were floating in a balloon at a height of a few kilometers. The mountains launched their sharp peaks towards them, while projecting gigantic shadows from their bases, and expanses of water glowed with the fiery reflections of the last rays of the setting Sun. Mute with amazement, clinging to the lines that attached them to the sphere, the voyagers kept their eyes riveted to the world that was attracting them with irresistible force, wondering anxiously whether the moment of impact might be the moment of death.
They were falling…falling…
Suddenly, there was a frightful shock, accompanied by a terrible noise; one would have thought that the vehicle had shattered into tiny pieces.
The four Terrans uttered screams of terror.
“Mercury!” shouted Fricoulet, in jest. “The whole world’s coming down!” He had not finished when a new shock, less violent, almost broke their attachments. Then, immediately afterwards, one after another, came a third and a fourth…soon, rolling madly, the sphere began to tumble downwards.
The voyagers, sometimes upside-down and sometimes the right way up, were blinded by thick dust, deafened by the thunderous noise the metal made as it rolled over the ground and bewildered by the sensation of being borne away by that inexplicable whirlwind. What had happened was, however, quite simple. In its fall, the sphere had met one of the high mountains of Mercury half way up; the violence of the impact had caused the sphere to rebound, like a balloon, to a height of some 50 meters; then it had fallen further on, and rebounded again, until the moment when, exhausting its force in successive bounds, it had begun to roll down the side of the mountain, knocking down trees, dislodging rocks and crossing ravines and streams, like an avalanche. In less than ten minutes, it arrived on the plain after a journey of eight kilometers; then it stopped.
“Oof!” sighed Fricoulet. “I thought it would never end.” Prudently, he waited for a few seconds. “However,” he added, “this time I believe we’ve arrived. What do you think?” No one replied to this question. “Damn!” he muttered. “My friends don’t have solid heads—just as long as we haven’t lost one or two of them along the way…”
Rapidly, he rid himself of the wire that bound him to the metal pivot, rummaged in his pocket and bought out his little magnesium torch, which immediately dispersed a
dazzling light within the sphere. His three companions were all there; he let out a sigh of relief. On looking at them, though, he burst out laughing almost immediately. In a state of collapse, with their heads slumped on their breasts, their arms hanging down alongside their bodies and their legs limp, they looked for all the world like the marionettes maneuvered in the Guignols of the Champs-Elysées for the amusement of children and soldiers. Cut the strings that make one of the aforementioned marionettes move, and you would have an almost exact idea of the appearance of the unfortunate Terrans…
“The fact is,” the engineer murmured, “that one would have to have a damned strong heart in one’s breast to withstand such a singular means of traveling.” While speaking, he untied his companions one by one and laid them out on the circular floor. After that, he went outside to investigate the lie of the land.
Night had fallen and everything around the young man was dark and silent. It seemed to him, however, that he could hear a confused murmur not far away, similar to that produced by the waters of a stream running over pebbles. As he stood still, not knowing which way to go, a star suddenly appeared in the clear sky, where numerous stars were sparkling, burning incomparably brightly amid the nocturnal fires illuminating space, whose gentle and indecisive light fell upon Fricoulet. At the same time the surrounding landscape emerged from the shadows, almost distinctly outlined, although blurred by the evening mist.
“Thank you, Venus,” the engineer said, blithely, nodding his head in the direction of the radiant star.
Looking around him, then, he observed that he was at the foot of a very high mountain, on the edge of a forest whose trees had stopped the sphere. Not far away, snaking down the mountain-side, a stream was singing in a crystalline voice, reflecting the discreet light of Venus in its waters.
It only took Fricoulet five minutes to grab the first receptacle that came to hand from the sphere, run to the stream, fill it up and come back to throw the contents in his companions’ faces. Hardly had the liquid touched their skin, however, when Mikhail Ossipoff and his two companions in misfortune began to scream horribly.
“Fire! Fire!” howled Farenheit, leaping to his feet. Then, noticing Fricoulet standing at the entrance to the sphere, looking at his friend in bewilderment, he groaned: “By God! What’s this dirty trick?” And he advanced upon the engineer with his fists raised threateningly.
“Now then, now then!” retorted the engineer. “Is that how you thank me for the care I’ve given you?”
“A funny sort of care, in truth,” said Ossipoff, in his turn. “A singular fashion of bring people round, dousing them in boiling water!”
“Boiling water?” repeated Fricoulet. “Have you gone mad?”
“Isn’t it you that’s gone mad?” cried Gontran, dolorously mopping his face with his handkerchief.
“Hot water?” the engineer continued. “But I just fetched it from that stream…over there!”
He had not finished speaking when Farenheit ran out, in order to be the first to check it out. Forgetful of the special laws regulating weight on the surface of a world that was new to him, though, he arrived at the place indicated by Fricoulet in a single bound, even though it was ten meters away. He fell into the stream, in which he sank up to his knees.
There were screams, curses and lamentations then, which were still pouring forth when they pulled the unfortunate Yankee out, with the skin on his legs almost coming away.
“Damn it!” murmured Fricoulet, while applying an improvised dressing. “There’s nothing like bathing one’s feet in a hot water to clear the head.”
Gontran, greatly amused by the American’s grimaces, came to shake his hand energetically. “Thank you, Mr. Farenheit,” he said. “Thank you!”
“For what?” asked the other, astonished.
“For having given us, by virtue of that little accident, certain proof that the ground on which we’re standing at this moment really is the surface of Mercury.”
Farenheit looked hard at his interlocutor, to see whether he was mocking him, but Flammermont’s serious expression fooled him and he stifled the ill-tempered words he was about to pronounce with a groan.
“Did you think, then, Gontran,” Ossipoff said, “that we needed such proof to know where we are?”
The young man sketched a vague gesture. “My God!” he stammered. “Perhaps it wasn’t entirely necessary.”
“I’d say more—that it was needless.” Raising his arms toward the sky, the scientist added: “Do we not have, there above our heads, a marvelous indicator, which, better than any other, can guide us on our way and inform us of our position?”
“It is, indeed, true,” said Gontran, “that by the positions of the stars…”
Fricoulet interrupted him. “Permit me, however, to observe, Monsieur Ossipoff, that the sky, seen from Mercury or other planets, is absolutely the same as when seen from Earth. Do we not perceive there, almost at the zenith, the seven stars of the Great Bear? Isn’t that Orion on our left, and Rigel, shining not far from the Pleiades? On our right, do we not see Arcturus, Vega, Procyon and Capella? Thus, we can scarcely have recourse to the starry vault to reassure ourselves that we’re really on the Mercurian surface.”
Ossipoff greeted these words with brief mocking laughter.
“You’re forgetting,” he said, “that Venus can shine with such an intense light for the planet Mercury alone. If that doesn’t seem conclusive to you….there’s Mars, over there…there’s Jupiter…and finally, there’s the Earth. Tell me, from which world in the sidereal system can one perceive the different planets I’ve just named, in those positions and with those dimensions?” He looked at the engineer triumphantly.
“Take note,” replied Fricoulet, “that I had no need of what you have just told me to form an opinion as to the world on which we’re standing—but I must insist on the point that, by virtue of the prodigious distance of the stars, the perspectives don’t change, and that…”
“Pardon me,” said Gontran, looking Fricoulet up and down disdainfully, “But is this little astronomical discourse addressed to me?”
“Not at all, not at all,” the engineer hastened to reply. “It was for Mr. Farenheit’s benefit.”
“By God!” grumbled the latter, considering his calves with a piteous expression. “The boiling water from the stream’s turned them scarlet! If you’re talking to me you’re wasting your time, for I care about all that as much as…” He finished his sentence by flicking his thumbnail against his teeth.
To describe Ossipoff’s scornful expression, on hearing the American express himself thus, would be impossible. He pivoted on his heels and shrugged his shoulders—but was utterly amazed to see Flammermont draw away at a run and then, after a few strides, take off into the air with a prodigious leap.
“Gontran!” cried Fricoulet. “Gontran, what are you doing?”
“I’ve got it!” replied the young Comte. “I’ve got it!” He was brandishing something at the end of his arm. The darkness did not allow them to distinguish it clearly, but it appeared to be struggling violently. At the same time, piercing and desperate cries became audible, disturbing the majestic silence of the night and awakening mysterious echoes in the depths of the immense forest.
Meanwhile, Gontran had touched down and briskly returned to his companions. “There,” he said, laughing. “This will make a succulent meal.” And he held up a strange animal, which bore a certain resemblance to a bird, in the sense that it was provided with membranous wings like a bat’s. Its head, which had only one eye, placed in the middle of the forehead, was equipped with a long curling tube that widened out, at its extremity, like the mouth of a hunting-horn. It had no paws, but its wings were furnished with hook-like claws, which the animal obviously used to suspend itself from tree-branches when resting.
The Terrans, especially Fricoulet, studied this creature with an interest mingled with amazement.
“And you think that’s good to eat?” asked Farenheit,
in whose eyes the flying creature had no other interest than the culinary adaptation that might be made of it.
“My word! You’re asking me a question I can no more answer than you can—as nothing in Nature is created without a purpose, however, it’s perhaps permissible to think that the animal is edible. Thus, if your heart tells you so…”
“No, not the heart but the stomach,” replied Gontran, who was already preparing the creature enthusiastically. “I don’t know whether that nutriment made of mastic on the Moon or the plants we minced on Venus suited your stomachs, but this bird has awakened carnivorous appetite in mine.”
While the young Comte was speaking, Farenheit had collected some twigs, which he heaped up; then, striking a match, he set light to the improvised pyre, which was soon transformed into a veritable brazier. A few minutes later, the Mercurian flyer, threaded on to a branch of green wood by way of a spit, was sizzling over the flames, spreading a pleasant odor of hot fat through the atmosphere—which our voyagers’ nostrils savored appreciatively.
As he watched over his roast, Gontran became pensive.
“What are you thinking, dear boy?” asked Mikhail Ossipoff.
“I’m thinking that we’re going to encounter many difficulties traveling rapidly through this unknown world, with no map of any sort to guide us—unless that rogue Sharp hasn’t robbed us of everything.”
“We have nothing to grieve over with respect to a Mercurian map,” the old man replied, “since terrestrial astronomers have never been able to study this planet well enough to be able to draw one. Your apprehension is vain, though—what’s 15,000 kilometers around to people like us?”
“Especially given that,” added Fricoulet, “constituted as we are, it’s exactly as if we were equipped with seven league boots.”
“To the table! To the table!” cried the American, at that moment.
“But your roast can’t be done yet,” declared Flamermont.
“I beg your pardon,” retorted Farenheit, watch in hand. “It’s been on the fire for ten minutes.”
The Extraordinary Adventures of a Russian Scientist Across the Solar System (Vol. 1) Page 53
