The Nyctalope on Mars 2: The Triumph of Love

by Jean de La Hire

  “Three hours.”

  “And afterwards?”

  “Leave.”

  “But…”

  “In one hour, we’ll be at the Martian camp, with or without the Master. The scientists are free to study the alphabet and the language of the kephales—as for me, I’ll carry out Xavière’s orders. While awaiting negotiations, find the Master and save him, or die: that’s the mission. If we haven’t come back in three hours, we’ll be prisoners or dead. There’s no use in your remaining here any longer—so leave, and go make a report…”

  “Very well! And if I’m attacked during those three hours?”

  “No quarter. Destroy everything and maintain your position.”

  “Perfect. Au revoir, Monsieur Damprich!”

  “Au revoir, Commander—or adieu! Hup!” And Damprich jumped on to the shore, followed by Jolivet. The 20 men rapidly formed up before O’Brien, who inspected them with a keen eye.

  Two minutes later, they were all in the woods, marching in Indian file behind Damprich, who was following Jolivet. That clever fellow was proceeding in small but hurried strides, bent over the ground, holding out his electric lamp at the end of a flexible arm, following the Nyctalope’s trail like a veritable Sioux Indian.

  They marched silently, without stopping, through the heavy and stifling darkness for a good quarter of an hour.

  “Stop!” said Jolivet, in a muffled voice. He stood up and turned to Damprich. “The Master stopped here for some time,” he said.

  “There, against the tree?”

  “Yes.”

  “And afterwards?”

  “Wait!” Prudently, Jolivet went around the tree several times, drawing a little further away on each circuit. He skimmed the ground with his electric lamp. Damprich followed him. The 20 men waited two paces from the tree, a black and compact group in the darkness.

  “I’ve got it, sir!” whispered Jolivet.

  Damprich turned back to the troop. “Forward march!”

  They went on; after 20 paces, they stopped again.

  “Oh! A fire was lit here!” Jolivet breathed. “See, sir...” He touched the ashes. “They’re still warm.” He stood up, and moved the beam of the lamp in a circle. “Hey—what’s that?” He ran and knelt down. “Martian corpses—two of them!”

  Damprich leapt forward, and the men came running. Two kephales were lying down on their tympanic membranes, limp, their tentacles shriveled up.

  “They’ve got holes in their eyes!” said Damprich.

  “Electric bullets.”

  “The Master has been attacked…”

  “Wait! A groove in the ground, there. Something long and sinuous has been dragged… Let’s follow the trail…”

  “What tracks! Look, sir, look! One might think they were webbed feet. Extraordinary!”

  “They’re the bipeds Xavière mentioned.”

  “Undoubtedly. But the tracks of the Master’s boots are there—near the fire. Follow them. They draw away, go towards the Martians… I can’t see them any longer. They’ve disappeared. That long and sinuous thing that someone has dragged… Look! Two sides. What can that be?”

  “I have it! An auto-serpent. Xavière mentioned them…”

  Jolivet laughed silently. “Yes sir. I can see the scene as if I were there. The auto-serpent arrived, mounted by two Martians. The Master killed them and took their place. But from what direction did it arrive and in which did it depart, guided by the Master? Wait!” The intelligent fellow observed, reflected, then, gladly: “I’ve got it. The track goes this way; it effaces those of the bipeds. It was in this direction, brushing the fire, that the auto-serpent moved off. Let’s see!” He took a few rapid steps. “Right! The bipeds escorted it to the right and left, their heels towards the fire. If it had come this way, the bipeds would have headed towards the fire instead of turning their backs on it. There’s no more doubt—let’s go!”

  “Let’s go!” said Damprich, full of admiration for Jolivet’s perspicacity.

  And on they marched, in Indian file, following the track of the auto-serpent. Hope made all their hearts beat faster. They would certainly catch up with Saint-Clair. He must have been fraternizing with the bipeds. He had not been wounded in the fight against the two kephales, since Jolivet had been unable to find a trace of blood, although he had looked hard.

  From time to time, Damprich consulted his chronometer.

  “That’s another quarter of an hour that we’ve been on the move.”

  Jolivet made no reply. The trail was easy to follow, and he did so rapidly. Suddenly, like a hunting dog, he stopped dead. Behind him, the entire file came to a standstill.

  “My God!” sighed Jolivet. And this exclamation was proffered in such a dolorous accent that an abrupt and horrible anguish seized the heart and throats of the men.

  “What is it? What do you see?” cried Damprich, in a strangled voice. Wide-eyed, he followed the luminous beam of the electric lamp, but he could not see anything. Jolivet’s hand was trembling terribly. The beam was jumping about madly.

  “Say something! What have you seen?” croaked Damprich, exasperated. And his anguish became so tortuous that he raised his hands to his throat, tore off his helmet and threw it away, ripping open his metallic jacket as if he were choking.

  “There…! There…! The Master!” stammered Jolivet.

  Excitedly, Damprich grabbed the lamp—and, with a hand that was not trembling, he directed the luminous beam….

  He and all the men saw a body lying on its side in front of them: a body dressed in the Nyctalope’s metallic uniform, easily recognizable because its black color differentiated it from all the rest, which were grey. For Saint-Clair to be there, alone, lying on the ground, he had to be dead!

  Damprich made as if to run forward—but at that very moment, he was nailed to the spot. The body had risen to its feet with a single movement! And Saint-Clair, in person, showed his face, encircled by the helmet, in the light-beam.

  “My dear Damprich!”

  The officer could not help himself; he leapt into Saint-Clair’s arms. Jolivet had leapt forward too.

  “What a fright you gave us! We thought you were dead!”

  “It was a trap.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll explain… I was pretending to be dead in order that the bipeds, with whom I have made friends, believing me to be really dead, would go to inform the kephales. The kephales would have come, and would probably have transported me to their camp, and…”

  “That’s extremely risky.”

  “No—one doesn’t kill a dead man. I would have observed, then acted… But how is Xavière?”

  “Safe and sound.”

  “What’s happening.”

  “We need you. The Martians have been understood. They’re talking. Flammarion and Reclus are studying their mute language and making admirable progress. Come on—a submarine’s waiting for us.”

  “How many of you are there?”

  “Twenty-two.”

  “And I make 23. The auto-serpent can carry us,.”

  “All of us?”

  “Yes, all of us. We’ll get there more rapidly—and I can see for all of us, so no light will give us away.”

  Saint-Clair went to his right; they followed him. Behind a pile of felled tree-trunks, he showed them the auto-serpent. By squeezing together like horseback riders, the 22 men were able to get on. Saint-Clair took the driving-seat.

  “Put out the light.”

  “It’s done.”

  “Hold tight.”

  Half an hour later, in the coupé of the Franc, Xavière welcomed the Nyctalope into her arms.

  Conclusion

  On the morrow of that memorable day, the yellow kephale left the Franc. A fast fly transported it to the shore of the island, where Saint-Clair had hidden the auto-serpent of which he had made use in the red bushes. As much to serve as a hostage as to continue teaching the humans its language, the black kephale remained on the Franc.
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  In 24 hours, Xavière, Flammarion and Reclus had, by means of extremely simple procedures—rendered efficacious by the intelligent good will of the Martians—assimilated some 50 geometric figures representing some 30 concrete ideas. The yellow kephale had therefore been able to depart, bearing the sufficient elements of an initial understanding between the Martians and the Terrans.

  For three days, the kephale did not reappear at the point on the shore where an aircraft commanded by Damprich was waiting for it. Throughout this time, the two armies remained in their positions without any manifestation of hostility. On the second day, the artificial clouds were dissipated, and on the evening of the third, the yellow kephale returned, accompanied by three other kephales, all Leaders. During its absence, the black kephale had continued to instruct the Terrans in the Martian language. Saint-Clair had added his intelligence to that of his companions—and when there were five kephales they were able to converse, with the aid of the chalk and the blackboard.

  The conversation was long and difficult. It lasted an entire week. The Martians, meanwhile, asked that someone should go in search of bipeds in order that they might feed themselves, Saint-Clair sent Damprich, who came back with a dozen prisoners.

  Naturally, the Nyctalope resigned himself to making no attempt to elevate the biped livestock from the state of social inferiority in which the kephales maintained them. The life of Martian intelligence rendered the slavery and animality of the bipeds indispensable.16

  Finally, at the end of the week, the prodigious conference came to a close. The Terrans learned things in its course that filled the astronomer Flammarion with joy, in the sense that they confirmed that many of his hypotheses relating to the conditions of life on Mars were well-founded—but they also learned other things of which they had had no suspicion.

  Three great nations of kephales shared the planet. One, which might be called the insular nation, inhabited the entire southern hemisphere of Mars. That was the one with which the Terrans were in contact. Its domination was uncontested throughout the southern islands and continents, from the pole almost to the equator. The capital of this immense nation—or, rather, the seat of its central government—was the fortified city of Zea, in the middle of the lake of that name, in the vast continent of Hellas.

  The two other continental nations shared the northern hemisphere. One, the more powerful, possessed the northern Orient and the part of the Arabic Eden that extended as far as the shore of Lake Niliacus. The other, less powerful but more intellectually-advanced, occupied the greater part of the northern Occident, extending as far as the region of Memnon in the southern hemisphere. This third nation possessed the most beautiful region of Mars, Arcadia.

  At this moment, the two continental nations were at peace, but the Orientals were at war with the insulars. The contemporary theater of this war was the regions of Eole and Ethiopia, in the extreme east, below the equator. That explained why the Terrans in Argyre had scarcely been troubled.

  The Terrans also learned that the Martians which had tried to invade the Earth belonged to the nation of the Oriental continentals. The failure of their attempt had discouraged them profoundly, and they had said very little about it in the celestial projections that were the newspapers of Mars.

  Following the preliminary conference held aboard the Franc, it was decided that a second conference, this one definitive, would be held in Zea, before the governing council of the insular kephales. It would take place in a month’s time, in order that the XV might complete their education in the Martian language—a language common, with slight differences of dialect, to the three rival nations.

  Two of the kephales, the yellow and the red, whose Martian names were two very complicated geometrical figures, consented to come to Argyre as instructors. The others were to return to Zea with the forces concentrated against the Terrans in Iapygia, in order to make preparations for the interplanetary conference.

  One can imagine the joy of Oxus and all the Terrans when they learned these results. Henri François radiotelegraphed them to Le Matin, which made them known to the entire Earth, to the amazement of humankind.

  The French government brought both Chambers together in an extraordinary congress, and the parliamentarians granted Leo Saint-Clair the sovereign right to speak and act in the name of France on the planet Mars. It was also decided to send reinforcements of 10,000 men by radioplane. The radiomotive station in the Congo was proclaimed as Martian Embassy, with the agreement of the Belgian government. France sent one of its senior civil servants, Gustave Serrès, to serve as director of radiotelephonographic services between Earth and Mars. His secretary, Paul Yaki, was charged with the direction of interplanetary travel.17

  On Mars, events even more prodigious than those of which we have been the historians took place. The war between the oriental kephales and the insular kephales became terrible, and the Terrans became involved in it, with the Nyctalope taking a leading role. At a later date, we might perhaps tell the story of that war, which was, according to the account of Maurice Reclus, rich in extraordinary turns of events—and, in the course of that new story, we shall be able, with the aid of the very precise notes left by Monsieur Flammarion, to give a complete account of the geography, the appearance, the atmosphere, the sky, the geology, the meteorology, the flora and the fauna of the planet Mars, and the civilization of its three national groups. We shall elucidate the problems of the canals and the polar snows, whose singular variations intrigue and divide our astronomers.

  On the present occasion, we have merely wanted to shed some light—in the most captivating form possible, without facile pedantry—on that admirable figure, who is Leo Saint-Clair the Nyctalope, so utterly French in heart and mind, a man for whom darkness truly does not exist.

  THE END

  Afterword

  The Chronology of the Story

  As I mentioned briefly in the introduction, the internal chronology of The Nyctalope on Mars does not make much sense, largely because La Hire appears to have changed his mind mid-way through Part One as to exactly when the action is supposedly taking place.

  To begin with, La Hire evidently intended the setting to be futuristic. When Koynos begins to explain to Xavière in Chapter I what has happened to her, the narrative voice interrupts to tell the reader that the scene is taking place 25 years after the creation of the Hictaner and the events described in L’homme qui peut vivre dans l’eau—which would have been assumed to be roughly contemporary when that serial appeared in Le Matin in 1908. This figure is repeated again when Oxus is first introduced in Chapter II; this implies a date for the action of Le mystère des XV of 1933.

  A single, initial mention of 22 years, instead of 25, in Chapter I might simply be a misprint or a slip of the tongue—assuming that La Hire dictated the text rather than penning it—but it might also have some significance—a point to which I shall return. The figure 22 might have been derived by the subtraction of 1911—the year of Le mystère des XV’s serialization—from 1933, in which case it would have required correction within the text to 25 because the narrative voice’s comparison is with the date of the earlier story, which had been set at least three years earlier.

  In Chapter II, and on several occasions thereafter, La Hire’s narrative voice also uses the formulation “à cette époque” [in that era] to fill in back-story—a conventional form of futuristic fiction, whereby a narrative voice tacitly placed further forward in time than the action of a story pretends to be explaining historical data to a “contemporary” audience, in order to create an excuse for issuing explanations that the actual audience will require. One of these expository essays explains that, since 1909—in which year, as the text observes, the airship République was briefly in operation—an entrepreneurial Compagnie Transatlantique Aérienne has established intercontinental airship travel by means of dirigibles of a more advanced design than the République’s. In the meantime, a Compagnie Aérienne Métropolitaine has hired aviation pioneer Louis B
lériot, along with his son, the Voisin brothers and Henri Farman, to facilitate the development of commercial air transport throughout France, using biplanes and monoplanes, and all the regiments of the French army, at home and abroad, have also been equipped with aircraft. By the time the story takes place, all of this—which must surely have been the work of decades rather than years—is an accomplished fact.

  The only suggestions in the first few chapters that the story might be taking place earlier than 1933 are one reference made by the narrative voice in Chapter II to Blériot’s cross-channel flight having happened “a few years ago,” which might have been a slip of the tongue as La Hire forgot momentarily that the voice in question is supposed to be speaking from a temporal standpoint considerably ahead of the story’s setting, and another to the fact that “the entire world was still excited by the Martian invasion of which England had been the theater,” a reference to H. G. Wells’ 1898 novel, The War of the Worlds—another point to which I shall return.

  At some stage thereafter, however—probably in the interval between Chapters II and IV, La Hire appears to have either changed his mind, or made a hasty improvisation, accidentally contradicting his earlier statements. Although he continued to used the “futuristic” setting in respect of the normalization of air transport, and even continued to use “à cette époque” in some of his expository passages, he introduced an entirely different time scheme, initially in order to insert the astronomer Camille Flammarion within the story.

  When Saint-Clair meets Flammarion in Palma in Chapter IV, the narrative voice informs the reader that “the illustrious scientist was then in his 62nd year” —“soixante-deuxième” in French. This is obviously another misprint, because Flammarion was born in February 1842, so the September in which he would have been in his 62nd year would be that of 1903. Unfortunately, there are two possible misprints that might have occurred—La Hire might have meant 70th— “soixante-dixième” —or 72nd—“soixante-douzième”—so it is not entirely clear whether the setting of the story has been shifted to 1911 or 1913, but the former is the more likely, as that was the year of Le mystère des XV’s serialization. The new contemporary time-scheme is reinforced thereafter by the addition of numerous other well-known contemporary figures to the cast of characters, such as Maurice Reclus, Marcel Blériot and Paul Yaki.