That labor lasted ten terrestrial days, during which they had to be content with the light of the Earth, whose disk was progressively enlarged, attaining a perfect circle, shining in its fullness, and then began gradually to decrease.
The lunar soil lost the enormous heat that it had accumulated during the day. Its temperature descended close to absolute cold, which, calculated on the centigrade scale, is 273° below zero. The explorers had, in consequence, to take the greatest precautions in order not to be gripped by the cold in spite of the insulating walls of their suits. They took care not to remain immobile for long and to stimulate organic combustion by providing a supplement of oxygen.
Espronceda and Bojardo were charged with monitoring the interior temperature of the Selenit and activating the heating system if it fell between eighteen degrees.
When suit-wearers returned home, the surface of their suits was immediately covered by a layer of ice formed by the condensation of the water vapor contained in the Selenit’s atmosphere, and they were obliged to wait until the exterior surface had warmed up again before being able to emerge.
Brifaut participated, like the others, in the labor of clearing the departure track, but he was also occupied in drawing up an exact and vivid account of the first voyage of exploration to the Moon. During rest periods he read what he had written to his comrades, and each of them made observations, rectifying any errors or adding forgotten details. They all agreed in saying that Brifaut’s account was perfect as a whole.
Finally, everything was ready.
In spite of their reassuring calculations and all the precautions they had taken, the explorers could not help feeling a certain anguish at the moment of launching themselves through celestial space for a second time.
For one thing, if they failed in their departure, they would be running a great risk of being unable to make a further attempt; the Moon would become their tomb, as it was already Scherrebek’s. When they thought that they had been on the Moon for twenty-five terrestrial days, and that they only had reserves of air for another five or six, they felt themselves shiver; of the Selenit suffered a malfunction, there might not be time to repair it.
When the preparation of the track was finished, the Selenit was taken to face the slope and carefully orientated in order to gain its initial impetus. Everyone went to his post, Galston and Goffoël in the pilot’s cabin, Garrick and Kito in the engine room and the others in the crew section. They installed themselves in such a way as to avoid falls when the Selenit passed from the horizontal position to the vertical.
When Galston gave them the signal to be ready, the members of the mission felt a contraction of the heart. Madeleine pinched her lips and lowered her eyes, but she put on a brave face.
“Ignite!” cried Galston.
The machine moved off, began to roll, horizontally at first, and then climbing an increasingly steep slope.
The movement accelerated, and the men were thrown backwards.
The framework of the vessel transmitted the shocks that the landing gear experienced on the track, and the vibrations, communicated to the air of the Selenit, filled it with a hum.
All the vibration suddenly ceased.
“Hurrah!” cried Lang. “We’re away!”
Scarcely had he pronounced those words however, than a shock more violent than the others was felt.
The machine had, in fact, left the ground for a few seconds, but its momentum had been insufficient as yet; it had fallen back, colliding forcefully with the rocky slope, and, as it had touched it at an angle, with only one side of the landing-gear, the wheels had broken under the impact. The Selenit tilted, its side began to scrape against the rock; a catastrophe was imminent.
The heavy mass was about to stop, and then, dragged by its own weight, slide down the slope like an avalanche, at the bottom of which it would be crushed.
Fortunately, at that critical instant, Galston retained all his composure and grave proof of his presence of mind.
“Increase the gas!” he shouted into the loud hailer. “Give it full power!”
Garrick and Kito were no less resolute than their chief. The engine rendered its full impulse. The Selenit dragged along a little further, and then detached itself again from the ground; this time, it did not fall back.
The voyage through space recommenced.
The Selenit was flying about six thousand kilometers above the terrestrial surface. From that altitude, the globe appeared as an enormous disk, as broad as a sixth of the celestial circumference. One part was sunlit, the other was dark, and its outline was only recognizable because it formed a screen in front of the stars. The crescent of the new Moon was still too slender and too close to the Sun to spread any light in the terrestrial night.
Some forty-eight hours had passed since the Selenit had quit the Moon, and it had arrived at the point at which its engines had to begin to brake in order to slow down its fall and prevent it from being crushed on the surface of the globe.
It was also important not to penetrate with too great a velocity into the atmospheric layer that extended to an altitude of more than five hundred kilometers if they were to avoid being subject to an intense overheating that would risk melting the walls of the machine and roasting its occupants.
Garrick and Kito restarted the engines and the braking had the immediate effect of returning the sensation of weight to the passengers, which they had lost since the moment they had entered into free fall toward the Earth.
That last phase of the voyage was due to last about forty minutes. They had discussed the best landing site at length. Ought they to come down over a continent or prefer the ocean?
At first they had inclined toward the latter opinion, contact with the sea being less brutal than with the land if the projectile still retained an appreciable velocity. As the Selenit was disburdened of its enormous cargo of explosive, it would float to the surface like a cork and would not take long to be picked up.
One disquieting observation had determined Galston to renounce that plan. Observing through a periscope, he had noticed that the surface of the Selenit had been badly damaged at the moment of departure from the Moon. The flank that had made contact with the rock had suffered a large rip. In those circumstances, if they had come down in the sea, the water would have rushed into the cavity between the double walls and they could not be certain that the Selenit would continue to float.
It was therefore necessary to resign themselves to coming down on land.
On landing, however, they would have one difficulty with which they had not had to cope when arriving on the Moon. As the Earth rotates on is axis in twenty-four hours, the points of its surface are animated by a velocity of rotation that increases from the pole to the equator. Very small in the vicinity of the pole, that velocity surpasses three hundred meters a second in the middle of France and four hundred and sixty at the equator.
It was therefore necessary to land in the direction of the Earth’s rotation and with a velocity almost equal to that of the selected point of latitude. Without that precaution, they would be risking a mortal encounter.
Unfortunately, they did not have much time for reflection, and an immense expanse of cloud that was covering a large part of the Earth’s surface hindered their observations.
They had penetrated the atmosphere. The air invaded the empty space that the breach in the hull had opened up, so the sound of the engine became much more distinct and the precipitate explosions that were almost confused rendered a loud hum.
On Galston’s instructions, the engineers caused the auxiliary motors to imprint a lateral movement on the machine in the direction of the Earth’s rotation.
Through gaps in the clouds, Galston had ascertained that the Selenit was going to fall somewhere in Western Europe. It was not without horror that he thought of what might happen if the machine came down in the middle of a city, but he no longer had the faculty of making considerable modifications in the trajectory. Given the difficulty of ca
lculating a position at a great height and the complications caused by the Earth’s own movement, Galston even doubted that it was still possible for him to choose between land and sea.
In a matter of seconds the Selenit traversed a layer of clouds and Galston saw the ground: fields, villages a forest, roads and railways, all minuscule and flattened by the distance.
“As long as we don’t suffer any damage,” he murmured, and shouted: “Gas to the right!”
He wanted to try to land in the forest. As well as there being less risk of injuring inhabitants, he calculated that the trees would provide a kind of mattress for the Selenit, which would deaden the fall. On the other hand, the hull of the machine was sufficiently resistant not to be staved in by the large branches.
There was no more time for reflection. The Selenit descended over the forest like a huge deflated balloon, and settled into the trees with an enormous din.
It had been seen falling in nearby villages. The local people came running, on foot, on bicycles or in vehicles. The gendarmes, having been alerted, also went into action.
The Selenit had landed in France, in the forest of Compiègne.
The machine was lying obliquely, and the members of the expedition ere ill at ease, obliged as they were to crawl over the sloping walls. They were exultant, however, at finding themselves alive after the extraordinary adventure into which they had launched themselves so audaciously.
“Well,” said Goffoël, summarizing the general opinion, “now that we’ve come back to Earth safe and sound, I can confess that when we took off I wouldn’t have given much for my skin. I thought we had ninety-nine chances out of a hundred of staying there.”
“You might have made me that confidence sooner,” said Madeleine. “But after all, you were right to let me believe that there was no risk Now that I’ve made contact with the Earth again, I’m very glad to have accomplished the voyage, far less banal than a trip to Morocco.”
They unscrewed the hatch of the Selenit, which had not been touched since he explorers had descended into the machine shortly before departure.
Although the varnish was scorched, the local people had read the name Selenit painted on the hull. A schoolteacher had then declared that it was definitely the machine that had been constructed in Philadelphia to accomplish a voyage to the Moon, and which had come back after completing its mission.
Brifaut leap through the opening of the hatch. Repeating the words of Cyrano de Bergerac, he cried, triumphantly: “We’ve fallen from the Moon!”
Acclamations replied to him. The members of the crew were welcomed with delight, and a particular fuss was made of Madeleine, who had shown so much valor for a woman.
Cyclists immediately set off to telephone Compiègne.
Three-quarters of an hour later, automobiles began to arrive along the nearby road, bringing officials and curiosity-seekers.
A grandiose reception was organized in honor of the mission. Many speeches were made, and the future of interplanetary navigation was evoked.
Brifaut related the history of the mission and detailed the results acquired.
Scherrebek was not forgotten, and a religious service was held in his memory. It was decided that a commemorative monument would be erected in the forest of Compiègne at the place where the Selenit had come down; the names of the explorers, with Scherrebek’s at the head, would be inscribed upon it.
A few weeks later, René and Madeleine Brifaut returned to America, to which the members of the expedition had been summoned to receive the prize of their exploit, in the midst of celebrations and scientific manifestations.
One evening, sitting on the deck of the liner that was taking them back to France, they were savoring the mildness of a beautiful summer night and watching the Moon rise among the stars, pouring a river of gleaming silver over the sea.
“Be grateful to her, Madeleine,” Brifaut murmured. “She’s made us rich.”
“Yes,” his young wife replied, “but I like her better from here; it’s too inhospitable a world for me to have any desire to go back there.”
THE GREAT CURRENT
I
In the year 2280, at the beginning of summer, Dr. Bormann of Zurich, the chief engineer of the Intercontinental Thermoelectrification Company, founded two years previously, judged that the enterprise was sufficiently far advanced to enter into its decisive phase, which was also the most audacious and the most difficult.
Except for the managing directors, who were habitually resident in Paris, from where they provided general stimulation, the senior staff of the company was divided into two main groups, one of which was based in Algiers under the orders of the Ponts-et-Chaussées engineer Hurtaut, of the École de Paris, and the other in Liverpool, presided over by Professor Gainsworth of Cambridge. The two groups had thus far had for their principal mission the preparations for works that were about to be undertaken on the one hand toward the equator and on the other in the vicinity of the North Pole.
The majority of their members, elite collaborators with the Intercontinental Thermoelectrification Company, were linked together by sentiments of amity or sympathy.
Paul Chartrain, of the École Supérieure d’Électricité de Paris, and Claire Nolleau, of the Algerian Institute of Science, the former attached to the Liverpool section and the latter to the African section, met that day for the first time in the large reception hall of the Company’s building, to which Dr. Bormann had invited all his subordinates.
It would not, however, be correct to say that Paul Chartrain and Claire Nolleau did not know one another, because they had had frequent occasion to talk to one another via the televising telephone. As soon as they perceived one another, they came together and introduced themselves.
They were both young. The voice of the former was deep, that of the latter high-pitched and harmonious, and that difference revealed that the first interlocutor was a young man, the second a young woman, but they were wearing identical costumes: short trousers, stockings and shoes, a jacket and a white silk shirt retained at the neck by a gilded clasp.
The man, clean-shaven or depilated, had a face as fresh and skin as smooth, apparently, as the woman, while she had short back-combed hair exactly like the person who had just bowed to her.
To judge by their faces and the color of their hair they were between twenty and twenty-five years old, but Claire Nolleau of the Algerian Institute of Science, slimmer, with more delicate features, gave the impression, because of her boyish appearance, of being her companion’s younger brother. If, like the women of the twentieth century, she had been wearing a dress and long undulating hair, that impression would have been attenuated, but she was living in the last quarter of the twenty-third century, and for a long time, fashions in feminine and masculine attire had been identical, except for evening wear. That is why Claire Nolleau, at first glance, resembled an ephebe.
Her costume however, had a few attributes that were the prerogative of her own sex. The lining of her sea-blue jacket was red silk, as were its decorations; the collar of her shirt was embroidered, and a brilliant stone ornamented the golden clasp that retained it. A red ribbon tightened the trouser-leg above the knee over stockings of the same color as the costume.
Those were significant details, which did not escape Claire Nolleau’s contemporaries.
“Since we’ve been acquainted for some time at a distance,” Paul Chartrain observed, “I’m glad, my dear comrade, finally be in your presence and to see you other than through a television screen.”
“I have great pleasure myself in meeting you,” replied the young woman. “I feel sympathetic toward you, and I’m sure that we’ll end up becoming true friends. For my part, at any rate, I hope so.”
“Thank you. I’m animated by the same sentiments in your regard—and I’m not saying that to flatter you, or for reasons of politeness.”
“I regret, Chartrain, that we’re not attached to the same center. Whereas you’re about to leave for the Far North,
I’m heading for the equator. We’ll be forced to content ourselves as in the past, with the telephonic communications of our liaison service.”
The young people were, in fact, responsible, one in the north and the other in the south, for maintaining a continuous correspondence between the various groups of engineers supervising the operations of the Intercontinental Thermoelectrification Company. In the present epoch, when material progress had been taken to its extreme, the televising telephone was constantly employed to overcome the inconveniences of the distance between the various collaborators in the same enterprise.
United under the presidency of Dr. Bormann, the assembly included, along with the Company’s engineers, some twenty scientists, men and women in costumes almost identical to those of Paul Chartrain and Claire Nolleau, journalists from the world’s major dailies, printed or spoken and televised, and representatives of the President, Secretaries of State and Parliament of the United States of Europe.
There was also a delegate of the Associated Republics of Asia, His Excellency Wang-Ti-Pou of Peking, who was there officially in the capacity of observer, with a mission to examine the question of whether the system of thermoelectrification adopted by the Europeans offered important advantages and could be applied to the Asiatic continent.
Wang-Ti-Pou was a phlegmatic individual with a closed physiognomy. His features were regular, his eyelids barely hooded, his complexion almost as rosy as that of his interlocutors. He was part of the elite of the yellow race that counts a high proportion of whites among its ancestors.
The reception, under Dr. Bormann’s presidency, began with a speech of thanks addressed to all the artisans of the enterprise, which consisted of establishing a great electrical circuit between the North Pole and the equator, taking advantage of the enormous difference in temperature between those two extreme regions of the globe.
“Our work,” Dr. Bormann concluded, “will revolutionize the European economy, because the construction of the thermoelectric sector, which we have acquired the habit, by virtue of the need for simplification, of calling the Great Current, will furnish Europe and Africa with enormous and unlimited electrical power.”
An International Mission to the Moon Page 11