An International Mission to the Moon

by Jean Petithuguenin

  “Given that, the possibility arises of capturing by some artifice at least a part of that formidable energy, which goes to waste without any profit to human beings, lost at the poles by radiation into space. The solution of the problem consists of creating immense thermoelectric piles between the poles and the equator. The junctions playing the role of cold electrodes are installed in the glaciers of the Arctic seas; the hot electrodes are set up in the tropics.

  “Those are the concepts that preside over the establishment of our project.”

  The explanations that Dr. Bormann gave Wang-Ti-Pou, whose heart he had to capture in order to conquer Asiatic opinion thereby, were potentially profitable to all those among the guests who were not scientists. Thus, while the chief engineer was speaking, journalists, officials and financiers had gradually come to join the little group. When he had finished his explanation, he was assailed by questions. Everyone wanted clarification on some particular point of the theory that had presided over the conception of the Great Current.

  Dr. Bormann, completely surrounded and having to reply to several people at the same time, ceased to occupy himself with Wang-Ti-Pou, who soon found himself separated, with Paul Chartrain and Claire Nolleau.

  An usher approached he delegate of the Asian Republics. “Monsieur Ta-Ho-Mai desires to make an urgent communication to Your Excellency.”

  Ta-Ho-Mai was Wang-Ti-Pou’s private secretary.

  “Bring Monsieur Ta-Ho-Mai in,” instructed Chartrain.

  The Asiatic delegate’s secretary had darker skin, more hooded eyes, a short nose and thicker lips than his master. He had a wireless message from the Congress of Asian Republics to give to Wang-Ti-Pou.

  Apologizing to the young engineers, the Asiatic delegate retreated with him to a corner of the room.

  The dispatch was drafted in code, and as the translation required ten minutes, Wang-Ti-Pou, although he was impatient to know what it concerned, allowed his secretary to finish the task on his own and returned to Chartrain and Claire Nolleau.

  “It’s not bad news, I hope?” asked the young woman, who saw that he was looking worried.

  “I don’t think so. It’s a communication from the Congress, which my secretary is in the process of deciphering.”

  The young people resumed debating the benefits of technology, which the Asiatic delegate contested.

  “Let me give you an example, Excellency,” said Claire, “of the advantages of mechanical progress, so often criticized by your compatriots. Have you not been struck by the atrocious conditions in which miners still work in China and Siberia while extracting coal? The seams that they exploit are relatively near the surface, of course. Nevertheless, as soon as their labor extends to five or six hundred meters underground, the workers, in spite of improvement in the ventilation of galleries, are subjected to almost intolerable temperatures. The manipulation of pneumatic borers and picks is exhausting, especially when it’s carried out in narrow tunnels, where the miner doesn’t have freedom of movement. The depressing sensation of being profoundly buried aggravates the physical fatigue. In addition, in spite of all the precautions, numerous accidents can’t be avoided, due to collapses and firedamp explosions.

  “Compare, Excellency, your outdated methods, which impose so many sacrifices on the proletariat, with those in use in our homeland.”

  “Your automata are marvelous,” Wang-Ti-Pou approved.

  “Then persuade your industrial leaders to employ them. As Dr. Bormann was saying a little while ago, it doesn’t make sense to squander the power of a human brain by only giving it command of the weak body in which nature has enclosed it. Thanks to the progress of telemechanics and the transmission of sensations at a distance, we now possess automata equipped with sensory organs, thanks to which the conductor, who maneuvers them from his control-box, can see, hear and feel whatever he would see, hear and feel if it were possible for him to put himself in the place of the automaton without dying of asphyxia, congestion or crushing.

  “Thus, we have no more workers in the depths of our mines. We replace them everywhere by machines activated at a distance by electricity, which affect the most various forms, in accordance with the function for which they’re destined. The human being is on the surface of the ground, while the machine he directs is at a depth of three or four thousand meters, and sometimes separated from him by a distance of seven or eight kilometers.

  “Well, Excellency, can you deny that Europe and America, which are at the forefront of that industrial evolution, have worked for the good of humanity?”

  Wang-Ti-Pou shook his head, and replied phlegmatically: “I’ll ask you another question, Mademoiselle. Did the inventors of these marvels—which, take note, I don’t refuse at all to admire as so many creations of human genius—really have the goal of liberating humans from the sad subjection of physical labor? Have they not rather been incited to the construction of their automated prodigies by the necessity of economizing on human labor and increasing profits? It’s less a question of philanthropy than of financial prosperity.”

  The conversation was interrupted because Ta-Ho-Mai, Wang-Ti-Pou’s secretary, was gazing at his master from a distance and inclining his head insistently to inform him that he had completed deciphering the telegram, The delegate of the Asiatic Republics, intrigued by the bizarre expression that his collaborator had adopted, moved away to rejoin him, even forgetting to apologize to the young people.

  When he had gone, Claire Nolleau murmured: “He seems preoccupied.” And she added, ironically: “Let’s hope that he hasn’t rendered himself suspect to his government by allowing himself to seem too sympathetic to the inventions of the European devils and is being recalled so that they can cut off his head.”

  “No,” said Paul Chartrain, “it’s surely not a matter of cutting off his head. See how his face is clearing—how happy he seems!”

  Indeed, Wang-Ti-Pou, who had sat down beside his secretary at a small table, seemed excited, in spite of his phlegm and his fatalism. His eyes were shining. The piece of paper on which Ta-Ho-Mai had scribbled the translation of the telegram was trembling in his hand.

  It was great news that he had just received.

  Ta-Ho-Mai looked at him avidly. “Then…Excellency…you accept?” he asked.

  Pride was reflected in Wang-Ti-Pou’s expression. “Yes,” he said, solemnly, his chin held high.

  II

  The reception had concluded. The guests were returning to their automobiles in the subterranean garage of the building, or their airplanes or helicopters on the terrace that crowned the edifice.

  Paul Chartrain and Claire Nolleau intended to take the pneumatic tube: a kind of improved Metro that served greater Paris, and whose trains, propelled by compressed air, made a journey like that from Lagny to Saint-German-en-Laye in an hour, stopping at numerous stations.

  As they were going through the large vestibule to emerge on to the Avenue des Nations, which, extending the old Avenue de la Défense Nationale, extended in a straight line in the direction of Saint-Germain, the great broadcaster, which proclaimed news from all over the world almost uninterruptedly, announced:

  “Revolution had broken out in Asia, where the Evolutionist members of Congress have been arrested, the Conservative Party has taken possession of power. The President of the Associated Republics has fled. A provisional government has been constituted.”

  All those who were in the hall at that moment had stopped, surprised, in order to listen more carefully to the sensational news. As soon as the unreal voice of the radio had fallen silent, a hubbub of animated comments resonated under the vaults.

  “Revolution in Asia!” exclaimed Claire Nolleau . “Well, Chartrain, that must be what the dispatch told Wang-Ti-Pou a little while ago, don’t you think?”

  “He seemed pleased,” the young man observed.

  “He might well be, for he’s reckoned in Asia to be among the leaders of the Conservative Party. The victory of his friends is his own.”


  “In that case,” said Paul Chartrain, laughing, “He’ll certainly obtain some profit from the change of regime. Who knows? His Excellency Wang-Ti-Pou might be in command of all Asia tomorrow. Let’s be diplomats, Nolleau, and make a friend of that individual, who’s about to climb to the pinnacle.”

  Dr. Bormann, who emerged from the conference hall in company with Professor Gainsworth, seemed consternated.

  “A revolution in our era is unexpected,” he observed. “What barbarity! Asia is five centuries behind the times. It’s a misfortune for the world. A misfortune!”

  Professor Gainsworth of Cambridge, who was not only a remarkable engineer but also a philosopher, did not envisage the event with as much pessimism.

  “Perhaps it’s not a bad thing if a part of humankind remains close to its origins, and we thus retain, in the bosom of the civilized world, whose refinement doesn’t always proceed without weakness, a reservoir of new forces capable of regenerating fatigued races.”

  “You like paradox, Professor,” Dr. Bormann replied, irritated. “But those who reason like you and make light of the threat to civilized humanity represented by that immense nucleus of anarchy, will wake up from their bliss one day, I can assure you.”

  “Well, Doctor, an anarchic Asia isn’t redoubtable. Disorganized hordes can’t do anything against a solidly constituted Europe and America.”

  “If a leader of genius emerges—an Attila, a Genghis Khan or a Tamerlane, capable of assembling in his powerful hand the scattered forces of the Asiatic world—he’ll have difficulty resisting the temptation to launch them in an assault on Occidental civilization. And if he succeeds in ruining Europe, America might well tremble.”

  Claire Nolleau, who usually lived in Algiers and had no family in Paris, agreed to accompany Paul Chartrain to the house of the young man’s parents, who had a pretty villa near Versailles, and spend the evening there.

  The two comrades talked enthusiastically about the work in which they were collaborating. They considered their time as an epoch of great progress, in which they were proud to live. They expressed that opinion to Monsieur and Madame Chartrain that evening, after dinner, in the garden of the villa.

  For a long time Versailles, like Saint-Germain, had been no more than an eccentric quarter of the great Parisian city, but a development plan, well understood and rigorously respected, had preserved its villas, its shade and its superb views from the invasion of utilitarian constructions.

  Thus, in the slowly-fading twilight, the calm of the Chartrains’ garden was only troubled by the throb of aircraft, helicopters and dirigibles passing over, some at low altitude, resplendent with all their lights switched on, and others at high altitude, among the little pink clouds.

  “When the people of 1950 proudly called their epoch the century of electricity,” Claire Nolleau observed, “they had a very paltry idea of the role that that exceedingly flexible and manipulable form of mechanical energy would one day play in the world.”

  “Are you quite sure that they didn’t foresee that role?” said Monsieur Chartrain, who occupied a chair in History at the Faculté de Paris. “The humanity of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries only lacked the means. It had imagined all that we have realized. Let’s not be too proud, and let’s remind ourselves that in spite of all the marvels of our modern civilization, we’ll only seem to be humble precursors in the eyes of the people of the thirtieth century, who will play with the world like a child with a toy, and travel through sidereal space and fantastic speeds.

  “You, who are undertaking the organization of the Pole, know in what season and in what manner the break-up of the ice is produced. You know how and in what direction the icebergs are detached from the sheet, and also how winter reestablishes the reign of cold over those immense extents. But remember that you owe your knowledge to the ancient heroes who were able to penetrate the secrets of nature, to the precursors, the mariners and scientists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries who explored the icy solitudes of the Pole, often at the expense of their life, when the greater part of what people would one day clarify was still unknown. Those pioneers of past centuries, when they set out on the conquest of an unknown world, were perhaps ignorant of the purpose that their heroism would serve, but they had faith in the destiny of humankind; they felt sure that their disinterested efforts wouldn’t be futile.”

  “We’ll try,” said Paul, “not to be inferior to those heroes of the past. The work that we’re taking on will mark a new, particularly important stage in the electrical equipment of our planet. We’re conscious of the fact that it won’t be accomplished without effort, perseverance and sacrifices of all kinds.”

  Paul and Claire walked together for a few minutes along the garden paths, invaded by obscurity.

  “I regret that we’re not attached to the same section,” the young man said. “I would have liked to have you as a colleague up there in the Far North, when we march to attack the ice.”

  “Well, perhaps I won’t always remain in the tropical section,” the young woman replied. “I confess that I’d have preferred to go to the Pole, where the struggle against the elements will be much more exciting.”

  “Yes, I’d like to hope that we’ll see one another again, other than through the screen of the televising telephone.”

  They felt very close to one another in spirit and in heart, and they were saddened by the thought that they would be separated again in a matter of days.

  “The world isn’t so large,” murmured Claire Nolleau, by way of consolation, as much for herself as for Paul. “A rocket-plane can travel from the center of Africa to Greenland in five hours. I don’t despair of making the journey some day with Monsieur Hurlaut, when he needs to confer with Professor Gainsworth.”

  “Yes, that’s right—ask to accompany him. The opportunity will certainly present itself. For my part, if I can come to see you…”

  “Don’t fail to do so!”

  At nine o’clock, the Monsieur Chartrain senior switched on the loudspeaker to listen to the evening news.

  The radio talked about the revolution in Asia. The governmental committee of the Congress had been overthrown, and those members that had not had time to flee had been arrested. But the big news was the election by the Revolutionary Assembly of His Excellency Wang-Ti-Pou as President of the Associated Asian Republics.

  Having explained the situation succinctly, the speaker announced that His Excellency Wang-Ti-Pou, who was in Paris in the capacity of delegate of the Asian Republics when he had received the news of his election, had consented, in response to the request of World Radio, to make a statement.

  “I am now handing over,” the announcer continued, “to His Excellency Monsieur Wang-Ti-Pou, President of the Associated Asian Republics.”

  Claire and Paul instinctively drew closer to the loudspeaker in order not to miss a word of what the individual with whom they had had the opportunity to discuss the grave problem of human happiness was about to say.

  After a few compliments addressed to Europe, whose hospitable virtues he praised, Wang-Ti-Pou expressed the diplomatic wish for a close collaboration, in all domains, between the two continents

  “I do not know,” he added, “Whether such a collaboration is presently possible, but I shall not neglect any possibility to bring it about. I shall be leaving you, for I need to be in Mukden21 tomorrow, where the provisional Revolutionary Government has been established. A special rocket-plane will take me back to the bosom of my people, so different from yours in some ways, but from whom you also, I think, have something to learn.

  “We in Asia are deeply spiritual. Our civilization, founded on the culture of the soul and interior contemplation, perhaps seems too disdainful of bodily needs for your taste, but do not your philosophers and thinkers proclaim, like ours, that material progress is nothing if it does not serve as a pretext for spiritual progress, and does not contribute to the mental grandeur of humankind?

  “You are working since
rely, I know, for the cause of that mental grandeur, and I shall always follow your efforts with a sympathetic gaze. I ask you in return not to judge the people of Asia severely if we do not adopt your methods with as much urgency as you would like, and if we try to attain the ideal by other ways than yours.”

  When Wang-Ti-Pou had finished his speech, Monsieur and Madame Chartrain, Paul and Claire, remained silent momentarily. They were emotional, for they were conscious of being witnesses to a great historic event.

  Finally, Paul declared, thoughtfully: “I imagine that the new President of the Asian Republics will not be a friend for us.”

  “Bah! You think that he wants to make war on us?” said Claire Nolleau.

  “Who can tell?”

  “What could the Asian Republics do against us, with their wretched archaic armaments—their rifles, their machine-guns and cannons—against out automata, our gases, our ardent rays and our artificial lightning?”

  “They have numbers. Suppose they succeeded, by means of a surprise attack, in putting the hydroelectric factories and industrial establishments of our frontiers out of action—or even took possession of them and used them against us. Nothing proves that we wouldn’t witness an invasion of the civilized world comparable to that of the Goths and Visigoths in the days of the Roman Empire.”

  To put an end to a conversation that was threatening to become depressing, Paul proposed that he drive Claire back to the center of Paris, where she was staying for the duration of her sojourn.

  He deliberately took the avenues planted with tall trees, with majestic perspectives, that descended from Versailles toward the old quarters of the capital, where the electric lighting was artistically filtered in order not to spoil the charm of a beautiful spring night.