An International Mission to the Moon

by Jean Petithuguenin

  “Atahualpa was not the son of a princess of the divine race. He could not, therefore, claim, as Huascar could, the heritage of the Empire.”

  “The mother of my ancestor was the Queen of Quito; her origin was no less divine than that of the Incas. And I ask who had more entitlement to exercise power: Atahualpa, who was capable of command and combat; or Huascar, who lived in softness and idleness, thinking of nothing but seeking pleasure?”

  But the new Huascar cried, indignantly: “Have you, then, forgotten the treason of Atahualpa, who, to satisfy his ambition, delivered his empire to the adventurers without scruple?”

  “Atahualpa was betrayed himself when he sought to save the empire from ruin.”

  The man that Jacques had known first under the name of Alvarez turned to the explorer.

  “If it is in reality our father the Sun who has guided you and your companions here, decide between us. Here are our people, divided by our rivalry. Our partisans are threatening one another, ready to come to blows, and the vivid flame of memory that we have maintained piously for four hundred years might perhaps be extinguished by the wind of a new disaster. Then all hope will be banished from our hearts; we shall have to curb our heads and submit to the fatality that has changed the face of the world for us.

  Atahualpa wanted to speak in his turn, but Jacques raised his hand in a gesture of appeasement, and said, solemnly:

  “It is an evil day when sons quarrel over the heritage of their forebears. Are you not ashamed, when your people are in a state of ruination, mourning their treasures, their power, their lost religion, when they are reduced to searching their fatherland with anguish or the almost-vanished traces of its ancient civilization, to be disputing the right to save the memory of your ancestors? Do you not know that the law that presides over life, over happiness, over everything that is noble and great, is love? Love one another, and all hope will be permissible to you, but if hatred sterilizes your aspirations and your efforts, you will be swallowed up by oblivion.”

  Those words, to which Jacques had deliberately given a certain grandiloquence, made an impression not only on the two rivals but also on the several hundred Indians assembled around the temple, A murmur of approval rose up, and Jacques, sensing that he was understood and encouraged, continued:

  “You are descended from the same ancestor and you were ready to take up arms against one another. Are you still astonished that men of different races cannot live in peace? If you want your empire to rise again one day from its ashes, it is necessary that you first learn the law of love, that you forgive one another your offenses and forget your rivalries.”

  Huascar, the Inca who was also the Peruvian Alvarez, extended his hand toward his rival, who was listening with his head bowed, his brow furrowed harshly.

  “My brother,” he said, “let us unite for the wellbeing of our people. Inti’s envoy has pronounced words of wisdom. We are menaced by grave dangers from every direction; let us not add to them the more terrible one of hatred.”

  But Atahualpa, raising his head with an expression full of arrogance, proclaimed: “I cannot renounce a right that is the very basis of our empire. Rather war than abdication!”

  Jacques extended a menacing hand toward the rebel.

  “In the name of Inti, I pronounce judgment against you, who has not wanted to hear the divine words. There is only one Inca here whom everyone ought to obey, and here he is.”

  As he concluded that assertion, Jacques had turned to Huascar.

  Atahualpa laughed, and said: “The judgment without value of an impotent judge!”

  At the same moment he drew a blade that he was wearing at his side, and plunged toward the surprised Huascar.

  The latter’s partisans leapt forward, protecting their sovereign with a living wall.

  Atahualpa, hesitantly, turned to dart a glance at his friends; he was awaiting their aid.

  The Indians, however, were looking at Jacques. The presence of the envoy of the Sun intimidated them. How could they rise up against the order of the divinity?

  Atahualpa saw that he had been abandoned.

  Then, exasperated against the stranger who had intervened in such an untimely manner to ruin his prestige, he wanted to sacrifice him to his vengeance; he leapt forward, blade in hand, to slake his rage by sinking it between his ribs.

  Pierre and Robert had advanced to stand beside Jacques, framing him, ready to help him at the first sign of danger. Their weapons thundered in unison.

  Atahualpa collapsed, struck dead at the feet of Inti’s envoy, without his partisans, completely subjugated, making the slightest move to attempt to avenge him.

  In that circumstance, moreover, Huascar gave proof of his presence of mind.

  “Glory to Inti!” he cried, prostrating himself before the trio of explorers. “He has signified his will to our people by striking our unfortunate brother, who listened to the inspirations of the evil spirit. I weep for Atahualpa, led astray by pride, and I order that honors be rendered to his remains. But hear the voice of the Lord, who wants you to be united under my power. Through me, you shall know renewal; through me, your fatherland and religion will be returned to you.”

  While Atahualpa’s body was carried away, at a sign from the priests, Huascar turned toward the altar, where the sacred flame was burning, and extended his arms in a gesture of prayer.

  “Glory to Inti, who illuminates and warms us! Glory to Inti, who makes our trees bear fruit and our herds increase!”

  And the crowd repeated, ecstatically, in a single voice: “Glory to Inti!”

  XI

  An hour later, the archeologists were conducted solemnly into an immense hall, into which the light of day only penetrated through three doorways with oblique uprights. The walls were ornamented with plates of gold. The tables and chairs with which the room was furnished were also made of gold.

  “They’re worth millions,” said Pierre, admiringly. “It’s a pity we can’t take home a few of those trinkets hanging on the walls.”

  “We aren’t conquistadors,” said Robert. “Their work of discovery would have been great without their cupidity, which debased everything.”

  “So,” said Jacques, pensively, “not all the secrets of the Incas have been profaned. At least one city remains on which our modern civilization has not put its imprint, and in that city there’s a temple that has retained its riches. I understand why Huascar/Alvarez was so hesitant to admit strangers into his sanctuary, why he raised so many obstacles before us and subjected us to such rude proofs. One indiscretion would be sufficient to attract a host of pillagers to this place, and the last treasure of the Incas would soon have disappeared forever.”

  Precious metals finely sculpted, imitated plants and animals. There were cornstalks with silver leaves and golden ears. There were figures representing the Sun and the Moon, Viracocha, the gods of the waters, Pachacamac, the god of fire, the divine serpents, and the condor, the messenger of the Sun.

  Left alone in the room, the explorers were admiring it when Husacar rejoined them.

  But he was Alvarez again, for he had abandoned his tunic and turban, and the Inca’ adornments in order to resume his costume of red cloth and his flat hat—and he no longer spoke in Quichua, but in Spanish.

  “I owe you, Señor Lasserre, as well as your friends, an infinite gratitude,” he said to them, gravely. “Without you, it would have been all over for the last sanctuary of the Incas; civil wars would have annihilated that which the incursions of strangers has not yet destroyed. You were right to say that our gods were favorable to you, and I have no doubt that they did indeed guide you here, as you proclaimed before the assembled crowd. I therefore consider you henceforth as the benefactors of my subjects, and mine, not only as my guests but as dear friends, brothers who can demand anything from their brothers. Visit the city at your leisure, with its palaces and its temples; your hands, I know, will not profane them.”

  The Indian interrupted himself in order to colle
ct himself momentarily, and then resumed in a more emotional voice:

  “Nevertheless, I have one plea to address to you, and I remind you, Señor Lasserre, in that regard, of what you declared yourself ready to promise me, in order to obtain the right to visit our sanctuary. I implore you not to reveal the location, or even the existence of this city. The laws of the Peruvian State would soon be used to dispossess me, and the last heritage of the Incas would increase the profane wealth of our oppressors.”

  The archeologists looked at one another, hesitantly. Had they taken so much trouble then, and deployed so much ingenuity, to renounce taking advantage of the victory that they had finally won?

  “Señor Alvarez,” said Jacques, “can we appear to return from our expedition empty-handed?”

  “Don’t let that hold you back! I’ll take you on a voyage such as no archeologist before you has ever boasted on accomplishing. Guided by me, you’ll visit ruins that only initiates have known until now, grandiose vestiges of our past, whose discovery will make you famous, and which I’m ready to abandon to the curiosity of scientists and tourists, provided that this city remains inviolate.”

  The offer was tempting, and he three friends had not spent long years studying the civilization of the Incas without experiencing admiration and respect for it. They shared Alvarez’ sentiments, when the latter feared that the holy city would be profaned and that its discovery would lead to its destruction.

  They consulted one another with glances, and Robert, in his capacity as leader of the mission, declared: “So be it! We accept your proposition, Señor Alvarez, and we give you our word of honor not to betray your secret, the secret of the Incas.”

  That pact concluded, the explorers received a truly royal hospitality in the holy city. They stayed for a week in order to witness the festivals of Hatoun Raymi, and during that time, they forgot that they were Frenchmen in order to believe that they had been transported four hundred years back in time to the resuscitated empire of the Incas.

  They went through the staircase streets, taking their curiosity from palace to palace, circulating in the citadel with square towers and the subterranean passages. The granite edifices had, for the most part, retained their imposing architecture. It would have been sufficient to reconstitute the roofs of wood and thatch to return them to their original appearance. Within the walls, enormous riches were still accumulated, for pillagers had not come to steal the gold and silver ornaments and utensils.

  Finally, Huascar, the last of the Incas, set forth with his guests and an imposing cortege. Under his guidance, the mission made magnificent archeological discoveries, which repaid Jacques and his friends handsomely for their respect for the secret of the holy city.

  They returned to Cuzco two months after their departure, accompanied by numerous porters laden with archeological specimens, and a businessman from Lima named José Alvarez, whose acquaintance they had made in the course of their travels.

  A few weeks later, when they embarked for France, Alvarez accompanied them as far as the deck of the boat.

  “I hope,” he said to them as they separated, “that it won’t be long before you come back. You will always be welcome in the house of Alvarez in Lima and the palace of Huascar in Tampu-Tocco, the holy city.”30

  Notes

  1 Available in a Black Coat Press edition, ISBN 978-1-61227-233-7.

  2 Available in a Black Coat Press omnibus edition, The Extraordinary Adventures of a Russian Scientist Across the Solar system, ISBN 978-1-934543-81-8 and 978-1-934543-82-5.

  3 Available in a Black Coat Press edition, An Unknown Word, ISBN 978-1-61227-302-0.

  4 Available in a Black Coat Press edition, The German on Venus, ISBN 978-1-934543-56-6.

  5 Author’s note: “Considerations sur les résultats de l’allègement indéfini des moteurs. Journal de Physique, mars 1913. See also L’Astronautique, 1930.” The second reference, newly added to the book version, was Robert Esnault-Pelterie’s first book on the subject of space travel; born in 1881, he was one of the most significant French pioneers of aeronautics and an experimenter with liquid-fueled rockets, his research in the latter field obtaining military funding aimed at the development of long-range ballistic missiles.

  6 Although the present novella was serialized three years before the completion of Fritz Lang’s film Frau im Mond (The Girl in the Moon) and a year before the foundation of the Verein für Raumschiffart [Society for Space Travel], which collaborated in the design of the rocket featured in the film, Willy Ley and Hermann Oberth had already been consulted as advisers for the projected movie, and it was known that it was planned as a follow-up to Lang’s Metropolis (1926), so the fact that the German representative is named Lang is probably not a coincidence.

  7 This is the modification imagined by “Pierre de Sélènes” for use in Un Monde inconnu.

  8 In the feuilleton version this figure is given as fourteen thousand, because of the arithmetical error in the calculation that follows, for which an erratum notice was subsequently issued, after a reader had pointed it out.

  9 This is the method proposed and illustrated by “André Mas” in Les Allemands sur Vénus.

  10 In the feuilleton version this chapter bears the title given to the subsequent chapter in the book version and the next chapter-break is omitted.

  11 The remaining wordage of this chapter does not appear in the serial version, probably having been cut in order to prevent the text overrun the page, and the feuilleton version of the following chapter bears the title of the subsequent one in the book version, the chapter break having been deleted.

  12 The “bombardment thesis” is now so widely-accepted as to be taken for granted, but in 1926 the notion of bombardment by matter from the outer solar system—asteroids or cometary fragments—still seemed bizarre and highly improbable, which is why Espronceda substitutes local projectiles generated during the formation of the Earth/Moon system.

  13 This extra chapter-break and title are absent from the feuilleton version.

  14 In the feuilleton version this chapter is entitled “Mountains and Precipices.”

  15 What the author calls rainures [grooves] are usually known in modern English astronomy as “rays,” but that word already has more than sufficient meanings in the present translation and the term “grooves” is used by modern astronomers in connection with craters on other satellites in the solar system, so a literal translation did not seem unjustified, especially given that the text’s (probably incorrect) explanation of the phenomenon is that they really are grooves.

  16 The Marsh of Putrefaction did make a brief appearance on lunar maps made in the 1880s (although Camille Flammarion called the feature the Sea of Putrefaction) but it disappeared some time before 1926, so in this instance the author seems a trifle behind the times.

  17 Golfe Torride is translated as “Torrid Gulf” in some English editions of Jules Verne’s account of a journey around the moon, but does not appear on English lunar maps, where the feature usually has the Latin name Sinus Aestuum, whose literal English translation would be “Bay of Billows.” As I have not been employing Latin names, in keeping with the spirit of the French text, it seemed best to translate this one literally.

  18 In the feuilleton version, this chapter is entitled “At Sunset.” It could not have been entitled “Copernicus” there because the name of that crater is one of those removed from the text for the purposes of the competition.

  19 This particular version of the thermoelectric effect is the one discovered by the French physicist Jean Peltier (1785-1845) in 1834; its principal application is in refrigerator cooling systems, in which electricity is used to produce differences in temperature rather than vice versa.

  20 The inventor Georges Claude (1870-1960), once known as “the Edison of France” built the first practical Ocean Thermal Energy Converter in Cuba, in collaboration with the engineer Paul Boucherot (1869-1943), which became operational in 1930, shortly before the publication of the present st
ory. They constructed another on a cargo ship in 1935; Petithuguenin had no way of knowing that the technology would be abandoned after both plants were destroyed by bad weather, nor that Claude would join the right-wing Action Française movement and collaborate actively with the Nazis in World War II.

  21 Now Shenyang, in north-eastern China.

  22 Now Bejaia.

  23 The references are to Marcellin Berthelot (1827-1907), who popularized the idea of synthesizing organic compounds, including foodstuffs, from their elements; Hans Fischer (1881-1945), who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1930 for his research into the constitution of hemoglobin and chlorophyll; and Vladimir Vernadsky (1863-1945), who popularized the idea of the biosphere in a book published in Russian in 1926, and added to it the concept of the noösphere, or the sphere of thought.

  24 The “figure 1” to which text refers here is not present in the Tallandier edition, although it presumably appeared as an illustrative diagram in the serial version in Science et Voyages, and nor is the figure 2 to which subsequent reference is made. The explanation does not, however, depend on the pictorial representations, although it is admittedly rather clumsy. The symbols E and P are redundant, and the other symbols employed are a trifle confusing, but I thought it best to transpose them directly from the original rather than attempt any modification.