The Navigators of Space

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  “No.”

  “Where are you from, then?”

  “Zwartendam, near Duisburg.”

  “Then why does your companion claim that you’re from Borneo?”

  “I didn’t want to contradict him.”

  “And you want to see a scientist?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “To be studied.”

  “To earn money?”

  “No, for nothing.”

  “You’re not a pauper? A beggar?”

  “No!”

  “What makes you want to be studied?”

  “My constitution…” But I had spoken too rapidly again, in spite of my efforts. I had to repeat myself.

  “Are you sure that you can see me?” he asked again, staring at me. “Your eyes are like horn…”

  “I can see quite well…” And, going from right to left, I rapidly picked objects up, put them down again, and threw them up in the air in order to catch them.

  “That’s extraordinary!” said the young man. His softened voice, almost friendly, gave me hope. “Listen,” he said, eventually, “I’m sure that Dr. Van den Heuvel will be interested in your case. I’ll go and inform him. You can wait in the next room. And by the way…I’ve forgotten…you’re not actually ill?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Good. Wait in here…the doctor won’t be long.”

  I found myself sitting among monsters preserved in alcohol: fetuses, children in bestial form, colossal batrachians, and vaguely anthropomorphic saurians.

  It’s an apt waiting-room, I thought. Am I not a candidate for one of these alcoholic sepulchers?

  VII.

  When Dr. Van den Heuvel appeared, I was overcome by emotion; I felt the thrill of the Promised Land: the joy of reaching it, the fear of being banished therefrom. The doctor, who had a vast bald forehead, a powerful analytical gaze and a soft but obstinate mouth, examined me silently—and, as with everyone else, my excessive thinness, my lofty stature, my ringed eyes and my violet complexion caused him considerable astonishment.

  “You say that you want to be studied?” he asked, eventually.

  “Yes!” I replied, forcefully—almost violently.

  He smiled approvingly, and asked me the usual question: “Can you see well enough with those eyes?”

  “Very well. I can even see through wood and clouds…” I had spoken too rapidly though. He looked at me anxiously. I started again, sweating heavily: “I can even see through wood and clouds…”

  “Really! That would be extraordinary. Well, what can you see through that door there?” He pointed to a closed door.

  “A big glazed bookcase…a carved table…”

  “Really!” he repeated, in amazement.

  My chest swelled; a profound contentment descended upon my inner being.

  The scientist remained silent for a few seconds, then said: “You speak very awkwardly.”

  “I speak too rapidly otherwise. I can’t speak slowly.”

  “Well, say something in your natural voice.”

  I then recounted the tale of my entry into Amsterdam. He listened to me with extreme attention, and an intelligent and observant manner that I had never encountered among my peers. He did not understand any of what I said, but he demonstrated the sagacity of his analytical capability:

  “If I’m not mistaken, you’re pronouncing 15 to 20 syllables a second—which is to say, three or four times as many as the human ear can perceive. Your voice, moreover, is much sharper than any human voice I’ve ever heard. Your gestures, excessive in their rapidity, correspond perfectly with that speech. Your entire constitution is probably more rapid than ours.”

  “I can run faster than a greyhound,” I said. “I write…”

  “Ah!” he interjected. “Let’s see your handwriting…”

  I scribbled a few words on a writing-pad that he gave me, the first ones fairly readable, the others increasingly scrambled and abbreviated.

  “Perfect!” he said, a certain pleasure mingled with his astonishment. “I believe that I shall be very glad to have met you. It would certainly be very interesting to study you…”

  “That’s my keenest—my only—desire.”

  “And mine, of course. Science…” He seemed preoccupied, thoughtful. Eventually, he said: “If we could only find an easy means of communication…”

  He started pacing back and forth, frowning. Suddenly, he stopped. “How stupid I am! You’ll learn stenography, of course! Eh?” A cheerful expression appeared on his face: “And I’m forgetting the phonograph…the perfect confidant. It’ll be sufficient to slow down the playback more than the recording. It’s settled: you’ll stay with me during your sojourn in Amsterdam!”

  The joy of a vocation satisfied, the delight of not spending vain and sterile days! In the presence of the intelligent personality of the doctor, in that scientific environment, I felt a delightful sense of well-being; the melancholy of my spiritual solitude, the regret for my wasted abilities, the long misery of the pariah status that had weighed upon me for so many years, all vanished, evaporating in the sentiment of a new life, a real life, a destiny of salvation!

  VIII.

  The doctor made all the necessary arrangements the following day. He wrote to my parents; he provided me with a stenography instructor and obtained phonographs. As he was very wealthy and entirely devoted to science, there was no experiment he did not propose to undertake; my vision, my hearing, my musculature and the color of my skin were subjected to scrupulous investigation, which made him increasingly enthusiastic,

  “This is prodigious!” he exclaimed.

  “I understood perfectly, after the first few days, how important it was that things be done methodically, proceeding from the simple to the complex, from slight abnormalities to marvelous ones—so I had recourse to a little artifice, which I did not try to hide from the doctor, which was only to reveal my abilities to him gradually.

  The rapidity of my perceptions and my movements claimed his attention first. He was able to convince himself that the subtlety of my hearing corresponded to the rapidity of my speech. Graduated experiments with the most fugitive sounds, which I imitated with ease, and the speech of ten or 15 individuals talking at once, which I could distinguish perfectly, demonstrated the matter beyond all question. The velocity of my vision was no less proven, and comparative trials of my ability to resolve the gallop of a horse and the flight of an insect, against those of instantaneous photographic apparatus, were entirely to the advantage of my eyes. As for perceptions of ordinary things, the simultaneous movements of a group of people, children at play, the movement of machinery, stones thrown into the air or little balls tossed into an alley in order to be counted in flight—they stupefied the doctor’s family and friends.

  My runs through the large garden, my 20-meter jumps, the instantaneity of my seizing objects and putting them back again, were even more admired, not by the doctor but by his entourage; and it was a continual pleasure for my host’s wife and children, during a walk in the country, to see me outrun a galloping horseman or follow the flight of a swallow. There is in fact, no thoroughbred to which I could not give a start of two-thirds of the distance to be covered, whatever it might be, nor any bird that I cannot easily overtake.

  The doctor, increasingly satisfied with the results of his experiments, defined me thus: “A human being endowed, in all his movements, with a speed incomparably superior, not merely to other human beings, but also to that of all known animals. That speed, found in the slightest elements of his organic make-up as well as the whole, has created an individual so distinct from the remainder of creation that he merits a special category in the hierarchy of animals all to himself. As for the curious constitution of his eyes, and the violet hue of his skin, it is necessary to consider them as mere indications of that special status.”

  Tests having been carried out on my muscular system, he found nothing remarkable therein, except for an excessive thinne
ss. No more were my ears furnished with any unique attributes; nor, save for its color, was my epidermis. As for my hair, which was dark—a violet-tinted black—it was as fine as spider-silk, and the doctor examined it minutely.

  “I’d have to be able to dissect you!” he said several times, laughing.

  The time passed pleasantly in this fashion. I had learned stenography very quickly, thanks to the ardor of my desire and the natural aptitude I showed for that manner of transcription—into which I introduced, moreover, a few new abbreviations. I began to take notes, which my stenographer translated. Furthermore, we had phonographs manufactured according to a special design made by the doctor, which were perfectly adapted to reproduce my speech, considerably slowed down.

  My host’s confidence eventually became perfect. In the first weeks, he had been unable to help being suspicious—which was entirely natural—that the uniqueness of my abilities might have given rise to some madness, some cerebral derangement. Once that fear was set aside, our relationship became entirely cordial—and, I think, as captivating for each of us as for the other. We carried out analytical tests of my perception through a large number of substances reckoned opaque, and of the dark coloration that water, glass and quartz acquired for me at a certain thickness. You will remember that I can see quite well through wood, the foliage of trees, clouds and many other substances, that I had difficulty distinguishing the bottom of a body of water half a meter deep, and that a window, although transparent, is less so for me than for ordinary people, and rather dark in color. A thick piece of glass appears almost black to me. The doctor convinced himself of all these singularities at his leisure, being particularly struck by my ability to make out the stars on cloudy nights.

  It was only then that I began to tell him that I also perceived colors differently. Experiments established beyond doubt that red, orange, yellow, green, blue and indigo were as invisible to me as infra-red or ultra-violet to normal eyes. On the other hand, I was able to provide evidence that I perceived violet and, beyond violet, a whole series of shades: a spectrum of colors with at least twice the range of the spectrum that extends from red to violet.38

  This astonished the doctor more than anything else. The investigation was long, scrupulous and, moreover, conducted with infinite artistry. It became, in the hands of that skillful experimenter, the source of subtle discoveries in the order of sciences classified by human beings, giving him the key to arcane phenomena of magnetism, chemical affinity and the power of induction, and guiding him toward new notions in physiology. You can easily imagine what an ingenious scientist might be able to deduce from such data as knowing that some metal manifests a series of unknown hues, variable with pressure, temperature and electrical state, and that the most transparent gas has distinct colors even at low density; learning about the infinite richness of the tones of objects that seem more or less black, and that they present a more magnificent spectrum in the ultra-violet than all the known colors; and, finally, knowing how the unknown hues of an electric circuit, the bark of a tree, or the skin of a human being vary from day to day, hour to hour and minute to minute.

  At any rate, these studies plunged the doctor into the delight of scientific novelty, compared with which the products of the imagination are as cold as cinders compared with fire. He repeatedly said to me: “It’s obvious! Your extra-luminary perception is, in sum, merely an effect of the speeding-up of your organic constitution.”

  We worked patiently for an entire year without my making any mention of the Moedigen; I wanted my host to be absolutely convinced, to give him innumerable proofs of my visual abilities before venturing upon the supreme confidence. Finally, the moment arrived when I thought that I could reveal everything.

  IX

  It was the morning of a mild Autumn day, overcast with clouds that had been traveling across the vault of the sky for a week without any rain falling. Van den Heuvel and I were strolling in the garden. The doctor was quiet, fully absorbed by speculations of which I was the principal object. Eventually, he began to speak.

  “It’s pleasant, mind, to imagine being able to see through these clouds…to penetrate as far as the ether, when we’re… blind as we are…”

  “If only the sky were all I could see!” I replied.

  “Oh, yes—the entire world is so different…”

  “Much more different than I’ve told you!”

  “What!” he cried, with avid curiosity. “Have you been hiding something from me?”

  “The most important thing of all.”

  He planted himself in front of me, stared at me with a veritable anguish, in which a certain mysticism seemed to be mixed.

  “Yes, the most important thing of all!”

  We had arrived beside the house; I rushed in to ask for a phonograph. The instrument that was brought was state of the art, much improved by my friend, capable of recording a long speech. The servant deposited it on the stone table at which the doctor and his family took coffee on fine summer evenings. The fine apparatus, miraculously accurate, lent itself admirably to conversation. We could talk almost as easily as in a normal conversation.

  “Yes, I’ve hidden the most important thing from you, wanting to have your entire confidence first. Even now, after all the discoveries that my constitution has permitted you to make, I fear that you might have difficulty believing me, at least to begin with.”

  I paused in order that my words might be repeated by the instrument. I saw the doctor go pale: the pallor of a great scientist confronted with a new aspect of matter. His hands were trembling.

  “I’ll believe you!” he said, with a certain solemnity.

  “Even if I claim that our creation—I mean our animal and vegetable world—is not the only life on Earth—that there is another, just as vast, as numerous and as complicated…invisible to your eyes?”

  He suspected occultism, and could not help saying: “The world of the fourth dimension: souls, phantoms and spirits.”

  “No, no—nothing like that. A world of living beings, condemned, as we are, to a brief existence, organic needs, birth, growth and conflict…a world as frail and ephemeral as ours; a world submissive to laws as fixed as ours, if not identical; a world similarly imprisoned by the Earth, similarly vulnerable to contingencies…but also completely different from ours, without any influence upon us, as we have no influence upon it, save for the modifications it makes to our common foundation, the Earth, or the parallel modifications to which we subject that same Earth.”

  I don’t know whether Van den Heuvel believed me, but he was certainly in the grip of a keen excitement. “In brief, they’re fluid?” he queried.

  “That’s something I can’t say, for their properties are too contradictory to the idea we’ve formed of matter. The Earth is as resistant to them as to us, as are the majority of minerals, although they can penetrate some way into humus. They are also quite impermeable—solid—with respect to one another, but they pass through plants, animals and organic tissues, albeit with a certain difficulty, and we pass through them in the same way. If one of them could see us, we would probably appear fluid in relation to them in its eyes, as they appear fluid in relation to us in mine—but it would probably be no more able to conclude that than I am; it would be struck by parallel contradictions.

  “Their form has the strange quality of having very little thickness. Their size is infinitely variable. I’ve known some of them to reach a hundred meters in length, and others as small as our tiniest insects. Some of them derive nutrition at the expense of the Earth and weather phenomena, others at the expense of weather phenomena and the individuals of their kingdom—without, however, that being a cause of murder, as among us, since it is sufficient for the stronger to draw energy, that energy presumably being extractable without exhausting the vital source.”

  The doctor asked me, abruptly: “Could you see them when you were a child?”

  I guessed that he had formulated the hypothesis that this was, in essence, som
e disorder that had overtaken my organism fairly recently.

  “Since infancy!” I replied, forcefully. “I can provide you with the necessary proofs.”

  “Can you see them now?”

  “I see them—the garden contains a considerable number of them.”

  “Where?”

  “On the path, on the lawns, on the walls, in the air…for there are aerial as well as terrestrial ones—and also aquatic ones, although those rarely leave the surface of the water.”

  “Are they numerous everywhere?”

  “Yes, and scarcely less numerous in towns than in the fields, and in houses than in the streets. Those that prefer enclosed spaces are smaller, though, doubtless because of the difficulty of moving around—although wooden doors are no obstacle to them.”

  “What about iron…glass…brick?”

  “Impermeable to them.”

  “Would you care to describe one of them—preferably a large one?”

  “I can see one of them near that tree. Its form is extremely elongated, and rather irregular. It is convex on the right, concave on the left, with bulges and indentations; one might imagine it to be a cross-section of a gigantic, thickset caterpillar—but its structure isn’t characteristic of the kingdom, for structure is extremely variable between species, if one may use that term in this context. Its infinitesimal thickness is, on the other hand, a universally general quality; it can scarcely be more than a tenth of a millimeter, although it is five feet long and 40 centimeters broad at its greatest width.

  “What defines it most obviously, and its entire kingdom, are the lines that cut across it in every direction, terminating in networks that thin out where two systems of lines meet. Each system of lines is equipped with a center, a sort of swollen patch slightly elevated above the mass of the body—or sometimes, by contrast, hollowed out. These centers have no fixed shape, sometimes being almost circular or elliptical, sometimes twisted or spiral, sometimes divided by several constructions. They are astonishingly mobile, and their magnitude varies on an hourly basis. Their borders vibrate very rapidly, by virtue of a sort of horizontal undulation. Generally, the lines emerging from them are broad, even though there are also some very thin ones; they diverge, finishing up as infinitely delicate traces that gradually vanish.