The Navigators of Space

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  She only had to climb up on the wall to see him, still distant, approaching with a heavy tread.

  His clothes were torn; there were cuts gashing his neck, face and hands; his entire body expressed fatigue—only his eyes retained a certain vigor.

  “Where have you been?” Arva cried.

  “I’ve been deep into the Earth,” he replied—but he did not want to say any more.

  The rumor of his return spread rapidly, and his traveling companions came to see him. One of them having reproached him for delaying their departure, however, he replied: “Don’t criticize me, for I bring great news.”

  This reply surprised and shocked his listeners. How could a man bring news that was not known to other men? Such words had had meaning, once, when the Earth was unknown and full of resources, when hazard dwelt among living beings and individuals or peoples opposed their destiny—but now, when the planet was exhausted, when men could no longer struggle against one another, when everything was resolved by inflexible laws and no one could anticipate perils before the birds and the instruments, they were absurd.

  “Great news!” the man who had reproached him repeated, disdainfully. “Have you gone mad, watchman?”

  “You’ll soon see whether I’ve gone mad! Let’s go in search of the Redlands Council.”

  “You’ve made them wait.”

  Targ did not reply. He turned to his sister and said to her: “Go fetch the woman I saved yesterday. Her presence is necessary.”

  The Grand Council of Redlands was meeting at the center of the oasis. It was not complete, several of its members having been killed in the disaster. The attitude of the survivors showed no trace of dolor, and little of resignation. Fatality had entered into them, as present as life itself.

  They welcomed the Nine with an almost inert calm, and Cimor, who was presiding, said in a uniform voice: “You brought us aid from High Springs, and High Springs has been struck itself. The end of humankind seems very close. The oases no longer know which of them is able to help the others…”

  “They should not try to help one another any longer,” added Rem, the chief supervisor of the waters. “The law forbids it. It is equitable, when the waters drain away, that solidarity should disappear. Each oasis will determine its own fate.”

  Targ stepped in front of the Nine and said: “The waters might reappear.”

  Rem considered him with tranquil scorn. “Anything might reappear, young man—but they have disappeared.”

  Then having darted a glance at the back of the room and perceived the luminous hair there, the watchman continued tremulously: “The waters will reappear for Redlands.”

  Placid disapproval appeared on some faces; everyone remained silent.

  “They will reappear,” Targ cried, forcefully. “And I can say so, because I have seen them.”

  This time, a faint stir, born of the one image that was able to excite the Last Men—the image of gushing water—passed from neighbor to neighbor. Targ’s tone, by its vehemence and sincerity, almost engendered hope—but doubt returned swiftly. Those overly bright eyes, the wounds and the torn clothing encouraged suspicion, although rare, that madmen had not yet disappeared from the planet.

  Cimor gave a slight signal. A number of men slowly encircled the watchman. He saw the movement and understood its significance. Untroubled, he opened his tool-bag, took hold of his slender chromographic apparatus and, unrolling a leaf, displayed the evidence that he had collected in the bowels of the Earth.

  They were images as precise as the reality itself. As soon as they struck the eyes of the people nearest to him, exclamations burst forth. A veritable thrill, almost an exaltation, took possession of the audience, for everyone recognized the redoubtable and sacred fluid.

  Mano, more impressionable than the others, yelled in a resounding voice. The cry, reverberated by the radiolinks, expanded outside; a multitude swiftly surrounded the hall. The only delirium that could still lift up the Last Men intoxicated the crowd.

  Targ was transfigured; he was almost godlike. Like the hearts of old, hearts went out to him with a mystic enthusiasm; faces blossomed, bleak eyes filling with fire; an immeasurable hope broke through the long atavism of resignation—and the members of the Grand Council themselves, lost in the collective being, abandoned themselves to the tumult.

  Only Targ could obtain silence. He signaled to the crowd that he wanted to speak; the voices died down and the surge of heads became calmer; ardent attention dilated their faces.

  The watchman, turning toward the blonde gleam that Erê mingled with all the dark heads of hair, declaimed: “People of Redlands, the water that I have discovered is on your land; it belongs to you—but human law gives me a right to it; before surrendering it to you, I claim my privilege!”

  “You shall be the first to join us,” said Cimor. “That is the rule.”

  “That’s not what I ask,” the watchman replied, softly. He made a sign to the crowd that they should let him through. Then he headed toward Erê. When he reached her, he bowed and said, in an ardent voice: “It is in your hands that I place the waters, mistress of my destiny. You alone can give me my reward.”

  She listened, surprised and tremulous, for such words were never heard any longer. At a different moment, she would scarcely have understood them—but in the midst of the exaltation of hearts, with the enchanted vision of the subterranean springs, her entire being was disturbed; the magnificent emotion that was agitating the watchman was reflected in the maiden’s pearly face.

  VIII. And Only Redlands Survives

  In the years that followed, there were only feeble earthquakes, but the last catastrophe had sufficed to kill off many oases. Those that had seen all their water disappear could not recover any. At High Springs it had drained away for eighteen months and then vanished into unsoundable gulfs. Only Redlands had known great hope. The expanse found by Targ provided abundant water, less impure than that of the springs that had disappeared. Not only was it sufficient to maintain the survivors, but they had been able to welcome the small group that had been saved at Devastation and many inhabitants of High Springs.

  There, all possible help stopped. The heredity of 50,000 years having adapted them to inexorable laws, the Last Men accepted the judgment of destiny meekly. There was, in consequence, no war; only a few individuals attempted to bend the rules and came to Redlands as beggars. They could only be refused; pity would have been a supreme injustice and a breach of trust.

  As their provisions were gradually exhausted, each oasis designated the inhabitants that were to perish. The old were sacrificed first, then the children, save for a small number that were reserved in case of a possible revival of the planet, then all those whose bodies were diseased or puny.

  Euthanasia was contrived with extreme gentleness. As soon as the condemned had absorbed the marvelous poisons, all fear was abolished. Their waking hours were a permanent ecstasy, their slumber as profound as death. The idea of annihilation delighted them; their joy increased until the final torpor. Many brought the appointed hour forward. Gradually, that became a contagion. In the equatorial oases, no one waited for the provisions to run out; water still remained in a few reservoirs when the last inhabitants had already disappeared.

  It took four years to annihilate the people of High Springs; then the oasis was seized by the immense desert, and ferromagnetals took the place of humans.

  Following Targ’s discovery, Redlands prospered. The oasis was reconstructed further east, in a territory where the rarity of ferromagnetals rendered their destruction easy. The clearance, the construction work and the capture of the waters was completed in six months. The first harvest was good, the second marvelous.

  In spite of the successive demise of other communities, the people of Redlands lived in a sort of hope. Were they not the chosen people, in favor of whom, for the first time in a hundred centuries, the implacable law had bent?

  Targ maintained that state of mind. His influence was great; he
had the attraction and symbolic prestige of triumphant individuals. His victory, however, did not impress anyone else as much as him. He saw it as an obscure reward for—and, even more so, as a confirmation of—his faith. His spirit of adventure blossomed; he had aspirations almost comparable to those of heroic ancestors—and the love that he felt for Erê and the two children born to her was mingled with dreams of which he dared not speak to anyone, except for his wife or his sister, for he knew that they were incomprehensible to the Last Men.

  Mano knew nothing of these fevers. His life remained direct. He scarcely thought about the past, much less the future. He savored the uniform mildness of days; he lived, with his wife Arva, an existence as careless as that of the silvery birds whose flocks flew over the oasis every morning. As his first children, by virtue of their robust constitution, had been among the emigrants welcomed into Redlands, only a fugitive melancholy gripped him when he thought about the wasting away of High Springs.

  By contrast, that wasting away tormented Targ; his glider took him back to his native oasis many times. He searched for water stubbornly, straying far away from the protected roads, visiting the terrible extents where the ferromagnetals enjoyed the life of young realms. With a few men from the oasis he sounded a hundred gulfs. Although the research was in vain, Targ was not at all discouraged; he taught his followers that discoveries had to be merited by dogged effort and great patience.

  IX. Fugitive Water

  One day, as he was coming back from the desert in his glider, Targ noticed a large crowd near the big reservoir. With the aid of his telescope, he made out the supervisors of the Waters and the members of the Grand Council; a few miners were emerging from the capture well. A flock of birds came to meet the glider; from them, Targ learned that the spring was causing anxiety. He landed, and as quickly surrounded by an anxious crowd, whose members put their trust in him. He felt a chill in his bones when he heard Mano say: “The waters are receding.”

  All the voices confirmed this sad news. He questioned Rem, the senior supervisor of the Waters, who told him: “The level has been checked at the edge of the expanse itself. The reduction is six meters.”

  Of them all, Rem had the most immovable face. Joy, sadness, dread and desire never appeared on his cold lips or his eyes, which were like two fragments of bronze, and in which the sclerotic was scarcely visible. His professional knowledge was perfect; he was master of the entire tradition of the captors of wells.

  “The water-level isn’t immutable,” Targ remarked.

  “That’s true! But the normal withdrawals never exceed two meters, and they’re never abrupt.”

  “Are you certain that they are at present?”

  “Yes; the recorders have verified it; their progress is normal. They haven’t registered anything this morning. It was about midday that the diminution began, so it has reached more than 1.50 meters an hour.” His mineral stare remained fixed; his hand had not twitched; one could scarcely see his lips move.

  Targ’s eyes were palpitating, as was his heart.

  According to the divers,” said Rem, “no new fissure has formed in the bed of the lake. The problem must therefore be with the springs. There are three main hypotheses that might account for it: either the springs are blocked, they’ve been diverted, or they’re drying up. We still have some hope.” The word hope fell from his mouth like a block of ice.

  “Are the reservoirs full?” Targ asked.

  Rem almost made a gesture. “They always are—and I’ve given orders to dig supplementary ones. Within an hour, all our forces will be fully active.”

  It was as Rem had said. Redlands’ powerful machines hollowed out the granite. Until the first star appeared, a stupor reigned over the oasis.

  Targ had gone underground. There was now a rapid and danger-free access route, thanks to tunnels excavated by the miners. In the beams of searchlights, the watchman considered the subterranean location that he had been the first person to reach. He studied it feverishly.

  Two springs fed the lake; the first opened out at a depth of 26 meters, the second at 24. The divers had been able to get into one of them, but with difficulty; the other was too narrow. To obtain some supplementary information, work had been undertaken in the rock, but a collapse had given rise to fears. Might not the excavation generate fissures through which the waters could be lost?

  Agre, the oldest member of the Grand Council, had said: “This water was given to us by the Disaster; without that, it would have remained inaccessible. Perhaps it also hollowed out its present route. Let’s not carry out haphazard endeavors; it’s sufficient that we have brought to a successful conclusion the ones that were indispensable.”

  These words seeming wise, they resigned themselves to mystery.

  As dusk approached, the level was declining more gradually, and a wave of hope ran through the oasis, but Targ and the supervisors of the Waters did not share that confidence; if the losses were attenuating, it was because the level had descended below the widest outflow fissures. The water presently contained in the lake could go down to four meters and, if the springs remained inactive, that—together with the supplies in the reservoirs—would be all the water the Last Men possessed.

  All night, the Redlands machines hollowed out new reservoirs; all night, too, the water, mother of life, never ceased to disappear into the abysms of the planet.

  In the morning, the level was down to eight meters, but two reservoirs were ready, which rapidly received their provision. They absorbed 3000 cubic meters of liquid. Filling them further reduced the level; the mouth of the first spring was exposed. Targ went into it before anyone else, and perceived that the rock had been subject to recent transformations. Several crevices had formed, and masses of porphyry were blocking the passage; it was necessary to give up attempts to specify the disaster for the time being.

  A second day passed, funereally. At 5 p.m., the subterranean outflow and the filling of a reservoir lowered the waters to the level of the second spring, whose orifice had completely disappeared.

  From that moment on, the losses ceased; it became virtually futile to hasten the construction of further reservoirs. Rem persisted, even so, in bringing the work to a conclusion, and for six days the men and machines of the oasis labored.

  At the end of the sixth day, the exhausted Targ, his heart feverish, stood outside his house meditating. Silvery darkness enveloped the oasis. Jupiter was visible, a sharp semicircle cleaving through the ether. Doubtless the great planet had also created realms, which, having known the freshness of youth and the strength of ripeness, were dying of anguish and penury.

  Erê came out. In a ray of moonlight, her long hair was reminiscent of a soft warm light. Targ drew her to him, and murmured: “I have rediscovered the life of olden times with you. You are the dream of genesis; merely in sensing your presence, I believed in numberless days. Now, Erê, if we cannot recover the springs, and are unable to discover any new water, within ten years the Last Men will have disappeared from the planet.”

  X. The Earthquake

  Six seasons passed. The supervisor of waters had immense tunnels dug in order to recover the springs. All of them failed. Illusory fissures or impenetrable gulfs frustrated the efforts. From one month to the next, hope decreased in hearts and minds. The long atavism of resignation descended upon them again; their passivity seemed even greater than before, in the same way that chronic maladies are aggravated after a respite. All faith, however slight, abandoned them. Death already had their bleak lives in its grip.

  When the time arrived for the Grand Council to decree the first round of euthanasias, more of the living were willing to volunteer than the law required. Only Targ, Arva and Erê refused to accept their fate.

  Mano became discouraged. It was not that he had gained in foresight—even more than before, he gave no thought to tomorrow—but the fatality had become present to him. When the euthanasias commenced, he had such a sharp sense of impending death that all energy abandoned hi
m; darkness and the light seemed equally hostile to him. He lived in listless funereal anticipation. His love for Arva disappeared along with his self-regard; he took no interest in his children, sure that euthanasia would soon take them away. Speech became odious to him; he no longer listened; he remained taciturn and torpid for entire days.

  Almost all the inhabitants of Redlands led a similar existence. No effort stimulated their pitiful energy, for work had virtually ceased. Save for a few fields of plants, maintained to produce fresh seeds, almost all cultivation had been abandoned. The water in the reservoirs demanded no care; it was shielded from evaporation and purified by fully-automatic apparatus. As for the reservoirs themselves, it was sufficient to subject them to daily inspections facilitated by automatic measuring-devices. Thus, there was nothing to disturb the lethargy of the Last Men. Those who resisted atrophy most strongly were the least emotional individuals, who had never loved anyone and scarcely loved themselves. They were perfectly adapted to millennia-old laws, displaying a monotonous perseverance, strangers to all joy as to all pain. Inertia dominated them; they maintained themselves against any excessive depression and all abrupt resolutions; they were the perfect products of a condemned species.

  In contrast, Targ and Arva maintained themselves, by means of a superior emotionality. Rebelling against the evidence, they opposed to the formidable planet small ardent lives full of love and hope, palpitating with the vast desires that had kept animal life alive for millions of years.

  The watchman had not abandoned any of his research; he carefully kept a fleet of gliders and electric cars operational. He did not even allow the principal planetaries to fall into ruins, and monitored the seismological apparatus.