The Navigators of Space

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  XIV. Euthanasia

  After three years, thanks to the contribution made by the hydrogenated substances, the supply of water had scarcely decreased. The solid provisions remained abundant, and there were still those at the other oasis. No trace of any spring had been discovered, however, although Arva and Targ had scoured the desert indefatigably, at enormous distances.

  The fate of Redlands troubled the refugees’ minds. One or other of them had often sent out appeals via the Great Planetary; no one had replied. The brother and sister extended their journeys as far as the oasis several times. Because of the inexorable law, they dared not land, but they flew overhead. No inhabitant deigned to acknowledge their presence, and they saw that euthanasia was doing its work. Many more people than the regulations demanded had died. By the 30th month, scarcely 20 inhabitants remained.

  One autumn morning, Arva and Targ left on a journey. They intended to follow the dual carriageway that had linked the Equatorial of the Dunes to Redlands since time immemorial. On the way, Targ would veer off toward a region that had attracted his attention on a previous trip. Lodged in one of the relay-stations, Arva would wait for him. They would be able to talk to one another easily, for Targ was carrying a mobile radiolink, which could transmit and receive voices at a range of more than a thousand kilometers. As on their previous expeditions, they would be in communication with Erê and the children, all the planetaries at the oasis and the relays having been maintained in good order.

  There was no danger threatening Erê, save for those so far beyond human strength that they posed no greater risk to them than to Targ and Arva. The children had grown; their wisdom—as precocious as that of all the Last Men—was almost adult. The two eldest, one of whom was Mano’s son and the other the watchman’s daughter, were perfectly well able to operate the machines and power-generators; they were worth as much as anyone in combating the blind enterprise of the ferromagnetals. A sure atavism advised them. Even so, Targ had spent long hours the previous day inspecting the family enclave and its surroundings. Everything was normal.

  Before the departure, the two families assembled around the glider. As with every departure, it was an emotional moment. In the horizontal light, that little group was the entire hope of humankind, all of its will to live, all the old energy of seas, forests, grasslands and cities. In the distance, in Redlands, those whose hearts still beat were no more than phantoms.

  Targ enveloped his family and Arva’s with a long loving gaze. The brightness of the fair-haired race had passed from Erê to her daughter; the two gold-clad heads were almost touching. What freshness emanated from them! What profound and tender legends! The others, in spite of their swarthy faces and anthracite eyes, also had a singular youthfulness: either Targ’s ardent gaze or Mano’s aptitude for happiness.

  “Oh, how hard it is to leave you!” he exclaimed. “But it would be even more dangerous for us all to go together!”

  All of them, even the children, knew that salvation was out there, in some mysterious corner of the desert. They also knew that the oasis, the center of their existence, would still be occupied. Besides, did they not communicate several times a day by means of the planetaries?

  “Let’s go!” said Targ, finally.

  The subtle frisson of the motors was audible from the wings of the gliders. They took off, and dwindled in the pearly sapphire morning light.

  Erê saw them vanish over the horizon. She sighed. When Targ and Arva were no longer there, fatality weighed more heavily. The young woman watched the oasis with fearful eyes, and every gesture the children made awoke her anxiety.

  Bizarrely enough, her fear evoked dangers that were no longer of this world. She feared neither the mineral realm nor the ferromagnetals; she dreaded seeing unknown men emerge from the depths of the inhabitable immensity. That strange resurgence of ancient instinct sometimes made her smile, but sometimes also caused her to shiver—especially when the evening imposed its dark vibrations on the Equatorial of the Dunes.

  Targ and his companion sailed vertiginously through the aerial sea. They loved speed. The many journeys they had undertaken had not been able to extinguish the joy of challenging space. The somber planet seemed defeated. They saw its sinister plains and its sharp rocks advancing, and the mountains seemed to be rushing upon them as if to annihilate them—but with a slight gesture, they triumphed over abysses and mighty peaks. Frightful, flexible and submissive, the motors sang their low-pitched hymn.

  When the mountain was past, the light gliders descended toward the desert again, where the vague, slow and ponderous ferromagnetals were moving. How pitiful and derisory they seemed! Targ and Arva knew their secret strength, though; they were the conquerors. Time was before them, and in their favor; things were coincident with their obscure will. One day, their descendants would produce admirable thoughts and command marvelous forces…

  Targ and Arva decided to go straight to Redlands first. Their hearts went out to the ultimate shelter of their peers, with a passionate desire in which there was dread, distress, profound love and chagrin. While people were still alive there, there was some subtle and tender promise. When they had finally disappeared, the planet would seem even more lugubrious, the deserts vaster and more hideous.

  After a brief nocturnal pause spent at one of the relay-stations, the voyagers had a conversation with Erê and the children by means of the planetary; it was less to reassure themselves as to bring the family together at a distance. Then they headed for the oasis; they succeeded in reaching it by midday.

  It seemed immutable. As they had left it, so it was outlined in the lenses of their telescopes. The arcum dwellings gleamed in the sunlight; the radiolink platforms were visible, along with the garages for electric cars and gliders, the energy-transformers, colossal and delicate machines, the apparatus that had once drawn water from the bowels of the earth, and the fields where the last plants had grown. Everywhere, the image of human power and subtlety persisted. Given the signal, incalculable forces could have been unleashed and directed, enormous tasks accomplished. So many resources remaining as useless as the vibration of a ray of light in the infinite ether! The impotence of human beings was structural: born with water, they were vanishing with it.

  For a few minutes, the gliders hovered over the oasis. It seemed to be deserted. No man, woman or child appeared at the threshold of any of the dwellings, on the roads or in the uncultivated fields—and that solitude chilled the hearts of the visitors.

  “Are they dead, at last?” Arva murmured.

  “Perhaps,” Targ replied.

  The gliders descended far enough to skim the roofs of the houses and the platforms of the planetaries. There was the silence and stillness of a necropolis. Even the dust in the dormant air was unmoving. Nothing was stirring but slow groups of ferromagnetals.

  Targ resumed his flight. He saw two individuals on the threshold of a dwelling and hesitated for a few minutes as to whether to call out to them. Although the inhabitants of the oasis no longer comprised anything more than a pitiful group, Targ venerated his Species in them, and respected the law. That was engraved in every fiber of his being; it seemed to him as profound as life itself, redoubtable and tutelary, infinitely wise and inviolable—and since it had exiled him from Redlands forever, he bowed before it.

  Thus, his voice trembled when he addressed himself to the people who had just appeared.

  “How many living people are there in the oasis?”

  The two men raised pale faces, which expressed a strange serenity. Then, one of them replied: “We are still five. This evening we shall be delivered!”

  The watchman’s heart contracted. In the gazes that met his own, he recognized the misty light of euthanasia.

  “May we descend?” he said, humbly. “The law has exiled us.”

  “The law is finished!” the second man murmured. “It disappeared at the moment when we accepted the great cure.”

  At the sound of voices, three other living individua
ls appeared: two men and a young woman. They all looked at the gliders with ecstatic expressions.

  Targ and Arva landed then.

  There was a brief silence. The watchman examined the last of his peers avidly. Death was within them; no remedy could combat the delightful poisons of euthanasia.

  The woman, who was very young, was much the palest of the five. Yesterday, she had still borne the future; today, she was older than a centenarian.

  “Why did you want to die?” Targ exclaimed. “Has the water run out, then?”

  “What does water matter to us?” whispered the young woman. “Why should we live? Why did our ancestors live? An inconceivable folly made them resist, for millennia, the decree of nature. They wanted to perpetuate themselves in a world that was no longer theirs. They accepted an abject existence, solely in order not to disappear. How is it possible that we have followed their pitiful example? It’s so pleasant to die!”

  She spoke in a slow, pure voice. Her words made Targ feel horribly sick. Every atom of his flesh rose up against such resignation—and the placid joy that lit up the faces of the dying was still incomprehensible to him. Even so, he kept quiet. What right had he to mingle the slightest bitterness with their end, since that end was no longer avoidable?

  The young woman closed her eyes. Her feeble exaltation was extinguished; here breath was slowing down with every passing second. Leaning against an arcum wall, she repeated: “It’s so pleasant to die!”

  One of the men murmured: “Deliverance is at hand.”

  Then, they all waited. The young woman was lying on the ground, scarcely breathing. An increasing pallor invaded her cheeks. Then she opened her eyes gain, momentarily, and looked at Targ and Arva with pitying tenderness.

  “The folly of suffering remains within you,” she stammered. Her hand was raised, and fell back slowly. One last shudder agitated her flesh. Finally, her limbs stiffened and she expired as gently as a little star on the horizon.

  Her four companions studied her with happy tranquility. One of the murmured: “Life has never been desirable, even in the times when the Earth determined the power of humankind.”

  Horrorstruck, Targ and Arva remained silent for some time. Then they piously wrapped up the woman who had been the final representative of the Future in Redlands. They did not have the courage to stay with the others, though. The absolute certainty of their death filled them with apprehension.

  “Let’s go, Arva,” said Targ, softly.

  When his glider was flying in convoy with Arva’s, the watchman said: “Now we and our children are truly the last—the only—hope of the human species.”

  His companion turned a tearful face toward him. “In spite of everything,” she stammered, “it was a great relief to know that there were people still living in Redlands. How many times that has consoled me! And now…now…” Her gesture indicated the implacable extent of the huge western mountains. Wildly, she cried: “It’s all over, Brother!”

  His own head had slumped forward—but he reacted against the pain. His eyes sparkling, he proclaimed: “Death alone will destroy my hope.”

  For several hours, the gliders followed the line of the highway. When the region that had attracted Targ’s attention appeared, they slowed down. Arva chose the relay-station at which she would wait. Then, the planetary having brought the voices of Erê and the children, the watchman set off into the wilderness alone. He already knew the lie of the land, vaguely, over an area that extended twelve hundred kilometers to either side of the road.

  The further he went, the more chaotic the terrain became. A chain of hills presented itself, and then, once again, the broken plain. Targ was now flying through unknown territory. Several times he descended to ground level, but a vertigo urged him to press on further.

  An immense red wall barred the horizon. The aviator flew over it and sailed over the abyss. Gulfs were hollowed out there, gulfs of darkness, whose depths were indeterminable. There was evidence of immense convulsions everywhere; entire mountains had crumbled, others were twisting, ready to collapse into the unsoundable void.

  The glider described long parabolas over the impressive landscape. The majority of the gulfs were so wide that aircraft would have been able to descend into them in dozens.

  Targ lit his searchlight and began the exploration at random. First, he flew into a crevice open at the bottom of a cliff. The light seemed to dissolve in order to reach the bottom, which was revealed to be devoid of any issue.

  A second gulf appeared more propitious for adventure at first. Several tunnels extended into the earth; Targ explored them without any profitable result.

  The third expedition was vertiginous. The glider descended more than two thousand meters before touching down. The bottom of the immense hole formed a trapezium, whose smallest side was two hectometers long. Caves opened everywhere. It took an hour to explore them. All but two were limited by blank walls. By contrast, those two included numerous fissures—but too narrow to permit the passage of a man.

  “No matter!” murmured Targ, just as he was about to abandon the second cave. “I’ll come back.”

  Suddenly, he had the strange impression that he had felt ten years earlier, on the eve of the great disaster. Taking out his hygroscope, excitedly, he consulted the needle, and released a cry of triumph.

  There was water vapor in the cave.

  XV. The Vanished Enclave

  For a long time, Targ walked through the darkness. His thoughts were sparse; an immeasurable joy filled his flesh. When he recovered himself, he thought:

  There’s nothing to be done for the present. To reach the mysterious water, it’s necessary to discover a way through, elsewhere than at the bottom of the gulf, or to hollow out a passage. It’s a question of time or a question of work. In the former case, Arva’s presence will be infinitely useful; in the second, it will be necessary to go back to the Equatorial of the Dunes and bring back the necessary apparatus to capture energy and cut through the granite.

  While reflecting thus, the young man had made preparations to get under way. Soon, the glider was describing the spiral curve that would take it back to the surface. Two minutes later he emerged from the gulf; the watchman immediately orientated his portable radiolink and sent out a call.

  There was no response.

  Astonished, he increased the intensity of the transmission. The receiver remained mute.

  Targ was gripped by a slight anxiety; he launched a circular call, which went forth in all directions successively—and, as the silence persisted, he began to fear some unfortunate occurrence. Three hypotheses presented themselves: either there had been an accident; or Arva had left the refuge; or, finally, she had fallen asleep.

  Before sending out another call, the explorer determined his present position with minute exactitude. Then he imparted the maximum intensity to the radio-waves. They would agitate the receiver microphones with such force that Arva would hear them even if she were asleep.

  Yet again, the expanse yielded no response.

  Had the young woman definitely left the refuge? She would certainly not have done that without a very good reason. At all costs, he had to catch up with her.

  He was already under way again, flying at top speed.

  In less than three hours, he had covered a thousand kilometers. The relay-station was clearly visible in the ocular lens of the aerial telescope. It was deserted! And Targ could not see anyone in the vicinity. Had Arva gone away, then? But where? Why? She could not have gone far, for her glider was still at anchor…

  The final minutes were intolerably long; it seemed that the speedy vessel was no longer going forward; the young man’s eyes had misted over.

  Finally, the refuge was there. Targ landed in the middle, tethered the apparatus and ran forward. A cry of lament sprang from his throat. Arva was lying on the other side of the road, set against the vertical bank—which had rendered her invisible. She was as pale as the young woman who had succumbed to euthanasia in
Redlands a short while before. To his horror, Targ saw a swarm of ferromagnetals—Tertiaries of the largest size—pressing around her.

  With two abrupt movements, Targ attached his arcum ladder; then, descending to the young woman’s side, he put her over his shoulder and climbed back up.

  She had not moved; her flesh was inert; kneeling down, Targ tried to detect a heartbeat, but in vain. The mysterious energy providing the rhythm of life seemed to have faded away. Tremulously, the watchman placed the hygroscope on the young woman’s lips. The delicate instrument revealed what hearing had been unable to discover: Arva was not dead—but her unconsciousness was so profound that she might die at any moment.

  The cause of her condition seemed to be obvious; it was due, if not solely, at least in large measure, to the action of the ferromagnetals. Arva’s singular pallor was evidence of an excessive loss of hemoglobin.

  Fortunately, Targ never travelled without carrying instruments, stimulants and traditional remedies. He injected two doses of a powerful cordial, a few minutes apart. Her heart resumed beating, albeit very weakly.

  Arva’s lips murmured: “The children…the Earth…” Then she fell into a sleep that Targ neither could nor ought to combat—a fateful and salutary sleep during which he injected a few milligrams of “organic iron” every three hours. It would require at least twenty-two hours before Arva would be able to tolerate a brief awakening. It did not matter! The greatest anxiety had disappeared. The watchman, knowing that his sister was in perfect health, was not afraid of any mortal consequence.