The Navigators of Space

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  Sometimes, a sequence of caves extended for considerable distances, including expanses of water, some of which were little lakes. The lighting grew brighter the further down one went. We became convinced that it was due to radioactive phenomena, although we found no substance similar to our Violium, the ancient Radium, or even Planium.

  “Undoubtedly,” Antoine remarked, one morning, “the radioactive release has been exhausted in the superficial layers, while it is probably even more active lower down.”

  “If it is radioactivity,” Jean put in.

  “Either way,” I said, “it’s a pity that we can’t use these energies to replenish ours.”

  In the absence of radioactive elements, we had discovered elements whose combination developed extremely high temperatures and produced high-frequency radiation; no more was necessary to achieve the atomic dislocations necessary to our work. We had succeeded in providing ourselves with considerable energies that were easy to renew.

  Furthermore, fortunate experiments had permitted us, by means of successive eliminations, to transform Martian water into terrestrial water and render edible three of the aliments consumed by the Tripeds. We were thus able to prolong our stay indefinitely.

  In the meantime, we had increased our intimacy with some of our hosts. Conversations had become increasingly easy, virtually automatic when they concerned familiar matters.

  The Tripeds’ industry retains the vestiges of an industry analogous to the human industry of the nineteenth century. They make ingenious use of solar radiation and use it to produce high temperatures; they practice a metallurgy little different from ours, but they do not weave any fabrics. Their clothing and blankets are made with the aid of a sort of mineral moss obtained by sublimation, which they are able to endow with a surprising resilience and flexibility. Their beds are made of large elastic strips, which they suspend from panels or beams by means of four, six or eight hooks. Their furniture includes too many variations for me to pause to describe it; in any case, it offers analogies with human furniture of various epochs and cultures.

  As for their agriculture, it is, in a way, “radiant;” they do not disturb the soil much, but submit it to the influence of waves and currents before sowing; the roots of plants easily dissolve the humus thus prepared. Since time immemorial, the Tripeds’ meals have been composed exclusively of liquefied nutrients, which they absorb with the aid of tubes comparable to reeds.

  Their personal and social life is very free. One might say that the era of crime is over for them, and the era of virtue too. As they have no need of any effort to respect the liberty of others, they no longer know poverty or wealth; everyone does his share of the work as naturally as an ant, while retaining his individuality.

  Tripeds capable of violence have become extraordinarily rare; they are considered to be insane. Does that mean that they have no passions? Yes, they do, and powerful ones—which do not, however, harm their neighbors. The worst could well have been love. They are subject to it as imperiously as we are, but over time, jealousy has disappeared. The male or female who does not find favor or no longer finds favor suffers violently; he or she cannot even conceive any longer that anyone might wish to infringe upon their freedom of choice. Multiple love is frequent and causes no more drama than the love of a mother or a father for several children.

  This tolerance might be explained by the futility sensed and recognized for selection. For long series of millennia the Tripeds have been under no illusion regarding their decadence; they accept it without bitterness and savor it as fully as we savor the joy of living. One day when I was conversing with the friend who understands us most fully, he said to me: “Why should the death of the species sadden the individual? Does not everything pass, for every living being, as if the entire world disappeared with him?”

  Obviously! But it might have been the case that the decline cast a melancholy shadow over their souls. On the contrary, the expectation seemed to bestow a sort of collective serenity on the Tripeds.

  How do they love? It took me long months to acquire a notion of that, which is certainly imperfect, but as extensive as human organization permits. Some nuances doubtless remain foreign to me, as the perception of sound is to the Tripeds. Their physical love remains an enigma more mysterious than the love of flowers. Their embrace—for their nuptial act is an embrace—seems extraordinarily pure. It is the entire body that loves, in a fashion that is somewhat immaterial. At least, if matter is involved, it must be in the form of dispersed atoms and imponderable fluids.

  The birth of a child is a poem. First, the mother is entirely enveloped by a halo, which, as it condenses on her bosom, becomes a luminous vapor. She then suspends a delightful shell from her shoulders—a sort of large pale flower—in which the infant condenses, takes on the form of its species, and then begins to grow. Its nourishment is invisible at first, emanated from the mother.

  To my imagination, the birth and primary growth of these beings has something divine about it; all the terrestrial infirmity and ugliness is banished therefrom, as they are banished from the nuptial caress.

  While we made our preparations—which required more than three months—we were able to study the structure of our friends more closely.

  Their vision is much more complex than ours; it extends into the infra-red and the ultra-violet; their three pairs of eyes register different ranges. One, situated at the top, only has a distinct perception of the part of the spectrum that extends from orange to extreme indigo. The middle set of eyes discerns the red and infra-red. Finally, the third pair is adapted to the particular exploration of the violet and ultra-violet rays, up to the highest frequencies.

  Their sense of touch is extremely varied. They perceive weak vibrations in the ground; the approach of another Triped or a Pentapod is signaled to them by magnetic induction, as are variations in atmospheric conditions—thus, the absence of hearing is largely compensated.

  All their arts are visual, but the arts in question are not static, like our painting, drawing and sculpture; they are dynamic arts in which light—their light, much more extensive and varied than ours—replaces sound. I have sometimes had a presentiment of the exquisite and infinitely nuanced nature of such arts but—alas!—only a presentiment. My efforts to understand—I won’t say a symphony, but a simple luminous melody—remain fruitless.

  I had an adventure, the strange and most captivating of my life. Chance, which leads destinies on Mars as it does on Earth, returned me several times in the company of the graceful creature that I mentioned above. Because she was avid to understand the mystery of our world, and doubtless because a confused sympathy attracted us to one another, we helped chance along and saw one another repeatedly.

  She had rapidly learned to make use of our optical alphabet, she manifested an ardent curiosity regarding the world from which we had come, and made intense efforts to penetrate its mystery.

  I made every effort to describe our humankind, which she judged much superior to the Tripeds, since we had crossed the frightful interstellar abyss. She never let up asking questions or learning; a perpetual enchantment shone in her eyes—the most marvelous among the marvelous eyes of her kind.

  The sentiments that attracted me to her were decidedly indefinable. They included a wholehearted admiration, the pleasure of discovering some subtler beauty every day, a magical delight that exalted me as the goddesses had once exalted mystical Hellenes, and a tenderness with no analogy to any known tenderness—neither love, which seemed impossible by destination, nor the kind of friendship that involves a greater familiarity of souls, nor the gentleness that arises at the sight of a baby. No, it was in truth an incomparable sentiment, which I did not seek to compare to any other.

  I remember walks in the forest, on the lakeshore or on the ruddy plain. I lived in a fairyland, uplifted by a fervor that abolished duration and dispensed the “bright” innocence of children and young animals.

  One day, we stayed out late by the lake. Night fel
l—the pure night of Mars, with stars more sparkling than those seen on our highest mountains. “Grace” manifested an admiration for terrestrial prodigies that was becoming a cult—but in that indescribably pure air the splendor of the Ethereals appeared.

  Gripped, I contemplated that divine spectacle for some time, and then—for we were still visible to one another—I sighed: “Because of them, Grace, Mars is superior to the Earth.”

  Her reply, which surprised me profoundly, was: “I don’t believe that.”

  “And why don’t you believe it?”

  “I’m not sure that these brilliant life-forms are superior to yours, or even to mine. There’s no proof of it—none! And I also think that something similar must exist on Earth, which you have not yet perceived, just as our distant ancestors had not yet perceived those…”

  “Perhaps they didn’t exist!”

  “In that case, their evolution must have been very rapid—too rapid for them to be superior…”

  We looked at one another in the darkness; Grace’s eyes shone like the constellation Orion; her life seemed to expand subtly over my face.

  “If even Earth has not yet produced them, it will produce them—in greater abundance and with more brilliance than Mars. Your planet must outshine ours in every respect!”

  We returned through the forest, pensively—and that night, I loved her even more.

  I loved her more, with further nuances. An unprecedented intimacy began to develop: an exaltation of the soul, a heartfelt sensuality foreign to the brutal sensuality of terrestrial animality.

  She too seemed increasingly avid for my presence. One day, I said to her: “Don’t human beings seem very ugly to you, Grace?”

  “I thought so at first,” she replied, “although that ugliness has never seemed unpleasant to me. Now, I think that your bodies and faces can have their beauty. I don’t know about you any longer. I await your arrival with impatience...I find an unfamiliar charm in our encounters that astonishes me.”

  “It’s very kind of you to say that, dear Grace—I was dazzled right away!”

  In the limbo of the unconscious, it seemed that a world was in the process of construction; supernatural entities were rising out of the depths; a mysterious light illuminated legends; possibilities were springing forth from creative eternity—and I sensed Grace’s world combining with the obscure world of my ancestors.

  How can I describe that emotion, which mingled the stars with the beating of a paltry human heart, which invaded me as the equinoctial waves invade an estuary?

  VIII. The War with the Zoomorphs

  Our preparations lasted longer than we had expected, but they were finally concluded. Assured of our provisions of energy and food, we declared ourselves ready to fight the Zoomorphs.

  About two-thirds of the way through the summer,49 the Stellarium touched down three kilometers from the invaded region. It comprised a plain bordered by low hills; two lakes and a few canals rendered its possession particularly precious to the Tripeds.

  We had constructed a dozen powerful ray-guns for our friends’ usage. The Stellarium was carrying five more. We had flown over the territory more than once, which was not yet permanently occupied, although several hundred giant Zoomorphs had killed or chased away the animals.

  The invasion stopped abruptly at a broad gap in the terrain, which had once been the bed of a river. The invaded territory comprised approximately 300,000 hectares. Zoomorphs of any size never stayed there for more than a few days; the ones that left were replaced by approximately equal numbers of newcomers.

  No regularity determined the arrivals and departures, any more than the movements of Zoomorphs within the area. We searched in vain for any trace of organization, unable to discern anything but chaotic trajectories.

  “I hoped to discover some sort of collaboration,” said Antoine, “if not akin to that of a beehive or an ant-hill, at least like that of migratory birds, but I can’t detect anything similar. Even so, the invasion seems quite clearly-defined, limited by the dry river-bed. That bed isn’t an obstacle—we’ve seen them cross more difficult terrain.”

  We knew, moreover—by courtesy of the Tripeds—that it was always the same. Every irruption of Zoomorphs had its limits, and no further push ever occurred until the invaded terrain had been entirely adapted to the life of its conquerors. There was a mystery of “incoherent unanimity” therein, as is sometimes produced in the development of the species, genera and families of terrestrial fauna.

  “Let’s renounce the attempt to understand,” said Jean.

  “And let’s get ready to act! It won’t be easy. When we’ve expelled a hundred colossi, we’ll hardly have begun. They’ll probably be replaced.”

  “Who knows? The instinct that guides their invasion might also notify them of an unavoidable peril. Let’s proceed methodically. Let’s begin by clearing an initial zone, as economically as possible.”

  We alerted our allies and distributed the apparatus, which they had learned to use. Then Jean said to the one who had been appointed, by the tacit consent of the Tripeds, the leader of the expedition, and whom we called the Implicit Chief: “Don’t do anything until you’ve been given the signal. We’re going to clear the loop of the river.”

  The Stellarium rose up to a low altitude. We saw the colossi roaming around the invaded territory in every direction, amid a legion of small and medium-sized Zoomorphs—which was reminiscent, from a distance, of a swarm of large bugs.

  The loop, situated to the north-east, extended for a length of 1000 meters and a breadth of between 1100 and 1200 meters. A dozen of the colossi were moving about there.

  Knowing from experience what radiations were efficacious, we projected a beam that immobilized and then put to flight an enormous Zoomorph. A few rays sufficed to keep it going in the right direction; as soon as it was out of the loop, we attacked a second, and then a third.

  Five were successively expelled, but while we were taking aim at a sixth, we saw two new ones arriving at great speed.

  “Exactly as we feared!” said Antoine. “How many more will come, over such a vast extent? How can we maintain a radiation barrier? What an expenditure of energy!”

  “Although it requires a fairly intense energy to make them flee, perhaps a weaker emission will be sufficient to hold them at a distance,” Jean suggested.

  “Perhaps—but it’s an entire plan of campaign that you’re sketching there. Let’s first take the advice of experiment.”

  At that moment a powerful Zoomorph approached the entrance to the loop. We directed a slender thread of radiation at it. At first, it seemed unaware of the attack and continued to advance—but its speed soon slowed down.

  “It’s stopping!”

  It did, indeed, stop, and remained stationary for some time. Finally, it began to retreat.

  “We’ll be able to make important economies!” Antoine exclaimed, joyfully.

  Nevertheless, to encourage our allies, we agreed to an expenditure of energy considerable enough to complete the clearance of the loop. Every time a monster from outside attempted to go through the pass, we stopped it at little expense.

  After three-quarters of an hour, our task was ended; the loop now only contained negligible Zoomorphs. The Tripeds could get rid of them by their own means. Our success enthused our allies—who, until then, had followed our advice like sacred orders.

  “The experiment is decisive,” Jean said, then. “It’s an important item of information. By taking our time, we can save energy. But I glimpse something more important than that economy, which is that accumulators with a feeble yield will be sufficient to maintain the Zoomorphs at a distance everywhere. The Tripeds will easily learn to construct such apparatus—which, once deployed, will draw their present energy requirements and reserves from solar radiation. Thus, the present frontiers will become impregnable.”

  While Antoine guarded the loop Jean and I went back to the Tripeds; they welcomed us with a frenzy of enthusiasm. Thousa
nds of scintillating eyes gave their faces a fantastic gleam and coloration. The “women” especially were carried away: moving flowers, palpitating blooms in which the pupils shone like prodigious glow-worms.

  In a rush of gratitude, Grace said to me: “What are we compared to you? Poor powerless creatures! How beautiful life must be on Earth, and how happy your humble little friend…”

  “Grace, dear Grace, there are no creatures as seductive as you on our planet, and no spectacle comparable to your face! Oh, doubtless you’re unaware of the charm of our rivers, the sweetness of our meadows and our forest-clad hills, the exciting fervor of our oceans, the sunsets that fade gently in the depths of the sky, and the enchanted world of flowers—but that sparse beauty cannot equal your luminous perfection…”

  “Rivers…waters that run…waves that rise and break, as you have described them, must be divine. I sense that memories are being reborn within me that are not my own, which come from the depths of our ages, from the times when Mars too had Living waters!” Her entire body quivered with enthusiasm as she repeated: “Living waters…”

  We succeeded in reaching an understanding with the Tripeds regarding the general attack. It would gradually expand, departing from a corner of the invaded territory—the corner by which the reconquered loop was surrounded.

  This disposition seemed to us to be preferable to an action that was overstretched at the start; it would permit us to familiarize the Tripeds with the economical deployment of the apparatus, and would not leave any gap through which the giant Zoomorphs might insinuate themselves unexpectedly, which might expose our allies—and perhaps us—to great risks.

  The attack began about two-thirds of the way through the day, with a moderate expenditure of energy. After a few hours we had driven the invaders back to a distance of three kilometers, from a surface of about 500 hectares. There remained a considerable number of small Zoomorphs, whose expulsion would have required such an expenditure of time that it was necessary to renounce it temporarily.