The Navigators of Space

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  All five were keenly interested in our existence, especially Aldebaran and Vega. Something that astonished us profoundly was that their voices—those voices that did not exist—exhibited some difference. It did not take us long to understand that this resulted from the rhythmic elements of each of the five Ethereals, the states that determined the “harmonic individuals.”

  It was Aldebaran who replied to us first on the day when we posed the question of Space and Time. Antoine began by defining persistence and change. It was necessary to add a few terms to our common vocabulary.

  The Ethereals listened, asked questions and made suggestions, and then Aldebaran concluded: “The changes that you perceive directly are extremely slow by comparison to those we perceive directly ourselves. You can, however, conceive—without perceiving them—of much more rapid changes. Your slow changes are an illusion; the obstacles that we encounter, and which seem motionless to you, appear to us from the outset to be assemblies of radiation all of whose components are destroyed and reconstructed incessantly. They are aggregations without individuality. Know too that everything is alive.

  “As for you, you are aggregations more active still, but organized. We do not understand what you call time and space, but we conceive of coexistence, change and number—thus, at present we are eight who are listening to you, who coexist without being confused. We communicate with one another much more directly than you.”

  From subsequent conversations, it transpired that they did not have a species memory as persistent as that of humans—no archives of a long past, no technology, no weapons, nothing analogous to books conserving thought and science, or disks conserving sounds and images—but in themselves, they had numerous and various elements permitted them to create means of communication with us—to understand, for example, in their fashion, a radio-transmitter—and, as they had so often proved, to understand us so intimately that they had contrived to emit radiations that were eventually transformed into sound.

  They understood, albeit abstractly, that we die periodically and reproduce ourselves. Strictly speaking, they do not die. At the end of a time that they are unable to determine since they cannot conceive of abstract time,61 the intensity of their life diminishes; then the members of a group of Ethereals renew themselves, and the renewal often involves considerable changes of structure. Renewed, the individual only retains a confused and soon-annihilated memory of its anterior life.

  “It’s as if they die without dying and are reborn without rebirth,” Violaine observed.

  We did not succeed in determining clearly how they understand one another—what they have that corresponds to our language. It must involve extremely complex combinations of radiation, which demand, as our communication does, a constant intervention of intuition.

  Let us imagine, to get a grip on the idea—for it does not correspond to any certain reality—that everything we express in speech has to be completed by the listener. One would rightly say that something is happening similar to the transmission of our thoughts and sentiments, with many errors of interpretation—an ever-imperfect and often false comprehension of both sentiments and ideas. Our lacunae or false interpretations are, however, more a symptom of insufficient discrimination than of the insufficiency of language. Among the Ethereals, language evokes in the speaker something that really passes to the other, not by integral reception but by a development of which I only understand a tiny fraction. To put it another way, the language, while having a relatively broad significance in itself, serves to establish mental states, to bring organisms into concordance, to create a sort of mental identity between two or more individuals.

  If we imagine a conversation between Aldebaran and Antares, it would consist of a series of phrases, operating as linguistic triggers, which would end up reproducing in one of the interlocutors, almost identically, that which is occurring in the other. One Ethereal can address several of its fellows, but cannot perceive several simultaneous replies distinctly. It is important to note that each individual remains master of its thoughts. It only creates, as much by questions as answers, a state of pseudo-identity in the other, within the limits that it sets.

  Let us try to translate this by supposing that humans were endowed with some faculty analogous to the one I have attempted to define. In a conversation with another person, every time I started to speak I would determine a mental state approximately similar to the one that is causing me to speak—an abstraction made, instinctively or voluntarily, by something I cannot specify. My interlocutor will understand me with no errors or lacunae. His emotional state will also be analogous to mine. It is necessarily the case that our nervous systems are vibrating in an almost-identical fashion at the moment when we are in communication.62

  The Ethereals have no experimental sciences, or even mathematics, in the sense that we understand them. Mathematics would not be any use to them. They solve the most subtle theorems of problems concretely, to perfection—and their science, which is personal rather than social, is an immediate function of their life. It involves series of realizations in all the domains of their activity, which far surpass ours.

  Even their structures embody knowledge that is innate or acquired in a flash, which are only revealed to us by dazzling but untranslatable suggestions. One essential fact is that their science involves nothing but radiations. It is in the form of radiation that they perceive what we call gases, liquids and solids—in a word, matter. Our physics and chemistry thus have no meaning for them. They only perceive the so-called material world in its radiant state—which, in verity, is capital in universal existence as in ours. The corpuscles that form matter, being nothing more than bound radiance, flow and renew themselves in the fashion of a river. All constancy is, in sum, nothing but dispersion and reformation in the same order, with the same density, within the radiant aggregations that constitute substance.

  It does not follow from the fact that the Ethereals only perceive bodies in the form of radiation that their knowledge is less extensive than ours, but it is a different knowledge. It gives them direct access to the secrets of physical influences and the combinations called chemical. It allows them to perceive the internal transformations of the radiant clouds that are bodies to them—but that knowledge of the infinitesimal hides a considerable fraction of the effects of mass from them; thus, they had no clear idea of the organic life of Mars, nor any organized life except their own. In that regard, we were an essential revelation for them.

  It is necessary to remark here that, if the Ethereals go around bodies when they encounter them, it is not because they cannot go through them—but in passing through them they are subject to painful sensations, which they naturally avoid. These influences would be more intense, and thus more painful, if they decided to penetrate into the interior of the planet.

  IX.

  Is the life of the Ethereals narrowly attached to the existence of Mars? It seems so. They cannot imagine that they might exist outside that influence. Mars is their center of energy; when they draw away from its surface, beyond a certain distance, soon becoming numb, they no longer have the same motive force and their thought is gradually extinguished. They are then drawn back toward the planet, and as they approach it their vitality is renewed—from which one may conclude that they are a function of an essentially Martian radiation, which decreases with distance.

  Would the Earth furnish them with a tolerable environment? I cannot see how one could verify that, the Ethereals being incapable of crossing interplanetary spaces.

  How did the Ethereal realm originate? To what modifications has it been subjected through the ages? These questions are insoluble, since the Ethereals have no records and their memories do not extend beyond a period so brief that they cannot obtain an abstract notion of time therefrom. For them, all that exists is a kind of present, ceaselessly in the process of transformation, devoid of distant benchmarks in the past; hence they have no tradition, and nothing that resembles our general or individual history—an
d yet they have an innate science that far surpasses the sum of our concrete and abstract science, a more lucid consciousness, a more rapid, more numerous and much surer intelligence than our consciousness and intelligence. Among them, the past, in its essentials, is incorporated into their structures—if one can speak of structure—and that is the basis that gives me a conjectural sense of the transformations of their realm, which could never be likened by analogy to the strata that furnish us with traces of ancient organisms conserved within the entrails of the Earth.

  Are the Ethereals as individualized as humans? It seems so, but we have seen that they can communicate more intimately between themselves, to the point of blending their minds, provided that there is mutual consent.

  They have no knowledge of sex; few Ethereals are born, those which are alive are approximately immortal (see above). Generation seems to be the result of an emanation, followed by a radiant condensation, due to more or less numerous groups. The rare births are compensated by the fusion, also very rare, of two Ethereals.

  There is no hatred, and no conflict—individual or plural—among them. The causes that give rise to rivalries are non-existent. There is no occasion to dispute their nourishment; energy is furnished superabundantly, and I do not think it is possible for them to harm one another; one Ethereal is powerless to cause another to suffer by virtue of any forcible breach of its integrity. Theirs is a situation analogous to the one we would be in if we could neither kill nor injure one another.

  If they have no enemies, do they have friends? Incontestably. Thus, Aldebaran is particularly attached to Vega, and Arcturus to Antares. The entire group comprising Antares, Aldebaran, Arcturus, Vega and Sirius is particularly close, and, as it is with this group that we have communicated since the beginning—although many other individuals often involve themselves in our conversations—it is they who have informed us most intimately about Ethereal life.

  We have tried in vain to understand that which corresponds in them to our pleasures and pains. To begin with, nothing comparable to our scale of physical suffering and pleasures. The world of torture has no meaning for them. Their radiant joys, like their sadnesses, give rise to phenomena that we can glimpse, but cannot understand and never will understand, except symbolically.

  X.

  With the aid of a crew of Tripeds, we have constructed a kind of blockhouse on the top of a hill a short distance from a region occupied by Zoomorphs. Equipment has been set up there, designed for communication at any distance, for astronomical observation and physico-chemical experiments, and for the production of a breathable atmosphere, along with powerful energy condensers. We are completely safe there from the most redoubtable Martian animals, and we would also be able to withstand legions of giant Zoomorphs.

  There is a striking contrast between the regions where the Zoomorphs reign and the regions where the Martian flora and fauna still persist. Only the mineral is manifest in one part, save for the Zoomorphs, which themselves seem to be minerals endowed with life.

  An infinitely desolate plain extends to a chain of mountains. There is no movable soil there, nothing but hard bleak rock, a bare and—apparently—utterly sterile desert. In reality, there is an extraordinary fecundity, since an innumerable Zoomorph population finds the elements necessary to its subsistence there.

  We know that all Zoomorphs, even those that draw energy from others, can subsist without any other alimentation than that supplied by the ground. The species that remain immobile are not, like our plants, attached to the ground. Moreover, the immobility is never complete; if their displacements escaped us at first, it is because they are only perceptible over a very long period; Zoomorphs of that sort advance at half a millimeter an hour, little more than a centimeter a day, while others, especially the giants, attain fantastic speeds of more than 100 kilometers an hour. It is understandable that a first approximation, like that of the beginning of our preceding voyage, had made us think that the great majority of the Zoomorphs were fixed to the soil. We had never stayed long to watch the same individuals, even for an hour.

  As for zoomorph generation, we are still far from understanding its mechanism. On the one hand, it is very slow. On the other, it involves groups. There is no trace of sex, nor of individual reproduction. The groups seem to give rise to scattered corpuscles—a sort of dust in the bosom of which almost imperceptible nebulae form, confused sketches whose evolution is too slow for it to be followed conveniently. It will take a long time for us to arrive at any precise notion of it.

  One day, I was dreaming at the junction of two locations, one rich, comparable to terrestrial life, the other despairingly desolate. Zoomorphs were circulating in every direction, but not crossing the boundary that separated their bleak zone from the vegetated zone.

  A giant Zoomorph, 50 meters long, found itself in confrontation with the most monstrous of the Martian animals, as massive as an Earthly rhinoceros but with longer legs. There was a striking contrast between the organism flattened against the ground, which was reminiscent of a bug as vast as the shadow of a sperm whale or a blue whale, and the enormous carnivore, three meters tall, clad in red silk, its pyramidal head illuminated by six enormous eyes, like searchlight beams. The distance separating them was no more than twenty meters.

  “One would think that the carnivore perceived the presence of the Zoomorph,” said Violaine, who was sitting beside me.

  “It’s possible, Violaine, but scarcely probable. I don’t think any emanation reveals the Zoomorph’s presence, and its appearance is as mineral as the ground on which it rests. If the carnivore were conscious of the other’s life, it would know that Zoomorphs have means at their disposal against which it is powerless.”

  “What if it were very stupid?”

  “The level of its intelligence is only a secondary issue; instinct is sufficient. It’s probable that our carnivore is unaware of the presence of the enemy, and vice versa, unless it’s simply indifferent. Remember your adventure, Violaine.”

  “I remember. My presence was recognized at a distance.”

  “And you were attacked—like us, in fact. I’m therefore inclined to believe that it’s necessary to be in their domain for the Zoomorphs to attack, and the idea gives rise to more than one conjecture. Outside of their zone, they don’t perceive anything, or everything in the other zone leaves them indifferent—or, finally, their fluidity is much less effective there. Notice that that the frontier is not crossed from either side, under normal circumstances. The ground presumably informs the two reigns, but it’s perfectly normal that, being strangers to all Martian evolution, nothing warns us except for the different appearance of the zones.”

  I fell silent, charmed by Violaine’s presence. Her somber beauty was sumptuous that day: the beauty of daughters of Iberia, which envelops them with a voluptuous aura. Terrestrial dreams rose up: the odor of young leaves, lawns and wild roses. I remembered a summer evening when Regulus was about to set in the west. Young women dressed in white appeared in the starry gloom. Their luminous dresses accelerated the rhythm of my arteries. Like them, Violaine was a symbol of all human joys, the innumerable legend that has mingled with universal love.

  A slight anguish was mingled with the charm: the fear of never seeing the Earth again. It would take so little to banish us to a world lost in the depths of space.

  “Violaine,” I murmured, agitatedly, “when shall we find ourselves once again on the bank of a river among tall Gothic poplars, while a landscape of Old France extends to the distant hills?”

  I had gripped her small hand. I drew her toward me gently, and her long hair spilled over my shoulder. I plunged my face into it as if into a wave.

  “I’m not unhappy here,” she said. “I like the violent contrast between the two locations. We’ll dream about that coppery lake, that forest, those red meadows and those fantastic beasts in future, and we’ll feel nostalgic.”

  “That’s true—all the more so because this is the world of our betrothal.”r />
  I hugged her to my bosom, instinct mounting tumultuously, but Violaine pulled away gently. I had never loved her as much.

  “Here’s the Stellarium,” she said.

  Our ship was already settling in the vicinity of the blockhouse. Antoine, Jean, the Implicit Chief and Grace emerged.

  “We’ve identified two regions strongly threatened by Zoomorphs,” said Antoine. “The invasions never take place everywhere, which is difficult to explain but of little importance; it’s necessary to engage in a serious battle at the threatened points.”

  “I wonder…” Jean began. He did not finish. He shook his head with a feeble smile.

  “What do you wonder?”

  “Chimeras,” Jean said. “I often think about it. An intervention by the Ethereals?”

  “A lovely idea!” Violaine exclaimed.

  The Implicit Chief watched us talking, but the movement of our lips told him nothing. Grace had drawn near to me, and her atmosphere poured delight into my entire being. As usual, whenever she was present, the anxiety mingled with the brightest of our hours disappeared. I translated Jean’s words for her.

  “What a magnificent hope!” she replied. Then, with slight melancholy: “But there’s no link between them and other living things.”

  “We can talk to them, Grace.”

  “You can talk to them!”

  I told her about the fabulous adventure; she followed my gestures, stunned by astonishment. “It’s obvious,” she said, “that we’re nothing compared to the inhabitants of the Earth.”

  Jean, Antoine and Violaine, with the Implicit Chief, had just gone into the back room of the blockhouse.

  “For me, you are the supreme beauty of life,” I said.

  Her charming head inclined toward my shoulder. “Why are you so much closer to my life than the others?” she wondered. “Even with my eyes closed, I’m aware of your presence; it penetrates me, while theirs is as imperceptible as if it were invisible!”