“Master,” the Commander relied, with a sort of concentrated rage, “I threw him into the sea with my own hands, from the deck of La Gironde, which was flying at an altitude of at least 100 meters…”
“He ought to be dead, then! But with respect to Saint-Clair, the laws of nature often remain impotent...” And, terrible in his calmness, Oxus added: “Koynos, you’ve been careless. When you attack a man like the Nyctalope, and want him to be dead, you don’t leave his corpse behind without taking the head with you. You know that! He defeated you during your African adventure!”
Koynos lowered his eyes, simultaneously downcast and tremulous with anger.
“He’s beaten you a second time, Koynos,” Oxus went on, implacably. “I should have sent Alkeus, who is crueler than you. Only the weak recriminate, though. Koynos, you have caused me to be astonished for the first time in my life. Because you have made me experience a new sensation, a new emotion, I forgive you. Go back to your house and await my orders. Go! But beware of the Nyctalope’s third victory—you’ll die of it!”
And Oxus pointed towards the door, his arm rigid.
Livid, with sweat on his temples, Koynos bowed as he backed away. That powerful and generous man was a mere child before the terrible will of Oxus.
When the Commander had gone out and the door had closed automatically behind him, Oxus raised his arms to the Heavens and gave free rein to the anger he had contained until then:
“Oh, accursed children of those who fought my Hictaner!” he cried. “It seems that his strength, which eventually turned against me, his creator, has been revived in them to oppose my designs! This time, though, I am not on the old and paltry battlefield of Earth, already overrun a hundred times! I am on Mars, on the planet Mars! Let Saint-Clair come if he can! For if he can, he will—and I shall be waiting for him!”
He strode violently back and forth within the study—and every time he arrived in front of the automatic register’s dial, he looked at the needle and shivered; it was always at 150.
“Come on!” he said. “It’s incontestable; the station hasn’t been destroyed. Breton and Normand were loyal men. If they haven’t carried out my orders, someone must have them in his power. That someone can’t be anyone except the Nyctalope. What will he discover? What will he deduce? What will he do?”
Oxus let himself fall into his armchair and, setting his elbows on the table and pressing his dry hands to his burning forehead, thought hard. Perhaps he only wanted to give his nerves time to calm down, his blood the leisure to become comfortable in his veins, and his brain the strength to collect his turbulent thoughts.
A long half-hour went by in this manner, in silence and stillness.
Finally, Oxus raised his head again and looked with a placid eye at the register; on the dial, the needle was still at 150. Then, with an abrupt movement, the Master shrugged his shoulders and pressed his index-finger on one of the electric buttons arranged symmetrically on his desk.
Three minutes later, the door of the study opened and Alkeus appeared. He was a red-haired giant with blue eyes and a flavescent beard and moustache. He gave a frightful impression of strength and cruelty, although, by an extremely rare contrast, his large forehead and keen eyes revealed a great intelligence.
“Sit down,” said the Master.
Alkeus sat down on a back-less stool that he found close at hand; then, obedient to a sudden impulse, he looked at the indicator, and a lively astonishment painted itself on his face.
“Yes,” said Oxus, who had followed the direction of his glance. “The Congo station is still sending us its radiomotive waves. Does that astonish you, Alkeus?”
“Master, if your previous orders have not been revoked, the station should have been destroyed nearly two hours ago, and the waves…”
“They have been revoked,” said Oxus, calmly, “but not, it is true, by me.”
Alkeus raised his eyebrows, amazed. Who could have revoked the Master’s orders, if not him?
“They have been revoked by… guess who, Alkeus! Search upon the Earth, among the men that the accursed dagger that Gamma left in Monsieur Jolivet’s breast may have launched on our trail... Search for the one that combines a strange gift with the quickest and vastest intelligence, the boldest audacity, the wisest prudence, the…”
“There’s only the Nyctalope,” said Alkeus.
“It’s him, indeed.”
And Oxus brought Alkeus up to date with his own conjectures on the subject of the non-destruction of the radiomotive station in the Congo.
“Koynos is an idiot!” said Alkeus, brutally.
“No,” Oxus corrected him. “Your rivalry blinds you, Alkeus. Koynos merely has a heart. He does not know that a man who cannot tear out his own heart cannot be the ultimate conqueror.”
There was a thoughtful silence between the two men, which Alkeus was the first to break. “What are we going to do, Master?”
“Wait and watch. Examine the sky. While the Martians are preparing to attack us again—which is scarcely to be feared, given the state of our defenses—we must think about attacking Saint-Clair when he appears in our atmosphere.”
“So you believe…?”
“Yes! If, as I presume, the Nyctalope is now master of our Congo station, he won’t take long to discover the secret to the machines and the pylon. In the workshops, he’ll find radioplanes unfinished or out of order. The plans of several of my inventions are stored in the archives; we weren’t able to bring everything with us—it took us months, and the time was so precious! I counted on the total destruction of the station to disperse our secrets in the atmosphere or obliterate them in the flames of the cataclysm. Let us, therefore, have the courage to envisage the hypothesis that, I’m sure, will soon become a reality: Saint-Clair will come, just as we have come. It’s up to us to prevent him from arriving, or take him prisoner when he arrives.”
“That will be easy enough,” said Alkeus, “if he arrives in our hemisphere—but what if he lands far away from Argyre Island, at some unknown point on the Martian surface—at the antipodes, for example?”
“In that case, he’ll have to deal with the Martians, who—put on their guard by our own invasion—won’t spare him. Thanks to our telescopes, though, we’ll be able to see the Nyctalope’s radioplane well before it’s able to land. Then, calculation will tell us how far away he’ll be at the moment we pick him up—and by means of another calculation, given the speed of the radioplane, its distance from Mars, and the planet’s rate of rotation and gravitation, we’ll be able to delimit the landing-point within ten kilometers or so. If the point is within our horizon, our electric cannon will annihilate Saint-Clair and his radioplane at an altitude of 50 kilometers. If the point is beyond our horizon, we’ll leave him to the Martians—from Saint-Clair’s viewpoint, they’re even more dangerous than we are.”
“But Master,” said Alkeus, excitedly, “you seem to be forgetting our principal weapon. We too can send forth radiomotive waves, which, in opposition to those coming from Earth, can immobilize the Nyctalope’s radioplane in the void of intersidereal space, caught between contrary forces.”
Oxus smiled. “That was my first thought, Alkeus, but you’re forgetting that Saint-Clair will find indications in the plans of the radioplane of the means to neutralize the action of waves contrary to the initial direction of motion. Ah, I repent now of having made that latter invention...”
“But for what purpose did you carry out the research, Master?”
Oxus looked at Alkeus authoritatively and said, dryly: “In order to forearm myself against treason, Alkeus. I didn’t want anything to hinder me in coming and going between Earth and Mars as I please.”
“Well, then,” said Alkeus, getting to his feet, “I’ll climb into my radioplane and return to Earth.”
“And what if Saint-Clair leaves before you arrive? You’ll pass one another in interplanetary space.”
“No!” cried the red-haired giant, standing up straight with
his eyes flashing. “If I want to, we’ll meet head on in a fatal crash—fatal for me, but also fatal for him!”
“What?” roared Oxus, quite carried away. “You’d sacrifice yourself, my son?” And as he too rose to his feet.
Alkeus ran around the desk, fell to his knees and seized Oxus’ hands, tremulous with passion. “Master! Master!” he stammered, in a hoarse voice. “You spoiled everything when you allowed women to be brought here!”
“What do you mean? Tell me!”
“Master, death will be welcome to me. I love that young woman who was given to me, but—she hates me!”
“Alkeus!”
“She hates me to the point of letting herself die of hunger. In order that Yvonne would not die, I had to swear to her never to appear in her presence, never to see her again… but I love her. When you summoned me, I had just decided to kill myself. So you understand, Master. If I remain here, I’ll die a coward; if I go, I’ll die a hero, my death being useful to you, to whom I owe everything, and to my Brothers, to whom I have sworn to sacrifice myself if the general interest of our glorious cause—so beautiful, so grand—should one day demand it. Master, let me go to meet Saint-Clair, let me die a death worthy of us both…” He wept. His hot tears ran on to the dry and cold hands of Oxus.
There was a long silence between the two equally formidable men; the one who was standing up looked down admiringly at the one who was kneeling, in tears. Oxus’ eyes misted over—but only for the duration of a lightning-flash. Suddenly, his ascetic features froze, his eyelids blinked, and he said, in a voice that was grave, profound and solemn: “Get up, my son, and go. You are as great as a god. And I, whom am only a man, accept your sacrifice, because great things will come of it. Whoever has a heart pierced by a woman is condemned to unhappiness. You shall suffer no longer. Go forth and die!”
Alkeus released a loud exclamation, got up, and went out at a run.
Five minutes later, a radioplane occupied by a single man sprang up from a terrace and leapt into the Martian sky.
Meanwhile, Koynos had gone into his house. It was marked above the door with Roman numerals shaped in pure gold: II. Except for the main building occupied by Oxus, the 15 houses of Cosmopolis—which was the name Oxus had given to his retrenched encampment on Argyre Island—only differed in respect of the figure over the door. They had all been built on the same model. They comprised only four rooms, arranged in sequence.
The first room, into which the street door opened, was empty, the walls, ceiling and floor being covered by a layer of electrifiable copper. Fifty people might go into it and be suddenly struck down in the blink of an eye; it was the defense-post.
The second room was equipped, according to the tastes and occupations of the inhabitant, as a laboratory, a studio or a library. It was also a bedroom, because, in each and every house, this room contained a sort of cupboard which, on being opened, displayed a bed, a bedside table and a console furnished with switches and bells, capable of receiving and transmitting signals. One of these switches controlled the electrification of the defense-post. In the middle of the room, a large trapdoor opened solely in response to another switch, through which, by means of an electric elevator, the inhabitant gained access to the immense man-made subterranean workings that extended beneath Cosmopolis. In a corner, a spiral staircase led up to the terrace, which covered the house and was electrifiable in the same manner as the guard-post.
The third room was a dining-room, communicating via another elevator with the vast subterranean kitchens.
Finally, the fourth room, furnished with prodigious luxury and augmented at the rear by a bathroom, was the feminine bedroom.
Koynos had, therefore, gone into his house, whose copper door closed automatically as soon as he had gone through. He went through the guard-post and pressed a button in the wall. A second copper door opened, let him pass through, and closed again. Without pausing in the laboratory/library or the dining-room, Koynos entered the fourth room, after announcing his presence by means of a bell.
It was illuminated by a tall and wide glazed bay window, through which one could see, about 200 meters away, the red lawns of a beautiful garden, which extended to the ramparts. A low bed, marvelously tasteful and luxurious, in the purest Louis XVI style, was set to one side. Facing the door was a profound divan, under a lace awning of inconceivable finesse. The walls were decorated with admirable old tapestries whose panels represented the 12 labors of Hercules. Between the panels, beautiful paintings of the 18th century French school had been hung. On the floor, covered by a thick rose-colored carpet, rugs were scattered, made of the skin of a polar bear, a lion, a tiger and a leopard. Beneath the armchairs were poufs. There were delicate side-tables and one ornamented full-sized table. There was a bookcase in one corner, and in the opposite corner a tall glass-fronted display-case, full of marvelous gems, antique fans and rare porcelain.
These objects, a tiny fraction of those which furnished and ornamented the houses of Cosmopolis, had been transported from the Congo station to Mars by means of radioplanes attached to one another, forming a veritable interplanetary convoy of merchandise.
When Koynos came in, a woman was lying full-length on the divan, with a book in her hand. It was Xavière. The captivity to which she had been subject had not altered her face at all, nor veiled the gleam of her beautiful eyes, nor lessened the suppleness of her feline body. She was dressed in a sort of embroidered silk kimono, which left her neck and part of her shoulders bare. Her white arms, admirable in the harmony of their line and the purity of their form, emerged from long loose sleeves. Her black hair, gathered together on top of her heads, descended the nape of her neck in a heavy chignon, into which the daylight imported blue reflections. At Koynos’ appearance, she propped herself up nonchalantly on her elbow and her enigmatic eyes fixed themselves upon the man—who, very pale, bowed profoundly.
“Mademoiselle,” he said, in a grave tone, “I have returned.” As he had come to seek consolation in Xavière’s presence for the disgrace he had suffered in Oxus’, his gaze was filled with ardent supplication. A passion that was already profound and recent suffering had thinned out his face, put dark circles around his eyes and changed his habitual arrogance into a sort of dolorous and noble resignation.
Xavière looked at her conqueror, and divined in him a man defeated. A smile of triumph spread across her lips, while her impassive eyes did not divulge the secret of her thoughts. “Koynos,” she said, “tell me what you have done—all of it!”
“Alas!” He was trembling. Was he, then, going to admit that he had murdered Saint-Clair? Saint-Clair, to whom—as Koynos knew—Xavière was engaged to be married. Saint-Clair, who loved her! It was true that the Nyctalope had probably escaped death—but he, Koynos, had at least attempted to murder him. If he admitted it, he would become an object of implacable hatred, disgust and horror for this young woman, whom he loved…
Now, Koynos had already risked one step on the slope of concession and compromise—the laxities to which amorous passion ordinarily leads. He had taken that step by promising the young woman to send the revelatory note to Admiral de Ciserat. The slope is slippery; Koynos hesitated to reclimb it abruptly, to pose as a master, a complete conqueror, before Xavière, arrogantly to take back all his actions and to say: “Yes, your fiancé is dead, or, at least, I have done what would normally have been enough to kill him. You are mine, entirely. Whether you love me or hate me, you belong to me!”
Koynos was afraid to talk thus, and, therefore, a liar in Xavière’s presence as he had been devoid of ideas in Oxus’—devoid of ideas while Alkeus had immediately come up with the noble idea of making the necessary sacrifice—he became a coward by virtue of the hope of love, when despair would have rendered him as heroic as Alkeus. He told the story of his journey to Earth, but passed over in silence the tragic incident in which Saint-Clair and Bastien had met, or ought to have met, their deaths.
When he had finished talking, still standing
in front of the divan on which the young woman was lying, he raised his pale head again, and his gaze was so expressive that Xavière shivered. One thing in particular had struck her during the recitation, which was that Koynos had not made any mention of Saint-Clair. Had her fiancé not accompanied Admiral de Ciserat, then? That was impossible! By means of the divinatory instinct that all women possess, some with a marvelous intensity, Xavière understood that there was an important lacuna in Koynos’ story. Strong and clever as she was, however, she wanted to maintain her moral superiority, and she refrained from compelling Koynos to talk specifically about the subject on which he did not wish to say a word.
The silence that followed the story was prolonged to the point of subjecting the man to torture. All of a sudden, however, in a clear, calm voice devoid of irony, Xavière pronounced these unexpected words: “So, Koynos, you love me?”
This was like a thunderbolt; he shivered and threw himself on his knees before her, replying, madly, with the eternal cry of passion: “How I love you, Xavière! Ah, I would be ashamed of loving you if I did not love you until death! Since the day when I saw you for the first time, you have chained me to you by chains more solid and more indestructible than all these doors and all the obstacles and spaces that separate you from liberty! Xavière, an insane hope has now entered into my heart. I thought that, since you have consented to see me and to speak to me without horror and without hatred, I thought… Pardon me, Xavière… I thought that you might love me one day…”
He was almost sobbing, and his eyes, brimming with tears, were imploring Xavière—who remained impassive. “Pardon me,” he resumed, in a lower and seemingly weary voice. “I was strong, I was powerful, I believed myself armored against any sentiment that my oppose my oath to the Fifteen… But you came along… I saw you… and I wanted to kill myself, because I loved you and I ought not to love you. Alas! Even that force, that instantaneous force that might have struck me down in the electrified room, never to rise again, I have not used… Xavière, I love you! I love you!”
The Nyctalope on Mars 1: The Mystery of the Fifteen Page 17