I didn’t recognize the horror, and Hauchet said that it had never existed on Earth. We named it Tridens ferox, and the species is rare. At any rate, the creature stood up, as big as an elephant standing on its hind legs, its shapeless limbs hanging down like a squamous robe. It had no muzzle, only a sort of whitish triangle that opened and closed rhythmically. It came forward deliberately, like a creature unfamiliar with its enemy, and the ground shook at each step. Twenty paces from the Sirius, it slowly crouched down.
Then the sound of an elephant-gun rang out. The Doctor stifled a curse, but the explosive bullet—two to the pound!—had struck the mass full on. The flame burst forth and the brute began coughing with the power of a motorized drill, rolling around in the convulsions of a furious agony.
Finally, death came. The terrible structure became still.
“Stay up here with your rifles. I’ll go take a look,” said Hauchet.
We inspected the surroundings and the Doctor went forward. Scientific interest soon made him forget the danger. Suddenly, with a shiver, I saw another form loom up behind the rocks. This one also descended rapidly towards us. Less burly than the Tridens ferox, it reminded me of vaguely familiar forms. At any rate, it took no notice of us, and, suddenly pivoting upon itself, threw itself towards the doctor like lightning. I fired and missed. Von Reinhardt dispatched five cartridges from his repeating rifle, but in vain.
The Doctor raised his head. No man was ever so prompt. With one bound he threw himself to his right, behind the corpse of the Tridens. With another, he found himself almost in contact with the new enemy, and discharged a round carrying an explosive bullet into its skull. The creature collapsed.
Thus we made contact with the fauna of Venus. We learned subsequently that our bad luck had brought us into the only plain 300,000 meters round whose gorges and slopes accommodated all these giant creatures.
While we dined, very animated, trying valiantly—but in vain—to cope with a slice of Tridens, the exultant Hauchet crowed: “My friends, we have arrived at the most interesting moment. This world, with its hot Sun, seems expressly made for reptiles. They have reigned here. Some people on Earth think that they still reign—but my ongoing studies of the Tridens and the other animal, which I have baptized Rhinoformis Reinhardtii imply that…”
He paused, took the piece of Tridens out of his mouth and put it on the table, despairingly.
“…Imply that,” he resumed, “these charming animals are no longer reptiles and not mammals. Are they intermediaries? No. Why? Do you want the same things to appear everywhere, invariably? Boring! They belong to an inferior class of a new order that I have just created: the Pseudosaurs, or false reptiles.”
I inscribed that in my Venus Yearbook.
“We have fallen into a very interesting world,” he continued. “These Pseudosaurs, especially the Tridens ferox, were worth the trip on their own. A pearl, a true pearl. No bones, cartilage; scales worthy of a cubist; an unknown jaw; a marvelously powerful organism, of course—I wouldn’t give a sou for a tiger who faced up to one. Nor, by Jupiter, a rhinoceros!”
“It would be nice,” said von Reinhardt, smiling, “to explore Venus from a distance and study these pearls from a safe height. For my part, I don’t like eating Tridens, and I’ll be annoyed if it tries to do the same to me.”
“Very true,” said Hauchet. “We’ll set up the aerac83 shortly, and start by killing a few of the cousins of our defunct friends if they try to get in our say.”
When dusk came, we put together the aerac, at the cost of some hard work, borrowing materials carelessly from the Sirius—but we reserved the test flights for the following day.
There was a delightful sensation of security after days of anguish. Behind our steel walls we certainly had nothing to fear from men or beasts—only from earthquakes. And we dined like gods. Afterwards, we observed the night through the portholes. There was no moonlight or starlight beneath that heavy vault of leaden cloud, but the formidable solar radiation gave rise to a very faint twilight, and formidable jaws were lurking in the darkness. Eventually, something advanced towards us, and we used our electric searchlight to unmask an immense, swift creature with a soft tread. It stopped short, petrified by the sudden light, and von Reinhardt’s rifle rang out. Turning its back, the creature decamped so quickly that it was impossible for us to fire again. The night was tranquil after that.
It rained heavily throughout the next day, and the clouds were dark and low. Then, on the third day, the Sun swept them all away, and Hauchet, balanced on the aerac, took to the air at a height of 30 feet.
We decided that we would all embark, for we had to live or die together. Hauchet took the lead; we had hours of rapid travel before us.
We climbed slowly towards the cliffs, aiming for the highest summits. We passed over vast creatures, asleep or moving slowly. A labyrinth of rocks extended beneath us, then a valley filled with lush brightly-colored vegetation, in which orange and yellow were dominant, then granite hills and further valleys—a complex network that we would not have been able to penetrate on foot. At regular intervals, we rose up above the spurs of mountains. The winds buffeted us briefly, while we searched for a shelter. Slowly, the summit at which we ere aiming loomed up in the sky, and we decided to set down on a rocky terrace above an enormous mist-filled valley. The aerac set down a few paces from the edge.
“We ought to be high enough,” said von Reinhardt.
As he spoke, the wind chased the clouds away and we contemplated a Venusian landscape of wild grandeur: titanic mountains in a starlit chain formed a distant background to immense valleys filled with the roar of cascades. The flaming Sun had melted the glaciers, but its glare illuminated monstrous cones erected on the surrounding plateaus—undoubtedly ancient volcanoes. And that chaos of granite, lava, darkening air and ravines extended for league upon league, repetitive, immense and terrible.
For a moment we remained open-mouthed before that otherworldly beauty, magical in its enormity, its light and its noise, set against the red sky. Then von Reinhardt ran back to the aerac. A stone column rose up into the sky. A second later, the black white and red flag stood out against the sky, and Heinrich took possession of Venus in the name of His Majesty the Emperor. He stood up tall and proud, like a god, and the colors of the Empire floated around him. My heart leapt with enthusiasm and I cried “Hurrah!”—but Hauchet stood up in his turn, very gravely.
“It’s good, Monsieur, to have thought of your fatherland. Allow me not to forget mine. Without me, would you have dreamed of what we have accomplished? I ask, on behalf of France, at least for a foothold—and I would like to see my colors displayed, without infringing your rights.”
“That does you honor,” said von Reinhardt, seriously.
Hauchet advanced to the rock. From his pocket, he took a silken cloth, and the blue, white and red played in the lively air, cut across by a gold triangle surrounding the motto: “Science; Humanity; Fatherland.”
“Higher even than your nation and ours,” Hauchet said then, “you see here the badge of the Future when the nations will be absorbed into one, and which, with me, sets its foot upon this new world.”
“You dream immense dreams,” murmured von Reinhardt, “and you have already brought one dream to a marvelous realization.”
And we soared like eagles over mountains and valleys, beneath the immense Sun, amid livid clouds pushed by the strong winds.
III. Explorations
We had described circles around the Sirius, within a 100-mile radius, and apart from the wild Pseudosaurs, no higher life-forms had become manifest. The Pseudosaurs were only manifest on the high plateaus. Their valleys must have condensed the world’s temperate life: rustling steams fed by the eternal clouds undoubtedly ran there. In our plain, enclosed by rocks, only brutal and formidable presences were concentrated, doubtless originating from other places on the planet, to which the dense vegetation assured abundant pasture.
There was also the matt
er of discovering the mineral riches of the world, masked here by the mantle of tangled plants: radium-containing springs, saline or thermal; future energy-sources that could be utilized at will—for our panclastite was diminishing even more rapidly than our provisions.
“With sufficient energy, I could telegraph Earth,” Hauchet said.
We could only see our planet in brief periods of clarity on rare nights, between the clouds, but that hope sustained us, and we decided to explore the marshes. Hauchet spent a week fabricating explosives with metallic peroxides and sulfur discovered by the ton along the cliffs, in the lairs of three or four Rhinoforms that we took care to exterminate. And we entrusted our destiny to the aerac.
After rocky beaches, there were gaping precipices, steep paths and finally lush shiny plains, swarming with plants. Then lakes, extensive waters disturbed by the twisting of immense creatures, from which infinite reed-beds sprang. From these clumps rose giant dragonflies with iridescent wings, and gigantic cockroaches—nightmarish vermin. There were monstrous leeches, hideous fish—an entirely unknown and malevolent fauna swarmed there, supporting voracious predators of formidable size, near relatives of the phytonomorphs that once reigned over our lagoons. One of them, extended beneath the aerac, suddenly reared up, and the long body, erect above the miry waves, darted jaws of steel towards us. Our engine lifted us up almost immediately, and we continued our course towards the sea. Its immense and monotonous mass beat the rocky coast with an eternal swell, while Pseudosaurs galloped and frightful birds flew over the shore. A few of them dared to give chase to us, our size seeming inferior to them—but our rifles spoke to them, their argument carrying so much weight over such a range that they did not continue.
Ascending to the plateaus again, we found a forest. It extended into the distance, dark and dense, devoid of the cries of beasts and the flutter of birds, and an irrational fear took hold of us. We avoided going down.
“I don’t know what’s there, but I’m afraid of it,” said von Reinhardt.
“Carnivorous plants?” I suggested.
“No,” said Hauchet. “Worse, perhaps…”
As we hovered, something moved. It was a huge, massive animal with a thick skull. It advanced towards the forest and went into it. There was no movement or sound below. Suddenly, the creature leapt up, howled and became stiff, 20 meters beneath our feet—and there were other bones there.
“Electricity! Lightning bolts!” cried Hauchet. “Radioactive tissues!”
It would doubtless be better to describe struggles and battles, but the fact is that, with our aerac and the prudence we brought to our explorations, if we did not get too close to anything, we were not in any great danger. We drew up a map of the region, as best we could, from Reinhardt’s mountain, and cleared the ground around the Sirius, with some difficulty. The plants, full of moisture, refused to burn; the heat was frightful and such was the saturation of the air that sweat could not evaporate—but we arrived at our goal with the aid of Hauchet’s explosives, and the carcasses of the monsters distributed around us created a barrier of terror.
Then we discovered, further away, a zone of dismal, heavy, lukewarm eternal rain. There, the Venusian plants are practically incombustible and fire is never seen. The dominant creatures are large semi-terrestrial mollusks, inhabitants of limitless pools of the intermediary region. Bolder flights carried us to high plateaus above ravines gleaming with strange fires in the tenebrous night, lakes of ice dormant between the crags, torrent bounding in joyous spray. There we dared to descend and camp, for the Pseudosaurs were as unknown there as the lightning-plants. Immense metallic masses confused our compasses. There were numerous smaller creatures, agile and fugitive—but one evening, we felt the wind of death pass by.
We had parked the aerac close to a peaceful lake, lit a fire of grass that we had cut and dried in the Sun—there was less rain at these heights—and we were chatting gaily, waiting for dinner, when Hauchet murmured: “Have you noticed that the air is getting thicker?”
A fog was, indeed, flowing out of a gorge towards us, getting nearer by the minute—something like a slow inundation. Our friend looked again, then suddenly cried: “To the aerac!”
We obeyed. The docile apparatus took off. An instant after, everything disappeared, while we set down on a firm terrace higher up, and the somber mass passed on. Our fire as still burning, but when the cloud reached the lake there was a sputtering sound and the fog suddenly vanished. The familiar flame of the fire invited us to go back down but Hauchet stopped us.
Finally, he allowed us to resume our position down below and our hearts leapt when we saw the discolored plants drooping.
“It’s a form of cyanogen,” our friend said. “It’s necessary to be wary of the mineral.”
I learned that to my cost the next day. We were near to another lake, whose water was dark but marvelously transparent; that excited my curiosity. The water was quite shallow and my companions were paddling in it a short distance away. I took off my sturdy boots and did likewise. It was very pleasant. Everything seemed secure when Hauchet saw me going forwards.
“Come back!” he cried.
I was one step from the edge, when there was a gust of cold wind and the lake suddenly solidified. The pressure on my bare legs was so horrible that I cried out in pain. Reinhardt leapt forward with a pickaxe and attacked the ice—was it ice?—with a giant’s strength. Hauchet arrived with fire.
They got me free and managed to carry me to the aerac.
“It’s a phenomenon of supercongelation,” the Doctor explained, later, “caused by an inopportune wind. Otto, you would have been struck dead for the sake of a bath!”
Be that as it may, we ascertained the lie of the land in its entirety: marshes, high plateaus, shores, completing the map, gaining a better knowledge of its goods and evils, and made preparations for the winter for two months.
IV. Those Who Might Have Been….
One morning, Hauchet showed us shining clouds in the south. It was the gentle fall of mortal snow. It scarcely reached the ground, but others came. Fortunately, we had taken our precautions. The Sirius was overflowing with provisions: fish caught with lines of steel, turtles, edible plants, and alcoholic liquors extracted from mosses or mushrooms. We woke up to a dark sky, the clouds racing under the last of storms. Then we went back to sleep.
The river did not freeze, but it was impossible to go out on those days. There was a deluge of rain. Wind and hail competed in battering out steel walls, so furiously that it was sometimes necessary to close the hatches. I was at a loss to understand that black winter, in such close proximity to the Sun, but Hauchet explained it to me. The inclination of the planet’s axis was the cause; cold water inundated us while other parts of the planet became infernos.84
“Console yourself,” he said. “The seasons are brief—and goodbye Sun, goodbye heat. It will be back soon enough, though.”
We smoked, read, and drew up our programs. Through the windows we watched the deserted plain on which the cold rain crashed down frightfully. Hauchet cheered us upon with his stories and multiple talents. By turns, he was editor of a facetious handwritten newspaper, a violinist, a lecturer with slides—he was a great help to us.
And a day dear to our hearts was drawing near: Christmas. It was the first feast-day on Venusian soil and we wanted it to be as beautiful as possible, so we looked forward to Christmas Eve, and everyone prepared surprises.
We had done well to bring a little fir-tree, for there are none on Venus. We stood it up in the drawing-room, decorated with fish-grease candles. By its familiar light we distributed a few small gifts. Our hearts became sad as we thought of the distant fatherland and our loved ones there—but Hauchet played, and the cares were lifted from our hearts by the joyful music. An unfamiliar champagne sparkled in our cups. Crayfish appeared, followed by many other triumphant dishes. At the sight of so many good things, we recovered our courage. Hauchet surpassed himself in everything, even the cooking!
On departure, we had received letters and many postcards. That day, I re-read my Hilda’s welcome handwriting. She was waiting for me up there, on Earth, where people were rejoicing—and we could hear nothing but the wind in the mountains. Would she have to wait for me forever? She would rather cross the immensity of space to join me. I also found forget-me-not seeds in the letter, so I gathered them up in order to sow them with the utmost care. My companions thought it a very poetic idea.
In this regard, I ought to say that Hauchet had brought a fine collection of various seeds for his experiments, and that we intended to plant them in favorable spots.
And the winter passed. One morning, it was no more than a dream. The Sun resumed its majesty. The fresh air filled us with a new zest for life, and we were preparing for an excursion when something unexpected happened.
First, there were distant flights. Closer to us, Pseudosaurs passed by, crushing the thickets. They were extending their necks, running southwards. Other monsters followed rapidly, a veritable dread urging their herd onwards. There was even a group of Tridens ferox galloping with the others.
We looked at one another. Such panic had to signify a cyclone or an earthquake, for what other enemy would be able to frighten these creatures? Then the fleeing creatures thinned out. Finally, a distant line appeared on the rain-dimmed horizon—a single mass at first, then separate shapes. We extended out telescopes avidly.
What was advancing towards us in serried ranks belonged to no known class of living creatures. They were five or six feet tall, with bare, smooth skin, large batrachian mouths, and massive, enormous and awkward hands—but a frontal projection jutted out from each face and the eyes were small, clear and keen.
There were thousands of them. Many, grotesquely, were carrying objects of various sorts in their hands; others were running back and forth. There was an orderliness about them. The unexpected had come into play. If the planet produced these robust and disciplined beings in multitudes, our very existence became problematic, full of dangers.
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