“The means imagined by Jules Verne in his romance Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” the old man replied. “I’ve constructed three diving-suits perfectly designed for the goal you’re about to reach. Compressed air is contained in a bag that you’ll carry on your back, and which will permit you to breathe easily inside the water drop or at least two hours. You’ll be illuminated by an incandescent lamp placed on top of your head, powered by means of an electric current produced by a potassium bichromate battery that you’ll also carry on your back. Finally, to enable you to communicate with one another, the helmets of the diving-suits are connected by means of solid rubber tubes. Come on, gentlemen; time’s pressing. You can put on your apparatus. Here they are.”
Al-Harik opened an enormous cupboard and took out three diving-suits constructed in the fashion he had just briefly explained. Ten minutes later, the three companions, fully-equipped, went under the bell-jar, and the diminution commenced. This time, Thilda was not present during the delicate operation.
To begin with, everything happened as in the previous experiments. The atmosphere gradually darkened; the walls of the bell-jar drew away to such a distance that they eventually became invisible. Meanwhile, the yellow fog enveloping everything became increasingly thicker. In becoming so small, the eye received much less light.
“A thousand curses!” exclaimed Camaret. “if this continues, we won’t be able to see anything at all.”
Another, stranger new phenomenon was manifest. Large floating masses were moving through the air.
“What does that signify?” demanded the dentist.
“It’s airborne dust,” he doctor replied. “The exceedingly fine dust-particles that one sees floating in a sunbeam in the middle of a dark room.”
The floating masses were becoming increasingly voluminous; some of them were as large as oranges, or even pumpkins. There were all sorts of shapes, mostly rounded but also oval, cubic and serpentine, the latter several meters long. Bizarrely, all the bodies repelled one another; far from coming to collide with the three friends, they were sharply repelled when they came too close. Camaret asked the doctor for an explanation of this extraordinary fact.
“My friend,” Paradou replied, “what you’re asking about is very difficult to explain; it’s what physicists call capillarity.{3 According to circumstances, tiny bodies placed on water either attract or repel one another; in air, as you see there’s a repulsion. But…”
The doctor was unable to continue his scientific explanation. An enormous mass, like a mountain of rock crystal, had just fallen loudly about a kilometer away.
“That’s the water-drop!” exclaimed Soleihas.
Yes, it really was the drop of water that Al-Harik had just deposited near the voyagers. That was the expedition’s objective and it was now a matter of getting into it—but what a gigantic drop of water it was! It was at least 500 meters in diameter, with a height of 200 meters. Light, in breaking through its surface and traversing its mass, took on all the colors of the rainbow.
In a few minutes they had reached the edge of the water-drop. Its form was that of an immense flattened disk—or rather, as Camaret remarked, that of a semi-deflated balloon. That comparison as rendered more just by a curious phenomenon that the dentist had discovered. Having applied his hand to the surface of the water, he was astonished not to see it pass into it as usual. It was as if the water were covered with a thin, elastic envelope that opposed the penetration of his hand. Again, Camaret had to call upon the doctor’s science.
“Capillarity again, my friend,” the latter replied. “It’s the surface tension of liquids…”
“To the Devil with your capillarity,” said the dentist. “I suspect it of being an evil spirit. Just so long as it doesn’t do us a bad turn of that sort.”
Alas, Camaret had had a sort of presentiment of what was to come. A minute later, capillarity did indeed play a nasty practical joke on the unfortunate doctor.
Come on, my friends,” Paradou had exclaimed. “You know that our apparatus can only function for two hours. Let’s not waste any time in needless chat and get into the water.”
“But how?” the optician replied. “You can see that Camaret’s arm doesn’t have the strength to pierce the surface.”
“The weight of our bodies will be quite sufficient,” said the doctor, who had already put on his diving-suit, save for the glass helmet, which was not yet screwed on. Here—look!”
And, supporting himself on one leg that was already on the liquid surface, he raised himself up and placed the other leg thereon. He took a few steps, lurching like a drunken man. Finally losing his balance, he fell flat on his stomach.
Surprise! Instead of remaining still, he started spinning madly, then rose up at a vertiginous speed to the summit of the water-drop, still spinning and describing huge curves.
His companions soon lost sight of him, for he had disappeared over the other side of the water-drop.
“My God!” cried the optician, in utter despair. “We’ve lost Paradou!”
“Let’s run to help him!” cried Camaret simultaneously.—and, putting one foot on the water, he tried to launch himself forward.
The optician grabbed him by the arm. “Stop, you fool,” he said. “You’ll be dragged away in your turn.”
Camaret understood, and stepped back. “Hang on,” he suddenly cried, pointing with his finger to the right of the drop of water—here’s the doctor coming back this way.”
Indeed, doubtless after having described further curves on the far side of the liquid surface, Paradou was coming back toward his companions. His movements had slowed considerably. He had come to no harm and even seemed quite satisfied with his misadventure. What harm could have befallen him anyway? None. Lying tranquilly on his back, for he had turned over, he was letting himself go with the capricious movements that the capillary force imparted to him.
“Look out,” said Soleihas. “He’s going right past us. I’m going to throw him a rubber tube.
It will be remembered, in fact, that the helmets of the diving-suits were to be connected together by means of tubes. Now, just in case, the optician had picked up one of these tubes, which was about ten meters long, and he got ready to throw that lifeline as soon as the doctor was close enough.
That fortunate circumstance came about a moment later. The tube, deftly thrown, was seized by the doctor, and the latter was thus brought to the edge of the water-drop. His two companions grabbed his arms, lifted him up and deposited him on the ground, safe and sound.
“Come on, quickly, my friends,” said Paradou, without manifesting the slightest emotion, as calmly as if nothing extraordinary had happened to him. “Let’s equip ourselves without losing a moment and go into the water. We’ve already lost too much time.”
“Wait a minute!” said the dentist. “You haven’t told us how we’re going to get in there. Your first attempt didn’t seem very successful to me.”
“Damn it,” replied the doctor, with a touch of scorn. “We’ll certainly end up triumphing over an obstacle as ridiculous as surface tension. Come on, come on—on with the diving-suits.”
They all put on the suits, and began talking about the marvels that they were probably going to see in the water-drop.
“We’re going to find a most extraordinary flora and fauna there,” said the doctor, “very different from those that humans are accustomed to seeing. Life is profusely distributed everywhere. The water in a pond or a roadside ditch constitutes a world in which millions of living beings are born, fight and die, in which dramas of hatred and love unfold with their ups and downs, as among the superior animals.”
“Creation is more extensive than is generally thought,” Soleihas remarked. “I’ve always imagined that humans stand between two infinities: the one that extends beyond the stars, and which represents superior beings; the other the microscopic and invisible world whose secrets we are about to discover, which is entirely contained within a drop of water.”<
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“Yes,” the doctor relied, “it’s there that imagination and poetry take us. With regard to the stars, science has not yet discovered anything of that beyond, but with regard to the water-drop, our eyes armed with microscopes, have pushed back the boundaries of life a long way…but enough philosophy of that sort. Let’s hurry up.”
The rubber tubes were screwed on to the glass globes and the globes themselves were screwed into the necks of the diving-suits. The bags of compressed air were activated and the electric lamps tested. Everything was perfectly in order. It only remained to get into the liquid.
Thanks to the tubes, they could hear one another quite clearly.
“I’ve thought of a means of breaking the elastic envelope of the water-drop,” said the dentist. “It’s simply a matter of kicking it.” At the same time, Camaret struck the surface of the water with all his might, with his lead-soled foot. But the envelope, deformed by the impact, recovered its original contour by virtue of its elasticity and threw the dentist violently backwards. The latter fell over at his companions’ feet.
“Satanic magic!” he exclaimed, getting to his feet. “Al-Harik might have warned us. He must be laughing at us now.”
Surprisingly, the three companions did indeed hear something like a distant muffled burst of laughter at that moment.
“Did you hear that?” asked the dentist.
“Yes, I think so,” said the optician.
“It’s impossible, my friends,” said Paradou. “We’re now too small to be seen by Al-Harik. Then again, enclosed as we are in diving-suits, it’s impossible for us to hear any sounds from outside.”
“True,” said Soleihas, “but I can’t explain those singular bursts of laughter we’ve already heard once in the tunnels of the ant-hill. Might it, by chance, be…”
“Might it be what?” asked the doctor, as his companion did not finish the sentence.
“Nothing,” the optician replied. “I’ll tell you later.”
“With all that,” said Camaret, “we’re still not inside the water-drop. You see, Monsieur Paradou, we’re laymen, and nature doesn’t want us to get too close to her marvels.”
“Nature,” the doctor replied, always loves the audacious. It’s our lack of experience that is responsible for all the misfortunes we’ve suffered. Habituated to a superior order of things, we’re disarmed in confrontation with the infinitely small. Look, I propose to take a knife—a sword if the knife isn’t sufficient—and cut through the envelope.”
As forearms could not be any use under water, each of them had armed himself with a cutlass and a saber to defend himself against the possible attack of microbes. Seizing his cutlass, Paradou struck the liquid envelope mightily, aiming to cut through it. At the same time, he felt himself lifted off the ground, drawn by an irresistible force. Passing through the breach that he had just made, he found himself abruptly transported to the other side of the surface of the water-drop.
Stunned by that fall, which he certainly had no expected, he needed a few seconds to realize what had happened. Soon, though, having recovered possession of himself, he perceived his companions on the other side of the surface, as bewildered as he was and looking at him anxiously.
“Do as I did!” he shouted.
Thanks to the communication established by the tubes, the instruction was audible. Soleihas and Camaret drew their cutlasses, cleaved the water and, an instant later, all of them were reunited inside the liquid mass.
“Finally, it’s done this time!” exclaimed the optician.
“What a singular manner of getting into the water,” Camaret added. “That’s a new kind of dive. Executed in a circus by clowns it would be a great success. Unfortunately, there’s a shortage of spectators to admire our prowess.”
It was necessary to switch on the electric lamps, so poor was the light.
“This obscurity is extraordinary,” Soleihas remarked. “I would have thought that daylight would penetrate the interior of a drop of water.”
“Pardon me, my dear friend,” replied the doctor, “but you’re forgetting that we’re not in a drop of pure water. In order to fill it with infusoria, Al-Harik has been obliged to infuse it over a matter of days with a tiny breadcrumb.”
“What!” cried the dentist. “It’s bread that produces infusoria?”
“No,” the doctor replied, “the bread had merely permitted the tiny eggs of microbes that float in the air to hatch and develop. It’s our illustrious Pasteur who has demonstrated that interesting phenomenon. Before his experiments, people believed in spontaneous generation.” He added: “Now, let’s be on our way.”
They set off. It was necessary to walk slowly because of the resistance opposed by the water and also in consequences of the inexperience they still manifested with respect to the handling of the apparatus. It was necessary to regulate the arrival and departure of the air; for a moment they were on the point of suffocation. A series of small adjustments rendered their respiration quite free and regular. They had not yet seen any living creatures; alarmed by the abrupt arrival of humans in their mysterious domain, the microbes must have fled.
Suddenly, they perceived a mass of singular appearance. It was vaguely reminiscent of a windmill, but a windmill fitted with a pair of wheels.
“Look,” said Soleihas, “there’s a rotifer.”
They approached cautiously, directing the light of the three lamps toward the animal. The rotifer did not seem to suspect the presence of the kings of creation, very probably being habitually neglectful, as Camaret took the trouble to remark. It was a singular creature, bearing very little resemblance to the other animals that humans are accustomed to encounter in their daily routines.
Humans have no awareness of the infinite variety of forms that the living beings surrounding them can adopt. They do not even suspect that in breathing the air that gives them life, and drinking the water that slakes their thirst, they absorb the most extraordinary beings. Fortunately for them, they absorb them without knowing it—otherwise, they would never drink another drop of water or breathe a draught of air. What a good thing ignorance is, in this case!
The rotifer’s body resembled a telescope; like that optical instrument, it was formed of a series of tubes fitting into one another. The head was especially remarkable, because of the presence on each side of two disks, seemingly animated by a very rapid rotatory movement.
“One might think they were the wheels of a windmill,” said the dentist, pointing at these singular organs, which immediately attracted his attention.
“Indeed,” Soleihas replied, “but you’re the victim of an illusion. Hold on—here’s the proof.”
Touching on of the wheels with his hand, the optician caused the animal’s movements to pause. Each wheel then revealed itself as an assemblage of cilia, arranged like the spokes of a wheel.
“It turns, though?” said Camaret.
“No,” Camaret replied. “The cilia beat the water relentlessly, each in its turn, which gives rise to an illusion of rotatory movement on the part of the whole. You understand now why these animals were called rotifers—it’s because of the apparent rotation of these singular organs.”
“And what do those organs do?” asked the curious dentist.
“See for yourself,” relied the optician. “The rotifer is now the process of eating.”
Indeed, thanks to the aspiration of the water produced by the movement of the cilia, a contrary current of the liquid had just been precipitated into of the animal’s mouth, drawing with it the particles that served as its nourishment. Camaret quickly grasped all the details of that bizarre organization.
“How fertile nature is in expedients!” said the dentist, as if talking to himself. “She has given humans hands with which to pick up their nourishment and transport it to their mouths; to elephants, she had given a trunk. To infinitely tiny creatures, she has been more generous still—she has given them a windmill’s sails!”
“You shall see many other m
arvels in this drop of water,” observed the doctor. “Microscopic animals are an inexhaustible source of astonishment. With them, nature has indulged herself in veritably surprising caprices. Look into the depths of this rotifer’s throat.”
While speaking, Paradou had gripped the animal’s mouth with both hands and opened it as wide as possible.
“You’ll get bitten!” exclaimed the dentist.
“Have no fear,” replied the doctor. “You can clearly see that the animal has no teeth in its mouth, but look into the depths of its throat.”
“That’s strange!” said Camaret, who had drawn nearer and was able, thanks to the light of the electric lamp, to see the slightest details of the rotifer’s throat. “Very strange! There are teeth at the bottom, almost in the stomach.” Then, after a moment’s silence, he gave the animal a light tap on the head and added: “Well, my little one, I pity the dentist who is obliged to extract one of those teeth!”
“Camaret, my friend,” said the doctor, interrupting the dentist’s reflections, “what would you say if I offered you a means of ceasing to live for weeks or months on end and then coming back to life, as fit and alert as before?”
“I would say, O sublime great man,” the dentist replied, gaily, “that you are a great benefactor of humankind, and I would accept your offer with alacrity. When ill, I would suspend my life until I am completely cured; weary of existence, I would go to sleep for a few centuries. Anyway, I seem to have read somewhere about something similar.”
“Yes, in The Man with the Broken Ear.”{4
“By About—I remember now. But that’s just a romance, with nothing real in it.”
“Certainly, I admit it,” said the doctor, “but what isn’t true for humans is for certain animals, including rotifers. Along with tardigrades, which are arachnids, and eelworms,{5 rotifers possess the ability to dry out completely, suspending their vital functions in that state, and returning to life after being moistened with water.”
“Oh, Monsieur Paradou,” said the dentist, “I understand the purpose of your question. You’re saying to yourself: if humans, having become as small as we are now, could have the same abilities as rotifers, what an admirable discovery it would be for science…”
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