The Martian Epic

by Octave Joncquel

  The taste for adventure that we both had in common was reawakened by the prospect of our imminent departure, and we lived in a state of feverish enthusiasm during these preparations. Despite the dangers we were about to run, the mission seemed to us to be something of a honeymoon trip. We almost forgot the fatal deadline. It was solely a question of fixing our departure for the day after the arrival of the third Martian missile—we could have been ready sooner, but an obscure and ill-formed sentiment pressed us to spend those days together at Saintes-Maries—and then we avoided the subject. Botram and Wronsky, aware of the futility of conjectures and hypotheses, only spoke about the future Institute, the individuals that it was most necessary to co-opt into it, and the other details of my mission.

  As a matter of conscience, the current from the Equatorial Alternators was employed in an attempt to deflect the projectiles. One after another, though, on September 28, 29 and 30, the three shells broke through the protective network of waves as if it were a spider’s web, without deviating from their course. It was no longer dirigible torpedoes that we had to deal with; these were purely ballistic missiles, penetrative shells that fell, one after another, into those regions where volcanic activity denoted the minimal resistance of the Earth’s crust.

  Arriving at a terminal velocity of 30 kilometers a second, these bolides, loaded with enormous penetrative force, breached the solid tegument that separates us from the igneous mass filling the interior of our globe, and three new volcanoes opened up—the first a little to the south of Fujiyama in Japan, the second on the flank of Popocatepetl in the Mexican Cordilleras and the third in the ancient Solfatara of Pozzuoli, west of Naples—giving free passage to the central fire.

  The famous explosion of Krakatoa on August 16, 1883, which ravaged more than 1000 square kilometers of the Indonesian archipelago, crushing burning and drowning 300,000 or 400,000 victims under showers of rocks, torrents of lava and tidal waves, had already given a glimpse of the particularly devastating nature of eruptive phenomena due to the sudden violent emergence of a crater rather than the normal play of plutonian forces. This time, the Earth had three Krakatoas. The detonations of their successive “bores” were audible to us, the first two in the form of muffled thunderous rumblings, distant but as clear and powerful as the explosion of large ammunition-dumps, the third resounding and prolonged, accompanied by palpable tremors, giving the tragic impression that a cataclysmic earthquake was about to occur. Then, a few hours later, the tidal wave—a foamy barrier four or five meters high—seemed to hurl the entire sea in an assault on our dunes. Several houses in the village collapsed, and the Camargue was lost to sight, swept by an inundation that stranded us in the TSF buildings until the following day. The helicopter set aside for our expedition was submerged in its hangar, and the necessary repairs delayed our departure for two days.

  The great meteorological perturbation overtook us in the interval, born in the vicinity of the giant valves releasing continuous jets of vapor and subterranean gases hitherto compressed at a 1000 times atmospheric pressure. For six days, a furious tempest, blowing northerly at ground level, from the south east in the heights, prevented us from leaving Saintes-Maries, where the first news of the disaster arrived. Although confused and summary from Japan and Mexico, where the violence of the catastrophe was at its maximum, the news demonstrated adequately that the material damage and loss of life caused by the earthquakes, cyclones and eruptions far surpassed the results of all analogous catastrophes and those of the deadliest wars—including the World War of 1914-18, with its 15 million victims!

  In Italy, the reaction to the sudden formation of a new crater had caused a resumption of the activity of already-existent volcanoes: Vesuvius, Stromboli and Etna. The first combined its fury with those of the Solfatara. As in Saint-Pierre and Martinique in 1902, a fire-cloud had engulfed Naples, the happy city, where 99% of the population had perished. The seismic shock had drowned the islands of Nisida, Procida and Ischia, a portion of Pausilippe and the point of Misene. The “Phlegean Fields” had disappeared under enormous flows of lava. Others reburied Herculanuem and Pompeii forever, and advanced into the gulf in promontories destined to equal the one at Sorrento. Volcanic “bombs” had fallen on Capua, pumice-stones into the Adriatic, and “lapilli” reached as far as the ruins of Rome, where plumes of smoke were seen by day and columns of fire by night.

  As for the moral effect, what little we learned via the TSF exceeded our worst fears, and what we would soon see would complete our conviction that the unexpected blow had caused all the hints of reorganization to be forgotten, and brought back the darkest days of the “Season of the Torpedoes.”

  V. In Search of Men 17

  The northerly tempest slackened during the night of October 7 and 8, and at 8 a.m., Leduc, who had come from La Crau for that express purpose, installed my beloved pilot and me in our aircraft. Gaby had also left her office to bid us farewell. Gideon Botram shook our hands energetically. Ladislas Wronsky, more emotional than he wanted to appear, stammered his final instructions, cutting them short to embrace us both paternally. Then, putting all of them aside, I got under way. Two minutes later, we were flying northwards, with our rotor blades whirling at top speed.

  We were off! Intoxicated by speed, I was sufficiently familiar with the operation of the machine to savor the exhilarating sensation of manipulating the control levers. Our helicopter had two sets of controls, and I could see Raymonde out of the corner of my eye, sitting beside me and looking eagerly out over the countryside fleeing beneath us: the green meadows of the Camargue, where free-roaming bulls raised their moist muzzles anxiously, and solitary lakes where flocks of pink flamingoes rose up from the reeds to follow us. In the distance, the branches of the Rhône, bordered with poplars, converged on the town of Arles, over which we would bear to starboard.

  “Wings, my beloved!” my companion said, eventually, above the gentle purr of our aerial progress. “Here are the wings so long invoked by the desire of poets. It’s Pegasus that’s carrying us through the open sky, far from the pedestrian routines and rampant baseness of quotidian life. It’s the marvelous escape towards the unattainable horizon, towards that Elsewhere which, even today, makes life—ours especially, my love—worth living. Oh, I implore you, let me take sole control! Let me feel the beautiful bird of human genius obey my orders as if my will were infusing it, and as if I were one with it, my heart beating within its heart of fire, my wings cleaving the air, forgetful of weight!”

  Leduc had declared her to be the most brilliant pupil he had so far trained, and he had not exaggerated. I knew her to be an authentic pilot, capable of relieving me for part of the journey. Barring accidents, our first day’s flight would easily accomplish the planned 1000 kilometers; we would be able to lay over in Lille, at the home of Doctor Malgras, the doyen of the Faculty of Medicine, whom Ladislas Wronsky had notified of our arrival.

  We had passed over Arles, with its russet roofs and the ovals of its ancient arenas. At present, we were flying over the valley of the Rhône, between the greener expanses of Languedoc and the cypresses and olive-groves of Provence, striped with white rectilinear roads. The intoxication of our departure had not made us neglectful of the manifestations of human life, and the first anomalies did not strike us before we reached Tarascon. The little town that I had previously found so lively, joyful and carefree seemed deserted. One the flat roof of king René’s château, whose stone turret overlooked the entrance to the Pont de Beaucaire, a dozen human ants—the only living beings in the entire city—were busy about a slender and elongated object strongly reminiscent of the cannon of yesteryear.

  The countryside, on the other hand, became more animated as we came closer to Avignon. Confused crowds of singing men and women and troops formed up in parallel ranks were advancing along every road towards the Papal city, from which spirals of smoke rose up. People were fighting furiously in the outlying districts, around the gates, in the streets and the squares.

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sp; “General Kropatchek’s army does not seem to have the upper hand,” I said, seeing the scarlet uniforms of the United Soviets everywhere in retreat.

  Carried away by curiosity, we descended to 100 meters above the Rue de la République. The blasters’ range scarcely exceeded 20 meters, so we were safe at that altitude—at least, I thought so. Over the racket of the riot, however, a characteristic sound of detonations was audible, with increasing clarity.

  “Rifles! They’ve got rifles!” Raymonde exclaimed, hurriedly pressing down the ascension controls as far as they would go. A crackling salvo of shots was directed at us, without inflicting any more damage than a single bullet embedded in the padding of my seat.

  Out of range, at 1000 meters, we flew over the incomprehensible battle that was raging throughout the city for another ten minutes or so. Around the Papal Palace the massacre was horrible; the square was crowded with scarlet uniforms, but the insurgents’ firearms were driving back the Soviet blasters everywhere. New fires were breaking out at every moment. On the left bank of the Rhône a fuel-depot was on fire, and the smoke driven by the mistral was spreading its sinister black spirals all over the city.

  “Poor Isaac!” I murmured. “Look what his fine projects have come to!”

  “If it were only his!” replied Raymonde, taking us northwards at full speed.

  That vision of horror repressed the initial joy of our aerial excursion. We were no longer schoolchildren on an escapade or a young married couple on honeymoon, as my cheerful travesty had suggested; we were the last envoys of civilization in search of Men worthy of that name, spared by death and the Spirit of Darkness that was ravaging the country and the entire Earth.

  The symptoms of decay revealed themselves to our attentive eyes. To the right and left of the Rhône, the railways formerly overrun by the wheels of gleaming electric convoys were empty, tarnished here and there by rust. The stations were abandoned. The one at Valence was no more than a heap of scrap iron twisted by fire, and looters were busy throughout the surrounding district, which was still burning. Two trains were lying on the tracks, telescoped and overturned. The highways were either deserted or blocked by rows of motor-trucks and armed troopers. There were no cars and no solitary pedestrians, save for a few on minor roads. At the entrance of a town near Livron, an embankment of earth blocked the road, surmounted by cannon and a red flag. Several times, sentinel helicopters whose sides were panted black or scarlet obliged us to make prudent detours, and we accelerated our speed to avoid encounters with suspect aerial flotillas.

  The madness of war and devastation had taken possession of Humankind again.

  We were almost happy when clouds hid the ground from our view shortly after Vienne. For four hours we flew over the sea of fog, beneath a sky blurred by a sort of vaporous dust, which had filtered the glare of the Sun since the great eruptions. Our helicopter made progress with admirable regularity under out alternate direction. At about 5 p.m., if the indications of the compass and the anemometer could be trusted, we would be in Lille.

  We would have done better, though, to follow Leduc’s advice and stop at Dijon. When we passed over the zone of cloud we found ourselves 100 kilometers north-east of Rheims; then we met an east wind that delayed us to such an extent that the Sun was brushing the horizon as we passed directly over Cambrai.

  I took over the controls again, because I knew the country, through which I had often cycled in my youth, and I steered without hesitation as the Sun set. Douai! Scarcely thirty kilometers separated us from Lille; we ought to have been able to see the beacon lights of the aerodrome—but there was nothing.

  The same dread overtook us both.

  “There are no lights anywhere,” Raymonde eventually remarked, anxiously.

  “Perhaps an accidental break in the cable. Then again, it’s not dark yet…” But I understood the significance of the total absence of electric light as dusk fell only too well. The failure of the Equatorial Alternators, anxiously expected for several days, had finally occurred. I imagined the gigantic workshops at Timbuktu, Lake Chad and Khartoum, which fed the entirety of Africa and Europe with electric current, virtually by themselves, besieged by the furious hordes of Islam; I saw their engineers waiting in vain for the help that we could not send them, defending themselves and their staff to the death before succumbing to the weight of numbers, martyrs to duty. The destruction of the Alternators would suppress the function of the TSF and plunge Africa and Europe into darkness—a further retreat of Civilization before the invasion of Darkness!

  The tall chimneys of Lille, its roofs and bell-towers, were silhouetted by the last rays of the setting Sun. At the Ronchin aerodrome, petrol fires were lit as improvised landing-lights, but I hesitated before putting down. A frightful anxiety, a nameless despair, gripped my heart at the sight of dark Soviet city spread out like a menacing trap. I cursed my temerity in having attempting this journey in such conditions, my folly in having ceded to Raymonde’s insistence…

  “What are you waiting for, darling?” she asked. And I committed myself, with a deathly chill in my heart.

  Once on the ground, my fears eased slightly. No doubts were expressed as to the sex of my pilot; our passports—in which I had prudently folded a bill for 20 “labor units”—seemed satisfactory to the absent-minded clerk. The salty local accent that sounded around us had something familiar and reassuring about it. A young man of good bearing came towards us when I pronounced my name and that of Ladislas Wronsky and introduced himself as Professor Malgras’ envoy.

  With the helicopter berthed, our mentor drove us in a fine limousine through unlit streets that grew darker and darker. The city seemed to be dead, the journey across it to the Boulevard Vauban interminable, and its roads in an atrocious state. Recently burned-out houses made mountains of debris, obliging us to make detours. These were the traces not of a Martian torpedo, but of recent riots.

  We were welcomed cordially by the professor and his wife, in a candle-lit drawing-room. There again, Raymonde passed without further ado as my younger brother Raymond, and was introduced as such to the guests that were soon looking us over: the scientists forewarned of our arrival.

  We were sitting down at the dining-table when the entrance of two women who had not been expected created a sensation that seemed bizarre to me. They had rosy complexions, shining eyes and radiated a sort of challenge. The other women clustered around them, questioning them volubly. The word Zézèphe was repeated insistently.

  “That’s right,” my neighbor murmured, smiling at my intrigued expression. “You’ve come a long way and you’re not up to date. Zézèphe is a euphemism for SSF, or the Service Soviétique Féminin. The women are always interested in fulfilling their new duties—although they’re still optional, in fact, for the most part. In this case, for example, they’ve had dealings with an old man who, in exchange for a bill of 25 labor units, has added the necessary stamp to their statutory card.” He turned to my pilot. “You see, young man, the Soviet regime is powerless to strip handsome lads of their natural privileges…the regime has been established for more than two months, and it’s had time to humanize itself.”

  “What harm will it do, anyway,” put in a thin individual of Mephistophelean appearance—Doctor Rambeaux, I think—“if the law is applied integrally. It would set a few precedents for us…”

  But no one noticed the incongruity or the sudden redness of my pilot’s cheeks, for the master of the house introduced the subject of my mission to them—a subject that took up the entirety of the second course, which consisted of a meager can of corned beef. That treat succeeded half a smoked herring each, and the bread was replaced by corn-flour pancakes.

  I perceived, to my surprise, that Ladislas’ generous idea was running into unforeseen difficulties, Our Lillois “scientists” were more concerned with their personal comfort than the future of Humankind. Doctor Goulliard and the chemist Cogniet, both bachelors, were the only ones who gave me their immediate support and promise
d to set off for Saintes-Maries within a few days. The others, who had families, refused to abandon their university posts, their local connections and so on. The status given to men of science by the municipal Soviet was acceptable, they claimed; the good of Society demanded their presence here, where they were working to improve public-spiritedness…

  “Will you take long to improve it?” objected Doctor Goulliard, sarcastically. “Don’t you see, gentlemen, that your efforts can do nothing, here, against the mounting tide of atavistic instincts freed since the ‘Season of the Torpedoes’ and excited to madness by the sentence of death pronounced by the penetrative shells and these Krakatoas, pricking the Earth’s crust—like iron banderillas in a bull’s spine before the final sword-thrust? Perhaps communism isn’t the kind of order that everyone dreamed of, but it’s order of a kind, and what the newly-unchained instincts are tending towards is disorder and anarchy. The regression will continue; after the ‘municipal cell’ we’ll arrive at the horde. In the meantime, individual madness gets nearer and nearer. Think of the epidemics of the Middle Ages, the moral contagions of the year 1000. Do you think that anyone will respect science, when the destructive mania breaks out in its fullest extent?”

  But these dismal and only-to-probable perspectives were more than the women were able to support. Our host’s spouse dissolved in tears. “My God! My God!” she moaned, “We’ll never see our old lives again, so easy, so placid, so happy! What will become of us?”