Worlds Apart

by Alexander Levitsky

  “Then for better or for worse there are no immortals among the crew. But the mortals here are among the most select, isn’t that so? From among those who have ‘worked long and well,’ as you expressed it?”

  “Yes, in general. Menni chose his comrades from thousands who wished to make the journey with him.”

  “And next to him, isn’t Sterni perhaps the most eminent?”

  “Yes, if you insist on measuring and comparing individuals. Sterni is a remarkable scientist, although of a completely different sort than Menni. He is a very gifted mathematician. He discovered an entire set of errors in the calculations which were employed to send the former expeditions to Earth, and he demonstrated that some of these errors were sufficient to destroy the projects and their participants. He discovered new methods for making such calculations and so far the results he obtained have been flawless.”

  “I gathered this was so from Menni’s words as well as from my own first impression. But still, and I don’t understand this myself, I don’t know why the sight of him makes me so uneasy, and arouses a kind of unfounded antipathy. Do you have any explanation for this, doctor?”

  “You see, Sterni has a great mind, but he is cold and above all, analytic. He dissects everything mercilessly and consistently but his conclusions are often narrow and sometimes extremely harsh, because his analysis of the details is not unified, and is less than the whole: you know that always where there is life the whole is more than the sum of its parts, just as a living human body is more than an assemblage of its members. As a consequence, Sterni does not understand others’ moods and ideas. He is always willing to help you with your problems but he can never understand what you need. In part this is the result of his preoccupation with his work; his mind is always busy with some difficult problem or other. In this respect he is very unlike Menni: he always sees what is around him and sometimes he has been able to explain to me what I really want, or what is disturbing me, or what I long for.”

  “If that’s so, then isn’t Sterni rather hostile to the inhabitants of Earth who are so full of contradictions and inadequacies?”

  “Hostile!—no; such a feeling is alien to him. But he is more skeptical than is necessary, I think. He lived in France for a half a year and wired Menni: ‘Nothing here.’ Perhaps he was partly right because Letta who was with him was also unable to find anyone of interest. But the characterizations he gave to the people of that country whom he met were much harsher than Letta’s, and, of course, they were much more one-sided although there was nothing in them which could be called inaccurate.”

  “And who is this Letta you mentioned? I don’t think I remember his name.”

  “A chemist, Menni’s helper, not young, the oldest man on the spaceship. You will find him very accessible and that will be useful to you. He is gentle by nature and he understands others, although he is no psychologist like Menni. Visit him in his laboratory; he will be pleased to see you and can show you much that is interesting.”

  It occurred to me that we were now far from the Earth, and I wanted to look at her once more. We went to one of the accessory rooms equipped with large windows.

  “Will we pass close to the moon?” I said as we walked along.

  “No, the moon will remain well out of our path, and I’m sorry that this is so. I would like to see the moon up close. It seemed so strange to me from Earth—large, cold, deliberate, mysteriously serene; it is so different from our two little moons which fly so swiftly through our sky, changing their faces so rapidly like living and capricious children. True, your moon is much brighter than ours and her light is so pleasant. Your sun is brighter, too; in this respect you are much more fortunate than we. Your world is twice as bright as ours and so you don’t need eyes like ours with their great pupils to collect the weak light of our days and nights.”

  We sat down at the window. Earth shone distantly below us like a giant sickle on which I could make out only the outlines of Western America, Northeastern Asia, a vague patch which was the Pacific Ocean and a white spot which was the Arctic. All of the Atlantic Ocean and the Old World lay in shadow; one could only surmise their existence beyond the uncertain edge of the sickle by the fact that the invisible part of Earth blotted out the stars over a great expanse of the black sky. Our curving trajectory and Earth’s rotation on its axis led to this changing scene.

  I looked and I was sorry that I could not see my native land where there was so much life, so many struggles, so much pain, where yesterday I had stood in the ranks with my comrades and where another was now to take my place. And my heart was filled with doubts.

  “There, below us, blood is flowing,” I said, and yesterday’s worker is playing the role of a comfortable spectator …”

  “Blood is flowing for the sake of a better future,” Netti answered, “and for the sake of the struggle you must come to know that better future. That is why you are here—to gain that knowledge.”

  Involuntarily I pressed his little, almost childlike hand.

  CHAPTER VIII: THE APPROACH

  Earth was yet further now and, as though it were languishing, it was transformed into a crescent moon accompanied by another tiny crescent, the real moon. All of us, the inhabitants of the spaceship too were transformed—into some kind of fantastic acrobats who could fly without wings and take any position in space, head to the floor or the ceiling or the walls, almost indifferently … Little by little I was coming to know my new comrades and to feel more at ease in their presence.

  On the second day after our departure (we continued to count the days, although for us, of course, there were no real days and nights) on my own initiative I dressed in Martian clothing, so I would not be so conspicuous among the crew. True, I liked the costume for its own merits, since it was comfortable without any useless, purely conventional features such as neckties or cuffs and allowed maximum body movement. The individual parts of the suit were connected by small ties so that the entire costume was one whole, but at the same time, if it were necessary, it was simple to unfasten and remove, for example, one sleeve or both or the entire blouse. And the manners of my fellow-travelers were like their costume: simple and with an absence of anything that was superfluous or only decorative. They never greeted one another, nor said farewell, nor gave thanks, nor continued a conversation out of politeness if its end had been achieved; at the same time they patiently provided explanations which were painstakingly set at the level of the person with whom they were speaking and with understanding for his personality although it might very much differ from their own.

  Of course from the very first I turned to the study of their language and they all, and particularly Netti, willingly played the role of teachers. Their language was very unusual: in spite of the simplicity of its grammar and the rules for word formation, some of its features gave me great difficulties. The rules of its grammar had absolutely no exceptions and there was no such thing as a gender, masculine, feminine or neuter; but instead all the names of things and qualities were inflected in time. This I could not absorb.

  “What could be the purpose of such forms?” I asked Netti.

  “Don’t you understand? In your languages you are very careful to indicate whether you consider a thing to be male or female, which is, you must admit, of no importance at all; and as far as inanimate objects are concerned, more than strange. It’s much more important whether a thing exists at the present time or that it did at one time or will come into being. In your language “house” is masculine, but “boat” is feminine, but in French the reverse is true—but this has nothing to do with the state of things. When you talk about a house which has burned down or which is yet to be built, you employ the word in the same form as when you talk about the house in which you live. Isn’t there actually much more of a difference between a man who is alive and a man who has died—between what is and what is no more? You need whole words and phrases to indicate this difference—wouldn’t it be better to indicate it by adding one letter to t
he word itself?”

  But at any rate Netti was satisfied with my powers of memory and his method of instruction was excellent and I made relatively rapid progress. This helped me in my dealings with the Martians—now I could confidently visit the entire spaceship, dropping into the rooms and laboratories of my fellow travelers and asking about anything which interested me.

  The young astronomer, Enno, Sterni’s aide, lively and cheerful, and still a lad, explained many things to me, obviously carried away, not so much by the measurements and formulas, of which he was a master, as by the beauty of what he was observing. I was happy to be with the young astronomer-poet; a very legitimate concern to orient myself in space gave me a constant excuse to spend time with Enno and his telescopes.

  One time Enno in the greatest excitement showed me the tiny planet, Eros, a segment of whose orbit passed between the paths of Earth and Mars but which otherwise lay beyond Mars in the asteroid belt. Although at the time Eros was located 100 million miles from us, a photograph of its tiny crescent under the microscope was like a whole geographic chart, like the maps of the moon. Of course it was also as lifeless as the moon.

  On another occasion, Enno photographed a flight of meteors which passed several million miles from us. The picture showed, naturally, only an indefinite haziness. At the time Enno told me that on one of the previous expeditions to Earth a spaceship was destroyed when it passed through such a flight. Astronomers who were following the spaceship in their telescopes saw how its electric lights were extinguished—and the spaceship disappear in space forever.

  “The spaceship probably collided with several of these small bodies and because of the great difference in speeds they must have passed right through its walls. Then the air escaped out of it and the chill of interplanetary space froze the travelers. Now the spaceship is still flying, continuing its journey in a comet’s orbit; it has left the sun forever and no one knows where it will end, a terrible craft manned by corpses.”

  As Enno spoke I could feel the cold of empty space invade my heart. I imagined our minute, glowing island in the midst of an endless dead sea, without any support moving at a dizzying pace with only a black void around us … Enno guessed how I felt.

  “Menni is an excellent navigator,” he said, “and Sterni makes no mistakes … And death … You’ve seen it before during your life … Death is death, nothing more.” Soon the time would come when I would remember those words in my struggle with a great spiritual sickness.

  I was attracted to the chemist Letta not only because of his extraordinary gentleness and sensitivity, which Netti had told me about, but also because of his enormous knowledge of the field which interested me more than any other—the nature of matter. Only Menni was better informed on this question, but I tried to have as little as possible to do with him, knowing that his time was too valuable both for science and for the interests of the expedition, so that I had no right to distract him for my own purposes. But Letta, a kind old man, was so endlessly patient with my ignorance and so helpfully explained to me the basic facts of the subject, even betraying pleasure when he did so, that I always felt quite unconstrained in his presence.

  Letta began to deliver a whole series of lectures to me on the theory of matter, illustrating them with a number of experiments on the decomposition and synthesis of the elements. He had to omit a number of the relevant experiments-limiting himself to a description of them—which were violent in nature and were accompanied by an explosion or which might take that form.

  During one of these lectures Menni entered the laboratory. Letta was finishing the description of a very interesting experiment and was about to begin its execution.

  “Be careful,” Menni told him, “I remember once when I performed it, it came to a bad end; only a trace of impurities in the substance which you are decomposing and even a weak electrical spark is enough to cause an explosion when you are heating it.”

  Letta wanted to abandon the experiment, but Menni, who was invariably thoughtful and considerate in his relations with me, offered to help him check the elements of the experiment; the reaction occurred without difficulty.

  The next day there were to be more experiments with the same substance. It seemed to me that Letta did not take his materials out of the same container as the previous day. When he placed the retort in the electric furnace it occurred to me to say something to him. Disturbed, he immediately went to the locker where the reagents were stored, leaving the furnace and the retort on the table near the wall which was also the outer wall of the spaceship. I went with him.

  Suddenly there was a deafening roar and both of us were blown against the locker with great force. This was followed by a deafening whistle and howling and the sound of breaking metal. I felt an irresistible force, like a hurricane, pulling me back toward the outer wall. I had time to seize a firmly attached strap on the locker and hung horizontally, held in that position by a powerful stream of air. Letta did the same thing.

  “Hold on!” he shouted and I could hardly hear his voice in the midst of the storm.

  Letta quickly looked around. His face was terribly pale, but the appearance of indecisiveness was replaced by one expressing thought and firm decision. He said only two words—I couldn’t make them out, but it seemed that he was saying farewell forever-and his hands relaxed their grip.

  There was a dull blow and the hurricane ceased. I felt I could release my hold and looked around. The table was completely gone and against the wall, his spine flat against the wall, stood Letta. His eyes were open wide and his face seemingly frozen. In one leap I reached the door and opened it. A stream of warm air threw me back. Menni entered the room in a second and quickly went up to Letta.

  A few seconds later the room was full. Netti entered, pushing everyone to the side and rushed to Letta. All the rest of us surrounded them in painful silence.

  “Letta is dead,” Menni said. “The explosion which occurred during the experiment punctured the spaceship’s wall and Letta closed the aperture with his own body. The air pressure ruptured his lungs and paralyzed his heart—it was a quick death. Letta saved our guest’s life—otherwise they would both have died.”

  Netti suddenly burst into tears.

  CHAPTER IX. THE PAST—[The chapter consists of an unambiguous rehashing of history from a dialectic point of view—shown to be equally applicable to Mars and to Earth—which supposedly led the much older Martian society to a classless paradise after the building of its canals. A. L.].

  CHAPTER X. ARRIVAL

  Under Menni’s cool hand the spaceship made its way without further mishaps toward its distant destination. I had become tolerably accustomed to conditions of weightlessness and I had mastered the majpr difficulties of the Martian language when Menni announced that we had completed half of our journey and had achieved our maximum speed, henceforth to decline.

  At a time carefully determined by Menni, the spaceship swiftly and smoothly reversed itself. The Earth, which had been a great and brilliant sickle, then a smaller one, and then a greenish star close to a sun’s disk, now left the lower half of the black sky and entered the upper half, while the red star of Mars which had shown bright above our heads was now below us.

  After many days had passed, the star of Mars became a clear small disc with its two stars, its satellites, Deimos and Phobos, innocent, miniscule, undeserving of their threatening Greek names “Horror” and “Terror.” The Martians were now elated and frequently visited Enno’s observatory to view their native land. I too observed it but found it difficult to understand that I saw in spite of Enno’s patient explanations. There was much there, in fact, which was strange to me.

  The red spots were forests and meadows while the dark places were fields ready for the harvest. The cities were bluish patches—only water and snow had their familiar hues. The ebullient Enno sometimes asked me to identify what I saw in the eye-piece and my innocent misinterpretations vastly amused him and Netti; I in turn repaid them for their jokes, c
alling their planet a kingdom of learned owls and confused colors.

  The dimensions of the red disk were constantly increasing—now it was much larger than the noticeably diminishing sun and it looked like an astronomical chart without labels. The force of gravity also was increasing which was surprisingly pleasant to me. From bright specks of light Deimos and Phobos were transfoemed into tiny, but well-defined circles.

  Fifteen or twenty hours later Mars, like a flattened ball, opened out below us and with the naked eye I could see more than was shown on all our scientists’ astronomical charts. Deimos glided over that round map, but Phobos was nowhere to be seen—it was on the other side of the planet.

  Everyone around me was rejoicing; only I was beset by uneasy foreboding.

  Closer and closer … No one could work any longer—they all were watching the ground below us, a different world, their native land, but for me a place of mystery and the unknown. Only Menni was absent—he was at the engine; the last hours of the journey were the most dangerous time and he had to regulate the craft’s speed and verify its distance from Mars.

  And what was the matter with me, the involuntary Columbus of this world, why did I feel no joy, no pride, nor even the peace of mind which dry land should have brought me after journey across the seas of the Unknown? Future events had already cast their shadow over the present…

  Only two hours remained and soon we would enter the planet’s atmosphere. My heart began to pound; I could not watch any longer and I went to my room. Netti followed me.

  He began to talk to me, not about the present, but the past, and the distant Earth high above us.

  “You will have to return there after you have completed your assignment,” he said, and his words were a gentle reminder of my own courage.

  We talked about assignement, its importance and its problems. Time passed for me unnoticed.