Worlds Apart

by Alexander Levitsky

  “Shokho.”

  In this manner he named several objects and listened to their equivalents in the language of the earth. Approaching Los he solemnly touched the space between his eyebrows with his ring finger. Los inclined his head as a sign of greeting.

  Gusev, after he had been touched, pulled the visor of his cap onto his forehead:

  “Like dealing with wild men.”

  The Martian went up to the craft and with repressed attention looked at it, and then apparently having grasped its principle, with excitement he examined the huge steel egg covered with a layer of soot. Suddenly, throwing up his hands, he turned to the soldiers and began to speak to them very rapidly, lifting to the heavens his doubled fists.

  “Aiu,” howled the soldiers.

  He placed his palm on his brow, breathed deeply, then overcome with emotion he turned to Los and now without restraint with dark moist eyes looked hard at him:

  “Aiu,” he said, “Aiu utara shókho, dátsia tuma géo taltsetl.”

  Then he covered his eyes with his hand and bowed deeply. Straightening up, he summoned a soldier, took from him a slender knife and began to scratch the craft’s skin: he drew an egg, above it a roof, next to it the figure soldier. Gusev watching over his shoulder said:

  “He wants to build a shelter and station here, but, Mstislav Sergeevich, I hope they don’t take our things, since there are no locks on the hatches.”

  “Please, Alexei Ivanovich, don’t be a fool.”

  “But there’s gold. And I’ve been looking closely at that soldier, and I don’t like what I see.”

  The Martian listened to this conversation with attention and respect. Los indicated by signs that he was willing to leave the craft under guard. The Martian placed a slender whistle to his wide, thin mouth and blew. From the ship someone answered with the same penetrating whistle. Then the Martian began to whistle some kind of signals. On the summit of the central and highest mast there arose, like hair, sections of slender wire which gave off crackling sparks.

  The Martian indicated the way to the aircraft for Los and Gusev. The soldiers closed in and made a surrounding circle. Gusev glanced at them, smiled a crooked smile, went to their own ship, removed from it two sacks with clothes and other belongings, tightly screwed down the hatch, and pointing at it for the soldiers’ benefit, slapped his Mauser, shook his finger at them and scowled. In astonishment the Martians followed his actions.

  “Well, Alexei Ivanovich, I don’t know whether we’re guests or prisoners, but there’s no place else to go,” said Los, laughing, as he threw a bag over his shoulder and they stepped towards the aircraft.

  On its masts the vertical propellers began to turn with a great roar. The wings dropped lower. The propellers howled. The guests—or was it prisoners?—ascended the flimsy stairway into the ship.

  BEYOND THE RAGGED MOUNTAINS

  The airship flew at a low altitude over Mars towards the northwest. Los and the bald Martian remained on deck. Gusev had descended into the ship’s interior with the soldiers.

  In the brightly lit cabin painted straw yellow he sat in a wicker chair and for a moment observed the sharp-nosed slim soldiers who blinked their eyes, red like birds. Then he took out his beloved tin cigarette case with its engraving of the Kremlin’s Czar-cannon—for seven years no matter where he fought, it had never left him—slapped the Czar-cannon, and said “Let’s have a smoke, comrades,” and offered them a cigaret.

  The Martians shook their heads in fright. Still, one of them took a cigaret, examined it, sniffed it, and deposited it in the pocket of his white trousers. But when Gusev lit up, the soldiers in abject fear stepped back and whispered in their bird voices:

  “Shókho, táo khávra, shókh-om.”

  Their reddish sharp faces watched in horror as the “shokho” inhaled the smoke. But they too inhaled a little, became less agitated and once more sat down beside him.

  Gusev, not especially discomfited by his ignorance of the Martian language, began to tell his new friends about Russia, the war, revolution, and his exploits, bragging without restraint:

  “Gusev, that’s my name. Gusev, it’s from ‘goose,’ we’ve got a lot of them on the earth, but I’ll bet you’ve never seen anything like them. And my first and second names are Alexei Ivanovich. I didn’t command just a regiment, but a cavalry division. I was a ferocious fighter, a terror. My tactics were simple: machine guns or no machine guns, use your saber, and I’d say, ‘Give up your positions, you sons-a-bitches,’ and then attack. I’ve been all cut up myself, but I don’t give a damn. In our military academy there’s even a special course called ‘Gusev Saber Tactics,’ honest to God, don’t you believe me? They offered me a corps,” with one finger Gusev pushed back his cap and scratched behind his ear, “I’m tired of it, no, excuse me. I’ve fought for seven years, let someone else have it. And then Mstislav Sergeevich summoned me, and said ‘Alexei Ivanovich, I’ll never make it to Mars without you.’ That’s the way it was, you bet. Exactly.”

  The Martians listened in astonishment. One brought in a flask with a brown and vaguely greenish liquid. Another opened canned food. From his bag Gusev brought out a half a bottle of pure spirits transported from the earth. The Martians drank it and murmured to one another. Gusev began to embrace them, slapped them on the back, and became effusive. Then he began to drag various objects out of his pockets, offering to exchange them. Joyfully, the Martians gave him gold objects for a pocket knife, a pencil stub, and a unique cigaret lighter made out of a spent cartridge. Soon Gusev was on friendly terms with all of them.

  In the meantime, Los, leaning his elbows on the aircraft’s open railing, surveyed the melancholy undulating plain which flowed below them. He recognized the house which they had visited yesterday. Everywhere there were similar ruins, clumps of trees, and the dry beds of canals.

  Pointing at this desert, Los managed to express his perplexity—why was this entire region abandoned and dead? The protruding eyes of the bald Martian suddenly became malevolent. He made a sign and the ship rose, made a circle, and then flew towards the summits of the ragged mountains.

  The sun rose high in the sky and the clouds disappeared. The propellers roared, the flexible wings creaked as the ship turned or rose, and the vertical propellers hummed. Los noted that besides the hum of the propellers and the whistling of the wind in the wings and the perforated masts no other sound could be heard; the motors operated silently. The motors themselves could not be seen. Only at the hub of every propeller spun a rounded box, like the housing for a dynamo, and at the tops of the forward and rear masts crackled two elliptical basket-like devices made of silvery wires.

  Los asked the Martian for the names of objects which he wrote down. Then he removed the newly found book with its drawings from his pocket and asked him to produce the sounds indicated by the geometric letters. With astonishment the Martian looked at the book. Once more his eyes grew cold and his thin lips twisted with disgust. He patiently removed the book from Los’s hands and threw it over the side.

  Thanks to the altitude and the force of the wind Los’s chest began to ache and tears came to his eyes. When he noticed this, the Martian gave a sign to descend to a lower altitude. The ship was now flying over blood-red barren crags. A winding, broad mountain range stretched from the southeast towards the northwest. The aircraft’s shadow flew below them over jagged cliffs sparkling with veins of ore and metals, over towering cliffs hung with lichens, tore across misted gulfs, and shadowed in passing snow-covered peaks sparkling like diamonds, and mirrored glaciers. The area was wild and without inhabitants.

  “Liziazira,” said the Martian, nodding towards the mountains and exposing his little teeth gleaming in gold.

  As he looked below at the cliffs which reminded him so much of a dead landscape, in a gorge he saw the twisted frame of an aircraft surrounded by fragments of silver metal. Then, from behind a ridge appeared the broken wing of a second aircraft. To the right, pierced on a granite peak, hung a
third aircraft, all in fragments. Everywhere in these regions could be seen the wreckage of great wings, broken fuselages, and protruding airframes. This was a battlefield where, it seems, the demons had been cast down onto these barren heights.

  Los glanced at his neighbor. The Martian sat holding his gown to his neck, quietly watching the sky. Towards the aircraft flew a line of long-winged birds. Then they rose, their yellow wings flashing against the dark sky, and turned away. Following their descent, Los saw the black water of a circular lake, lying deep within the cliffs. Curling vegetation clung to its banks. The yellow birds came to rest near the water. Waves appeared on the lake’s surface, they became yet more turbulent, and then from its center rose a great stream of water which threw itself outward and then fell back.

  “Soám,” said the Martian solemnly.

  The mountain range ended. To the northwest through transparent, vibrant heat waves could be seen a canary yellow plain with large bodies of water. The Martian raised his hand towards the hazy mysterious distant land and said with a broad smile:

  “Azóra.”

  The aircraft rose slightly. Moist sweet air blew against their faces and sounded in their ears. Azora spread out before them as a broad shining plain. Divided by broad canals, covered with orange clumps of vegetation and bright yellow plains, Azora—the name means “Happiness”—seemed like those miniature springtime meadows which we saw in our dreams in our distant childhood.

  Ships and small boats moved on the canals. Along their banks were small white houses and the small pathways of kitchen gardens. Everywhere the tiny figures of the Martians could be seen. Some were using the flat-roofed houses as platforms and from them soaring like bats over the canals or to the woods. Windmills spun on transparent towers. Everywhere in the meadows glittered ponds and sparkled streams of water. A marvelous land was Azora.

  At the far end of the plain shimmered in the sunlight a great expanse of water towards which flowed the curving lines of all the canals. The aircraft flew in its direction and Los finally saw a large straight canal. Its distant bank was sunk in watery haze. Along a sloping stone embankment its yellowish turbid waters flowed slowly.

  They flew for a long time. Finally at the end of the canal, the even edge of a wall began to lift itself out of the water, disappearing beyond the horizon. The wall grew larger in size. Now they could see in it huge dressed stones with bushes and trees growing out of the crevices. They approached a gigantic circular reservoir. It was full of water. Above its surface in many places rose the foaming crests of fountains …

  “Ro,” said the Martian, lifting his finger significantly.

  Los brought a notebook from his pocket, hunted through it hastily to find a map of the lines and dots on Mars which he had made the day before. He extended the drawing to his neighbor and pointed below him at the reservoir. The Martian looked at it, frowned, understood, joyfully nodded, and with the nail of his little finger indicated one of the dots on the sketch.

  Bending over the side, Los could make out two straight canals and one winding one, which, full of water, flowed out of the reservoir. So this was the secret: the round circles on Mars were reservoirs for water storage, while the triangles and semicircles were canals. But what kind of creatures could have built these cyclopean walls? Los looked at his traveling companion. The Martian stuck out his lower lip, and spread his extended arms to the sky:

  “Tao khatskha utalitsitl.”

  Now the ship was crossing a scorched plain. On it lay the rose-colored, broad, waterless cultivated bed of a fourth canal, covered, just as though it had been sown, with regular rows of vegetation. Apparently this was one of a secondary network of canals—a pale network on the outline of Mars.

  The plain became a region of low soft hills. Beyond them appeared the blue outlines of latticed towers. On the craft’s middle mast the bundle of wires rose and began to scatter sparks. Beyond the hills rose more and more outlines of latticed towers and terraced buildings. A huge city emerged in a silvery shadow from the hazy sunlight. The Martian said: “Soatséra.”

  SOATSERA

  The sky-blue outlines of Soatsera, the terraces on its flat roofs, its latticed walls covered with greenery, the oval mirrors of its ponds, and its airy towers emerged from beyond the hills, spreading further and further, lost on the hazy horizon. A number of dark objects above the city flew to meet the airship.

  The cultivated canal receded towards the north. To the east of the city opened up an empty eroded plain strewn here and there with detritus. At the edge of this waste land, casting a sharp and long shadow rose the giant statue of a man, cracked and covered with lichen.

  The stone figure of the naked man stood erect, his feet slightly apart, his arms held close to his narrow hips. A worked belt supported his deep chest, while his helmet with ear pieces and crowned by a pointed crest, like the fin of a fish, gleamed dully in the sun. His crescent mouth smiled on his broad-cheeked face, while his eyes were closed.

  “Magatsitl,” said the Martian, pointing at the sky.

  Beyond the statue could be seen the enormous ruins of a reservoir and the sad outline of an aqueduct’s fallen arches. Looking closely, Los understood that the stone on the plain, the pits, and the mounds were ruins of an ancient city. To the west of these ruins, a new city, Soatsera, began beyond the sparkling lake.

  The black objects in the sky came closer, increasing in size. They were hundreds of Martians flying to greet them, riding on winged ships and small crafts, on birds made of canvas, and balloons. The first to meet them came close, banked sharply and hung over the ship, a shining, golden, four-winged narrow cigar-shaped object, like a dragonfly. From it showered flowers and brightly colored bits of paper which fell onto the deck of the craft, and out of it hung young, excited faces.

  Los rose, and, holding onto a cable, removed his helmet—the wind lifted his white hair. From out of the cabin Gusev emerged and took a position next to him. Armloads of flowers floated towards them from out of the Martian aircraft. On the sky-blue or olive-skinned or brick-red faces of the Martians who came near to them were expressed the wildest excitement, delight, or horror.

  Now, above their heads, from the front, the sides, and the rear of their slow-moving aircraft came hundreds of air ships. Here came gliding down in a balloon a fat Martian in a striped cap waving his arms. Here was a bearded face peering through a telescope. Here a sharp-nosed worried Martian, his hair flying, swung in front of the airship in a winged saddle, turning some kind of a spinning box towards Los. Here passed an open ship decorated with flowers and in it-three women’s long goggle-eyed faces with blue bonnets, blue flying sleeves, and white scarves.

  The song of the propellers, the roar of the wind in the craft’s wings, the high-pitched whistles, the glitter of gold, the bright-colored clothing against the dark blue of the sky, and the vegetation of the parks below, now purple, now silver, now yellow, the windows of the terraced buildings which flashed in the sun—it was all like a dream. It was enough to make one’s head spin. Gusev looked around, and kept repeating in a whisper:

  “Look, just look …”

  The ship flew past hanging gardens and smoothly came to rest on a large circular open space. Immediately like moths hundreds of ships, baskets, and great bird-like craft landed around it, thudding onto the white paving stone of the square. On the streets which radiated from it milled crowds of people, running, throwing flowers and bits of paper, and waving handkerchiefs.

  The aircraft had landed near a tall, massive and gloomy building, like a pyramid, made of darkest red stone. On its broad stairs between square columns which tapered upwards to a distance of one-third of its height, stood a cluster of Martians. They were all in black gowns and round caps. This was, as Los was later to discover, the Supreme Council of Engineers—the highest governmental organ among the Martian nations.

  Their Martian guide indicated to Los that they were to wait. Soldiers ran down the stairs and surrounded the aircraft, restraining the pres
sing crowds. Gusev in delight observed the tumultuous square and the bright clothing, the multitude of wings rising over their heads, the masses of grayish or dark red buildings, and the airy outlines of the towers beyond the roofs.

  “Well, it’s quite a city,” he repeated, dancing in excitement.

  On the stairs the Martians in black gowns opened their ranks. A tall, stooping Martian appeared, also dressed in black with a long, gloomy face and a long, narrow, black beard. On his cap trembled a golden crest like a fish’s fin.

  Descending the center of the stairs leaning on a stick he long surveyed the visitors from earth with his sunken dark eyes. Los too watched him, attentively, guardedly.

  “Doesn’t he know better than to stare, the devil,” whispered Gusev.

  Then he turned to the crowd and shouted enthusiastically: “Greetings, Martian comrades. We say hello to you and expect the best.”

  The dumbfounded crowd gasped, murmured, stirred, and moved closer. The gloomy Martian seized his beard with his hand, shifted his gaze to the crowd, and swept the square with his lackluster eyes. And under his glance the stormy sea of heads grew calmer. He turned to those standing on the stairway, said a few words, and raising his stick, pointed at the airship.

  Immediately one of the Martians ran to the ship and softly and rapidly said something to the bald Martian who leaned to him over the side of the ship. Signal whistles were given, two soldiers ran up onto the craft, the propellers spun, and the aircraft, ponderously lifting off the square, flew over the city towards the north.

  IN THE AZURE GROVE

  Soatsera had disappeared far behind the hills. The airship was flying over a plain. Here and there could be seen the monotonous lines of buildings, the towers and cables of aerial tramways, mines, and loaded barges moving along narrow canals.

  But then more and more frequently out of the forests rugged peaks began to lift themselves. The ship descended, flew though misted defiles, and landed on a meadow inclined towards dark and luxuriant woods.