“Very good! Very good!”
“Barlotin will get himself out of it as best he can. I’ve recommended the poor devil to the indulgence of the court…just so long as Mrs. Bloomfield doesn’t get him condemned to life imprisonment—but no, Bloomfield is his lawyer; he’ll get him out of it, we hope. We’ll know the outcome soon. William Bloomfield will telephonoscope us.”
“Now,” said Monsieur des Ormettes, “I like the tropical landscape in which you’ve set down. Very pretty! Dry and luxuriant at the same time. What rocks, and what vegetation! Jeanne, come and see—scorched rocks here, a nest of exuberant vegetation there…”
“Good morning, good morning,” said Madame des Ormettes. “All’s well, then? The dear children’s health is good, and yours too—keep it up! We’re fine too. Oh, if you’d heard my speech in the Chamber yesterday, on the budget! What a success, my dear! I’ll let you hear it—I’ll send it by Tele right away. Where are you, then? Yes, an environment fit for that old romance of the Middle Ages—you know the one…Paul et...Stéphanie?...no, Paul et Virginie. Exactly like that!”
“We’re in Guatemala, near the great breach of Panama. We’ve only just arrived, and we haven’t seen anything much yet. Last night, 100 volcanoes were flaming in the distance, which promises some excitement when we pass over them in a week’s time, after a rest cure. My dear des Ormettes, you must come and see us—a holiday beach could be created here, with a big hotel and a fine advertising campaign. And how is the great work progressing where you are?”
“Oh, I try to think about that as little as possible. But I have the infernal rumble of 100,000 machines in my head all day long. Then again, there’s a danger of delays in the region—a lack of materials to remake the subsoil sufficiently solidly. They’re going to cut a slice off the former Mont-Blanc as soon as possible, but it takes time, all the same, and we’re in a hurry. They’re carefully hiding it from us, my dear chap, but I’ve learned from one of my friends who’s an engineer…I’ve been told under a seal of secrecy, you understand—above all, don’t repeat it anyone…”
“What? You’ve been warned…”
“That our quarter has been sinking steadily at a rate of a millimeter a day for nearly two years. Above all, don’t say anything! Absolute secrecy!”
“Of course! I’ve known that for more than three years. I noticed something, and followed the work of excavation with exceedingly sensitive instruments; its slowness reassured me slightly.”
“Oh yes—those bizarre instruments that you have at home. I wondered what use they could be to you, a scholar and literary man.”
“Yes—I didn’t say anything about it, so as not to worry you. Since you know, get the instruments from my house and follow the process. I repeat, there’s no immediate danger, merely a supplement of prospective annoyances.”
“I’ll keep watch, but I’m not a man of science—I get lost in all calculations.”
“Talk to your friend the engineer—he’ll set up the apparatus for you. You’ll only have to look at it every morning.”
“So long as we don’t go the way of Montmartre 20 years ago…”
“No, the hill of Montmartre, which was still 85 meters above sea level 100 years ago, began its slow descent without anyone noticing—a few centimeters a year at first…a somewhat neglected quarter, evidently; an old Airstrip for a few major airship lines, not very busy. Then the descent accelerated and people at the Airstrip noticed something.”
“I know, I know.”
“Errors in calculation! The arithmetic was wrong—sea level had declined following the oceanic perturbations….”
“Exactly! Produced by the fall of Astra, the island fallen into the Pacific, which we’ll go to see one of these days…”
“As I was saying…errors in calculation, so to speak, inevitable given all the upheavals, and on day, the 150-meter Airstrip found itself at ground level, and…”
“And today the former summit of the hill, so famous in the Middle Ages, is nearly 60 meters lower down, and forms a small mound in a large cavity.”
“In sum, since they’re working flat out to complete the solidification in your neighborhood, I don’t think there’s any immediate danger to fear…”
“I’m assuming that too,” said Monsieur des Ormettes. “I’ll keep an eye on it, with my friend the engineer.”
“Try to take a vacation, then, and come and join us in the Panamanian region, or even in Astra!”
“A little break would certainly do us a lot of good, in the midst of all this upheaval. I’ll do everything I can to but a few projects in order, and when you get to Astra, perhaps we’ll be able to spend two or three weeks with you to roll in the grass, dream, sleep or think at our ease…and perhaps find a little business to do out there…a new land, with a wide-open future…we’ll see.”
Madame des Ormettes returned, still in a hurry, her eternal briefcase under her arm, stuffed with papers. Family effusions. Complaints about the frightful racket of the great Resurfacing; headaches, no longer any way to organize one’s thoughts and he arguments of a speech, etc.
The Tele vibrated. Monsieur and Madame des Ormettes seemed to have brought with them all the noise of Parisian life. When they had disappeared, Monsieur Cabrol, fatigued, treated himself to a little siesta in the shelter of a thicket of cacti and agaves, while Andoche and Moderan, reinvigorated by the sea breeze, set to work with the Cine-Tele University.
In the curse of a stroll, after a late-afternoon bath, Andoche restarted the conversation about Astra, the island fallen from the sky, with which he was in such a great hurry to become acquainted.
Monsieur Cabrol was still thinking about the hill of Montmartre, descended from its former rank of Parisian mountain.
“Yes,” he said, “two or three centimeters a year, at first, then….”
“What’s that? Astra, two or three centimeters?”
“No, the former Butte Montmartre.
“No, we were talking about Astra, the island we’re going to see; we know it well thanks to the course in geography, but you were going to tell us details of its fall into the Pacific…”
“Oh yes. Well, you know that, in the course of the last century, someone at the Observatory noticed a perturbation in the sky one day, which had not yet been noticed by anyone else—and a most extraordinary perturbation. Something had to be happening somewhere in space, in the vast emptiness beyond the limits of observation, at a distance that could only be recorded with the aid of several 100 digits. But numbers aren’t my business, as you know; beyond ten or 12 zeros, I’m finished. So, the Observatory observed a very tiny thing that had to be an explosion of suns, a tremor of worlds…
“Yes,” said Andoche, “a jostling among a crowd of stars.”
“Probably! The little thing that emerged from the jostle, scarcely visible, divined rather than perceived, took ten years—you can see how far away it was—to reach our atmosphere and become something like a tiny, very tiny planet. It insinuated itself into the company of larger ones, the more or less distant cousins of the Earth, the jolly family that Papa Sun draws in his wake through the immeasurable immensities of the sky—Jupiter, Venus, Mars—with whom we’ve been traveling through the ether for such a long time without even giving one another a few signs of amity, or even politeness. It was necessary to wait for our era to begin to send very vague and short messages over long distances and to try to understand the replies.”
“But I have high hopes that we’ll soon see them at close range, Uncle,” said Andoche.
“Yes, yes, if you like—your father says so, at least, since he’s entitled his company The Interastral Travel Agency, but his interastral airships have only got as far as the Moon as yet.”
“Progress, Uncle!”
“Yes, Progress with three capital letters, if you like: PPProgress! But…”
“You’re definitely behind the times, Uncle!”
“I’d like to think so.”
Andoche and Mod
eran uttered scandalized exclamations.
“Then we’re not going…”
“Perhaps! Setting all difficulties aside, though, by traveling with one’s nurse, from the age of six months on, one might hope to disembark in one’s ninetieth year or thereabouts, with a respectable white beard. That would be very nice, truly…but to get back to the little thing that the astronomers, already a little anxious, were following with their telescopes, at first it followed a very irregular course; it was as if it were performing waltz steps amid the large planets and their satellites, leaping here and there—I’m not an astronomer, so I can’t attempt to describe its motion more accurately—but it was as if the large planets were playing ball with it and throwing it back and forth. That lasted for some time; then the little thing, rebuffed by the others, gave us its preference, headed toward us, and started rotating around us, behind the Moon…”
“I know: attracted into the orbit of the Moon,” said Moderan gravely. “I read about that.”
“Attraction, satellites…spout scientific terms,” said Andoche. “Show that you can get your baccalaureate in science whenever you wish.”
“If I wish!”
“I’ll give it to you—but let the story continue…”
“Come on, no arguments. Listen: I’m not only concerned with the picturesque aspect of facts, myself, in my research on the political and social institutions of the Lunatics; I’ve taken note of some curious facts. I know that the poor Lunatics were much more annoyed than the Terrans when the indiscreet little morsel of a plant penetrated our system and started following the Moon in its orbit around us like a little dog, a satellite of our satellite. But that phase of the little thing’s progress was only apparent. Subject to the attraction of the Earth, undoubtedly, the little thing finally adopted a regular path that brought it gradually closer to our terraqueous globe. To begin with, uninitiated Terrans were not overly worried; only the astronomers got excited and devoted themselves to studies and calculations regarding the intruder’s trajectory. It was gaining speed perceptibly, and becoming more visible with every passing month. At first a simple point of light in the heavenly plains, the little new Moon gradually increased in intensity and in size. People unversed in astronomy were easily able to see that it was visibly closer, and everyone became anxious.
“The new Moon was still getting larger. The observatories were calculating. Ten years had already gone by since the appearance of the insignificant ‘little thing.’ It was not describing a regular orbit, however, like the old familiar Moon, but an ellipse, a spiral that would…no one dared say it, but they thought it—hurl it upon us, after an indeterminate, but perhaps not very long, interval.
“Drawn at a speed that was accelerating day by day, it was approaching with increasing rapidity,
“Another ten years passed; the little thing had grown considerably and took up more space in our sky than the Moon; its dimensions seemed to be doubling every month, an enormous Moon traveling toward us. It began to be visible during the day, suddenly appearing in gaps in the clouds, at points where one did not expect to find anything, very high or very low in the sky. Then the great panic began!”
“There was reason enough,” said Andoche. “We, the young, know what happened; we accept the event without thinking about all the emotion, the extreme terror with which people must have gone through before the denouement. Brrr!”
“What happened next?” asked Moderan
“Oh, let me breathe—the weather’s so good! The sky’s so blue! It’s hard to go back to those evil moments in thought!”
XII. A Planetary Fragment in the Pacific
A very restful day, sweet and beautiful. Sunlight to make colors vibrate; the yellow-tinged bright pink of the rocky soil; the cinnabar or emerald green of the vegetation—agaves pointing all their blades and giant cacti, palm trees swaying their fans—the darker green of gigantic mahogany trees, garlanded with lianas and plumed with flowers; thickets defended by 1000 thorns, inhabited by hundreds of birds of every color, adding shrill notes to the grating music of insects of every sort, swarming on all sides.
Phanor galloped everywhere, raising small game-birds; he danced with delight, already in rank amity with the children of the village. Babylas, more careful in his gait, glided through the foliage, prudently exploring the interior of bushes, swinging indolently on lianas or climbing trees in pursuit of birds that jeered at him and mocked him, perched in rows on the low branches. In her anxious solicitude, Melanie called him back continually; Babylas shut his eyes and continued to sniff the powerful aromas of the flowers and the scent of the chattering prey frolicking in the foliage.
When Babylas went to sleep in the heart of a palm tree, Melanie finally decided to go back inside, in order to start hunting herself, waving napkins at the insects that permitted themselves to invade the rooms, filling them with a hum of trombones and fifes. For the tranquility of the imminent night, it was necessary to get all the little creatures outside before dusk.
Monsieur Cabrol had started work, but it was very hot! After ten minutes of attention his eyes close of their own accord, and he slumped in his armchair without thinking about it. It seemed to him that the music was a lullaby; he sighed with contentment, stretched himself out and went to sleep voluptuously.
What a fine siesta! It lasted at least three hours, which went by too rapidly, and would probably have been prolonged if his nephews had not suddenly come in, rather noisily.
“Uncle, uncle! The Moons are rising!”
“Eh? What?” said Monsieur Cabrol, with a start.
“The Moons, Uncle—you know, the Moons of the mountain, out there!”
“It’s already dark—how did that happen? I’d hardly dropped off…”
Indeed, dusk had arrived very quietly; the Sun had finished taking its invariable evening bath on the other side of the mountains, in the immensity of the Pacific, and, as they did every evening, the volcanoes were becoming visible, some mere fumaroles and others little gleams or fiery projections.
“Us too, Uncle! As it’s no longer very bright, our eyes are beginning to close. It’s rather elegant, that illumination over there. What if we were to go and see it at closer range?”
“We’ll go, but not this evening; it’s too far, we wouldn’t have enough time to make the trip. Let’s see—we have to go northwards toward Yucatan and come back down to Panama. Tomorrow, perhaps, if the weather seems favorable.”
“And what about the story of Astra, Uncle?” Andoche said. “The planetary fragment fallen into the Pacific? You left it at the moment when the people of Earth were beginning to dread something. I’d like to have been there.”
“Damn it! I was there, a little later, when it actually fell—and I shivered like everyone else in the world!”
“I would have shivered with you—I like violent emotions…when everything comes out well, naturally.”
“Let’s go up to the top floor, to contemplate the volcanoes. I’ll finish my story for you.”
They went up into a little upstairs room equipped with a large window, and installed themselves on the balcony. It was a trifle cramped, but they discovered such a broad section of horizon there that it recompensed them somewhat for the seats being too close together. The sunset had been less incandescent than the previous one; now it was completely extinguished, darkened into a violet ultramarine, almost black, over which the volcanoes loosed their flames and red smoke.
“Yes,” said Monsieur Cabrol, “When it was evident to everyone that the little thing wandering in the sky was getting closer to the Earth with every rotation, and that it was bound to fall on the surface, everyone shivered with fear. Where would it fall? What country would receive the impact? What part of the world would be struck by the frightful projectile, and undoubtedly crushed, pulverized? Would it be the old continent, the cradle of civilization, or another? Naturally, everyone thought: ‘Just so long as it’s not on us that the sky falls!’
“I was there; I rem
ember. I was your age, and like everyone else I followed the preparatory phases of the immense catastrophe suspended over our heads passionately. The fate of our entire planet was at stake!
“And that accursed morsel of broken planet that threatened to destroy everything was still growing! It was clearly visible by day now, and I don’t whether it was more terrifying for us then than by night. It arrived in a corner of the sky, sailed through violently disturbed clouds and traversed a part of our horizon. The astronomers were lost in their calculations; they were trying to measure its exact orbit in order to try to discover the threatened location, and the discussions were never-ending. The scientists did not understand the nature of the bolide. What was it, exactly? What was its composition? A solid body, a fragment of a planet, or a nascent planet? Molten matter? Brrr!
“Everything stopped, all business abandoned in almost every country. People became more insane as time went by. The suspense became unbearable.
“The spiral followed by the monstrous projectile shrank. Soon, binoculars could distinguish its exact form. The frightful bolide was not a sphere, but an elongated, irregular mass, sharpened by its progress, which plunged into the atmosphere, crumbling slightly, for it scattered small fragments of its surface, aeroliths of all sizes, some of which were received in Europe.
“Their analysis removed the doubts as to the composition of the body; it was very similar in nature to our Earth. The projectile was known, it had been measured and weighed; it was a considerable morsel, almost equal to France and Spain amalgamated, perhaps with Switzerland added on.
“The point of impact remained to be determined; that was more difficult.
Chalet in the Sky Page 22