An Unknown World

by Pierre de Sélènes

  After a month, everything was complete, and on the very day when the two worlds reentered their first quarter, they were ready to reply.

  VII. The Moon Replies

  There was great agitation at Long’s Peak Observatory. Sir William Burnett, who had been in telegraphic communication with Mathieu-Rollère, had been informed of the precise moment when the latter had sent his first message to our satellite. At that moment, the region of the Rocky Mountains was still in daylight, and he had been unable to ascertain immediately that the message had been received and understood. As soon as night had reached the region and observations could be resumed, however, he had observed the presence on the lunar disk of the accustomed signals.

  This time, however, something new was happening: instead of showing themselves successively, as they had done thus far, the three letters M, J and R all appeared together; they were not shining in a uniform and continuous fashion for a determined time; they were seen to go out and reignite precipitately. There was nothing regular about those abrupt and disorderly appearances. One might have thought that the mysterious correspondence, eager to act but not yet having more complete means at their disposal, wanted to say to their distant friends: “We’re here, we’ve seen you; have a little patience and we’ll soon be able to reply to you.”

  So dispatches succeeded one another rapidly and urgently between Long’s Peak and Biskra.

  Knowing the impatience of his French colleague, the American astronomer said to him: “Have confidence; our friends have received your greeting. The almost feverish agitation with which they’re multiplying their demonstrations proves that up there, ardent preparations are being made. We’re evidently close to a definitive solution of the problem in hand.”

  Mathieu-Rollère was in a state of excitement that was shared by the engineer Dumesnil and the emperor Dom Pedro, and had ended up infecting all the Europeans that curiosity had gathered around him. Burnett’s dispatches were read publicly, commented on, and communicated to all the newspapers. For the several nights during which the signals sent from the Moon remained visible, the observers at Long’s Peak never ceased to observe the irregular but continual appearance of the symbolic letters and thus to maintain the hopes of Mathieu-Rollère and his companions.

  A month had necessarily to pass before the point on the lunar surface at which telescopes were desperately aimed all over the world would become observable again. During that forced delay, all the scientific periodicals were filled with interminable discussions and indefinite theories, which had the result of keeping public curiosity alert.

  Further visitors were arriving incessantly in the vicinity of Biskra, and the entire region, previously almost deserted, was now buzzing with intense life. At the same time, many scientists, desirous of seeing their hypotheses confirmed or opposing theories belied, and many idlers avid for new sensations or unknown spectacles flocked to the observatory at Long’s Peak.

  Already, considerable sums had been offered to the honorable Burnett to purchase the right to put an eye to the telescope and collect the next signals, for no one now doubted that some decisive manifestation would be witnessed during the next favorable phase of the moon.

  The director of the observatory was inflexible. “I want to be the first to receive the three voyagers’ messages,” he had replied, “but as the signals appear, I’ll transmit them to the telegraph post in Denver, from which the whole world will be able to take cognizance of them.”

  The curiosity-seekers had to be content with that response, and the majority of the great newspapers of the two continents had send reporters to Denver charged with gathering information without delay regarding the great event that he entire world was awaiting impatiently.

  They day so ardently awaited finally arrived; it was 18 May that was to remain famous in the annals of science.

  As all the newspaper reporters and curiosity-seekers were pressing around the telegraph office and the crowding threatened to produce disorders, the public authorities thought it appropriate to intervene. It was decided that all the journalists who could prove their entitlement would gather in a kind of congress and choose one of their number to man the receiving apparatus in order to receive the communications from Long’s Peak and transmit it to all his colleagues.

  The interested parties’ selection fell to the representative of Le Figaro, the French newspaper with the largest circulation, which had already defended Mathieu-Rollère’s cause ardently.

  It was eleven twenty-three in the evening at the Long’s Peak meridian when the bell of the apparatus suddenly rang. Everyone held his breath and all expressions were taut. Leaning over the ribbon on which the typographic characters were printed, the representative of Le Figaro read in a voice tremulous with emotion: “Long’s Peak Observatory. I can distinctly read the following words on the lunar disk: ‘Thank you.’ Will continue transmission if other words appear.”

  Cries of enthusiasm rang out. People congratulated one another; that simple phrase was the response to the greeting send from Earth. The voyagers had received it and understood it. They had found a means, in so short a time, to put themselves in communication with the Earth in a more complete and rapid fashion than anyone had dared to hope, since they could transmit at a stroke no longer isolated letters but entire words. Surely they would not stop there.

  Scarcely ten minutes had gone by when the bell was heard again, and on the telegraphic ribbon the words “M J R alive” appeared.

  They had not been mistaken; it really was the three bold voyagers who were talking to their friends from the depths of space and wanted to reassure them as to their fate.

  That same day, at an interval of several hours, a similar animation reigned in the vicinity of Biskra. There too a new manifestation as expected; the regular communications sent by Burnett had maintained Mathieu-Rollère and his companions in an absolute confidence. So, when the first telegram sent from Long’s Peak arrived in that lost corner of Africa, the astronomer and the engineer Dumesnil felt inundated by a profound joy.

  In the presence of the magnificent result they had obtained, what did the ordeals they had undergone matter, the difficulties surmounted with so much difficulty, so many struggles and so many sacrifices? They had emerged victorious against envy and ignorance. Thanks to them, a fecund era was opening up for humankind; science was about to see hitherto-unknown horizons opening before it. And the imperial benefactor, whose intelligence had understood everything that was great in their idea, and had rendered its realization possible, shared their intoxication.

  At the first words transmitted by Burnett, the old scientist’s soul had blossomed. The three friends, he was now certain, were alive, and he saw confirmed, in spite of his funereal anticipations, the indomitable hope that had never ceased to live in his daughter’s heart. Hélène was beside him, and their tears of happiness mingled.

  But the communications that followed soon gave his thoughts a new direction.

  On the somber screen on the lunar disk, the telescope in the Rocky Mountains had read distinctly words that plunged all the witnesses into a profound amazement, which seemed to overturn scientific theories that had previously seemed well established:

  Lunar surface uninhabitable. Interior inhabited. Lunar humankind glad to enter into communication with Earth.

  What new perspectives those unexpected revelations caused to unfurl before their eyes!

  If the first part of the message confirmed what science had long observed with respect to the surface of the satellite, how could the presence of life in the bosom of such a compact mass be explained? What could that humankind be like, living in conditions that the most audacious imagination could scarcely conceive?

  To judge by the scientific character of the means employed to communicate with the Earth, it might be thought that the humanity living there had achieved a high level of intellectual development. On the other hand, the signs perceived had been made on the surface. How could that be done if it was impossib
le to live there?

  There were so many mysterious questions that remained unanswered, and in the old astronomer’s head the ideas were crowding and spinning in an inexpressible confusion.

  The news of that extraordinary event spread throughout the entire world. All the Institutes and all the scientific societies had been rapidly informed, and passionate discussions did not take long to cast trouble into minds. The crowd, always seduced by the marvelous, greeted the most fantastic stories served to them every day by the overexcited imagination of journalists with enthusiasm; the more incredible they were, the more fervently they welcomed them.

  Public opinion, overheated, was already criticizing governments for inertia and indifference; monstrous cannons had to be founded in haste in order to give further voyagers the opportunity to repeat the experiment, and construction began of gigantic telescopes equal or superior in power to the one at Long’s Peak. National pride was involved. Why leave the United States with the monopoly on correspondence with the Moon? Did not every nation have a duty to make every effort to arrive first in the race for the conquest of great scientific truths?

  In France, the demands were imperious. Was not the endeavor, in sum, primarily French? Of the three voyagers, one was certainly English, but it was now known that Lord Rodilan was not a scientist; he was only a blasé individual in search of new emotions, and his role in the whole enterprise was the most minimal.

  Then again, Mathieu-Rollère was also a Frenchman, and it was his indomitable tenacity that had, in spite of routine, accomplished such great things. Was it not just that, after having soaked up so much disdain and bitterness, he should remain responsible for completing the work he had begun? He had taken the trouble; he ought to have the honor.

  VIII. In Search of a Crater

  Eighteen months had gone by since Marcel and his companions had arrived on Earth’s satellite, and when they thought about everything that they had experienced, learned and accomplished they were tempted to wonder whether they had not been living in a continuous dream.

  An extraordinary voyage in conditions that seemed to defy all human previsions; a new world discovered, a world whose moral and intellectual superiority realized the most sublime conceptions of dreamers and utopians attempting to imagine a better humankind; a grandiose chimera, regular communications between the spheres orbiting in space, realized amid a thousand difficulties and perils: that was what their audacity and faith in science had achieved.

  But now that goal had been attained and the work was complete, their hearts felt a profound emptiness. The zeal that had sustained them so long as they had something to do was now extinguishing for lack of an aliment. And they rediscovered with regret the Earth that they had left behind them, the friends whose thoughts reached them through space but whose hands they felt a need to shake and whose hearts they wanted to feel beating against their own.

  Nothing can replace an absent fatherland, and in spite of the enchantments that had delighted them, the Earth was decidedly lacking. In the narrow and closed environment in which they had been living for long months, where the temperate and light were constant, the horizons always limited, colors mild but dull, where everything was calm and placid, devoid of the unexpected, devoid of the accidental, where nothing excited desire or inflamed the imagination, they were often seized by regret for the vast and various horizons of Earth, the warm bright light of the Sun, the depth of the blue sky, the swarming life on the surface of the land, the aerial spaces and the liquid abyss of the waves.

  Many times, they had desired a storm or a tempest—in sum, something to break the eternal monotony of that unalterable serenity. The life these superior beings led was no longer sufficient for them. That whole existence, so sage, so sober and so well-regulated, appeared to them to have something artificial about it, and they wondered whether, deep down, life such as it was led on Earth, with its struggles and uncertainties, its perils and adventures, its alternation of good days and bad days, was not preferable, for beings endowed with sensibility and activity, to that ideal uniformity, similar to a lake with still waters, whose surface was never rippled by any breeze.

  Marcel, who still retained a vague sentiment in the depths of his heart, dormant rather than extinct, could perhaps have resigned himself, even though he had bid adieu to all hope, to leading that placid existence, which cradled his love so gently. Jacques and Lord Rodilan, however, were beginning to show definite signs of having had enough; they were urging Marcel to think about the return journey. And he, yielding to their pleas and faithful to the promise that he had made to them, decided to talk to Rugel about it.

  “Friend,” he said, “the desires of the great Aldeovaze are now fulfilled. The link that will link the two sibling humankinds together is now established, and they can, as the sage’s mind had glimpsed, march in convoy along the road of progress. Our task is complete. The result we’ve obtained far surpasses what we had dared to dream when we launched ourselves into an unknown adventure. If our highest ambitions and aspirations have been satisfied, our hearts have found sweet recompenses here; we have encountered precious sympathies, solid amities, and we shall remember them eternally; but—forgive us, my friend—that’s no longer sufficient for us. You’ll surely understand, having given your entire life, all that you have of strength and intelligence to this world where you have born and where those you love reside. We too have a fatherland that we cherish; we were able to avoid suffering from being separated therefrom for as long as we were sustained by the desire to work for its glory and its happiness, but today the love of our native soil has reawakened imperiously in our souls; all the force of our souls is aspiring toward it, and we’re suffering from its deprivation.”

  While Marcel was speaking thus, Rugel’s face had veiled with sadness.

  “What you say, friend,” he replied, “afflicts me but doesn’t surprise me. I’ve been expecting it. I understood that that once the surprise caused to you by a world so different from your own had passed, when you no longer had before your eyes the noble goal to which you had devoted yourselves, you would lack something that our affection would be powerless to give you.” With a melancholy smile he added: “You want to leave us; your departure will cause us to suffer, but we love you too much to think of delaying it. For my part, I shall attempt to hasten the moment for which you aspire with as much zeal and as much care as I have put into guiding you within our society and assisting you in your endeavors.”

  Jacques’ face, and Lord Rodilan’s, lit up at the thought that they were going, one to see the beloved fiancée with whom his heart was filed, the other finally to exchange the chemical nourishment to which he had never managed to adapt himself for large and succulent joints of roast beef at the Pall Mall Club.

  “Well,” said the Englishman, “since we’re in agreement on that important point, it will perhaps be appropriate to enquire as to the ways and means to ensure our return.”

  “The question appears to me to be resolved in principle,” Rugel replied. “We only have to preoccupy ourselves with the execution.”

  Marcel recognized, in fact, that the sole means to employ was the one that had permitted the three voyagers to reach the Moon. The specific weight of the satellite being six times less than that of the Earth, the force of attraction that it was necessary to overcome would be reduced in the same proportion. In addition, the neutral point at which the two attractions canceled one another out being much closer to the moon—eight thousand leagues away, in fact—the distance to be covered was far less and would necessitate a considerably reduced initial velocity. It was therefore necessary to establish a cannon capable of a puerile effort, which, although less vast in its proportions than the Gun Club’s Columbiad, would nevertheless be enormous.

  “We are not novices in the matter of constructions of that sort,” said Rugel. “We did not have recourse to other means in sending you the numerous projectiles designed to attract your attention. The machine that served to fire the cannonbal
l that you so fortunately discovered was cast not far from here. I’ll take you there soon and you can appreciate for yourselves the extent of our knowledge of ballistics.”

  Shortly afterwards, in fact, dressed in the special apparatus, accompanied by Merovar, a few of his colleagues and a number of Diemides, they left the observatory.

  Guided by Rugel they went down the slope of the crater on the opposite side to the one they had descended when they established the signals, and soon came to the entrance to a steep-sided gorge between elevations of granitic rock, which seemed to trace a sinuous furrow through the chaotic accumulation.

  To their great surprise, they perceived a sort of thick ribbon of iron, set on the ground, which followed the contours of the ravine,

  Marcel hastened to hook his telephonic wire on to Rugel’s sphere and say: “You’ve had a railway here, then?”

  “We still have one,” Rugel replied, smiling behind is mask at the astonishment of the three friends—for Jacques and Lord Rodilan were also manifesting a veritable amazement by means of their gestures.

  “One never finishes,” Jacques murmured, “being wonderstruck by this extraordinary world.”

  “That would open the eyes of the cockneys in the City,” said Lord Rodilan, at the same time.

  “Let’s follow Merovar,” said Rugel.

  The director of the observatory was heading toward a jutting rock, behind which a number of wagons soon appeared, similar in form to those they had seen circulating inside the cavern, and similarly equipped with gyroscopic devices designed to maintain them in equilibrium on the single rail.