The Extraordinary Adventures of a Russian Scientist Across the Solar System (Vol. 1)

by Georges Le Faure; Henri de Graffigny

  “But what about its weight? And that of the fire, and the water…?”

  “Patience…we’ll get to that shortly. For the moment, here’s my kite drawn forwards, thanks to the helices, with a speed that can be as much as 50 meters a second. At any rate, that speed is sufficient for the air to present sufficient resistance to sustain the entire apparatus.

  “But once launched,” said Gontran, banteringly, “your kite will go straight ahead, without being able to deviate from a straight line—and, as you said to me in St. Petersburg, speaking of balloons, you’ll head for Norway went you want to land in Siberia.”

  Fricoulet shrugged his shoulders. “Smart thinking!” he said. “Doesn’t the rudder count for anything?” As he spoke, three strokes of the charcoal added a triangular surface, like a fish’s tail, to the rear of the apparatus. “Here,” he said, is what will steer our aerial boat.”

  “That’s very good!” retorted Flammermont. “But tell me about the motor.”

  “I’d like to—but that won’t be as obvious to you. Anyway, my motor is composed of a high-pressure boiler in a serpentine form, so as to be incapable of exploding, and containing only 500 grams of water. By virtue of the great heat generated by the combustion of the liquid hydrocarbons burned in a lamp, the 500 grams of water are transformed into vapor at a pressure of 500 atmospheres and work upon both faces of an exceedingly light piston, whose shaft is directly articulated to the crank-shafts of the spindles of the propulsive helices.”

  “Oof!” said Gontran. “What a sentence!”

  “My dear chap, scientific explanations scarcely lend themselves to oratorical flourishes. I continue: after relaxation by working in a second cylinder, the vapor is brought back to a condenser in which it is liquefied, and from which a pump extracts it to return it to the boiler—in that manner, virtually all the dead weight of water and the fuel brought with it is dispensed with. Do you understand?”

  “Hardly any of it…but one thing I do understand is that the motor, with all its accessories, still weighs something.”

  “My kite can support a load of 700 kilos!” the young inventor cried, triumphantly. “It can travel 1000 kilometers in a single flight.”

  Gontran was dumbfounded.

  “What do you have to say to that?”

  “Nothing—absolutely nothing,” retorted the Comte. Then, suddenly throwing his arms around the young engineer’s neck, he exclaimed: “You’re a genius, Fricoulet!”

  “Pooh!” said the other. “You’d never have dreamed of saying that to me, you mocker, if my kite weren’t going to bring a smile to Mademoiselle Selena’s lips.”

  “Ah, my friend,” Gontran riposted, “I shall owe my happiness to you!”

  “What a madman!” growled Fricoulet. “Has any free creature ever been seen so desirous of being in chains?” Then, meeting Gontran’s eyes, he said, curtly: “Don’t ever blame me if the honeymoon you’re anticipating changes color and goes red…for I tell you straight out, in spite of our friendship—or, rather, because of it, that I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing if it weren’t a matter of rendering to science a man as eminent as Monsieur Ossipoff.” And having delivered this speech in a single breath, the young engineer fell silent.

  Gontran, who was long familiar with his friend’s antipathy toward marriage, shrugged his shoulders gently. “As regards Ossipoff,” was all he said, “how will we let him know we’re coming?”

  “He already knows,” Fricoulet replied, sullenly.

  The Comte’s mouth fell open. “Ossipoff already knows!” he said. “But who’s told him?”

  “I have,” said the other, laconically. Taking out his watch, he murmured: “In two hours, I have to be at the Cail factory to inspect my motor. Have you anything else to ask me?”

  “I’d like to ask one question.”

  “Go on.”

  “When will your bird be able to take to the air?”

  Without hesitation, Fricoulet replied: “My aeroplane will be ready on July 20… I’ll be carrying out trials until the end of the month. I’ve allowed three days for fitting it out completely and furnishing the stocks of food and provisions of every sort. That will take us to August 3. We’ll leave on the evening of August 4.”

  “In six weeks!” Gontran exclaimed.

  “Yes, in six weeks—and on the morning of August 8, we’ll be flying over Ekaterinburg.”

  “As long as we don’t break our heads on the way,” observed Flammermont.

  “Very true,” Fricoulet replied. And he added, shrugging his shoulders: “Well, it’ll end that way or by marriage!”

  Alcide Fricoulet definitely did not like women.

  Chapter V

  Ossipoff’s Removal

  About 500 versts from the Kammenoy Poyas—the “stone belt”—as the Russians call the chain of the Ural Mountains, at 56 degrees 51 minutes north latitude and 38 degrees 18 minutes east longitude, stands the town of Ekaterinburg, the center of a crowd of mines and forges. It was there, after a frightful two month journey, his body broken by fatigue and suffering but his morale still resistant, that Mikhail Ossipoff arrived with an entire column of convicts, composed for the most part of condemned criminals.

  The day after his arrival, separated from his companions and escorted by two policemen in blue tunics and copper helmets, the old man was taken to the police station. There, in the presence of the smotritel—the inspector—he was stripped to the waist in order to establish his identity with reference to a description. Then he was given the number 7327 which would henceforth replace any other status in his regard.

  When these various formalities were complete, the inspector said to his secretary: “Go and see if Ismail Krekov is here.”

  The other came back a few minutes later with a huge devil of a man clad entirely in furs, with a bearskin cap pulled down to his eyes. His face was almost completely hidden by a thick black beard, into which the emphatically curved lips imported a scarlet stain.

  “Ismail Krekov,” said the inspector, “this is the man you’re waiting for.”

  The newcomer approached the old scientist. “Your name is Mikhail Ossipoff?” he asked.

  “That’s me,” replied the scientist, in some surprise.

  “Ah!” said the other, moving around the prisoner, examining him from top to toe.

  The inspector stamped his foot impatiently. “Get on with it!” he said. “What are you waiting for, Ismail Krekov?”

  “I want to verify that it’s really the man I’ve been told about,” the other replied, gravely.

  “Imbecile,” murmured the inspector. “Since you’ve never seen him before, how can you possibly know whether it’s him? Go on—take delivery of your man and get out.”

  Meekly, Ismail Krekov bent over a large ledger that was opened for him, put his signature in the place that was indicated to him, and went out, giving Mikhail Ossipoff a signal to follow him.”

  Outside the door of the police station, a telega hitched to two horses was waiting. Ismail Krekov climbed into it. The old man took his place beside him and the two horses, spurred on by a vigorous crack of the whip, carried the light vehicle through the suburbs of the town.

  The last houses soon disappeared; then, turning abruptly off the highway, the telega went into a narrow road that climbed rather steeply along the side of a mountain. The driver let his horses slow down, and turned to his companion. “Well,” he said, “you can count yourself very lucky.”

  “Yes?” said Mikhail Ossipoff, evasively.

  “Just imagine that three days ago, when I received the letter recommending you to me, my book-keeper—a convict like you—had just died. Then, as they told me that you were a man sufficiently educated to keep books, I asked the smotritel to let me have you.”

  “Ah!” said Ossipoff, making every effort to hide his astonishment. “You received a letter mentioning me?”

  “Yes, three days ago. A French engineer that I had with me for some years to supervise the mine of w
hich I have the commission wrote to me warmly recommending you. So, as he’d rendered me such good service and I retained fond memories of him, and as I also had need of another book-keeper to replace the one who died…I’m taking you on. Are you content?”

  “Thank you,” said Ossipoff, simply. His amazement was so great that he did not think of offering further thanks to the man for the great service he was doing him in taking him out of the hellish mine-work. He wondered what friend could have written from Paris to recommend him, given that he had never left St. Petersburg and had no connection with the French capital. Unable to answer that question, he accepted the matter philosophically, silently blessing that person to whom he owed the amelioration of his fate without knowing who it was.

  These things happened at about the same time that Selena and Gontran de Flammermont were leaving St. Petersburg, a week apart, the former to travel through the many dangers of the Siberian steppes to join her father, the latter in response to the appeal of his friend Fricoulet, whose telegram summoned him to Paris.

  During the early days of his sojourn, Ossipoff found a diversion from his chagrin in the exploitation of the mine and the chemical operations necessary to the treatment of the platinum extracted from the serpentine rocks of the mountain.

  Separated by repeated washing from the earth and sand that contained it, the platinum is then plunged into a bath of aqua regia,29 in which the gold and iron mixed in with it are dissolved. The aqua regia is then concentrated further and the metal dissolves with the other substances still attached to it: rhodium, palladium and iridium. The decanted solution is evaporated almost to dryness to remove the excess aqua regia and decompose these metallic substances more fully. Then the liquor is treated with ammonium chlorhydrate, which yields a precipitate of platinum ammonium chloride. This precipitate, washed, dried and heated to red heat, then constitutes the gray “platinum sponge” from which metallic platinum is recoverable. This powder was the end-product of the mine and factory that Ismail Krekov directed; it was then sent to Moscow, where it was founded in a special process to manufacture actual ingots.

  Almost all the convicts employed by Ismail Krekov, with sallow complexions, untidy beards and haggard eyes, bore on their foreheads and cheeks, branded by hot irons, the three letters of the infamous stigmatum vor, meaning “thief.” They were also recognizable by squares of black cloth sewn on the backs of their greatcoats. Murderers wore red squares and arsonists yellow ones.

  Although Mikhail Ossipoff, employed in the administration offices, had no communication with his companions in captivity by day, when evening came he had to return to the isba—a kind of small hut built of mud—that he shared with another convict, on whose back was a red square. He was a murderer, and on the first evening they spent together, Yegor—that was the man’s name—told Ossipoff his story in such cynical detail that the old man could not help shivering.

  “What about you?” asked the bandit, when he had finished. “Why are you here?”

  In order not to irritate his companion, the scientist acquainted him briefly with the odious plot that had led to his condemnation. The other remained pensive. The following evening, as Ossipoff was about to go to bed, Yegor drew him to the window of the isba and, showing him the star-strewn sky, said to him: “Tell me a little about all that.”

  Initially surprised, the scientist looked at his companion, doubting that he was serious—but, seeing the bandit’s grave expression and curious gaze, he began to explain to him in simple terms, understandable to a naïve intelligence, the principles of the universal mechanism. Then he passed on to the organization of the celestial system, and spoke for two hours—forgetting, by involving himself thus is a subject so dear to him, the horrible situation in which he found himself.

  Every evening, it was the same. The bandit was increasingly captivated by he scientist’s explanations. Gradually, the scientist felt his initial reserve melt away and a certain sympathy for the unfortunate penetrated his heart.

  “Ah!” said Yegor, one day, with a deep sigh, extending his hand toward the silvery disk of the Moon. “I wish I could see it at closer range.”

  “We’d need a telescope for that,” Ossipoff replied.

  The following morning, as the old man went into the little room that served as his office, he was told that Krekov wanted to see him in his study.

  The concessionaire had a letter in his hand. “Your friend in Paris,” he said to Ossipoff, “has written asking me to give you this—which, he assures me, will give you great pleasure. As I’m pleased with you, I don’t see any objection to doing as he asks.” So saying, he pointed to a long, narrow object set on the table, carefully packaged in cloth and straw.

  The old man opened the package excitedly, and his eyes were delighted by the appearance of a magnificent telescope. He uttered a cry of joy and his tremulous hands almost dropped the precious object.

  “Take it away,” said Ismail Krekov. “This evening, when your day’s work is done, you can amuse yourself at your leisure.”

  One can imagine how slowly the hours passed for the old scientist. A telescope! That object alone brought him back to life. Thanks to that, he could continue his studies and seek to forget his misery in the stars.

  When he arrived at his isba, Yegor had not yet come back from the mine. Without losing a minute, Ossipoff, having focused his telescope, aimed it at the vault where a myriad of stars were scintillating. To his surprise, though, the instrument’s field remained dark; not a single star was visible. It was as if a thick veil were extended between the scientist’s eye and the objective lens.

  Thinking that a foreign body had slipped into the interior of the instrument, Ossipoff dismantled it completely, then examined the various parts one by one with extreme care. Suddenly, he released a muffled exclamation. A small piece of collodion was stuck to one of the lenses, about the size of a thumbnail.

  His throat constricted by emotion and his heart beating with unimaginable violence, the old scientist realized that the collodion seemed to be dotted with imperceptible black spots. Immediately, he suspected that he was dealing with a photographic reduction; placing one of the magnifying lenses of the telescope over the reduction, he was able to read these words:

  We are watching over you and working to save you. We shall be in Ekaterinburg between August 7 and 8, arriving by air.

  It was signed Gontran de Flammermont.

  Ossipoff required all his will-power not to scream with joy. He had not been abandoned! People were working on his behalf! They were going to save him! Was that really possible, in truth? He re-read the blessed note several times. Yes, it had been written, definitely written, and the day of his deliverance was fixed for August 8, and it was signed Flammermont. So the mysterious friend who had written to Ismail Krekov must be the young Comte. Ah, the brave lad! How happy he was that Selena loved a man like that!

  Gradually recovering his composure, though, the scientist hastened to scrape away the collodion. Then he reassembled the telescope and, incapable of surrendering himself to his favorite study that evening, was about to got to bed when there was a sound of footsteps outside. The door was violently shoved open and two men—two convicts—came into the isba carrying an unfortunate covered in blood by the feet and head. By the light of the lantern, Ossipoff recognized his nightly companion.

  Without saying a word, the prisoners deposited their comrade on his bed and left.

  “Yegor!” cried the old man.

  The injured man opened his eyes with difficulty, gazed silently at Ossipoff for a moment, then beckoned to him to come closer. “I’m dead,” he murmured, in a feeble voice. “A section of rock collapsed on me. I only have a few hours to live, but I want to tell you something before I die.”

  “Speak,” said the old man, putting his ear close t the dying man’s mouth.

  The latter made a violent effort, sat up in his bed and pointed to the hearth. “There,” he said, in a voice punctuated by gurgling. “There, unde
r the stones…a fortune…found in the mine…ten years ago…for you…for you…under the stones…” He slumped backwards; his limbs twisted, then became motionless. He was dead!

  Ossipoff, deeply moved, spent the entire night sitting up with the cadaver, then returned to his duties the following day without even trying to establish the veracity of Yegor’s last words.

  It was not until several days afterwards that, alone in his isba one evening, the cloudy weather rendering any astronomical study impossible, the old man suddenly shivered as his eyes fixed themselves mechanically on the hearth, remembering the dead man’s revelation. Having carefully locked the door and extended his only blanket over the window, he went to the hearth, knelt down and, with the aid of an iron pick, lifted up the stones of the fireplace. A hole then appeared, into which he shone the light of his lantern. He recoiled, his eyes dazzled by the many glints thrown off by the heap of rubies, emeralds and tourmalines—the smallest of which was as broad as a thumb—that filled the hole he had uncovered.

  “A fortune!” he exclaimed. “Yes, the man was telling the truth. There’s a fortune here!”

  He remained pensive for a moment, kneeling on the compacted earth that served as the isba’s floor; his honest man’s soul rebelled at the thought of taking possession of these precious stones, and his initial impulse was to take them to Ismail Krekov—but he reflected that the man was merely a concessionaire and that, by virtue of the laws of the empire, precious stones found on Russian territory belonged to the Tsar. It was not, therefore, Ismail Krekov who would get the benefit of the treasure accumulated by the bandit Yegor, but the Emperor.

  Now, the Emperor….

  Mikhail Ossipoff remained hesitant for part of the night, but by morning his decision was made. He had resolved to use the fortune that had fallen so unexpectedly into his hands for the realization of his famous project. The Emperor will be frustrated, he thought, but Russia will gain thereby. He replaced the stones in the fireplace and kept Yegor’s secret to himself.