Sharp replied to these words, which the old man had spoken in a sorrowful tone with a mocking laugh. “Ah!” he retorted, looking at his former colleague with an expression full of hatred. “You’re departing, are you, Mikhail Ossipoff? For you, the glory and the joy of having satisfied your thirst for the infinite—and for me, nothing but death! Well, that won’t happen.”
As this speech ended, Farenheit finally succeeded in freeing himself from the grip of the two young men, and hurled himself toward Fedor Sharp—but the latter never took his eyes of him. On seeing him come running, followed by Ossipoff and the other Terrans, he took out a metallic tube with the approximate form and dimensions of a rifle cartridge and threw it at the group united against him.
There was a frightful bang. Ossipoff and his friends were surrounded by flames and smoke. The ground gave way beneath their feet and they fell, amid rocks pulverized by the explosion. Farenheit, struck full in the chest by the murderous blast of the selenite-stuffed projectile, writhed in the most horrible agony.
Profiting from the stupor and the general panic, Fedor Sharp ran toward Selena, who lay unconscious beside her father, and seized her in his arms; then he fled as fast as his legs could carry him to the middle of the circus. He disappeared under the canvas that was shielding the shell from the light.
Already, those Terrrans who were only stunned were coming round.
“My daughter!” cried Ossipoff, observing Selena’s disappearance.
Gontran uttered a cry of fury. “That bandit’s capable of holding her as a hostage,” he said.
A Selenite who had followed Sharp’s movements pointed to the center of the circus. “There,” he said. “The man has taken refuge there with your companion.” As he completed this speech, the tarpaulin fell away, uncovering the shell, which sparkled like a diamond in the sunlight.
Ossipoff and his companions ran forward, a poignant anguish in their hearts—but before they had covered half the distance, the shell, obedient to the light that was attracting it, rose up and shot into space like a lightning-bolt, carrying Fedor Sharp and his enemy’s daughter away.
On seeing this, Mikhail Ossipoff collapsed into Fricoulet’s arms, while Flammermont, maddened by impotent range, waved his fist threateningly at the Infinite.
Chapter XX
Our heroes experience hunger pangs
Alcide Fricoulet was what is called a “fine fellow”—and if, for reasons that he kept secret, he did not like women, at least he had a generous heart. So, while privately applauding the incident that saved his friend Gontran from the hell of marriage, he could not help simultaneously deploring that same incident, which had struck the Comte de Flammermont such a cruel blow.
Like a madman, the latter shouted and gesticulated, insulting Sharp, appealing to Selena, vainly scanning the immensity in which no trace of the vehicle could any longer be seen amid the solar radiation.
“Gontran!” cried the engineer. “Gontran!” But the young man, entirely in the grip of grief, did not hear him and continued to absorb himself in his search.
Fricoulet then shifted his attention to Ossipoff, who had fainted in his arms in response to the violence of emotion. With his legs limp, his body inert and his head dangling, the old man remained motionless; without the labored breath that escaped his constricted throat, he could have passed for a dead man. Fricoulet, the only one had conserved his composure—and with reason, since he was neither Selena’s father nor her fiancé—felt the necessity of taking a decision. “I can’t stay here forever,” he murmured. “The old man needs help. As for Gontran, he’ll be distraught for a while.”
Only then did he perceive that the audience that had gathered for the congress was gradually leaving the crater. In the distance, long files of Selenites were disappearing into tunnels, like a family of rabbits disturbed in their play by a stranger. Egotists! thought Fricoulet. Not one among them has come to find out what happened.
At that moment a hand fell on his shoulder. He turned round and recognized Telinga. “Hey!” exclaimed the engineer. “Would you ever have imagined that such scoundrels might exist on the luminous world that illuminates the region of Subvolva by night?”
The Selenite shook its head without making any reply. Then, after a pause, he said: “You must hurry.”
“Me, hurry?” Fricoulet replied. “Hurry to do what?”
“Leave here.”
The engineer looked at his interlocutor in bewilderment. “But where do you want us to go?” he asked.
Telinga placed his index finger on the young man’s forehead.
“No, no!” he exclaimed. “Don’t worry, I’m in my right mind—but I don’t understand why you’re telling me to hurry away from here.”
“Night,” replied the Selenite, laconically—and extended his arm toward the horizon. The summits of the neighboring mountains and craters were gradually blurring, and the growing shadow of their volcanic battlements was extending toward the Terrans. At he same time, in the deep azure of the sky, whose impassive and bleak serenity was untroubled by any cloud, the stars were beginning to shine.
“Brrr!” said Fricoulet, suddenly. “One might think that a cloak of ice were falling on one’s shoulders.”
“It’s necessary not to delay,” observed Telinga. “The Selenites, whose constitution is better adapted these abrupt changes in temperature, are already returning to their warm underground dwellings. Believe me, it would be dangerous for you and your friends to stay here any longer.”
“You’re right,” Fricoulet replied. “I’m already chilled to the bone.” With as much ease as if he had weighed no more than a feather, the engineer lifted Ossipoff up and threw him over his shoulder. Then he ran to Gontran, took him by the arm and dragged him towards the large room put at their disposal by the director of the Maoulideck Observatory. He had only taken a few steps when he suddenly stopped. “What about Farenheit?” he exclaimed. Wholly preoccupied with Ossipoff’s condition and Gontran’s distress, Fricoulet had forgotten all about the American, the memory of whom had returned to him abruptly at that moment.
“I can’t abandon the unfortunate like this,” he said—and, in spite of Telinga’s observations, he strode back purposefully to the place where Farenheit had fallen.
Struck full in the chest by the murderous blast of Sharp’s cartridge, the American lay on the ground; his limbs were stiff, his rage-convulsed face was rigid, his eyes were glazed and his fist was still clamped on the butt of his revolver, in the attitude in which death had seized him.
“But he’s alive!” cried Fricoulet, deceived by that appearance of movement.
Telinga shook its head. “The cold has already taken possession of him,” it murmured. “The soul has fled into the higher spheres, and we have nothing but the mortal husk before our eyes.”
“I must at least give him a grave,” the engineer insisted.
“The ground is already frozen,” the Selenite replied. “You would exhaust yourself in vain trying to dig into it. Futhermore, it is a needless precaution. The cold will desiccate the body and mummify it. When the Sun shines again, you can do what seems to you to be necessary.”
Fricoulet looked at his companion’s corpse sadly. Followed by Telinga, he fled the profound shadow cast by the summits that was invading the circus behind him, enveloping with deathly silence the titanic rocks at the foot of which, seized by the frightful cold of space, Farenheit’s grimacing corpse was freezing.
Having arrived in the room that had already served as their habitation for 15 times 24 hours, in which they would be forced to await the Sun’s return, Fricoulet laid the old man down on Fedor Sharp’s bunk. Then he rummaged in one of the many pockets with which his garments were equipped and took out a candle-stub, which he lit. In its flickering light the room soon took on a sinister and funereal aspect. Monstrous shadows where cast by the room’s projections, making the three Terrans gathered in a corner seem even smaller.
“Damn!” said Fricoulet. “It’s
not cheerful here!” He shook his shoulders abruptly to shake off the veil of sadness that threatened to envelop him like a shroud. Then he went to Flammermont—who had let himself fall on to a bunk and was sitting there with his head slumped on to his breast and his eyes fixed on the ground, engulfed by a desperate torpor—and put a hand on his shoulder.
The young Comte shuddered, raised his head and looked at his friend with the initial stupor of a man abruptly woken from sleep imprinted on his features.
“Come on, Gontran,” said the engineer. “Come on—be a man! What the Devil…? In truth, I’m ashamed to see you downcast like this.”
Flammermont shrugged his shoulders helplessly and murmured a single word in a heartbroken voice: “Selena!”
Fricoulet became suddenly impatient and stamped his foot. “What?” he cried. “You sit there, unmoving, as inert as a crater, despairing and calling to Selena! Do you think that’s the way you’ll get her back?”
“Get her back!” Gontran murmured. “She’s lost, alas—lost forever!” After a brief pause, he went on, bitterly: “Oh, why didn’t that swine kill me along with Farenheit? At least it would be an end to suffering.”
Fricoulet raised his arms to the heavens. “That’s perfect selfishness, and no mistake!” he exclaimed. “What about us? Don’t we count for anything in your affection? Have I, in particular, no right to that for which you’d end your existence so cheaply?” He paused, then resumed: “Would you ever have been able to lay a finger on that happiness whose loss has driven you to despair if I hadn’t made you a stepladder to bring you within reach of it?”
“What are you getting at?” Flammermont asked.
“Quite simply, this: that something even worse than Mademoiselle Selena’s abduction could have come between you and your matrimonial intentions.”
The young Comte looked at his friend, wide-eyed with bewilderment. “I understand less and less,” he stammered.
“Grief must be clouding your mind. Does what I’m saying not seem clear to you, genius? Imagine that, instead of kidnapping your fiancée, that rascal Sharp might have left on his own.”
At this suggestion, Gontran released a profound sigh. “Alas!” he said.
“And imagine, too,” the engineer went on, “that instead of killing poor Mr. Farenheit before his departure, it might have been me that Sharp had struck down.” He paused, then folded his arms. “Don’t you think that Selena would then have been even more lost to you than she is at present? Oh, my poor friend! Monsieur Ossipoff would have perceived the scientific ignorance of his future son-in-law for sure.”
“Well, what does Monsieur Ossipoff’s opinion matter to me now?” Flammermon riposted. I only consented to play that comedy for love of his daughter. My happiness is lost forever….”
The engineer cut him off with a curt gesture. “Lost?” he said. “Why’s that?”
Gontran sat up straight, as if impelled by a spring. “What do you mean?” he stammered, in a tremulous voice.
“That I consider your happiness to be compromised, but not lost.”
The Comte grabbed his hands. “Go on!” he said, in anguish. “Do you have some hope? Some plan?”
“Plan, no—but in any case, I’m not in despair. I’m furious, enraged; I could strangle Sharp with infinite joy—but with respect to Mademoiselle Ossipoff, if I were in your place, I wouldn’t despair until I found her dead.”
“Find her?” murmured Gontran. “Do you think that’s possible?”
“Is anything impossible for men like us?” replied the engineer, with a casual shrug of his shoulders. And then, glad to see Gontran emerge from the initial torpor into which the disappearance of his fiancée had plunged him, he exclaimed: “Let’s go! Sursum corda!89 Let this misfortune, far from beating us down, put the Devil in our bodies instead, to bring us forth triumphant from the gigantic struggle that we’re waging against the Infinite!”
A groan resounded behind the engineer and Ossipoff’s dolorous voice was heard: “Alas, it’s not a matter of us struggling against the Infinite, but against our own nature. Why are you talking about going in pursuit of Sharp, Monsieur Fricoulet, when we’ll be nothing but corpses in a few hours?”
The young engineer could not restrain a start of surprise. “What?” he said “You too! You’re confessing yourself beaten?” Then, suddenly standing up straight, enthused by the very difficulty of the obstacles that had to be vanquished, he cried in a vibrant voice: “Well, since you, her father, and you, her fiancé, are abandoning her, I’ll be the one to go to Mademoiselle Selena’s rescue!”
Gontran seized his friend’s hand and shook it energetically. “I’m at your disposal, Fricoulet,” he said, in a firm voice. “What you tell me to do, I’ll do; wherever you go, I’ll go—for, in truth, I’m ashamed of my dejection and despair!”
“Fool that you are,” exclaimed the old man, “haven’t you considered the fact that, by taking possession of our shell, that wretch has not merely robbed us of the means of leaving the lunar surface, but also of our means of subsistence?”
Gontran went very pale. “What do you mean?” he stammered.
“That we have no more to do but die of hunger. We no longer have any food, nor water, nor air…”
“Come on!” Flammermont retorted. “The Selenites find means of subsistence.”
“Because the aliments of which they make use contain the nutritive elements necessary to their organic make-up.”
“But why are you so sure that our stomachs can’t accommodate them too?”
The old man cut him off with a despairing gesture. “Do you think that I waited until today to find that out? Chemical analysis has demonstrated that we are not compatible with Lunarian alimentation.”
These words were greeted by a groan and a cry of rage, the first uttered by Gontran and the second released by Fricoulet’s lips. The three men looked at one another for a few seconds, silent and depressed. The situation was, indeed, terrible; to struggle against the impossible was still at the level of their audacity, but to struggle against starvation…
It was the engineer who spoke first. “To die of hunger!” he exclaimed. “After traveling more than 90,000 leagues, to die of hunger on the Moon! In truth, that would be stupid, and if the good Terran astronomers ever found out about it, they’d burst out laughing at their telescopes!” And he began striding back and forth across the room.
“You can call it stupid if you wish,” retorted Flammermont, “but it’s no less true that we’re confronted with an empty larder!”
“To be sure, we still have the resource of dancing,” the engineer went on, “but although hygienic, I don’t know that dancing has ever been considered as a fortifying exercise.” After a pause, he went on. “Let’s see, we are three men to whom, as is undeniable, none of the secrets of modern science is unknown—and we can’t find the means of sustaining ourselves in the world that we’ve reached? That’s absolutely unthinkable!”
Gontran shook his head. “It’s easy for you to talk,” he said. “To invent a system of locomotion that allows you to travel millions of leagues astride a ray of light or an electric current…to travel the planetary immensity…to visit the Sun and the stars—that’s nothing! But to invent a leg of mutton or a beefsteak without having the primary ingredient—which is to say, a sheep or an ox—to hand…that, I declare, is beyond my scope.”
Fricoulet snapped his fingers impatiently. “My word!” he said. “You’ll persuade me that you’re as bourgeois as all the bourgeoisie who crowd the tables in Duval’s soup-shops or the 32-sou restaurants of the Palais-Royal. Do you still believe that legs of mutton and lamb cutlets are indispensable to human existence?” He waved his arms in the air and cried: “What will the people of the 20th century say, when they read that people still believed such things in the enlightened era that we claim to inhabit?”
So saying, Fricoulet had turned to Ossipoff as if to demand his approval—but the old man had not heard a single word of what the
two friends had been saying. Crouched on his bunk, he seemed to be fully occupied in blackening a blank page in his notebook with figures and diagrams. Finally, he raised his head and exclaimed: “Sharp won’t reach Venus for 25 days. It’s still a month until the planet arrives in conjunction with the Sun and at its greatest proximity to Earth, from which it’s only separated by some 12,000,000 leagues.”
“Futility,” murmured the young Comte bitterly. “It’s really not worth the trouble of talking about it.”
“Have you taken account in your calculations of the reduced weight that the shell is carrying?” Fricoulet asked.
“Of course—and I’ve found that the duration of the journey will be reduced by 4 days 18 hours 14 minutes and 13 seconds, by virtue of the elimination of the 285 kilos that the four of us represent.”
“But Sharp’s weight must be set against that diminution.”
Ossipoff nodded. “I’ve thought of that. Sharp weighs 80 kilos; those 80 kilos subtracted from 285 leave 205 kilos as the lightening of the shell, which represent, in effect, an augmentation of speed that translates as four days…”
“…18 hours, 14 minutes and 13 seconds less in the duration of he voyage,” Gontran put in.
“That’s right.”
“And what do these calculations imply?” the young Comte asked, mockingly.
“Simply this,” replied Fricoulet, cutting off the old man unceremoniously. “That we need to find a means of locomotion rapid enough to us to arrive on Venus in 25 days as well, in order to catch that scoundrel Sharp and rescue Mademoiselle Selena.”
Ossipoff silently extended his hand to the young engineer and shook hands with him firmly.
The Extraordinary Adventures of a Russian Scientist Across the Solar System (Vol. 1) Page 39