Gontran and Fricoulet looked at one another, terrified.
“Dead!” exclaimed the young Comte. “He’s dead.”
“No,” replied the engineer, “but he’s not far off. Help me to carry him to his bunk—then we’ll figure out what to do.”
When the old man was lying down, the upper part of his body slightly raised up to facilitate the functioning of his lungs, the young Comte and his companion went back to the retorts that Ossipoff had used to compose the alimentary preparation that was to ensure the existence of our voyagers.
“So that’s what we have to absorb,” murmured Gontran, pulling a face.
“So he claims, at least…”
“But suppose we poison ourselves.”
“Impossible, given that all the elementary substances that went into it are absolutely inoffensive.”94
“In any case, simply looking at that, I can feel my appetite going away. Pooh! It looks like licorice paste.”
Without paying any heed to Gontran’s repugnance, however, Fricoulet had uncorked the receptacle and brought out a walnut-sized lump of the composition the tip of his knife, which he swallowed after chewing it for some time. Flammermont stared at him with such a strange expression that he could not help bursting into laughter.
“Well?” asked Gontran.
The engineer clicked his tongue against his palate. “Hmm…it’s a trifle insipid—that’s the sole reproach one can address to it. Here, taste it yourself…”
“And you think,” Gontran complained, “that this will suffice to prevent our dying of starvation?”
“In theory, it ought to be sufficient. In any case, it won’t be long before we know what to expect from it.” For the third time, he took a little of the precious substance on the end of his knife and, going back to Ossipoff, introduced it into his mouth, not without a good deal of trouble unclenching his teeth.
Meanwhile, Flammermont, staying where he was, seemed to be silently studying the effects produced on his organism by the absorption of this bizarre aliment. “It’s strange,” he murmured, finally. “My empty head seems to be filling up, my ideas seem clearer and my hunger pangs are disappearing. It’s very strange.” Then, addressing Fricoulet, he said: “Do you feel the same?”
“Me? At this moment, I’m in the same condition as if I’d just left the table after a hearty meal.”
“Indeed—but it’ll be very monotonous to nourish ourselves on licorice,” said Gontran, piteously.
“Go on!” exclaimed the engineer. “Are you, then, one of those people who live to eat? Me, I eat to live…”
Gradually, Ossipoff opened his eyes. His pale cheeks took on a little color. At first, he appeared very surprised to find himself lying down. “Was I asleep?” he stammered.
“No, my dear Monsieur Ossipoff,” Fricoulet replied, in jest, “you died of starvation.”
The old man passed his hand over his forehead. “Oh, yes,” he said. “I remember.” Abruptly leaping off his bunk, he grabbed the young men’s arms, one after the other, and cried: “Saved! We’re saved!”
“Hmm!” murmured Gontran. “Provided that we aren’t victims of an illusion. I’d be more reassured if I’d absorbed a couple of cutlets…if only from the visual point of view…”
Ossipoff shrugged his shoulders. “Now that our existence is assured,” he said, “we need to find a means we can employ to set off in pursuit of Sharp.”
“I propose,” said Flammermont, immediately, “that we go to the Mountains of Eternal Light.”
“Good God—to do what?” exclaimed the engineer.
“To seek out the scoundrel’s shell and coat it, as we did with ours, with the radiothermic mineral, in order to launch ourselves in pursuit of the wretch without losing any time.”
Fricoulet shook his head. “My poor friend,” he said, “before preoccupying ourselves with the means that we’ll employ to get our hands on that gentleman, it would be more logical to find out first exactly where he’s gone—for, following the direction he’s taken, we’ll be able…”
Ossipoff did not let him finish his sentence. “What!” he cried. “Sharp can only have taken one route—the one we must take ourselves. He’s flying directly towards the Sun, and in a fortnight or thereabouts, he’ll reach Venus.”
The engineer stuck out his lips in an expressive moue. “What you just said, Monsieur,” he replied, “would seem plausible in any other circumstances—but it’s necessary to take account of the scant desire that Sharp must have to be caught by us. Now, he will certainly suppose that you, being Selena’s father, Gontran, being her fiancé, and I, being your friend, will employ all means imaginable to rescue his victim.” A profound groan issuing from Flammermont’s breast underlined Fricoulet’s words. The latter raised his hand. “Let me continue,” he said.
Before he could resume his reasoning, however, the young Comte exclaimed: “Of course! You’re right—all that we’ve already done will give him an idea of what we can do. Personally, if I were in his place, I’d fly on through space, without stopping. I’d overshoot Venus…”
“To go and burn yourself in the Sun, no?” said Ossipoff, in his turn.95 The old man studied Flammermont pityingly. Leaning toward the engineer, he murmured in his ear: “His affection for my poor Selena must be profound to make him forget the most elementary notions of astronomy like this, for it’s obvious that by not landing on Venus…”
“It’s necessary to make a decision, though!” Flammermont exclaimed, violently. He stamped his foot in rage and added: “Oh, science is nothing but a vain word!” Prey to a genuine despair, he took his head in his hands and fell silent, anguished.
At that moment, the echo of footsteps approaching their room became audible, muffled at first and then more clearly. “Someone’s coming,” murmured Ossipoff. “Telinga, no doubt.” As he finished speaking, a gigantic shadow extended along the floor of the tunnel; the shadow was, indeed, that of their guide.
“Greetings, friends,” the Selenite said, in a curt and metallic voice.
“Greetings,” replied Ossipoff. “How is it that we see you standing up, when all your compatriots are deeply asleep?”
“I’ve come back from Wandoung to bring you news.”
“News?” all three of them repeated. “News of whom?”
“Of the Terran who took possession of your apparatus and the young woman.”
In the grip of the emotion occasioned by these words, Ossipoff sat down on his bunk, almost fainting, incapable of saying a word. As for Gontran, he ran to Telinga and seized its hands. “Praise God!” he exclaimed. “Has the wretch fallen back on lunar soil? Oh, if only that were the case!” His eyes shone with a hateful gleam and his eyebrows, deeply furrowed, offered evidence enough of the ideas of vengeance that were haunting his mind.
“Fallen back? But that’s impossible. Mathematically, the projectile must reach Venus.” The person who had spoken was none other than Ossipoff. His affection for his daughter and his hatred for Sharp were not as strong as his love of science. He preferred to see his enemy escape him, thanks to a system of locomotion he had invented, to being mistaken in his calculations and projections…
Gontran had paid no attention to the old man’s words, because another thought—a frightful thought—had just occurred to him. “But Selena would have been killed in the fall!” he exclaimed.
He had pronounced these words in the Selenite language, addressing himself to Telinga. Very surprised, the latter asked: “What fall?”
“Didn’t you just say that you were bringing us news of the villain?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“How can you have any if he hasn’t fallen back on the Moon?”
Telinga shook its head. “At this moment,” it replied, “the Terran is flying through space at high speed, heading for Tihy, which he seems to want to reach—but he is still far away and will not arrive until the time when daylight has come to gild the high summits of the circus of Wandoung.”
“It’s from the Observatory that you’ve been able to determine the progress of the vehicle?” asked Gontran.
“What are you thinking, my dear friend?” exclaimed Ossipoff. “Remember that it’s now five days—that is to say, five times 24 hours—since Sharp left…now, according to our calculations, he’s traveling at 75,000 kilometers an hour. He must, therefore, be 2,300,000 leagues from the Moon. You’ll agree with me that no optical instrument, however powerful, could permit the perception at such a distance of a body whose surface area is as small as that of our vehicle.”
Gontran bowed his head, convinced that he had said something stupid and once again regretting that he had such a hasty tongue.
“Sharp must, however, have been seen from somewhere” Fricoulet put in, “since Telinga says so.” So saying, he looked at the Selenite.
The latter replied, gravely: “The progress of the Terran through space has indeed, been observed—but not by us, the Lunarians.”
“By whom, then?” asked the young engineer.
“By the inhabitants of Tihy—the planet you call Venus.”
The three voyagers stood there open-mouthed and wide-eyed, unable to believe their ears.
“It appears,” murmured Gontran, “that there’s an optical telegraphic service between the Moon and Venus.”
Fricoulet shrugged his shoulders. “Your love for Selena is making you lose your mind,” he stammered.
Ossipoff looked at the young engineer severely. “Monsieur de Flammermont may be closer to the truth than you think,” he said. Then, he said to the Lunarian: “You must have observed the amazement into which the words you’ve just pronounced have thrown us. Please explain.”
“Centuries ago,” Telinga replied, “our astronomers noticed intermittent shining points on the surface of Tihy, which appeared to change in form and intensity. They judged that they were signals designed to establish communication between the planet and other worlds, and all their efforts, for many years, were devoted to securing a relationship with our brilliant neighbor. They succeeded, thanks to agreed signals, which the luminous centers of Tihy understand and repeat.”
Ossipoff listened to this speech, utterly dumbfounded. Unable to restrain his curiosity, he interrupted the Lunarian. “But what method do you employ?” he asked.
“There is a metal in our surface that has the curious property of conducting electricity, following which it emits light to an equivalent degree of brightness.”
“That’s selenium,” said Fricoulet.
“Don’t interrupt!” exclaimed Ossipoff. “Especially to say things that everyone knows as well as you do.”
The impassive Telinga continued: “With this metal we have constructed an immense, very bright, reflector, the focal point of which is connected by wires to an electrical generator and an apparatus for transmitting speech.”
“But that’s a telephone!” exclaimed Gontran.
“Or rather a photophone,” Fricoulet added.
“Thanks to the light accumulated at the focal point of the reflector by a host of small mirrors, all of whose rays converge at the same point, the sound is transmitted to the receptive apparatus installed by the Venusians on the highest mountain of their globe. The ray of light carries the sound vibrations through space and our own voices reach our celestial brothers, while theirs arrive here.”
“It’s prodigious…prodigious,” murmured Ossipoff. Then, after a pause, he asked: “But what sort of receiver do you have?”
“Our transmitter itself serves that purpose, transforming the luminous waves that arrive at the reflector into sound waves. Do you understand now how I can bring you news of the Terran? Immediately after the catastrophe, I left for Wandoung. Taking advantage of the final hours of solar light, I put myself in communication with Tihy, whose inhabitants gave me the reply that I’ve given you.”
“Prodigious, prodigious,” the old savant continued to repeat, in a whisper. The memory of Sharp, and even his daughter, was far away; his mind was entirely taken up with the thought that two worlds orbiting millions of leagues from one another could communicate with one another—and he thought, in humiliation, of his natal globe, alone and isolated in the midst of sidereal space.
He was snatched out of these reflections by an exclamation uttered by Flammermont. “I have an idea!” the young Comte said. “Might this light that carries voices on its wings be powerful enough to carry us as well?” He had expressed himself in his own language, with the result that Telinga was unable to understand the cause of the amazement into which Ossipoff and Fricoulet had suddenly fallen.
The old man was the first to recover his composure. “What do you mean by that?” he asked.
“Well,” Gontran replied, without embarrassment, “they can send messages as far as Venus—why can’t we follow the same route?”
“Explain what your mean,” said Ossipoff.
Fricoulet tugged at his friend’s coat-tail to recommend silence, but in vain. Flammermont replied: “Since electricity is a force, I imagine that if we could accumulate all that contained in light and utilize it to activate a motor, we’d have an infallible means of reaching Sharp swiftly and getting Selena away from him.”
As he heard Gontran speak, the engineer seemed to be standing on hot coals; he coughed in a significant fashion, but in vain; he rolled his eyes at him in a terrifying fashion, but it was futile. The fool! he thought. He’s done for now. My word—he must have gone mad!
“Not as mad as all that,” Gontran replied, a trifle bitterly, having caught the last few words as they were murmured, “for if I were mad, it would be necessary to admit hat Monsieur Ossipoff has also gone mad! Haven’t you heard him repeat several times that light, heat and sound are nothing but movement and force? Well, if we could utilize all these vibrations and oscillations that travel through the ether and intersect…” He paused, and asked, ingenuously: “And why shouldn’t we utilize them?”
Ossipoff drew closer to him, his eyes wide open, shining with a strange gleam. Then, all of a sudden, he grabbed his arms and cried: “Oh, my dear boy! You haven’t said that lightly! I can already sense and divine that a plan is germinating in your mind.”
The young Comte tried to deny it.
“You must try something, at least,” the old man persisted. “Remember that Selena’s fate is in your hands. To get her back will require a miracle—and you alone are capable of accomplishing that miracle.”
Fricoulet bit his lip to prevent himself bursting into laughter. It became even worse when he heard his friend—speaking slowly, as if he were tracking the phases of an idea slowly hatching in his brain—say to the old man: “We can admit, can’t we, that the atoms moving in the ray of light that the reflector reflects set off in a straight line at an immense speed. What prevents the utilization of those atoms for the continuation of our voyage?”
The engineer was unable to listen further; he leaned close to Gontran’s ear. “You’re rambling, my dear friend,” he whispered—but he was obliged to lower his head beneath the triumphant gaze that Gontran was directed at him on hearing Telinga declare that the Lunarians had already undertaken trials by means of the Wandoung apparatus, transmitting light objects on rays of light.
“Indeed!” the young Comte cried, folding his arms. “I’d be very glad to hear your explanations on that subject. “What machine did you employ?”
“A simple hollow sphere, which was placed at the center of the great reflector I mentioned,” Telinga replied. “A deep and continuous sound acts on the transmission apparatus, whose poles are connected to a powerful electric battery. Under the influence of the vibrations stored therein, the sphere, suspended in the network of electrical and luminous oscillations, escapes with unusual rapidity and moves in a straight line until the vibrations became so weak that the sphere is no longer animated by any movement and is forced to stop. In the same way, if the sound and the luminous ray are interrupted while it is traveling, the sphere stops and falls back.”
&
nbsp; “Well?” demanded Flammermont, addressing Fricoulet. “What do you have to say to that?”
“Nothing,” replied the engineer, “absolutely nothing, except that I’ll put myself entirely at your disposal to construct, according to your plans, a sphere similar to that mentioned by Telinga, but of sufficient size to contain all three of us.”
He had pronounced these words with such magnificent seriousness that Ossipoff was captivated and murmured in an audible whisper: “Well done! There’s the modesty I like to see. It’s a great pity that the boy isn’t always like that.”
The old man frowned, though, on hearing the engineer murmur, in a low voice: “The lunar soil must certainly have special properties utterly different from those we find in our terrestrial soil, for the Devil may take me if such a plan could succeed on our native planet.”
“How is it, Monsieur Fricoulet,” Mikhail Ossipoff exclaimed, “that you are so prejudiced against the future? The few scientific notions that you possess ought to allow you, more than common mortals, to estimate the true value of the marvelous discoveries to which the 19th century alone has given birth—and those discoveries should have given you some inkling of the miracles that future centuries hold in reserve for us.” After this small admonition, the old scientist turned to Telinga. “It’s urgent,” he said, “that you give us the plans of the system that you’ve just mentioned.”
“If you and your companions had let me finish what I was saying,” the Selenite replied, “you would know that all the pieces of an apparatus once constructed by audacious Selenites who proposed to visit Venus are in Maoulideck, in the tunnels leading to the Observatory.”
Ossipoff uttered a cry of joy. “What does this apparatus do?” he asked.
The Extraordinary Adventures of a Russian Scientist Across the Solar System (Vol. 1) Page 41