The old man reflected for a few moments, then turned to Flammermont. “You’ve heard what these gentlemen have said, my dear Gontran. As nothing, fundamentally, obliges them to continue the voyage in our company, it’s necessary for you to find a means of facilitating their return to our point of departure—the Earth, that is. In consequence, I shall leave it to you to think about that means.” With that, he turned on his heel and resumed his position at the porthole.
Farenheit seemed to be satisfied, but his attitude contrasted strangely with the pained expression on Fricoulet’s face. Flammermont, for his part, looked at his friend, smiling ironically.
“There we are, then!” muttered the engineer. “Better to tell us straight out that we’re tied to him indissolubly.”
“What?” said the American, pricking up his ears.
Gontran trod on Fricoulet’s toes; the latter pulled a face, but understood the warning and shut up.
“You were saying?” Farenheit persisted.
“Me? Nothing…although, now I recall...I meant to say that Monsieur de Flammermont’s situation is very difficult. There’s no doubt, of course, that he’ll find a means of repatriating us…except that, whatever means he comes up with, he’ll have to put into execution.”
“Damn!” said Farenheit. “Mercury’s a world like any other, I imagine…”
“Like any other!” muttered the engineer. “That depends what you mean by it. Remember that Mercury is scarcely 57,250,000 kilometers away from the Sun—14,300,000 leagues, that is—that its diameter measures no more than 1,200 leagues and that its volume is only 38% of that of the Earth.”115
“Well, what does all that matter?”
Fricoulet’s face reflected a profound amazement. He turned to Gontran. “Do you hear?” he cried. “He’s asking why a world’s distance from the Sun, diameter and volume matter. Savage that you are, it matters a great deal that Mercury is the smallest planet in the entire Solar System and that it’s also the nearest to the central star.”
“So?”
“So Mercury can’t be a world like any other—not to mention that its orbit is very eccentric; which is to say that it’s formed as an ellipse with the Sun at one of its foci…to the extent that the difference between the aphelion and the perihelion is 6,000,000 leagues. Six million—that’s a fair amount for an orbit that only measures 28,000,000 leagues in diameter, which the planet goes round in 88 days…”
“In 88 days?” repeated Gontran, in astonishment. “Its year is only 88 days?”
“And do you know what the consequence is of that rapid progress? It’s that a Terran infant transported to Mercury would know how to read and write at scarcely one year of age, that a boy of five would be an adult, and that we’d be centenarians.”116
“88 day years,” murmured Flammermont. “That would make children and concierges happy.”
“Why’s that?” asked Fricoulet.
“Because of the Christmas presents, of course.”
Fricoulet shook his head. “For my part,” he said, “I doubt that Mercurian civilization has got that far.”
“I read in Les Continents célestes, though, that the intensity of solar heat, ten times greater than on Earth, must have caused life to develop on the surface of Mercury with an incredible rapidity.”
Ossipoff turned round. “That supposition does not seem to be correct,” he said, “for telescopic and spectroscopic observations have established, in an irrefutable manner, that Mercury is surrounded by a considerable atmosphere, very thick, in which a quantity of cloud floats and which protects the planet against the destructive ardor of solar radiation when it is at its perihelion. It similarly prevents the overly rapid evaporation of heat when Mercury is at its aphelion…”
“So?”
“So I conclude, while taking account of the intensity of the heat, that this world, being the last-born of the Universe, must be in the same state as the Earth was in its primary epoch.”
Farenheit’s face had become anxious. “In those conditions,” he said, “I’m afraid that Monsieur de Flammermont will not be able to find a way for me to see the starry flag of the United States again any time soon.”
The young man shrugged his shoulders. “What do you expect, Mr. Farenheit?” he said. “Nothing’s impossible and I’ll just have to rack my brains if I don’t find any humankind on Mercury capable of lending me a hand. I hope that you won’t be condemned to enjoy our society any longer than you desire.” He assumed an earnest expression to address Osipoff. “However,” he said, “while recognizing the sound foundation of your reasoning, especially with respect to the age of Mercury, it seems to me that in his Cosmotheoros, the illustrious astronomer Huygens established the existence of a humankind similar to ours.”
The old man burst out laughing. “According to the theories of Huygens, as to those of Fontenelle, the inhabitants of Mercury will be little beings, lively and agile, always on the move, and as black as the natives of Ethiopia. I don’t believe in that humankind any more than the one invented by Baron Holberg in his novelistic account of Nicholas Klim’s voyage to the subterranean planets. The plant-men and guitar-men imagined by him have no more reason to exist than Fontenelle’s Ethiopians, Huygens’ humans and those of the Voyage au monde de Mercure published in the 18th century.”117
His companions, including Farenheit, were listening to him with evident interest; by way of conclusion, the old man added: “For the scientist and the philosopher, it’s already a considerable effort to imagine the existing humankinds, without being further preoccupied with the forms that future humankinds might affect. Let’s let a few centuries go by, and our remote descendants can then attempt to solve such problems…”118 With these words he returned to his observation-post, leaving the American quite disconcerted by these revelations.
“What are you doing there?” asked Gontran, seeing Fricoulet attentively examining a sort of dial fixed to the extremity of the central pillar of the sphere.
“As you can see, I’m consulting my ‘rapidimeter’.” When the young Comte raised his eyebrows questioningly, he added: “It’s an indicator of my own invention, by means of which I can assure myself, at any moment, that the luminous waves are still reaching the sphere and activating it with the same force.”
“Very practical,” Gontran approved, “but how does it work?”
“Listen—I’ll make it as clear as possible, it’s up to you to understand it if you can. What sustains and propel our vehicle in space? The vibrations emitted by the Venusian reflector. I employ an infinitesimal fraction of these vibrations to activate a radiometer turning in a glass ampoule; two gear-wheels guide the needle that rotates in front of the dial. As long as the radiometer moves at great speed the needle is pushed to the extremity of its range; if, for one reason or another, the movement slows down, a spring will bring the needle back towards zero. Do you understand?”
“Well enough,” replied Gontran, whose eyes no longer left the rapidimeter, “that I felt a shiver run through my limbs. So, when that needle reaches zero…”
“If it reaches zero before we reach the attractive zone of Mercury, we’ll fall back on Venus.” Seeing the deplorable effect this declaration had on his friend, the engineer added: “Don’t worry, though—there’s no reason for any such accident to occur. Then again, should it do so, we’re sufficiently accustomed to falls not to fear them any longer.”
“It’s not the fear of breaking my bones that makes me tremble,” Gontran retorted, “it’s the time we’d lose in retracing out steps while Sharp continues to move forward.” So saying, he studied the instrument anxiously. “At this moment,” he said “how are we doing?”
“We’re flying at top speed. If my calculations are exact, we’ll have passed the neutral point within 48 hours.”
Farenheit rubbed his hands together energetically. “Then the accident can go ahead and happen,” he growled. “We’d fall, but what would it matter, since we’d fall on Mercury?” He concluded
his observation with a formidable yawn. “This Senegalese temperature makes one sleepy, don’t you think?” he asked, lying down on the divan.
“It’s evidently contagious,” joked Fricoulet, on seeing Gontran lie down too, in his usual place.
“That’s quite possible,” replied the young man, in a loud enough voice to be heard by Ossipoff—and summoned his friend to his side by winking his eye. “Shh!” he said. “I ant to take advantage of Monsieur Ossipoff’s absorption in his contemplation to study Mercury a little.”
The engineer was amazed. “You’ve got a singular fashion of studying the planets,” he replied, in the same hushed tone…unless you’re imploring Morpheus to send you astronomical dreams, I don’t see how…”
Flammermont smiled thinly and took a book from beneath his traveling blanket, which he opened. “What about Les Continents célestes? Do they count for nothing?”
“Understood,” Fricoulet replied. “Oh well, I’ll leave you to your lesson—study hard. I also have a little work to do…” And he went to install himself at a porthole next to the one at which the old man was stationed with his telescope.
Less than a quarter of an hour had gone by when the engineer’s ears were disagreeably struck by two sonorous noises of different pitch, which filled the cabin. He turned round and saw that Gontran had slumped forward, with his nose in the work of his illustrious namesake, and was mingling his snores with those of the American.
40 hours went by thus, in desperate monotony for Flammermont and Jonathan Farenheit, the former sighing over Selena and the second roaring after Sharp; then, when one had sighed enough and the other roared enough, they sought to forget their sterile love and impotent hatred in sleep. As for Ossipoff and Fricoulet, they scarcely left their observation portholes except to take such rest as was strictly necessary to keep their strength up; the rest of their time was spent with an eye glued to the telescope or a hand blackening a notebook with interminable calculations.
They were approaching the end of the second day when Gontran, impatient at seeing Fricoulet sitting in the same place, still absorbed in his algebraic calculations, went over to him. “We’ll be imprisoned in this cage for years, then,” he said, “and for years, you’ll be gazing and calculating.”
“It won’t be years,” the engineer replied, “it’ll be centuries that are necessary, not to understand, but to begin to understand, the Universe.”
“But what are you doing at this moment?”
“I’m answering—or, rather, trying to answer—a delicate astronomical question.”
Gontran raised his arms to the heavens. “Another one!” he exclaimed. “But isn’t astronomy full of delicate questions?”
“There’s a star, classified by Groombridge under the number 1830,119 which plunges scientists into a profound perplexity because of its prodigious speed of translation.”
“The ‘fixed’ stars move, then?” put in the young Comte.
Fricoulet grabbed his arm, indicating Mikhail Ossipoff with an inclination of his head. Fortunately, the old man, absorbed by his contemplation of the sky, had not heard anything. “Do they move?” retorted the engineer. “Absolutely—and with a certain rapidity. Thus, the one I’m talking about, Groombridge 1830, travels at 320 kilometers a second.”
Gontran’s eyes grew round. “320 kilometers a second!” he stammered.
“That’s what creates the supposition that it doesn’t belong to our visible Universe, for a body attracted by the suns that we know doesn’t attain a velocity superior to 40 kilometers over second.”
“And what’s the purpose of your research?”
“To elucidate the origin and provenance of this star, which is emerging from the depths of immeasurable infinity.”
Gontran shrugged his shoulders, and murmured, with a mocking smile: “And that’s how scientists spend their time and use up the genius that their Creator has given them!” He sniggered, and added, in a disdainful tone: “Don’t you think that it would be more useful to your peers to seek to resolve the social problems by which our poor humankind is weighed down than to wear yourself out in sterile studies of Groombridge 1830?”
Fricoulet was about to reply when his friend added: “And when one thinks that this star, whose destiny preoccupies you, might have been extinct for 20,000 years—that the world from which its luminous ray sprang probably went to join the old moons centuries ago!”
These words, which betrayed a certain scorn on the young man’s part for the science so dear to Ossipoff, nevertheless contained an appearance of logic. At first Fricoulet was somewhat nonplussed.
At that moment, a thunderous “By God!” burst forth behind them.
All three of them turned round simultaneously, and saw Jonathan Farenheit standing as still as a statue, his hair standing on end in horror, his features convulsed and his eyes wide, with an expression of indescribable fear covering his face. Both his arms were extended and the index fingers of both his fingers were pointing at the rapidimeter.
Fricoulet was the first to realize the meaning of that tragic immobility. He ran to the instrument and uttered a cry of fright. “Stopped!”
That single word made Ossipoff and Flammermont blanch, and they repeated, with one voice: “Stopped!”
The needle did, indeed, stand at zero.
Farenheit, having emerged from his stupor, tore at his hair. “If only we were in Mercury’s zone of attraction!” he groaned.
“Unfortunately,” replied Fricoulet, “we’re still in that of Venus.” And he added, darting an interrogative glance at Ossipoff: “But what the Devil can have happened?”
The old man replied with a shrug of his shoulders.
“Perhaps it’s your rapidimeter that’s out of order,” Gontran suggested, snatching at that last hope.
“It’s hardly probable,” replied the engineer. “In any case, there’s a very simple way of settling the matter, and that’s to go and see.”
Without swaying anything further, he put on his diving-suit, and carefully screwed down the metallic helmet, after introducing a tablet of solidified oxygen into it. Lifting up the trapdoor fitted into the floor of the cabin, he went down the stairway that led to the interior of the sphere. The first thing he observed, thanks to the magnesium lantern with which he was equipped, was that the central axis around which the sphere rotated was immobile. Apart from that, everything was in as good a condition as at the moment of departure. Very puzzled, he was about to go back to the cabin when, moved by an inexplicable presentiment, he went down to the final steps leading to the inferior aperture of the sphere, and leaned over the abyss.
An exclamation escaped his throat. He had expected to see below him, in space, the luminous point that the focal point of the reflector ought to form on Venus, thanks to whose radiation the sphere was sustained in space—but the space was dark. The luminous point was extinct; the planet itself had disappeared.
Swiftly, the engineer rejoined his companions. He took off the diving-suit and, for the first time since they had left the Earth, the marks of profound despair appeared on his face. “My friends,” he said, in a grave voice, “this time we’re doomed.” In a few words, he told them what he had discovered.
“But what can have happened?” groaned Farenheit.
“Something quite simple,” replied Ossipoff. “Something I anticipated, but which I didn’t want to mention to you at the time of departure. In the aftermath of one of the meteorological cataclysms so frequent on the surface of Venus, a layer of cloud has interposed itself between the Sun and the reflector.”
“We’re going to fall back on Venus, then?” complained the American, whose features were contorted by rage.
“It’s probable,” Ossipoff replied. “We might already be falling—that’s something else that’s easy to verify.”
From one of his pockets he took a little apparatus in the form of an elongated metal frame. Two slender wires, one of which was movable, traversed the frame vertically. By moving
the two wires closer to or further away from one another, by means of a screw, one could measure the diameter of any object. The old man attached the instrument to the ocular lens of his telescope and said to Fricoulet: “Here, see for yourself.”
The engineer aimed the instrument at the Sun, and turned the adjustment screw slightly to enlarge the distance between the two wires to the appropriate distance.
“Well?” asked Ossipoff, after a brief interval.
“The two threads are tangential to the edges of the Sun.”
“What measurement do you obtain?”
“65 minutes,” Fricoulet replied, abandoning the instrument.
“We’ll check it in a quarter of an hour.”
Needless to say, those 15 minutes seemed as long as 15 centuries to the unfortunates, whose chests were constricted by anguish.
Mikhail Ossipoff alone conserved his self-composure. From the moment that they were no longer moving forwards, they were falling—but might they be falling elsewhere than on Venus? With his watch in his hand, he watched the minute-hand impassively as it slowly made its way around the dial.
“Look,” he said, finally.
Again, Fricoulet put his eye to the telescope.
“Well?” said the old man. “You ought to observe a perceptible diminution in the solar disk.” Then, watching the screw that the engineer was gently turning between his fingers, he suddenly said: “What are you doing? Have you lost your head? Don’t you see that you’re drawing the wires apart rather than moving them closer?”
Fricoulet did not reply. Pale, with his lips pursed and his breast swollen by labored respiration, he clutched the telescope in his left hand while his right hand maneuvered the micrometer.
Finally, in a choked voice, he stammered: “Monsieur Ossipoff, the solar disk isn’t diminishing.”
“What do you mean, it isn’t diminishing? That’s impossible. We aren’t at the neutral point, and, in consequence, can’t be immobile. Emotion’s clouding your vision. The disk must be diminishing.”
The Extraordinary Adventures of a Russian Scientist Across the Solar System (Vol. 1) Page 51