The Extraordinary Adventures of a Russian Scientist Across the Solar System (Vol. 1)
Page 58
One morning, when Fricoulet’s chronometer marked half past three and Flammermont was sighing very softly, with his nose crushed against the telescope, an exclamation from the American made him start.
“By God!” said Farenheit. “I’ve got it! I’ve got it!” Immediately, to manifest his joy, he started dancing a frenzied jig.
“You’ve got it!” cried Gontran, running to him. “What have you got?”
“Why, the planet, of course! The planet Vulcan.”
“That’s not possible,” the young man replied, full of incredulity.
“What! Not possible? Didn’t you see it, then, as I did just now? You had your eye stuck to your instrument, though.”
Not wishing to admit that he had been asleep, the young Comte shook his head. “No,” he said, “I didn’t see anything…”
“Well,” said the American, handing him his binoculars. “Look through those...and tell me what you see.”
Scarcely had Gontran aimed the instrument in the direction indicated by Farenheit that he released a cry of surprise in his turn and hurled himself toward the sphere, where Ossipoff, his daughter and Fricoulet were asleep. “Vulcan!” he said. “Vulcan!” And he shook the old scientist and the engineer roughly. Both of them got to their feet, prey to the bewilderment inseparable from an abrupt awakening.
“Vulcan!” repeated Flammermont, in a voice strangled by emotion. “Vulcan!” Seizing Ossipoff by the arm, he dragged him outside. “Look!” he said, pointing into spaced. “Look!”
“But that’s the constellation Aquila that you’re pointing to,” the old man retorted. “What is there to see there?”
Fricoulet, who had already taken possession of Farenheit’s binoculars and had aimed it at the constellation indicated by Flammermont, cried: “Yes, Monsieur Ossipoff-it is, indeed, in the direction of Aquila that it’s necessary to look…not far from Vega…”
Shaking his head incredulously, the old scientist put his eye to the ocular lens. Immediately, his hands were seized by a convulsive frisson, his lips trembled and he had to lean on his daughter’s shoulder, so great was his emotion. “God in Heaven!” he exclaimed, after several seconds. “I’ve just seen a new star!”
“And a star that’s in the exact position in which Vulcan ought to be, according to your own words,” replied Gontran, in a biting tone.
“Moreover,” added Fricoulet, his eyes still at the binoculars, “We’re heading for an encounter with that star; within two days we’ll be able to study its configuration, and even its geography.”
Prey to an extraordinary emotion, Ossipoff had aimed the telescope into space again.
“Well, Monsieur Ossipoff?” asked Flammermont, with a mocking smile, “what do you think of that sunspot?”
The old man went to him, with his head lowered and a piteous expression. “Oh, my dear boy,” he murmured, holding out his hand. “How many apologies do I have to make…?”
“Then you agree that the honorable gentlemen Watson and Swift were not imbeciles?” said Farenheit, in his turn.
Ossipoff raised the cloth cap that covered his skull. “Mr. Farenheit,” he replied, “accept all my apologies, in your name and those of your illustrious compatriots.”
The American assumed a dignified attitude and replied: “I accept them, Monsieur Ossipoff, while asking you to remember this example, which proves how wrong it is to accuse anyone of thoughtlessness without having the proof in one’s hands.” He turned to Gontran. “I want to tell you publicly that you are a great man and a true scientist,” he said, “whom I am happy to know and to appreciate at his real value.” He folded his arms across his chest and added: “Do you know what I shall do with the money lost by the honorable Monsieur Ossipoff? It will be the initial nucleus of a sum that I shall devote to the founding of an Observatory high in the Cordilleras.” As they looked at him with curiosity and astonishment, he went on: “Perhaps I don’t know anything about it, but I want to be the Bischoffsheim of America…and I hope that Monsieur de Flammermont will do me the honor of accepting the directorship of the new establishment.”
At this unexpected proposition, Gontran remained flabbergasted. Fricoulet had to turn away to hide the formidable burst of laughter that rose from his throat to his lips. As for Ossipoff, no human face ever reflected such bewilderment.
“It’s agreed, then,” added the American, with a cavalier gesture, “that if Monsieur de Flammermont has need of an assistant, I certainly won’t prevent him coming an arrangement with you, my dear Ossipoff.”
Chapter XXX
In which the hour of vengeance finally chimes
As might be imagined, our voyagers did not sleep that night. Somber, glum and humiliated, Mikhail Ossipoff took possession of the rudimentary observatory established in the upper part of the sphere and, with his eye riveted to his telescope, absorbed himself in the contemplation of Vulcan. From time to time, abandoning his instrument, he seized his notebook, which he covered with figures and algebraic formulas. His companions were gathered a short distance away, chatting about the prodigious event, commenting on it and discussing it with forceful gestures and exclamations.
Gontran was radiant, and received the American’s compliments with admirably feigned modesty, wondering what miracle of chance had led him, at exactly the right moment, to adopt a scientific theory contrary to that of Monsieur Ossipoff, but capable of further augmenting his prestige in the old man’s eyes.
As far Selena, she was exultant, first because her father’s aggressive attitude with regard to Gontran during the last few days had pained her enormously, as well as beginning to give birth in his mind to suspicions of her fiancé’s ignorance of astronomical matters. Already, several inspirations of veritable genius had occurred to him, which had got Mikhail Ossipoff himself out of trouble; already, several of his audacious theories, which the old scientist qualified as follies and Fricoulet as absurdities, had been confirmed, and here was another…
My God! she thought, with an upbeat emotion in her heart. Will Monsieur de Flammermont be a man of science? Covertly, she darted an admiring glance at her fiancé.
Fricoulet was prey to a double sentiment: doubt and bewilderment. The discovery made by his friend, although he had checked it with his own eyes, seemed to him even now to be abnormal, illogical, anti-scientific and anti-natural. While grumbling, he continually aimed Farenheit’s binoculars at the dark immensity in which the planet appeared, scarcely larger than a dot, black and immobile in its vertiginous course. “Absurd…absurd!” he muttered when, his eyes fatigued by his observation, he passed the instrument to the American, who was also desirous of contemplating the new star.
“Why absurd?” replied Flammermont. “Because it pleased a host of scientists of greater or lesser quality to declare that Vulcan did not exist, should we deny the evidence? That’s what’s absurd.” And he added, in a vibrant voice: “I’d like to know how you reconcile your political principles with your scientific ones! You detest autocratic government, but you’re a partisan of absolutism in scientific matters. You execrate Louis XIV’s ‘such is our pleasure,’ but you admit into your mouth the Monsieur X or Monsieur Z who gravely decrees the laws of the Universe from the depths of his dusty study or the heights of his incomplete observatory…” The young Comte emphasized this sentence with a brief laugh, then continued: “Me, I’m like St. Thomas—I don’t much care for all your calculations, and of all those people who pontificate about what’s happening millions of leagues from insular Earth, I ask: ‘have you been there to see?’ ”
Fricoulet was astounded. He remained silent momentarily; then, shrugging his shoulders, he replied, with imperturbable seriousness: “But if you don’t believe in calculations or scientific deductions—if, for you to believe in the existence of a planet or a star, it’s necessary for you to see it with your own eyes—on what did you base your opinion relative to Vulcan? Do you think that Le Verrier and Dr. Lescarbaut had been there to see, as you so aptly put it, when they aff
irmed the existence of an intramercurial planet?” So saying, he transfixed Gontran with his little grey eyes, full of a malicious gleam.
Addressing himself to Flammermont, Jonathan Farenheit cried: “Don’t reply, old chap—it’s surely jealousy that dictates these words to Monsieur Fricoulet.” Looking the engineer up and down scornfully, he said: “It’s not just anyone who can discover planets!”
At that moment, Ossippoff’s voice was heard. “Gontran!” shouted the old man. “Would you climb up here for a moment?”
The young man frowned. “Hmm,” he murmured, anxiously. “What does he want?”
“Doubtless to ask you to establish Vulcan’s coordinates,” Fricoulet replied.
Flammermont looked at his friend interrogatively. “Coordinates?” he repeated.
“Which is to say, to give the new world a sort of civil estate: mass, density, surface gravity, orbit…”
The unfortunate Comte made a gesture of alarm.
“Gontran,” the old man repeated. “Are you coming?”
“Here goes,” moaned Selena’s fiancé—and he set foot on the interior stairway that led to the top of the sphere, like a condemned man mounting to the scaffold.
The engineer ran to him and whispered in his ear: “A very small world whose diameter doesn’t exceed a few 100 kilometers; orbit steeply inclined to the plane of the ecliptic, which explains the rarity of its passages over the solar disk. As for the rest, your eyes are too tired by long observation to be able to furnish you with accurate information. Do you understand?”
“Thanks,” murmured Gontran, squeezing his hand amicably.
A few seconds later, a series of exclamations was heard to resound in the improvised observatory, soon followed by the sound of someone hurrying down the stairway—and old Ossipoff appeared, followed by the stupefied Gontran. “Vulcan!” stammered the old man, in a strangled voice. “It’s not a spherical planet…it’s a prismatic rock, a polyhedral fragment, an irregular bolide!”
“Hang on!” cried Flammermont. “I protest against the epithet bolide!”
“You can protest all you like,” replied Ossipoff, “The evidence is there, against which you’re battling in vain.”
“The evidence demonstrates that the body in question is not a sphere, that’s true—but nothing proves that it belongs to the class of bolides.”
Mikhail Ossipoff did not like to be contradicted, and favored Gontran with an irritated stare. Flammermont, for his part, felt that he had gone too far to retreat and played his role as conscientiously as possible; he looked back at the old man with frank displeasure.
A new scene was on the point of breaking out. Fricoulet intervened. “Messieurs,” he said, in a conciliatory voice, “I believe that it would be silly to go one arguing about this subject. In a few hours, the world carrying us will have made rapid progress through space, so that we shall be able to undertake a detailed study from the body we occupy—so postpone your appreciations until you can see with your own eyes which of you is correct.”
Selena hastened to add: “That’s well said, Monsieur Fricoulet. All the more because one planet more or less isn’t worth the trouble of two men of your worth sulking for a single instant.” Then, understanding the need for a distraction, she went on: “I’m a little like St. Thomas myself, my dear Father, and I think it’s good to touch something with one’s finger to be convinced…all the more so because even the greatest scientists can’t think of everything…or know everything.”
“What are you getting at?” asked Ossipoff.
“I’m getting at the world that is carrying us,” replied the young woman, “And I’m asking myself how it is that two men filled with knowledge, like you, dear Father, and you, Monsieur de Flammermont, were unable to foresee the singular fashion in which we passed from Mercury to this comet.”
“For the sole reason,” riposted Ossipoff, a trifle piqued, “that, comets being foreign to our world—the majority of them, at least, arriving from infinity and returning there—it’s absolutely impossible to predict their appearance.”
“Their appearance, no doubt,” said Fricoulet, who never missed an opportunity to enrage the aged scientist, “but not their return. Of the 40 comets that have been recognized, there are, I believe ten whose periodicity has been established and verified—and, if your suppositions are just, the one that is carrying us is one of them. Therefore…”
“Therefore,” added Farenheit, “it should have been easy for you, whose job it is, to foresee what has happened to us.”
“That’s very easy for you to say,” retorted Ossipoff. “It’s obvious that you don’t understand it at all. Then again, I had other things on my mind than comets.”
“Very well,” declared Fricoulet. “If that’s the reason, so be it—but don’t tell us that it wasn’t possible to know the precise date on which Comet Tuttle would intersect the orbit of Mercury. Its last passage was observed in 1871, and as its period is 13 years and 81 days, it’s sufficient to be able to count on one’s fingers to know that its reappearance would take place in 1884.”135
“My God!” stammered Selena, admiringly. “How does it come about that such things are so accurately predictable?”
Gontran smiled. “18 centuries ago,” he said, “Seneca declared that ‘comets move regularly in paths prescribed by Nature’ and he affirmed that posterity would be astonished that his era could be mistaken about such an incontestable truth—but it wasn’t until 1758 that comets, having frightened everyone with their sudden appearances, became celestial phenomena of a purely natural order, thanks to Newton and Halley.”
“I remember having seen drawings as primitive in artistry as in thought, representing comets whose tresses contained blood-stained daggers,” observed Selena.
Farenheit shrugged his shoulders. “What savages!” he muttered.
“Not at all,” declared Fricoulet. “The year 1557 is not so far away and Ambroise Paré136 was no donkey…and yet comets still had a mysterious and terrifying allure in that era, and in the eyes of educated men—as the description of Charles IX’s surgeon confirms.”
Flammermont, to whose memory a few lines from L’Astronomie du peuple had suddenly returned, declared professorially: “It was only in 1758 that, thanks to the studies of Halley, Seneca’s prophecy was justified, Halley having understood that, according to the laws of universal attraction, the motion of comets must describe very long curves, calculated the turn of the great comet of 1682. The event proved him right and, on the twelfth of March 1759, the date indicated by the astronomer, the star reappeared in the sky. From that moment on, it was firmly established that comets orbit the Sun…”137
“Just like vulgar planets—but following a more elongated orbit.”
“Didn’t you say just now, though,” objected Selena, “that some of them arrive from infinity and return there?”
“You’re absolutely right, Mademoiselle—but to enable you to understand that, I would have to give you an explanation of the theory of the parabola that would certainly bore you greatly, and with which, to tell the truth, my scientific knowledge would perhaps only permit me to furnish you imperfectly.”
“With respect to their composition, though,” Selena went on, “do all comets resemble the one on which we’re located?”
“No, the greater number of them are simple nebulous masses, aggregations of cosmic matter devoid of consistency. They’re vaporous traces, gaseous clouds…”
“Perhaps no more than optical illusions,” murmured Flammermont.
Fricoulet trod heavily on his foot and, without giving the old man time to think about it, he replied: “You’re forgetting, Monsieur Ossipoff, that the great comet of 1811 had a solid nucleus measuring no less than 1089 leagues in diameter; that of 1858 similarly possessed one of 9000 kilometers.”
“And the nucleus of the comet of 1769 was 4000 leagues in diameter!” exclaimed Gontran.
Farenheit, who was yawning as he listened to this conversation, suddenl
y asked: “I thought that the distinctive sign of a comet was its tail. How is it that the one carrying us is deprived of that appendage?”
“First of all,” said Ossipoff, “it’s an error to suppose that all comets have tails; there are some that don’t, just as there are some which possess several.”
“By way of compensation, no doubt,” murmured Flammermont, in jest.
“Then again,” the old man continued, “there’s no proof at all that the world on which we’re riding lacks that caudal ornament…”
The American burst out laughing. “You’re joking,” he said. “Either that or you’re trying to make me think I’m short-sighted. According to you, the tails of comets are thousands and thousands of leagues in length. Now, you’ll admit that, if that were so, we couldn’t be better placed to measure that of our comet…but there’s no trace of it.” Turning to the east, he put out his hand to indicate infinite space, illuminated only by the light of the stars.
Ossipoff uttered a mocking laugh. “If that’s the direction in which you’re searching for it,” he said, “I understand why you haven’t found it…”
The American opened his eyes wide. “By God!” he grumbled. “What’s the joke now, and in which direction to you expect me to search for the comet’s tail, if not the direction opposite to the one in which we’re traveling?” Gradually, anger took hold of him; agitating his arms in chaotic gestures, he exclaimed: “We’re going from west to east, so…”138
Ossipoff smiled pityingly and looked at Flammermnt, pointing to Jonathan Farenheit by means of a wink. “Vulgum pecus!” he murmured.
Gontran shrugged his shoulders in a gesture of ironic commiseration.
“Now then!” said the Yankee. “Explain it to me!”
“With the greatest pleasure, Mr. Farenheit. Like a great many of your peers, who have never taken it into heir heads to raise their eyes to he sidereal immensity, you thin that the tails of comets follow them in their course…it’s a profound error. That caudal appendage is always opposed to the Sun, as it is the luminous shadow of the comet.”