The Mammoth Book of New Jules Verne Adventures (26 page)

Choleric red bloomed in his battered cheeks. “Verne indeed now claims his lazy and sensational books were fiction. It is convenient for him to do so. But they were not! He was commissioned to write truthful accounts of our extraordinary voyage!”

“Well, that’s as may be. But see here. In M. Verne’s account the projectile was launched towards the Moon. Not to Mars.” I shook my head. “There is a difference, you know.”

“Sir, I pray you resist treating me as imbecilic. I am well aware of the difference. The projectile was sent towards the Moon on its
first
journey — in which I had the honour of participating . . .”

The afternoon was extending, and I had work to do; and I was growing irritated by this boorish Frenchman. “Then, if this projectile was truly built, perhaps you would be good enough to show it to me.”

“I cannot comply.”

“‘Why so?”

“Because it is no longer on the Earth.”

“Ah.”

Of course not! It was buried in the red dust of Mars, with this Barbicane inside.

“But —”

“Yes, M. Ardan?”

“I
can
show you the cannon.”

The Frenchman regarded me steadily, and I felt an odd chill grow deep within me.

Seventy-Third Day. Four Million One Hundred And Eighty Four Thousand Leagues.

Today, through my smoked glass, I have observed the passage of the Earth across the face of the Sun.

The planet appeared first as a mar in the perfect rim of the parent star. Later it moved into the full glare of the fiery ball, and was quite visible as a whole disc, dwarfed by the Sun’s mighty countenance. After perhaps an hour another spot appeared, even smaller than the first: it was the Moon, following its parent towards the Sun’s centre.

After perhaps eight hours the passage was done.

I took several astronomical readings of this event. I measured the angles under which Earth and Moon travelled across the Sun’s disk, so that I might determine the deviation of my voyaging ellipse from the ecliptic; and the timing of the passage has furnished me with precise information on whether the projectile is running ahead or behind of the elliptical path around the Sun which I had designed. My best computations inform me that I have not deviated from the required trajectory.

It is more a little than a century since Captain James Cook, in 1769, sailed his
Endeavour
to Tahiti to watch Venus pass before the Sun. Could even that great explorer have imagined this journey of mine?

I have become the first human being to witness a transit of Earth! — and who, I wonder, will be the second?

It took two days for us to travel by despatch-boat from New Orleans to the bay of Espiritu Santo, close to Tampa Town.

Ardan had the good sense to avoid my company during this brief, uncomfortable trip. My humour was not good. Since leaving England I had steadily cursed myself, and Ardan, for my foolishness in agreeing to this jaunt to Florida.

We could not ignore each other at dinner and breakfast, however. And at those occasions, we argued.

“But,” I insisted, “a human occupant would be reduced to a thin film of smashed bone and flesh, crushed by recoil against the base of any such cannon-fired shell. No amount of water cushions and collapsing balsa partitions would be sufficient to avert such a fate.”

“Of course that is true,” Ardan said, unperturbed. “But then M. Verne did not depict the detail of the arrangement.” “Which was?”

“That Barbicane and his companions in the Gun Club anticipated precisely this problem. The
Columbiad,
that mighty cannon, was dug still deeper than Verne described. And it did
not
contain one single vast charge of gun-cotton, but many, positioned along its heroic length. Thus a
distributed
impulse was applied to the projectile. It is an elementary matter of algebra — for those with the right disposition, which I have not! — to compute that the forces suffered by travellers within the projectile, while punishing, were less than lethal.”

“Bah! What, then, of Verne’s description of conditions within the projectile, during its Lunar journey? He claims that the inhabitants suffered a sensation of levitation — but only at that point at which the gravitational pulls of Earth and Moon are balanced. Now, this is nonsense. When you create a vacuum in a tube, the objects you send through it — whether grains of dust or grains of lead — fall with the same rapidity. So with the contents of your projectile. You, sir, should have floated like a pea inside a tin can throughout your voyage!”

He shrugged. “And so I did. It was an amusing piece of natural philosophy, but not always a comfortable sensation.

For the second journey we anticipated by installing a couch equipped with straps, and hooks and eyes on the tools and implements, and additional cramp-irons fixed to the walls. As to M. Verne’s inaccurate depiction of this sensation — I refer you to the author! Perhaps he did not understand. Or perhaps he chose to dramatize our condition in a way which suited the purposes of his narrative . . .”

“Oh!” I said. “This debating is all by the by. M. Ardan, it is simply impossible to launch a shell to another world from a cannon!”

“It is perfectly possible.” He eyed me. “As you know! — for have you not published your own account of how such shells might be fired, if not from Earth to Mars, then in the opposite direction?”

“But it was fiction!” I cried. “As were Verne’s books!”

“No.” He shook his large, grizzled head. “M. Verne’s account was fact. It is only a sceptical world which insists it must be fiction. And that, sir, is my tragedy.”

One Hundred and Thirty Fourth Day. Seven Million, Four Hundred and Seventy Seven Thousand Leagues.

The air will be thin and bracing; it will be like a mountain-top on Earth. I must trust that the vegetable and animal life — whose treks and seasonal cycles have been observed, as colour washes, from Earth — provide me with provision compatible with my digestion.

I have brought thermometers, barometers, aneroids and hypsometers with which to study the characteristics of the Martian landscape and atmosphere. I have also carried several compasses, in case of any magnetic influence there. I have brought canvas, pickaxes and shovels and nails, sacks of grain and shrubs and other seed stock: provisions with which to construct my miniature colony on the surface of Mars. For it is there that I must, of course, spend the rest of my life.

 I dream that I may even encounter intelligence! — human, or some analogous form.. The inhabitants of Mars will be tall, delicate, spidery creatures, their growth drawn upward by the lightness of their gravity. And their buildings likewise will be slender, beautiful structures . . .

With such speculation I console myself.

I will confess to a sense of isolation. With Earth invisible, and with Mars still no more than a brightening red star, I am suspended in a starry firmament — for my speed is not discernible — and I have only the dazzling globe of the Sun himself to interrupt the curve of heaven above and below me. Has any man been so alone?

At times I close the covers of the scuttles, and strap myself to my couch, and expend a little of my precious gas; I seek to forget my situation by immersing myself in my books, those faithful companions I have carried with me.

But I find it impossible to forget my remoteness from all of humanity that ever lived, and that my projectile, a fragile aluminium tent, is my sole protection.

We stayed a night in the Franklin Hotel in Tampa Town. It was a dingy, uncomfortable place, its facilities exceedingly primitive.

At five a.m. Ardan roused me.

We travelled by phaeton. We worked along the coast for some distance — it was dry and parched — and then turned inland, where the soil became much richer, abounding with northern and tropical floras, including pineapples, cotton-plants, rice and yams. The road was well built, I thought, considering the crude and under-populated nature of the countryside thereabouts.

I am not the physical type; I felt hot and uncomfortable, my suit of English wool restrictive and heavy, and my lungs seemed to labour at the humidity-laden air. By contrast Ardan was vibrant, evidently animated by our journey.

“When we returned to Earth — we fell back into the Pacific Ocean — our exuberance was unbounded. We imagined new and greater
Columbiads.
We imagined fleets of projectiles, threading between Earth, Moon and planets. We expected adulation!”

“As depicted by M. Verne.”

“But Verne lied! — in that as in other matters. Oh, there was some celebrity — some little notoriety. But we had returned with nothing: not so much as a bag of Lunar soil; nothing save our descriptions of a dead and airless Moon.

“The building of the
Columbiad
was financed by public subscription. Not long after our return, the pressure from those investors began to be felt:
Where is our profit? —
that was the question.”

“It is not unreasonable.”

“Some influential leader-writers argued that perhaps
we had not travelled to the Moon at all.
Perhaps it was all a deception, devised by Barbicane and his companions.”

“It might be the truth,” —I said severely. “After all the Gun Club were weapons manufacturers who, after the conclusion of the War between the States, sought by devising this new project only to maintain investment and employment . . .”

“It was not the truth! We had circled the Moon! But we were baffled by such reactions. Oh, Barbicane refused to concede defeat. He tried to raise subscriptions for a new company which would build on his achievements. But the company soon foundered, and the commissioner and magistrate pursued him on behalf of enraged debtors.

“If only the Moon had not turned out to be dead! If only we could succeed in finding a world which might draw up the dreams of man once more!

“And so Barbicane determined to commit all to one throw of the die. He took the last of his money, and used it to bore out the
Columbiad,
and to repair his projectile . . .”

My temper deteriorated; I had little interest in Ardan’s rambling reminiscences.

But then Ardan digressed, and he began to describe how it was — or so he claimed — to fall towards the Moon. His voice became remote, his eyes oddly vacant.

Two Hundred and Forty Fifth Day. Twelve Million, One Hundred and Twenty- Five Leagues.

The projectile approaches the planet at an angle to the sunlight, so Mars is gibbous, with a slice of the night hemisphere turned towards me. The ochre shading seems to deepen at the planet’s limb, giving the globe a marked roundness: Mars is a little orange, the only object apart from the Sun visible as other than a point of light in all my 360° sky.

To one side, at a distance a little greater than the diameter of the Martian disk, is a softly glowing starlet. If I trouble to observe for a few minutes, its relation to Mars changes visibly. Thus I have discerned that Mars has a companion: a moon, smaller than our own. And I suspect that a little further from that central globe there may be a second satellite, but my observations are not unambiguous.

I can as yet discern few details on the disk itself, save what is known from observation through the larger telescopes on Earth. However I can easily distinguish the white spot of the southern polar cap, which is melting in the frugal warmth of a Martian summer, following the pattern of seasons identified by Wm. Herschel.

The air appears dear, and I can but trust that its thickness will prove sufficient to cushion my fall from space!

“I imagined I saw streams of oil descending across the glass of the scuttle.

“I thought perhaps the projectile had developed some fault, and I made to alert Barbicane. But then my eyes found their depth, and I realized I was looking at
mountains.
They slid slowly past the glass, trailing long black shadows. They were the mountains of the Moon.

“Our approach was very rapid. The Moon was growing visibly larger by the minute.

“The satellite was no longer the flat yellow disc I had known from Earth: now, tinged pale white, its centre seemed to loom out at us, given three-dimensional substance by Earthlight. The landscape was fractured and complex, and utterly still and silent. The Moon is a small world, my friend. Its curve is so tight my eye could encompass its spherical shape, even so close; I could
see that
I was flying around a ball of rock, suspended in space, with emptiness stretching to infinity in all directions.

“We passed around the limb of the Moon, and entered total darkness: no sunlight, no Earthlight touched the hidden landscape rushing below.”

I asked, “And of the Lunar egg shape which Hansen hypothesises, the layer of atmosphere drawn to the far side by its greater mass —”

“We saw none of it! But —”

“Yes?”

“But . . . When the Sun was hidden behind the Lunar orb, there was light all around the Moon, as if the rim was on fire.” Ardan turned to me, and his rheumy eyes were shining. “It was wonderful! Oh, it was wonderful!”

We crossed extensive plains, broken only by isolated thickets of pine trees. At last we came upon a rocky plateau, baked hard by the Sun, and considerably elevated.

Two Hundred and Fifty Seventh Day. One Million, Three Hundred and Thirty Five Thousand Leagues.

The nature of Mars has become clear to me. All too clear!

There is a sharp visible difference between northern and southern hemispheres. The darker lands to the south of an equatorial line of dichotomy are punctuated by craters as densely clustered as those of the Moon; while the northern plains — which perhaps are analogous to the dusty maria of the Moon — are generally smoother and, perhaps, younger.

A huge canyon system lies along the equator, a planetary wound visible even from a hundred thousand leagues. To the west of this gouge are clustered four immense volcanoes: great black calderas, as dead as any on the Moon. And in the southern hemisphere I have espied a mighty crater, deep and choked with frost. Mars is clearly a small world: some of these features sprawl around the globe, outsized, overwhelming the curvature.