The Mammoth Book of New Jules Verne Adventures (28 page)

When I got the gist of
this, I laughed out loud. I dashed off a quick note instructing Newnes not to
pass on to me any further communications from the same source.

Fifth Day. Two Hundred and Ninety Seven Thousand Leagues.

Through my lenticular
glass scuttles, the Earth now appears about the size of a Full Moon. Only the
right half of the terrestrial globe is illuminated by the Sun. I can still
discern clouds, and the differentiation of ocean blue from the land’s brown,
and the glare of ice at the poles.

Some distance from the
Earth a luminous disklet is visible, aping the Earth’s waxing phase. It is the
Moon, following the Earth on its path around the Sun. It is to my regret that
the configuration of my orbit
was
such that I
passed no closer to the satellite than several hundred thousand leagues.

The projectile is extraordinarily convenient. I have only to turn
a tap and I am furnished with fire and light by means of gas, which is stored
in a reservoir at a pressure of several atmospheres.

My food is meat and
vegetables and fruit, hydraulically compressed to the smallest dimensions; and
I have carried a quantity of brandy and water. My atmosphere is maintained by
means of chlorate of potassium and caustic potash: the former, when heated, is
transformed into chloride of potassium, and the oxygen thus liberated replaces
that which I have consumed; and the potash, when shaken, extracts from the air
the carbonic acid placed there by the combustion of elements of my blood.

Thus, in inter-planetary
space, I am as comfortable as if I were in the smoking lounge of the Gun Club
itself, in Union Square, Baltimore!

Michel Ardan was perhaps
seventy-five. He was of large build, but stoop-shouldered. He sported luxuriant
side-whiskers

and moustache; his shock
of untamed hair, once evidently red, was largely a mass of grey. His eyes were
startling: habitually he held them wide open, so that a rim of white appeared
above each iris, and his gaze was clear but vague, as if he suffered from
near-sight.

He paced about my living
room, his open collar flapping. Even at his advanced age Ardan was a vigorous,
restless man, and my home, Spade House — spacious though it is — seemed to
confine him like. a cage. I feared besides that his booming Gallic voice must
awaken Gip. Therefore I invited Ardan to walk with me in the garden; in the
open air I fancied he might not seem quite so out of scale.

The house, built on the
Kent coast near Sandgate, is open to a vista of the sea. The day was brisk,
lightly overcast. Ardan showed interest in none of this, however.

He fixed me with those
wild eyes. “You have not replied to my letters.”

“I had them stopped.”

“I have been forced to
travel here unannounced. Sir, I have come here to beg your help.”

I already regretted
allowing him into my home — of course I did! — but some combination of his
earnestness, and the intriguing content of those unsolicited missives, had
temporarily overwhelmed me. Now, though, I stood square on my lawn, and held up
the newest copy of his letter.

“Then perhaps, M. Ardan,
you might explain what you mean by transmitting such romantic nonsense in my
direction.”

He barked laughter. “Romantic
it may be. Nonsense — never!”

“Then you claim this
business of ‘propagating emissions’ is the plain and honest truth, do you?”

“Of course. It is a
system of communication devised for their purposes by Impey Barbicane and Col.
Maston. They seized on the electro-magnetic discoveries of James Maxwell with
the vigour and inventiveness typical of Americans — for America is indeed the
Land of the Future, is it not?”

Of that, I was not so
certain.

“Col. Maston had built a
breed of mirror — but of wires, do you see? — in the shape of that geometric
figure called a hyperbola — no, forgive me! — a
parabola,
for this
figure, I am assured, collects all impinging waves into a single point, thus
making it possible to detect the weakest —”

“Enough.” I was scarcely
qualified to judge the technical possibilities of such a hypothetical
apparatus. And besides, the inclusion of apparently authentic detail is a
technique I have used in my own romances, to persuade the reader to accept the
most outrageous fictive lies. I had no intention of being deceived by it
myself!

“These missives of yours
— received by Maston — purport to be from the inhabitant of a projectile,
beyond the terrestrial atmosphere. And this projectile, you claim, was launched
into space from the mouth of an immense cannon, the
Columbiad,
embedded
in a Florida hill-side . . .”

“That is so.”

“But, my poor M. Ardan,
you must understand that these are no more than the elements of a fiction,
written three decades ago by M. Verne — your countryman — with whom I, myself,
have corresponded —”

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.