The Martian Epic Read online

  While people waited for this limitless source of energy to make the social problems disappear, their acuity was much diminished. After a few political—or, rather, economic—experiments, stable and definitive peace bore its fruits. Humankind, in its entirety, thus protected against its violent instincts, experienced unprecedented well-being and prosperity, to such a degree that the last survivors of the period preceding the Great War of 1914-18, ever ready to talk up those distant days as a kind of lost paradise, ended up admitting the superiority of the contemporary era.

  The perfection of mechanical technology and the limitation of the birth-rate—finally admitted as the natural consequence of a civilization that had arrived at its apogee—had reduced the duration of the working day to three hours, offering people more leisure time. Numerous public festivals channeled the need of the masses for external entertainment, while their moral aspirations were satisfied by the practical obligations of the various official religions—which, in Europe, now included Theosophy and Buddhism. A new elite, which replaced the old ruling classes, devoted itself to the noble joys of scientific curiosity, passionately conducting research organized by the Terrestrial Directorate. That institution, positing as axiomatic that the pursuit of truth is an essential duty of the human species, dedicated the disposable resources of its global budget to works of pure and disinterested science. Previously subject to the demands of practical utility, and funded in a derisory fashion while its adepts—considered as harmless lunatics—were left to die of starvation, speculative science was now triumphant; progress, directed towards ever-loftier horizons, marched at an ever-accelerating pace.

  Gigantic laboratories, furnished with equipment whose excessive cost had previously inhibited their construction, were given to researchers intoxicated with the sublime joy of exploring the secrets of nature. Astronomy benefited especially from this unprecedented largesse; new optical instruments far in advance of the telescopes of yesteryear, which had been privately funded by the likes of Lick and Carnegie, scrutinized the sidereal depths.

  The problem of the plurality of habitable worlds was taken up again—a problem that had once had its martyrs, such as Giordano Bruno, burned at the stake for having proclaimed that the Earth was not the only world in Creation on which thinking beings lived, and which had caused so much ink to flow while there was no practicable means of resolving it. The idea, boldly expressed in the 19th century, of sending fiery signals to our brothers in space was finally realized, and every night, across the extents of the Sahara, immense geometrical designs solicited the attention of extraterrestrial observers. At the same time, extremely powerful TSF 2 waves, beamed by the Equatorial Alternators, bombarded our neighboring planets, Mars and Venus, incessantly.

  The result of these sublime efforts to secure interplanetary brotherhood was not long in coming, but the first success, obtained at the beginning of 1975, amazed the cultured world. The paradoxical news was hardly believable: the response came from Jupiter! Jupiter, the sparkling jewel of terrestrial nights; Jupiter, the giant of the Solar System, eleven times greater in diameter than our modest globe; Jupiter, enthroned, escorted in its majestic orbit by its nine satellites, five times more distant from the Sun than Earth; Jupiter, finally, which orthodox science had hitherto deemed uninhabitable because of its enormous mass, which must have prevented it from cooling for much longer, conserving in its bosom the temperature of a scarcely-extinguished Sun. But the fact was there, soon confirmed and undeniable; in the round black shadow that the largest of the Jovian satellites, Ganymede, projected on its mother planet as it passed in front of her, enigmatic moving lights first observed a long time before were resolved by the magnification of the most powerful telescopes—Mont Blanc and Gaurisankar—into distinct luminous lines, which eventually reproduced, one by one, the geometrical signals from the terrestrial Sahara!

  There was no more doubt. The solitude in which the indifferent material blocks of ancient astronomy floated was no more. Intelligent beings were living up there, among the abysms of the Heavens, the bounds of which had been gradually extended by the bold investigations of science. The vertiginous infinite Space that had replaced the naïve firmament of the Ancients, whose crystalline spheres were secured by golden nails, no longer intimidated the imagination with its limitless void. Humankind was done with the sensation of being lost in the bosom of unfathomable gulfs, a unique and isolated spectator of the incomprehensible mystery of the universe, shivering in the loneliness of its infinitesimal globe! Life and intelligence were no longer reserved to one sole planet, among the smaller members of the Solar System. Minds analogous to ours populated, at the very least, the giant Jupiter!

  A wave of sacred enthusiasm ran through all the thinking brains of Earth. Public ceremonies were organized, and thanks were offered in the temples of every religion, for the fact that other humans existed, who undoubtedly praised the glory of a Creator, and were now susceptible, thanks to the new means of communication, of being introduced to the knowledge of the one true God, if they did not have it already.

  It was not only members of the scientific elite, but the masses ordinarily inattentive to the progress of pure knowledge, who followed the development of the experiment passionately. A feverish curiosity held minds in suspense during the long months that passed before a satisfactory conventional language was established, so that an exchange of ideas could take place in consequence between the two planets—or, rather, between the planet Earth and the Jovian satellite Ganymede, from which the signals described on Jupiter’s sea of cloud in the moon’s shadow were emitted.

  The task was arduous and complicated, to be sure, but Champollion had succeeded in deciphering the hieroglyphics of a race that had vanished 2000 years before. In the present instance, the most lucid and ingenious brains of two life-bearing planets were devoting all their energy to the solution of the problem.

  After ten months, intelligible conversation was established, and revelations were arriving from outer space, for which—for the first time since the origin of man—news of the Earth was sent in exchange. Every morning, the newspapers reproduced a “Message from Jupiter,” and cinemas projected filmed images of Jovian life that telescopes had initially picked up on the dark screen of Ganymede’s shadow… but the specialist works published on this subject are too numerous and widely-circulated for there to be any need to continue.

  The most powerful impression was, perhaps, created by the news that the human population of Jupiter had very close affinities with the human population of Earth, even in the matter of physical constitution. Savants with preconceived ideas were astonished, but an explanation was soon forthcoming from the Jovians themselves, whose wisdom had proved to be superior to ours from the first. The kinship of the planets, all similarly emitted from the primitive Sun—or, rather, the primal Nebula—implied an analogical evolution on their surfaces of the identical seeds of life, or cosmozoons, incessantly brought to each heavenly body by the millions of aeroliths that are strewn through space in every direction—seeds that only develop to provide the root stocks of the entire series of vegetable and animal species in narrowly-defined circumstances, in particular under the influence of certain rays formerly projected by the Sun but absent today from its impoverished light.3

  At any rate, the intelligent race on Jupiter, having appeared much sooner than its Earthly equivalent, possesses not only a very extensive scientific knowledge but a perfect dominion of its mental faculties over animal instincts. According to the Jovians, this is due to the particular nature of their individual longevity, which—in the course of years that are almost equal to 12 terrestrial years, each comprised of 10,455 days of 10 hours—permits them to acquire at an early age the experience and the equilibrium that are, in us, the prerogative of decrepit old age.

  War has been unknown for thousands of years on this sagacious world, whose inhabitants, their needs satisfied in moderation, live for the joys of study and contemplation. Their practical industry seems to be
quite limited in its development, but they have taken pure science and certain of its applications to a point of marvelous perfection. These include the domain of optics, for astronomy is there considered to be the highest of the sciences.

  It is true that the atmosphere of the planet, frequently charged with opaque clouds, is unpropitious for the exercise of their preferred science—and perhaps that initial difficulty made them all the more determined to pursue it. At that time, the greater number of the sedentary inhabitants of certain equatorial zones never saw the solar disc, and, for the very best of reasons, had no knowledge of the marvelous spectacle of the stellar firmament. A long time ago, however, the Jovians learned how to communicate with their satellites. The five smaller ones, which were uninhabited, served as places of exile for rare degenerates, while a peaceful and fraternal alliance was established with the inhabitants of the four larger ones; observatories were established on one of them, Ganymede. Minuscule as it is by comparison with the immense planet, that world is quite sufficient to accommodate all the Jovian astronomers with ease, since its diameter is greater than that of the planet Mercury. Vehicles powered by “solar batteries” still permit mere amateurs to go there, in order to contemplate the marvels of the Heavens from the ideally pure atmosphere of the satellite.

  The description of their telescopes, whose details the Jovians did not attempt to conceal, took up numerous and laborious transmission sessions. Faithful to its rules of conduct, however, the Terrestrial Directorate kept the core of these revelations to itself. Only the general principle was divulged, and people were amazed to learn that the Jovian telescopes, which were only a little larger than those at Mont Blanc and Gaurisankar, nevertheless permitted the attainment of limitless magnification. Indeed, their images, instead of only being magnified by a system based on an ocular mirror, were also subjected, by means of special relays, to an “amplification” analogous to that which the terrestrial microphone imposes on sonic vibrations. This was so successful that, not only had the luminous signals in the Sahara been perceived immediately, but the life of the Terrans had been studied for centuries with troubled solicitude, much as a biologist might track a colony of microbes in the focal field of an ultramicroscope. The luminous signals projected from Ganymede on the screen of its shadow had not, therefore, been created at hazard, but specifically to attract the Terrans’ attention.

  Now, it seems that the members of the planetary family are steeped in a sort of spiritual atmosphere analogous to that which reigns in the bosom of terrestrial civilization. It seems that the manifestations of the Spirit follow a strictly parallel course on the surfaces of the Daughters of the Sun. In addition to material communications, there are “interplanetary ideas”—much as there are ideas “in the air” here, thanks to which an invention emerges, when its time has come, in a host of brains at the same time, in various parts of the world. A preliminary proof of this hypothesis had just been given to us by the simultaneity of efforts made by Earth and Jupiter to establish intellectual communication. A startling confirmation soon arrived to convince us of its exactitude.

  The detailed description of Jovian television technology had scarcely finished when the receptive antennae of the interplanetary TSF, mute until then in spite of daily appeals, were suddenly activated. Clear and precise signals arrived, in the dots and dashes of a conventional alphabet of the Morse genre, instituted by agreement with Jupiter. It was believed at first that this was a new mode of communication that the giant planet was bringing into play, at the instigation of Earth, to supplement the optical signals.4 On the first day, the news, published in that form, did not excite much curiosity—but after several hours, there could be no more doubt, and the provenance of the “cosmograms,” duly received and verified, was confirmed. It was necessary to yield to the evidence. The planet Mars had, in its turn, joined the circuit.

  With marvelous sagacity, the Martians, ideally placed between the two planets to decipher their communications simultaneously, had succeeded in discovering the conventional key. With an immediate mastery—at the first attempt, without any fumbling—they had transposed the luminous language into TSF. Without a doubt, they had perceived the Hertzian signals radiated from the Earth into space at the outset, but had omitted to reply to them for some reason or other. Perhaps their transmission apparatus was not yet ready, or perhaps…

  When these questions were posed, though, Mars refrained from answering. From the very first messages, it was understood on Earth that this was not a matter of the noble exchanges of ideas to which the sagacious planet Jupiter had accustomed us. Clear and curt questions, positive and technical, unfurled on the tapes of the receptive apparatus, and were then published, causing the public to reflect, divided between their naïve admiration for such imperious precision and their disgust for the dry and arid character of the messages. What was the exact population of the Earth? The greatest aggregations of population? What force was exerted by the most powerful lifting apparatus? Where were there ores of…? (After elaborate explanations, it was understood that the question related to radium.) And then, pell-mell, as if at hazard: Explosives? The most powerful means of destruction? Exact thickness of the Earth’s crust? Composition of the atmosphere? The precise concentration of argon, in particular? Climate? Temperature? Salinity of the seas? Etc, etc…

  In brief, questions seemingly representative of an aimless curiosity, which the public soon found repellent, but which flattered the vanity of terrestrial savants happy to demonstrate to their brothers in space the level to which their knowledge had already risen. The Terrestrial Directorate itself, on this occasion, lifted its embargo concerning certain secret formulas. What danger could these Martians, orbiting 50 million kilometers away, pose? They would never be able to do us any harm or inhibit the forward march of Progress and Civilization?

  Oh, nobly trusting Earth, as naïve as some nouveau riche counting his gold coins in front of thieves—how soon and how cruelly you were disabused!

  Now that the catastrophe has happened, and bitter experience has revealed the true character of the inhabitants of Mars to us, I think with respectful admiration about the intuition of our distant ancestors, who were certainly ignorant of astronomy, but were situated in mysterious proximity to the profound heart of Nature, in which their souls could read a language that the subsequent development of rational thought caused us to forget.

  Mars, whose name has always been associated with carnage since the distant epoch when our first forefathers fought to the death on the icy slopes of Pamir to conquer the fertile plains; Mars, whose occult influence alone seemed to drive men mad; Mars, symbol of war and devastation; Mars, savage and pitiless god, presiding over discord and violent death—thus consecrated by an infallible prescience of the threat that the red planet would bring down from the heights of Heaven upon the Earth and the human race!

  And, more recently, at the dawn of the 20th century, that other seer, worthy of being placed in the rank of prophets inspired by the universal Spirit, for whom the future and the past were contained in an eternal present—that simple English man of letters who was perhaps enabled by the impending approach of the event to interpret similar presentiments, made precise and concrete, in a visionary document. He had seen, through the mists of the future, the monstrous invasion to which we, the last terrestrial humans, would be witness less than a century later! But his novelist’s brain, distorting the horrors to come in order to please an optimistic public, had softened the terrible denouement, and, imbued with the scientific theories of his own day, had attributed a fantastic cephalopodan anatomy to the Martians…

  Oh, if we had only been able to remember his book during those first Martian communications, not as an imaginary fantasy but as an augural Mene, Mene, Tekel upharsin!—what an irreparable disaster we would have been spared by a modicum of suspicion and foresight!

  But the gods blind those they wish to destroy, and, after happening upon the secret of Jovian television as it was transmitted,
Mars was benevolently instructed by the Earth as to the most precious discoveries of our science—including the principle of the radium “blasters,” which was delivered to them by an unpardonable sin of the Directorate.

  II. The Martian Menace

  Those weeks of civilized tranquility still seem peculiarly clear to me now, despite the abominable adventures that I have undergone since—along with all our human brothers, without exception—even though the period of my life that preceded that calamitous era generally seems as strange to my present self as the troubling reminiscence of some previous life. Tracked by death, hardened to misfortune and the brutal assassination of my own finest hopes and those of humankind, my contemporary soul, crystallized by desperate stoicism into a block of black diamond, remembers with melancholy pity the naïve trust of yesteryear and the sweetness of life in those days.

  In the wake of some excessive mental toil, I had decided to take a premature vacation in Saint Valéry, in the relaxing and restorative region of the Somme estuary. Even in those culminating days of civilization, the little town conserved its immutable appearance and its late 19th century customs. Savoring that restfulness with delight, I spent my days perfecting my knowledge of botany—drawn until then from textbooks—by empirical study. I spent long hours absorbed in the examination of plants collected from the hedgerows, the woods and the fields. I learned to dismantle flowers piece by piece—petals, sepals, stamens, pistil—and to distinguish, in the infinite variety of formal combinations and the manifest numbers of these elementary organs, the characteristics of families, genres and species.

  My herbarium increased every day with numerous specimens. The placid joys of the collector seemed to me to be supplementary, however. I was impassioned primarily by the sentiment that these detailed explorations of vegetable tissues developed within me: an intellectual penetration of the secrets of life, a subtle communion with the essential heart of nature, which gave my contemplation of the landscape a profundity that my simple visual delectation in colors and forms had never given me. I perceived, dimly, my true place in nature. I plunged sensuously into the depths of the uninterrupted flux of life, which worked assiduously upon the surface of the planet, unfolding its progressive phases from the most infinitesimal moss to the sequence of mammals, as far as humankind, under the impulse of the universal Soul.