CHAPTER V.
"It was afternoon when Chapman and I, fully equipped and provisioned,moved off from the long granite pier at the Registeries, after anaffectionate parting from my guide and friend, who returned sorrowfullyto resume his watch for his son, whose coming to Mars seemed to him soassured.
"How wonderfully strange and exciting it all seemed! Down the crowdedcanal we slowly moved, amidst the calling crews, the pleasant cheers,and beckonings of sightseers; and back of us rose on its hills the Cityof Light, that, as we passed still further away, and watched it in thefading sunset, began to glow, and finally, to shine like some titanicopal in the velvet shadows of the night.
"These numerous arms of the canal some miles from the City coalesce andmerge into the enormous trunk canal that passes on to Scandor throughhills and mountains and the plain country, excavated by the wonderfulToto powder. This trunk canal is doubled; upon one member, the boatspass outward to Scandor, and on the other the boats return. Branchespass north and south at centers of population, and of some of thesewhich pass actually into the frozen depths of the polar countries, I maytell you later.
"As we slowly progressed into the undulating plain country, with itsvillages and farm lands, diversified by woods, and sometimes solitaryprojections of rock, as the stars stole urgently into the sky, as thephosphori lamps began their soft illumination of the decks, and whilemurmurs of songs from merrymakers on the land came to us in snatchesbewitchingly, though incongruously mingled with the delicious odors ofthe Napi grass, I turned to Chapman, and felt that now, throughout thehours of the genial night, I would pour out unchecked the flood ofinquiry that had risen again and again to my lips in this strange newlife.
"'Chapman,' I began, 'you must feel that I have a great deal to ask you.This new life, with its surprises and the strange incidents of the twoor three days I have already lived here have suggested so manyquestions, can we not now talk about these marvels?'
"'Certainly,' replied Chapman, as he lifted a glass of delicate pearlpink, filled with the pungent and keenly stimulating _Ridinda_, to hislips. 'Put on your thinking cap, and perforate me with all the puzzlesyou can think of. I am a trifle rattled myself in this new ranch--havenot been here long--but I tell you, Dodd, Mars is first class. It suitsme. Never enjoyed living so much, never found it so much a matter ofcourse, and as to livelihood, when I think of those freezing nights onthe earth in Rutherford's cheesebox shooting at the moon with wetplates, I can tell you this sort of thing isn't a long call from all Iever hoped to find in Heaven. Open your batteries. To-morrow will befull of sight-seeing, and I guess you will forget all you want to knowto-day in trying to remember what you will see then.' He took anothersip of the snapping liquid, drew his chair closer to my own, and while asort of musical echo lingered in the air, I began:
"'Chapman, where on Mars are we? I seem to feel neither heat nor cold. Isee these flowers, the palms in the Garden of the Fountains, day passesinto night, and there is no very apparent change of temperature, so faras feeling goes. What are we made of? Is this new body we carryinsensible to heat or cold? I feel indeed my pulse beat. I am consciousof warmth in the sun, and of coolness in the shade. I feel the wind blowon my cheeks, but all these sensations are so much less keen than on theearth, and yet again I realize that sensations are in some ways as vividas on the earth. The pleasure of my ears and eyes is wonderfully deepand exhaustive, the sense of taste rapid and delightful. I am happy,supremely happy, and affection, even the hidden fires of love, burn inmy veins as on the earth.' Chapman looked at me with that bright smilehe wore on earth, and his gestures of expostulation were amusing. 'Wait,Dodd, don't talk so fast. You remember I had a slow way on the earth. Ihave no reason to think it will prove any less pleasant to stay slow onMars. One thing at a time. My own sense of position is not so securethat I can tell exactly all you want to know, and there are a good manythings that the heavyweights up here don't pretend yet to explain. Now,where are we? Well, the City of Light is about 40 degrees south of theMartian equator, not so far from what on earth would be the position ofChrist Church, where you "shuffled off the mortal coil." Don't frown.Mars is a serene, sweet place, but I am not yet so intimidated by thelofty life here as to drop my jokes. Some Martians strike me as a trifleheavy in style, just a suggestion of a kind of sublimated Bostoneseabout them, don't you know. Curious! However, the ordinary Martian isgamy, good company, full of happiness, with a considerable fancy forjokes, absurdly addicted to music, and as credulous as a child. Somehow,Dodd, a good deal of my earthly nature has stuck to me, and I revel in adual life. I have my Martian side, but I can't, and this life can't,knock the old foibles of the world you left, out of me yet. I may getthe proper sort of exultation in time, but just now I've importedconsiderable human horse sense.'
"He looked at me whimsically; I walked away, and watched the recedingcity.
"The motion of our white boat was so smoothly rapid, that soon, andalmost unnoticed we had threaded all the many lanes, windings, and locksthat led to the broad canals some twenty miles from the city. We hadpassed laden barges, flat and storied boats carrying excursions orfreight, and trains of smaller craft crowded with fruit brought in fromdistant farms for the great population of the City of Light. The sceneassumed a fairy-like unreality as night settled down, and the boatsswarming with light, or else carrying a few red lanterns, passed uswhile their occupants or owners chanted the lonely lullaby of theMartians, which begins: 'Ana cal tantil to ti.'
"It was yet to me all a wonderful dream, from which each moment Idreaded awakening. It was all so beautiful!
"I sat again with Chapman under the canopy, talking of the earth.Strange Mystery! Here we were with our earth memories yet vivid,recalling incidents of life in New York City, and summoning amid all theappealing charm of this strange new life, the little, sordid variancesand trials, vexations and minor sufferings that had marred his own lifeon earth. We turned to these things, not because they were grateful orpleasing to remember, but because it seemed to _establish_ us, or ratherme, to give me identity, and build up the growing certainty that I hadcome from the earth, and was re-embodied in this new sphere of activefeeling and experience.
"I told him of you, of the death of your mother, of our flight to NewZealand, our experiments, the Dodans, and then turning to him, as we sawthe Martian moon rise in ruddy fullness far away over the hill of_Tiniti_, I said, searchingly: 'Chapman, you remember Martha? Howbeautiful and good she was! I have kept one long, sad, and stilldeathless hope in my repining heart. I shall see her again! It must be!I have felt so certain of this that no argument, no appeal to reason,can drive away the keen sense of its realization. Have you seen her onMars amongst the thousands you have met, and is there on this entrancingorb any other place than the Hill of the Phosphori, for the disembodiedof other worlds to enter this new world?
"Chapman smiled. 'Yes,' he answered, 'I remember your wife very well. Icould pick her out from ten thousand, but I have never seen her yet inthe City of Light. You may, my dear friend, cherish only an illusion,and yet I am half willing to agree with you; such intuitive feelingshave a deeper philosophy of truth than we can fathom, and no laughingskepticism, no mere frivolous doubt can expel them. Wait, my friend; itmay yet be meant for you to meet her. And now I do recall some accountstold me of occasional visitants to Mars entering its life at differentpoints; many indeed have been received near Scandor, and on one or twooccasions the prehistoric peoples, the little strong men of themountains and the northern ice have brought in such a chance waif thathas become body amongst them. How wild and frightened they become! Andquite naturally! Ghosts dropping out of the air becoming flesh and bloodmight startle a rational being into a rigid course of religiouspractices, not to say superstition. But look, how fair the night hasbecome.'
"The landscape about us was wonderfully illuminated by the twosatellites, Deimos and Phobos, which, as you well know, were made knownto astronomers on the earth by Prof. Asaph Hall in 1877. What amarvellous spectacle they presented,
moving almost sensibly at theirdiffering rates of revolution through a sky sown with stellar lights.The combined lights of these singular bodies surpassed the light of ourterrestrial moon, by reason of their closeness to the surface of Mars,while the more rapid motion of the inner satellite causes the most weirdand beautiful changes of effect in the nocturnal glory they both lend tothe Martian life.
"We were sailing in a broad river-like canal, perhaps one mile or morewide. On all sides the undulating ground, covered with cultivation,varied with thick patches of trees, with here and there shining lightsfrom villages and isolated homes, carried the eye onward to a risinghill country, beyond which, again, silhouetted against the shining skywhere Phobos began to rise mountain tops were just discernible.
"Deimos, the outer moon, was already shining, and its pale, sick lightimparted a peculiar blueness impossible to describe upon all surfaces ittouched. Here was the phenomenon we witnessed with increasing pleasure.Phobos was emerging from a cloud and its yellow rays possessing agreater illuminating power, mingled suddenly with the blue and spectralbeams of Deimos and the land thus visited by the complimentary flood oflight from these twin luminaries seemed suddenly dipped in silver. Abeautiful white light, most unreal, as you mortals might say, fell ontree and water, cliff, hill, and villages. The effect was not unlikethat instant in photography when a developing plate shows the outlinesof its objects in dazzling silver before the half tints are added, andthe image fades away into indistinguishable shadow.
"It was a print in silver, and while we gazed in mute astonishment thesharp shadows changed their position as Phobos, racing through thezenith, changed the inclination of its incident beams. The effect wasindescribable. I walked the deck in an agitation of wonder and delight.Chapman, to whom the novelties of this Martian life were stillwonderful, followed me, and was the first to speak.
"'Dodd, you know that the strangest thing about this whole place is yourbody. It's body all right enough, but I can't quite understand what sortof a body it is. It hurts in a way, and is pleased in a way, but itseems a better made affair in texture and parts than anything wepossessed on earth. Exertion is so easy.'
"'Well, Chapman,' I answered, while my eyes rested on the water, throughwhich an approaching barge rose like a vessel of frosted or burnishedwhite metal, 'we were taught on the earth that, with gravitation reducedone-half, the same weight on Mars would seem only half as heavy as onthe earth, and that the effort which there carried us eight feet wouldhere send us sixteen.'
"'It is true,' returned Chapman, 'but that doesn't explain everything.We sleep less here, we scarcely touch meat, and yet exertion, prolongedby hours, scarcely accelerates the blood or vexes the nerves, andgenerally we don't grow old. Our bodies are light; the texture,apparently firm and resisting, is somehow diaphanous. I've seen thelight through the palm of my hand. And then again I haven't. Somehowmind works in the body here and changes it, and changes it different atdifferent times. Why, Dodd, the other day at the Patenta, a studentjumped up with a cry of delight at something, and stumbled and fell froma window to the ground, but he stood up without a bruise or hurt of anykind. His exultation, his emotional excitement made him buoyant, Ithink, and he fell to the earth like a thistledown. There was noconcussion.'
"'Well,' I responded, 'I cannot tell. I know very little as yet. I feelwonderfully active and vitalized. My senses are acute. I see further,hear further, smell further than I ever did on earth, and it even seemsto me I can anticipate things. The nerve currents are so rapid, the mindseems so persuasive, that coming events are registered by a propheticfeeling I can scarcely describe. For that reason, Chapman, I growhappier every minute, for now I see approaching that great joy, myreunion with Martha, the one great divine event I hunger and hope for.
"'Well,' said Chapman, as a cloud covered the scudding moons, 'I do hopeyou may see her, and somehow I think, too, you will. But, Dodd,' themoons emerged, and the lower one was in transit across the face of theupper, 'I must call your attention to this strange peculiarity of ourbodies, that we undergo extremes of temperature with almost nonoticeable sense of the great heat or cold. This region we aretraversing is about the latitude of Christ Church, as I told you, and itis the period of harvests, and the heat is moderate, but in the heightof summer the heat seems scarcely more felt than now, and in theclothing I am now wearing, I have sailed through the ice packs of theNorth, and slept thinly covered in its snows, but without unduediscomfort. I tell you, matter in us, and flesh and blood in us are alldifferently conditioned.'
"'Why not ask these questions of the wise men of the Patenta, thedoctors and chemists?' I replied. 'I can think of an analogy that mightmake this Martian constitution intelligible. A close, dense bodyconducts heat or cold; a loose, open texture or cellular mass does not.In our curious embodiment from spirit the substance of our bodies is anetherealized matter, loosely, I might say, flocculently, disposed, andwhile it conveys sensations of a certain tone or key of vibratoryintensity, it will not respond to any violent or coarse shocks. Theysimply cannot be carried. They escape us. Are the people all alikeamongst the Martians?'
"'Oh, no,' returned Chapman, who pointed to the widening spaces in thebeams between the slow Deimos and the fleeter flying Phobos, 'there aregreat differences. I have seen that. In materialization some seem badlyput together, and these resemble our former terrestrial bodies. Theygrow old, they succumb to disease, they feel changes of weather and theyhave less vitality. Yes,' and he drew nearer, 'it is these unhappymisbirths in this spirit land who retain the sin of earth and cannotsurvive and get the _Kinkotantitomi_ or irreverently, as the earthlingwould say, the grand bounce. They are fired off the planet.'
"He paused and laughed. How strange this almost human laugh sounded, andyet how pleasant! I looked at him with a deep affection. He noticed theimpression, and quickly drawing me to him, said half timidly:
"'Dodd, that sort of laugh and those words of mine just used, are notMartian, they don't belong to these rarefied beings here. They have ahuman or earthly taint, and they frighten me. I seem so lonelysometimes. My stray fun which I once enjoyed on earth must somehow beforgotten here. I feel so irreverent at times, so full of horse play,but I must keep up the high key and act like the rest. Indeed for themost of the time I feel as they do, I suppose, but sometimes that sortof ribaldry and feelings of the ludicrous that made us joke, and prank,and cut up in genial companionships come over me, and I am suffocatingwith a glee out of place to this exalted society. Ah! it's good to feelyou, my friend, so fresh and new from earth. It's promised here in thelearned talk I have heard, that those who disappear from Mars becomereincorporated upon earth again, if they belong there. Well, I wouldn'tmind if I got returned, wonderful and sweet and happy as all this seems.The dear, dear old Earth!'
"He flung his arms around me, and our faces met, as if we had been lostbrothers. A sort of terrifying melancholy invaded me. I was so distantfrom all I had known and loved, so distant from the surges we hadwatched from our observatory at Christ Church, so distant from the lifeof heat and clothing and genial domesticities; the life even, it mightbe called, of the daily paper, the novel, the new book, the life ofpolitics and human history, and conventionality, the life of ups anddowns, of sickness and health, of individual enterprise, of routine andmechanical fatigue, the life of exertion, contrast and socialinequality, with its picturesqueness, its incessant interest, all thiswas now utterly removed by all the measureless leagues of icy spacebetween me and the floating planet--the old sin-stricken Earth--that wasshining in the Martian skies, so inconspicuous and tiny--soinaccessible.
"But my heart was pulsating audibly. If I could recover Martha, if, inthis serene atmosphere of good will and fairness and kindness, in themidst of unknown possibilities of knowledge, in the company ofenthusiastic and high-minded men and women, in this arena of scientificwonders, and in the joy and beauty of universal happiness and thrift andpeace and well doing and intuition, I could find a human companionshipin the woman whose face and nature have
summed up for me the whole oflife, if I could find her! then, indeed, this new world would be all myearthly home could be, and the endless future with her for guide andfriend would lose its terror and lonely isolation, and--I dared to thinkit--even the presence of God himself become bearable.
"Chapman had stolen away from me. He had stolen to the little, daintyrooms that were sunk in the cockpit or cabin of our boat, and I wasstanding alone in the light of the midnight moons in Mars, a waif fromthe far earth, incomprehensibly born after death into this humanpresentiment and renewal in youth, and again instinct with revivifiedpassion and desire; and breathing the atmosphere of a planet that foryears I had watched through the tube of a telescope, as a floating flakeof celestial fire. A delicious drowsiness overcame me, and while Inoticed the pilot was changed, his place being taken by another, andthat we were approaching a ridgy or disturbed country, I found my way tothe white couch prepared for me, and sank into a deep and dreamlesssleep.
"The morning of the next day was clear and beautiful. Shall I everforget that first approach to the mountains of Tiniti, where Mit andSinsi, the villages of the quarries, are located. All day long the boatpropelled through a diversified country, covered with morainalheaps--great hills of drift matter, heaps of worn pebbles and rollingplains of estuarine sediment. Much of this land seemed untouched withcultivation, and sublime forests of the loftiest trees covered it. Thecanal passed through solitudes, where the silence was only broken by thecackling laugh of a crane-like bird, marching in lines along the banks,or perched like sleepy sentinels amid the outstretched branches of thetrees.
"These wild and fascinating regions were often alternated by miles ofbright plantations radiant with the yellow leaves of the Rint, bearingits deep red pods, while avenues of palms, not unlike the royal palm ofthe Earth, led in long vistas to clustering groups of houses, and we,too, caught glimpses of basking lakes on which, even as in the Earth,the patient fisherman in basket-like circular boats, waited for hisflashing captives.
"Then, again, there were prairie-like stretches of a sort of pampaswaving in cloudy lines, the glistening pappus of the wild Nitoti, apeculiar, low composite, that grows in abundance and furnishes food tothe strange gazelle of this latitude in Mars.
"This animal, the Rimondi, could be seen in scampering herds over theseplains, its horns making an hour glass form above its head, as they bentto each other, touched, and then curved outward again to reunite asecond time.
"We were rapidly moving northward, and just as it would be on the earth,the changing vegetation gave visible notice of our advance.
"But more interesting than nature were the scenes of life along our way,and the custom of public worship filled me with wonder. Amphitheatresof stone built high above the ground, and approached by encirclingterraces of steps dotted the country at long intervals. These, Chapmanexplained, were the churches of the people. Here they gathered from longdistances around, and, even as he described their meaning, thecongregations were seen assembling, while later we heard the music flungin waves of sound from these houses of song and worship.
"Chapman did not understand the Martian faith. There seemed little tounderstand about it. It was one national expression of the love ofgoodness and of beauty, but it was all directed to a source ofinfallible wisdom, power and justice.
"Thus considering the country and its customs we fell again into a longcolloquy:
"'Dodd,' said Chapman, musingly, 'we should all become as these peopleabout us, and do the same things, and believe and act as they do. Youwill, but I think I remain a little strange. I seem a spectator that acaprice has cast upon this globe, and though I live here, I must succumbto a certain alienation, a lack of mediation between their life and myformer existence, and because of this subtle estrangement, I shallcontract disease, or meet with accident, or waste in age, while youshall stay young, and living, sink into the Martian life and yield toit a spiritual, a mental acquiescence. You will become absorbed, and,with your love realized, the whole rhapsodic life of this world willmingle you forever in its tide of song and science and labor.'
"'Yes,' I answered, 'I am sure I shall. For whatever period of time Istay here, I am one with this beautiful and strange life. I respondnaturally to all this serenity and joy, this precision of power overinanimate things; this flooded being and the dawning sense that throughthe stepping stone of Mars, I approach yet higher beatitudes of living.At least in Mars the sordid taint of suffering, of ignominious physicaltorture and privation, which spoiled the Earth, is almost unknown.'
"Chapman laughed, and an echo gave back from some hillside its musicalresponse. 'Ah, it may be, I know it is true, and yet--and yet--the Earthpossessed a pictorial, a dramatic power in its contrasts of happinessand suffering, of goodness and sin. It had literary material. Itsconsecutive growth in the ages of social and national and economichistory were so wonderful, so thrilling in interest, in the details ofcharacter and adventure, in the incessant panoramic display it gave oflight and shade. And on it rested the shadow of a strange, patheticdoubt, the mystery of creation. Its romance, its fiction, its fable, andthe animating picture it furnished, with its sceptics and itsbelievers, its haters and its lovers, its tyrants and its heroes. Itswide, verbal immensity! I miss all that, or almost all. This life isevenly celestial, and glowing, and carelessly happy. And here knowledgeis extreme and pervasive and omnipotent. The dear commonplaces of theEarth life are unknown too, the ludicrous is absent, and the sublimityof sacrifice impossible.'
"He laughed again, and I felt for one brief, incredible instant a pang,too, that the blossoming, full, sensual Earth has passed from beneath myfeet forever.
"But it was past. For me nothing was left behind when Martha had gonebefore. The future for me was the pilgrimage through worlds for her lostface. The sum and substance of a world's growth, of the unintermittentand heraldic progress of the soul was union with her. And deeper in myconvictions than science or faith or desire, lay the consciousness of mysure approach.
"Again the evening fell. We arrived at the entrance of a gloomy andstupendous gorge. It was the wonderful passage driven through the firstarea of igneous rocks before we reached the quarry country of theTiniti. It pierced the dark and stubborn dike that rose in sheer wallslike the Palisades on the Hudson, 1,000 and 1,200 feet above our heads,and it seemed that the darkening tide was carrying us into the bowels ofthe sphere. As the precipitous walls rose on either side, a loud report,followed by another more muffled, startled us. Looking upward, Chapman,shouting '_Golki, tanto_,' with outstretched hand pointed to a flamingmissile passing over our heads, and apparently in the direction we wereheading.
"It was a meteor. It was just such a phenomenon as we know of on theEarth. I felt certain that it was a bolide from space, one of thosefiery visitors of stone and iron that collide occasionally with ourEarth, and that somewhere before us, in the country we were approaching,it would be found.
"Later a few straggling shooting stars appeared. The languor of fatigueovercame me, and I slept prostrate on the cushions of the deck as themurmurous reverberations from the walls of the rock-bound canal rose andfell, with the cadence of the waves, splashing softly against theirfeet.
"I dreamt of the Earth, the pictures naturally recalled, by thesesurroundings, of my life on the Hudson River in New York, and it seemedso real, that I should find myself with you working away in the oldlaboratory at Yonkers near the Albany Road. Suddenly I was shaken, andopening my eyes I beheld the firmament of heaven falling in coruscatingcascades about us. Starting up, I found myself clutching Chapman, whohad called to the pilot to stop the boat. A few of the attendants weregrouped near us, and the loudly suppressed exclamations made me realizethat these visitations were perhaps infrequent upon Mars.
"It was a meteoric shower, like our leonids in November. It rainedpellets or balls of fire, these phosphorescent trains gleamingspectrally, while a kind of half audible crackling accompanied the fall.Shooting in irregular shoals or volleys, they would increase anddiminish, and
recurrent explosions announced the arrival at the groundof some meteoric mass.
"It was a marvellous and splendid scene. It lasted till the dawn. Weremained almost unchanged in position, while the tiny comets crowded thesky with their uninterrupted march, and the air was shot through withintermingled lanes of light.
"As the morning broke, we had passed the great gorge in the canal, andhad entered a wild, savage, almost treeless country. Great weatheredcolumns of rock stood alone in the debris of their own dismemberment,the bare gray or rusty and jagged expanses sloping up steeply from theedge of the canal, sparingly dotted over with gray bushes, and coveredwith an ashen colored lichen.
"The scene was here forbidding and desolate. We moved for miles throughthe waste of a ruined world. The whole region had been the stage ofgreat volcanic activity, and the monticules of scoriaceous rock, thebroad plains excavated with deep pools that reflected their dismal,untenanted borders in the black depths of unruffled water, spoke ofmeteorological conditions long prolonged and intense. It was a weird,strange place, silent and dead. But amongst these vast ejections, thesetruncated fossil craters were embedded masses of the rare self-luminousstone that made the City of Light. Chapman told me how in pockets orhuge amygdaloidal cavities, this white phosphorescent substance wasquarried, brought up bodily perhaps in the slow upheaval of the regionfrom the deep-seated sources of this mineral flood.
"The canal passed along for miles in the depression between two folds ofthe surface. Finally, gazing ahead, there slowly came into view a huge_rictus_, a gaping rent in the side of the black and gray and red wallsto our right, and a minute movement of living forms, scarcelydiscernible, revealed the first quarry near the little town of Sinsi.
"As we drew nearer I descried a slant incline from the open excavationdown which the blocks of stone were slid. They were brought to thesurface by hoisting cranes, and just as our little porcelaincockle-shell glided to the dock, an enormous fragment rudely shaped intoa cubical form, was moving down the metal road bed to the edge of thecanal.
"Here we landed, and a crowd of people hailed us, and amongst them weremany of the prehistoric people, the short, sturdy brown or coppercolored northerners who work in the quarries and mines. It wasnightfall. Their day's work was over, and they crowded around us withinterest. They were good-natured, but quiet, and dressed in a kind ofoveralls that was made in one garment from head to feet.
"Chapman pushed amongst them, followed by me. We made our way to apleasant house, built of the quarried volcanic rock, alternating withthe white stone of the quarry, and covered with an almost flat roof ofthe blue metal. In this house we were received by the Superintendent ofQuarries, a supernatural, who still retained a mechanical aptitude,brought with him from the earth. The greetings were pleasant, and as theSuperintendent spoke his former earth language, which had been French,we got along intelligibly.
"The rooms of this house were large, square apartments, simply furnishedwith the white chairs, tables and couches I had seen in the City ofLight, but on its walls were drawings and photographs of the quarry, thecountry, and groups of the workmen. Amongst the pictures were somewonderful large scenes of an ice country, and the lustrous high wall ofa gigantic glacier. I pointed these out to Chapman. He told me that tothe north of the mountains lay the great northern sea, in winter a seaof ice, and that from continental elevations within it glacial massespushed outward, invading the southern country. A road led over themountain from Sinsi to regions beyond, where there were fertileintervals and plains inhabited by populations of the small, early peoplewe had met.
"Here were their settlements, from which the workmen of the quarries hadbeen brought. Beyond this again lay the margins of the polar sea. TheSuperintendent--his name was Alca--had visited this region, and probablymade the pictures I wondered at. The Superintendent said we should visitthe great quarry in the morning before we started again for Scandor. Andhe showed us, as the darkness descended about us, a marvellousphenomenon. Standing on the roof of his house, we looked up the mountainside to the immense opening forced in its flank, and it had become agreat surface of palpitating, rising and falling light. The waves ofglorious soft radiance bathed the village about us, the waters of thecanal, and the arid crusts of rock beyond, the circle of encompassingdarkness straining like a great black wall, on its spent edges.
"Song and music closed the day, and after eating the wine-soaked cakesof Pintu, we made our way to the white and simple bedchamber and waitedfor the morning.
"It came, fresh and splendid. The air of this latitude of Mars is sopure, vivid and dustless! My strength and power and vitality seemedboundless. And as in the broad mirror of my bedchamber I viewed myreflection, I leaped with wonder to see the youth I had been, formedanew in lineaments, fairer than Earth's. My son, I have become youngerthan yourself, age has vanished, and all the restraint of differingyears between has vanished with it.
"Alca, Chapman and myself, as is the Martian habit, walked to the quarrymouth, up a winding and hard stone road. This dreary and desolate regionseemed to have a charm. Its expanse of rigid waves of stone, pimpledwith sharp excrescences, and as deeply pitted with cavernous grottoes,where no life seemed able to survive, save a stunted herbage, sparselyassembled in vagrant groups, or gathered in thirsty lines around the lipof the still pools, was full of scenic interest, but more deeplyeloquent of great geological convulsions.
"Chapman and Alca were in front of me, speaking the Martian tongue,while I stood looking backward every few steps, delighted to trace thebroad river of the canal winding through the desolation for milesbeyond. Then I noticed how rapid and effortless is motion in Mars.Volition is so easy and penetrating, the body becomes a mere playthingfor the mind. Every function, every part is swayed into vitality by themind. There is the apparent motion of the limbs, but really the wholeframe sweeps on as by an intangible process of translation, and the bodyis transferred to the point the mind desires it to reach almost withoutfatigue. This gives strength exactly proportioned to Will, and the shornpowers of disease and Time proceed from the creative faculty of thought.The disabling of the body in Mars by weakness or disease, or accident orage, sprang front a mental discord, an emotional dissonance. Here wasthe explanation of those disorders that still cling to the Martian life.In this lay also the secret of crime.
"I looked upward to Chapman, who was then peering with hand raised tohis eyes at some object before him which the Superintendent had pointedout, and I felt sorrowful that he should be in disagreement with thislife. It boded ill. I had begun to love Chapman, and the first sense ofsuffering I had felt seemed now awakened at the thought of harm comingto him.
"But there was no time for meditation. Chapman and Alca were lookingbackward and shouting. They beckoned with their arms, and as I gazed Isaw between them, and ahead of them a great black object, about which anumber of the little workmen were running excitedly like a swarm ofants. I leaped to their position. Chapman exclaimed: 'You remember themeteor we saw. Well, there it is.'
"Extended like a gigantic and deformed missile lay an iron meteoritebefore us, the same thing as the Siderites that appear in your Museumson Earth. It was yet warm, a crevice spread down into its interior, andit had apparently rolled from the spot of its first impact, since ahammered side, abraded and worn on the hard rock, lay uppermost. It borethe significant pits, thumb-marks and depressions of the terrestrialobjects, while streaming striations spread from its front breast wherethe iron in melting had run like tears over its surface. It measuredsome four feet in length, and must have weighed many tons.
"Then a curious thing happened, or seemed to happen. Alca, theSuperintendent, advanced to it, and bending against it withoutstretched arm, muttered a few words, frowned as if in concentratedthought, and--was it credible--the iron object moved. I looked aghast atChapman, who turned away with what I dismally interpreted was anexpression of disgust. I pressed up close to him, and he murmured, 'Wasthat a miracle? If it was I should like to get back to common sense andjack-screws.'
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"We continued upward, and now the terrific gulf piercing the ground forover two terrestrial miles yawned at our feet. The steep precipice, lostin a twilight dusk below, was disconcerting. The blocks of stone werehoisted from the gigantic pit by hoists worked by hand. Here is one ofthe anomalies of this existence in Mars. Electrical science and itsapplication is understood, great stores of mechanical experience andwisdom can be drawn on, and yet in most of the mechanical work, handwork, the toilsome method of the Pharaohs of Egypt prevails. There areno railroads or trolleys or steam vehicles. The boats are driven byexplosive engines, and there are electric carriages of velocity andpower. But the latter are infrequent. The canals are numerous,especially about Scandor, and the great trunk canals are broad avenuesof traffic.
"The intense swift motion of the Martians meets their needs in mostcases. Where hard labor on a mammoth scale is necessary, the little raceof _prehistorics_ serves all their purposes. The canals are their greatengineering feats, and the wonderful telescopes, their triumphs inapplied science, their knowledge of the transmutation of theelements,--their greatest intellectual victory,--and Scandor, the Cityof Glass, their architectural gem and miracle.
"We stood in a line gazing upon the receding roof of the great cavern,the heavy walls left like buttresses to hold up the overlying mountainridge, and the tiny figures dimly swarming on the distant floor.
"The quarry extends far in under the ridge. Much barren rock is takenout, for the Phosphori rock occurs variously in masses, layers,lenticles, and almond shaped inclusions in the igneous matrix.
"We were to descend, but before we did so the Superintendent led us tothe summit of the ridge. From here, with a superb hand telescope, wegazed up a distant land beyond the volcanic area we had surmounted,occupied by farms and villages. It was the North country where theprehistorics dwelt. It seemed peaceful and attractive. Beyond this againwe just discerned the shimmering surface of the Great Glacier, thesuperb train of ice, that comes southward in the winter, and encroacheseven upon some of the exposed margins of the land of the prehistorics.Its retreat is rapid in the warm season, and its broad tract is brokenby emergent backs of rocks and land, that are seamed with wild flowers.The Martians travel to these oases in the Ocean of Ice, and it is fromthese flowers that an entrancing perfume is extracted, of which theMartians are extremely fond.
"We lingered on this pinnacle of rock and surveyed a prospect on eitherside of contrasted and great interest. The land of the Zinipi north ofus resembled the fertile hill and valley country of the Genesee River inwestern New York, the great region south of us a combination of theSnake River country in Idaho, and the fissured ranges of the SilvertonQuadrangle in Colorado.
"Between these rose this high partition of castellated rock.
"We descended again to the mouth of the quarry, and, led by theSuperintendent, were swung far out from its dizzy sides into the lake ofair between them upon a platform, used for an aerial elevator. Chapmanclung nervously to me, and complained of a light nausea and dread. Ifelt only a tonic exhilaration, and as we slowly sank through the shaftof air, crossed by sunlight for some distance, and then passed into thecooler shadows of its deeper parts, where the yet level sun failed topenetrate, I cried aloud with delight, and the abyss around us shoutedits salutation back.
"Still we descended, and soon saw back in the deep prolongations of thetunnel the shining walls of this phosphorescent cave. The light glowedso effulgently that it seemed a soft radiant haze, through which camethe sound of voices, and in it black figures moved incessantly.
"The method of quarrying is not unlike that of the marble quarries onthe earth. Drilling long holes in and under the stone, which frompressure has assumed a rudely cubical cleavage, separates the rock intoheavy pieces. These holes are wedged, and the rocks forced off intouseful blocks. All is done by hand, and the picture of activity, withworkers constantly engaged at their various duties made a singularscene. We walked far into the ever deepening womb of the mountain, whileon either hand lateral tunnels, or rather avenues had been pushed,penetrating rich segregations wherever they had been traced, and wherealso glowed the welcome glow of this lithic lamp.
"The Superintendent explained that the stone was quite unequal inquality, and he told us how the illuminating power of the stone wasactually tested in what on the Earth we would call candle powers, butis known on Mars as Ki-kans, or a unit of light derived from a platinumwire one millimetre thick, carrying 100 volts current. We could see thevarying radiations, and came upon rayless sections, which from admixtureof impurities or imperfect chemical perfection, were deprived of allluminousness.
"Returning, it seemed as if in the sharp convulsions of the crust aflood of light had been somehow absorbed by the rock, and then thislight-saturated rock had been overwhelmed and buried out of sight, onlyto be painfully restored to its first home, in the open skies, by thelabor of men.
"But time was pressing. Chapman must reach Scandor, his envoy's errandwas important, and bidding the kind Alca good-bye, which the Martiansexecute by a kiss and an embrace, we came out again into the deep well,and gazed upward past the glistening precipices, irregular with littleledges, and over-reaching cavities, to the distant sky.
"And now a terrible calamity befell us. The Superintendent pointed out anarrow path that led circuitously around the great crags of rock to thetop. It was a narrow winding ledge, rising by a mild incline, andcircling the pit before it finally reached its brim. In parts it wasquite unprotected, but the extraordinary nerves of the men made theachievement of passing out or in the quarry by this means a very simpletest of endurance. Even as the Superintendent alluded to its use, a fileof dark figures was just above us, with soldierlike precision marchingdown to the level we occupied. Chapman banteringly asked me to try it,and I accepted the challenge, urging him to follow.
"We started up. At first the ascent was simple, and the view backwardjust a little exciting. We continued, and I noticed that the pathcontracted, and nervously looking on ahead, was startled to find itbroken with short gaps, which must be crossed by jumping. I had felt thevague premonitions about Chapman increasing, and somehow, by thatintuition which becomes prophetic, in this semi-etherealizedconstitution of our bodies and minds, in Mars, I knew an impending blowhung over us.
"I looked back and saw Chapman gravely following me. The cheer andlaughter had disappeared from his face, the jesting gayety had fled, andhe seemed enfeebled. I hastened to him, and he raised his face with areassuring smile.
"'Dodd,' he said, 'I am dizzy. I feel strangely here,' and he felt hisforehead. 'I wonder that it is so. But come! Don't be frightened. Itwill pass over.' He pushed me from him. For an instant we stood andgazed around us. Far up we saw the outer sunlight beating on the barrenexposures of the mountain, around us was black excavated rock, and belowthe shining walls, faintly blue and pink.
"'Chapman,' I said, 'let us go back. The hoists will take us out.''Folly,' was the answer. 'I shall be all right. Why, a Martian has nophysical weakness or dread. Come, Dodd, you have not yet acquired theMartian defiance of accident, disease, or death. You are sneaking backunder the cover of fear for me.'
"His voice seemed peevish. I looked at him with wonder. He leaped pastme, with a forced agility, and sprang on upward. I followed withlightness born of thought, with which the true Martians move.
"On, on, we sped. The narrowing path carried us up until one of thosegaps I had noticed came in view. Chapman stopped, and then hearing myapproaching steps, ran forward and jumped. His calculation and strengthwere yet secure and adequate. He safely passed the first break in thepathway, and, as I crossed it with a wide leap, we both still sped onupon an even narrower shelf, which also was more steeply inclinedabout the jutting prominences of the rocky cliff.
"The next gap was reached, and now the edge of the succeeding length ofpathway was not only farther away, but higher up. Chapman, I could seeimperfectly, because of a slim projection in my way, had reached thelower side, and, hesitatingly, drew backw
ard. It was his preparation forthe leap. He launched forward. I rushed precipitately upward, feelingthe air about me vibrating, it seemed, with an impending disaster.Chapman had landed on the further side of the break, but the cruel,treacherous rock crumbled beneath his impact, and I saw his staggeringform turning backward. Another instant and his descending body was belowme, plunging to the floor of the abyss. I turned, and then, my son, Ifelt the marvel of the mind's creative power over matter. I wishedmyself at the bottom of the quarry where Chapman had fallen, andalthough the movement of the translation down the pathway seemedapparent, yet I was scarcely parted from him an instant before I wasstanding and leaning over him in a group of astonished workmen, at thevery spot where he lay. He was conscious, but gravely injured. I kneltbeside him, and as I raised his head upon my knee, he looked up, and hislips moved; at first he was inarticulate, but soon his words becameaudible and intelligent.
"'Dodd,' he said, 'this ends me for Mars. Take the papers to the Councilat Scandor. They are in the cabin in my desk. They are sealed. I knowthere is a celestial runaway that is going to strike this planet. Ioverheard that much at the Patenta. And its direct path, the point ofimpingement, will be at Scandor. The fires ascending from Scandor aresignals that they, too, have divined the disaster. I think so at least!Hurry on! You may see the strangest phenomenon eyes have ever seen. But,Dodd, enough of that. I am turned down for this world. I was not inagreement, as the philosophers call it, and the true mental Martianimmunity from accident was not in me. I am injured mortally.'
"He groaned and tried to rise, but his crushed body was incapable. TheSuperintendent, Alca, had hurried to the spot where the crowding menstood around us ejaculating their amazement. Alca tore open the garmentabout Chapman, and placing his forehead on the body, poured out as itwere, the full tide of his mental sympathy and power.
"I could see the struggle between the mortality of Chapman, born ofdoubt, and his unfittedness and apathy, and the spiritual power of thebrave Superintendent. The flame of life in Chapman would be stimulatedor excited, and then flicker and die down. These alterations lasted buta short time. Soon Chapman passed into stupor, and then deathsupervened, and the strange and seldom known circumstance of death amongthe supernaturals in Mars was realized.
"Alca kept the body of Chapman, which would be sent back to the City ofLight, and cremated in the Temple of Glorification--which I have notseen. He intended to accompany it. He sent me on to Scandor. I had nowlearned enough of the Martian language to speak, imperfectly. Thatmental facility, which is the amazing and most wonderful thing in Mars,was perhaps more slowly roused in me. But daily I became known, and morealert and inflamed with thought and the eager intuition of the Martians.
"We started from the great Quarry of Sinsi, and I was alone with theMartians on the porcelain boat, now made by this tragic fate theambassador from the City of Light to the Council in Scandor.
"The sterile, sinister and yet marvellous region of lava beds, dikes andconic craters suddenly was passed, and the canal moved into the hugeforest lands of the Ribi wood.
"This is a beautiful land. Mountain ranges rising from four to sixthousand feet cross it, holding broad valleys and plains, or elevatedplateaus between them; lakes and rivers pass through it, and villagesand towns with a mixed population of the supernaturals and theprehistorics are frequent. The canals cross the great region in manydirections. The trunk line I followed was carried up and down by systemsof locks of astounding magnitude and perfection. Great lakes were madeconvenient feeders, and rivers were also tapped to keep the water levelsconstant in the canals. The weather was that of a semi-tropicalparadise, and the late flowers of the Ribi filled the air withfragrance.
"Quickly we approached Scandor. It was a clear, calm day when we emergedfrom the Ribi country, and the pilot pointed out to me the distanthills, almost purple in a twilight haze, which encircled the Valley ofthe City of Scandor. The country we had entered was a fertile farmcountry, where great plantations of the Rint, and vineyards of the Omagrapes were established, and where great flocks of the Imilta dove,almost the only meat eaten by the Martians, are raised. The enormousflocks of this snow-white bird were strangely beautiful. They madeclouds in the air, and their purring notes when they settled in whiteblankets over the fields, were heard pulsating over long distances.
"Finally we came to the last tier of locks at the summit of which mycuriosity was to be satisfied by a view of the great City of Scandor,the City of Glass.
"It was night when our china boat floated upon the waters of the lastlock that completed the ascent, and immediately below the observatoryStation or Settlement of Scandor. I was standing on the deck of theboat, watching impatiently the slowly rising tide upon which we wereborne upward. I could at first see as we ascended the towers of theobservatory station. Above me, looking at us with interest, on the wallsof the lock, was a company of Martians. The night was cloudy, and thelights of the hastening satellites were but intermittently evident.Gradually my head passed upward beyond the obstructing interference ofwall and gate and fence, and the glorious and unimaginable splendor ofthe City of Scandor, like some monstrous continental opal, lay before mein the immediate valley.
"The glistening panes of water below me marked the places of thedescending line of locks. Around me were the buildings of the ScandorObservatory, and to the right and left swept the forested slopes of acircular range which, as I later saw, ranged about in oneamphitheatrical circuit the, great vale of Scandor. But only aninstant's glance could be spared for this detail. The divine Cityglowing below me seemed to magnetize attention, and control, through itswonderfulness each wavering attitude of interest. My son, the eye of mannever beheld so astonishing a picture. Imagine a city reaching twentymiles in all directions built of glass variously designed, interruptedby tall towers, pyramids, minarets, steeples, light, fantastic andbeautiful structures, all aflame, or rather softly radiating a variouslycolored glory of light.
"Imagine this great area of building, penetrated by broad avenues,radiating like the spokes of a wheel from a center where rose upward tothe sky a colossal amphitheatre. Imagine these roads, delineated to theeye by tall chimneys or tubes of glass through which played an electriccurrent, converting each one into a lambent pillar. Imagine betweenthese paths of greenish opalescence the squares of buildings of domed,arched and castellated roofs, pierced and starred, and spread in linesand patterns of white electric lamps. The noble proportions of thelarger buildings, the graceful outlines of turreted or campanulateerections, and the smaller houses were all defined. I could see canalsor rivers of water winding through the City spanned by arches of flame,and even the symmetrical disposition of the dark-leaved trees wasvisible.
"But the night was still further turned to day, for above the City, highin the velvet black empyrean were suspended thousands of glass balloons,each emitting the Geissler-like illumination that marked the lines ofstreets. So full and opulent was the flood of light, that the summit Ihad reached, the encircling hills, and the farther side of thesaucer-shaped valley where Scandor lay, were bathed in an equallydiffused radiation.
"But, as if the heavenly marvel might still further startle and amazeand charm me, from the City rose the swelling chords of choruses;billows of sound, softened by distance, beat in melodious surges on thehigh encompassing lands.
"I stood mute and transfixed. It seemed a beatific vision. If the veryair had been filled with ascending choruses of angels, if the darkzenith had opened and revealed the throne of the Almighty, it would haveseemed but a congruous and expected climax.
"Long I gazed, and slowly, very slowly became conscious of the greatnumbers of people about me, and that they were being augmented by newarrivals. The porcelain barge I had come in from the City of Light, wasmoored now to the side of the lock. I had disembarked, carrying almostmechanically in my hand, the chest in which the communications from thePatenta to the Council were locked.
"It was perhaps only a short interval before the pilot woke me from mytranc
e, saying in Martian: 'This is the Observation Hill of Scandor.These are Scandor's Observatories. I hear there is seen by the observerssome approaching danger in the heavens. These citizens of Scandor arecrowding from the City to hear the latest reports. There is a messengerfrom the Council here waiting on the observers. I will bring him to you,and you and the messenger can at once be conveyed to the Council.'
"I looked at him speechless, yet unable to again realize I lived andbreathed in another world. It seemed as if a sudden motion, a cry, awhisper even, would break the chrysalis of sleep about me, and plunge meinto void and nothingness.
"The pilot left me, and I saw him thread his way amongst the lines ofpeople, moving toward the dark walls of the observatory that covered thehill. At long intervals rockets rose from the opposite rim of the greatcircular ridge around the City, scarring the deep, inky vault about uswith lines of fire. They ascended to an enormous distance. Almostinstantly these were apparently answered by similar rockets in othercolors from the hill I stood on.
"There was a sudden movement about me. The pilot had returned. With himcame the messenger. I flung my absorption from me. I was a Martian. Thelight of recognition came back again to my eyes--my tongue was loosened,my senses accommodated themselves to the stupendous circumstances aboutme. I spoke first.
"'Mindo,' (the name of the pilot), 'I am ready to accompany my guide tothe City. Will you go with us?'
"'No! Heboribimo,' (your excellency), 'I must stay at the locks. I shalldescend to the City in the boat to-morrow. This man will bring you tothe canal. I advise haste. There is great excitement and dread inScandor. Mars is in the path of a comet.'
"I turned to my guide, a beautiful youth, not dressed as the citizens ofthe City of Light, but clothed in a tight fitting doublet of a creamyblue, with short trunks of yellow, and on his feet were sandals. Hesaluted me, and together we descended the broad boulevard between thewidely separated lustres that became more crowded as they massed like aprogressive deepening of color into the eddying splendors of the Cityitself.
"Again I realized how swift is motion in Mars. We wished to reach theCity, and we glided to it by the rapid propulsion of desire. The broadway was filled with lines and groups of peoples clustering to thehilltop--and over the far-reaching slopes I could see the awaitingthrongs. My guide pointed to the constellation of Perseus, and I coulddiscern a nebulous mass of considerable diameter from which proceeded awisp-like exhalation, just a phantasmal fan of phosphorescence, behindit.
"The glory of the City fell around us now; we were in its broad streetsbeneath the towering pillars of light that framed them in a fence ofsplendor. On we pressed, but I glanced from side to side, noting thegreat glass houses and buildings, here colonnades of translucentopalescent beauty, made up of hollow tubes of glass holding an interiorillumination, and clambered over by vines whose expanding leaves formeda tracery of silhouettes upon their sides.
"Still on, past porticos and under arches, through open forum-likesquares, from which were elevated the great glass globes I havedescribed, which hung lamp-like in the sky,--past palaces and arcades,blocks of low stores in iridescent tints, and long, straight fronts ofwhite opaque buildings, through occasional tunnels into which weplunged as into a sea of radiance, and on, out, past a few squares ofblack umbrageous trees that seemed like dead coals laid on the heatquivering hearth of a furnace, past minarets of curling, entwinedfilagrees of glass threads, past dull or darker areas where the hugeglass factories were built, their forges glowing like Cyclops' eyes inthe night, and from which was produced the colossal sum of manufacture,which this great City embodied.
"It was a strange bewilderment of marvels, and from it all, as if itwere its interior motive and cause, sprang light. It was electric inorigin, conveyed in some peculiar manner from a great source of power,in the high falls of Zenapa, near the City. But this I learned later.
"I divined that we were approaching the center of the city. Soon,indeed, I saw before me the sparkling walls of the amphitheatre I haddescried from the hill of Observation at the locks. Here it is, that thegreat plays, the gigantic concerts, the operas, and services of thePan-Tan are held. It was a seraphic, astounding picture. It rose in themidst of a great square of many acres in extent, where the light,purposely subdued, allowed its dazzling beauty subdued isolation. Howwonderful! I stopped. For one instant, before hurrying on, I gazed upona miracle of constructive and decorative art. One hundred columns of redglass rose upward, and between them was a wall, in tiers of green glassarches, and on the keystone of each a pink globe of fire. From thepillars sprang, in an inverted terrace formation, metallic brackets,carrying gorgeous chandeliers of a red bronze; the largest chandelierswere at the very upper edge of the building, and the cascade of lightthus shed upon the splendid fabric was indescribably magnificent.
"But there was small time for wonder or examination. We swept on throughthe shadowy gardens about it, and my guide quickly brought me to theHall of the Council, a low, inconspicuous building of yellow brick, oneof the few discordant architectural notes in the whole city.
"The doors of the single chamber, which embraced all the interior space,swung open, and I stood on the threshold of a shallow, rectangulardepression, surrounded on all sides with benches, and holding in itscentral area a long table, at which, beneath tall lamps, sat, perhaps, adozen men and one woman. Opposite to my point of view, in a niche uponthe further wall, was the colossal figure of the Deity I had seen in thePatenta at the City of Light.
"The faces of the twelve men turned to us as we entered. The heraldannounced my errand with the customary salutation of 'Hebori bimo.' Iwas invited to descend to the central table. I advanced, and layingChapman's chest, with its sealed communications upon the table, spoke:
"'I am a stranger. I have come to your world from the Earth. I bringnews, celestial news, from the astronomers of the City of Light. I had acompanion to whom all this was entrusted.' He was killed in the quarriesof Tiniti. I came on, bidden so to do by Alca, the Superintendent. Thepapers of the Wise Men of the Patenta are here.'
"I laid the chest upon the table. My speech was yet unformed, andperhaps upon the delicate and intellectual faces before me, there dwelt,with the transient influence of a passing thought, a smile of sympathyor amusement. Then a young being at the head of the table exclaimed inMartian:
"'Welcome, stranger. All who come to us are soon made one withourselves. The Martian spirit is that of salutation and friendship. Wehave heard of the discoveries in the new commotions in planetary space.Our own astronomers have announced them. This great City of Scandor, theproduct of many centuries' toil and invention, is apparently doomed. Itlies in the path, certainly defined and determined by observers, of asmall cometary mass, which will plunge upon it a rain of rock and iron.Even now this approaching body grows more and more visible in the sky.The astronomers are working at the problem, hoping some deflection, someinterpositional mercy will carry off this disturbing incidence. But ifwe are to be destroyed, if there is no escape from the singular fortuneof annihilation by an inrushing stream of meteoric bodies, then warning,through proclamation, shall be made, and our citizens will move out ofthe city to Asco, and the islands of Pinit.'
"He ceased; upon him the expectant faces of the others, assembled aboutthe table, were fixed, and a visible tremor of dismay and grief seemedto convulse them. A few covered their faces with their hands, othersstood up and gazed at the benignant colossus in bronze at the end of theroom, while others, motionless, still maintained their attitude ofattention.
"The presiding officer, with a slight inclination of the body, raisedhis hand, and addressing me, said: 'You shall be the guest of our City,and if it must be that this great capital of Mars must succumb to thismysterious invasion, if this place, so long a marvel of beauty, shallbe succeeded by a heap of burning stones, then you shall be ourcompanion in pilgrimage. Remain with us until the end of this strangecircumstance is known.'
"As he finished, a noise of indescribable lamentation from
a multitudeof voices broke upon our ears--the sound of running feet and sharp criesof amazement, crashed in upon the half ominous silence about us.
"I turned instinctively to my guide. He stood statue-like beside me,with a stealing pallor crossing his face, and then, the doors of theapartment swung open, and loud voices were heard crying, 'The Perilcomes. Stand forward. To the Hills!'
"Panic, that nameless associated mental terror of the unknown and theimpending, which on Earth spreads fever-like through multitudes, hadarisen amongst the Martians, and hurrying crowds were hastening in awild retreat from the City to the hills.
"All thought of the Council, of my errand, or of the new relation I hadbeen graciously accorded, disappeared from my mind. Frightened by thesudden premonition of destruction, bewildered by the torrent of newsensations, and even yet only half confident that my existence in thenew world was altogether real, I was impelled to spring forward.Reaching the doors, hands shot out around me, and I was swept in thetide of running forms.
"It was a living stream of manifold complexity. Only for one moment didI lose consciousness. The next I was struggling to escape from thespreading tentacles of this involved current. I leaped to the projectionof a low pedestal, upon which an unfinished construction or group ofstatues was in progress. Holding my exposed position for an instant, Iwrenched myself clear of the pulsating throngs, and succeeded in gainingthe low summit above me. Here I was free to look around me. My guide wasgone, the Council House was lost to view; I was alone. Below passed thesurging crowd, made up of youths and girls, with few older men or women,many beautiful, all expressing the Martian distinction, but nowstrangely bewildered and uncontrolled. It was a reversed emotionalpicture from that buoyant, frenzied throng that a few weeks ago carriedme into the Hall of the Patenta.
"Faces were turned toward the sky, and hands, as if in ejaculation, werewaved up and down, or thrust in significant indices toward that fatalblurred blot of splendor in the heavens. I followed their direction. Theapproaching nebula had grown sensibly since an hour ago. It glittered,the size of a shield, and a light coruscation seemed emanating from itsedges. The faces of the multitude were justified. The mass above us wasa train of celestial missiles, hurling toward Mars. Its contact seemedmore and more imminent. I felt a nameless terror. The thought ofisolation in this new world, the unknown awfulness of this planetarydisturbance, the sudden extinction of the hopes that were feeding myheart with a new life, and the forecasting of the impossible agonies ofuniversal death in this great, strange place I had so wonderfullyentered, overcame me. I fell sobbing to the glassy floor on which I wasstanding. It was again a new proof of my assumption of the ecstaticnature of these children of light and music, impulse and inspiration.
"The convulsion passed. I felt stronger, and was quickened with a keenlyprudent determination to escape from the city, find my way back to theHill of Observation, and if possible, send you, my son, my lastexperience before all had become silence.
"I could see the regular ascent of the rockets from the distant hill. Ifound the streets about me almost emptied, the white, lustrous river oflife had passed. I descended to the pavement. The way past the splendidAmphitheatre was easily found, and then I hastened, guided by a dumbinstinct of direction, toward the still ascending rockets. I came tothe broad Boulevard which led to the Hill of Observation, and went on,now plainly controlled by the sweeping avenue of lamps about, and infront of me.
"I shall not pause to recount the success of my application to theastronomers to use the transmitters of the wireless telegraphy, whichare as fully perfected here as at the City of Scandor.
"As my message ends, the dawn ascends from the wide margins of the Ribicountry. I am stunned with drowsiness. The Sun's rays have extinguishedthe scintillant peril in the skies. But the order has gone forth toleave the City, to camp upon the hills, the City of Scandor is doomed,and the area of destruction it embraces is the diametral measure ofthe----"
I heard no more. Overcome with fatigue, exposure and increasingpulmonary weakness, of which I had had painful premonitions, I faintedat the table, and fell to the floor of the damp and inclement room.
My assistants aver that the transmission ceased almost the next momentupon my collapse, and the unfinished sentence of my father's message canbe readily understood as implying that the foreign body, or Swarm,which was destined to strike Mars, had been determined as having aboutthe amplitude of the City of Scandor.
Days lengthened into weeks, weeks to months, but though unflinchinglywatched by night and day, no further message was received. I had becomeweaker, pale and lifeless. The terrible malady made its inroads upon aframe unable to meet its savage or insidious attacks. This weakness wasaggravated by the excitement produced by the singular experience I hadpassed through. My nerves had undergone a strain quite unusual, and theinterior sense of elation, reacting its fits of extreme mentaldespondency dislocated my system, and accelerated the gliding virus ofdisease inundating the capillaries of circulation and breaking down thetissues with fever and consumption.