CHAPTER XVI
AN UNLIKELY STORY
"If the doctor," I said, "will pardon me, I will say, in relation tothe origin of meteorites, that our scientific men have held from timeto time many different theories. Some have believed that they areaggregations of metallic vapors which, meeting in the atmosphere,solidify there and fall, just as watery vapors solidify and come down inthe form of hailstones. Others have held that they are thrown out fromthe center of the earth by volcanic action; and others still that theyall came from the moon when her volcanoes were active. These lattertheories imply that the meteorites in immense quantities are revolvingaround the earth, and that occasionally they become entangled in heratmosphere and fall to the surface.
"And now, Thorwald, I am tempted to repay all your great kindness to uswith an act of ingratitude, nothing less than the relation of a story."
This rather foolhardy speech of mine made the doctor wince, and I am notsure but he began to fear that my mind was weakening in a new direction.But I had my own excuse for my action, which I felt that I could explainto him at some future time. The fact is, I was so disturbed in my mindabout Mona and was anticipating so much from meeting the so called Avis,that I thought I could never sit still all the morning and listen to adry scientific discussion. It seemed to me that I could stand it betterif I could do part of the talking myself, and so I took advantage of thesubject before us to propose relating an extravagant tale that I oncehad heard.
In contrast with the doctor's frowns, Thorwald showed a livelyappreciation and insisted that I should be heard.
"Not another word from me," he said, "till we have had the story."
With such encouragement, it was easy for me to proceed.
"I fear you will be disappointed," I said, "for what I have rashlycalled a story is only a fancy founded on the idea that the meteoriteswere at some time shot out of the volcanoes of the moon. I had it from afriend of mine, whose mind is evidently more open to the notion of lifein other worlds than is that of my companion here. As the story waswritten long before the moon came down to visit the people of theearth in their own home, the writer did not have the advantage of thediscoveries made by the doctor and myself, and it is well for me thatthe doctor's friend, Mona, is not here to disprove any of my statements.
"On account of the smaller volume of the moon, the attraction ofgravitation on its surface is only one-quarter that of the earth, and itis estimated that, if a projectile were hurled from the moon with two orthree times the velocity of a cannon ball, it would pass entirely beyondher attraction and be drawn to the earth, reaching it at the rate ofsome seven miles a second.
"Now we all know--this is the way the story runs--that the moon was onceinhabited by a highly intelligent race. They tell us it is a cold, deadworld now, not at all fit for inhabitants. But that is because its dayis passed. Being so much smaller than the earth it cooled off quicker,and its life-bearing period long since found its end. Men have oftenspeculated on the idea that our race will one day fail and the time comewhen the last generation shall pass away and leave the earth a bare andugly thing, to continue yet longer its lonely, weary journey around afailing sun. That day the moon has seen. That direful fate the race ofmoon men have experienced. Some poor being, the last of his kind, wasleft sole monarch of a dying world, and with the moon all before himwhere to choose, chose rather to die with the rest and leave his worldto cold and darkness.
"From our own experience we do not know how high a state of civilizationcan be reached by giving a race all the time that is needed. But we knowthat before the inhabitants of the moon passed off the stage they hadattained to the highest possible degree of intelligence. They beganexistence at a very low plane, developed gradually through long periodsof time--there has never been any haste in these matters--and when theyhad reached their maturity as a race of intellectual and moral beings,primitive man was just beginning on the vast undertaking of subduing theearth, a task not yet accomplished.
"The incident I propose to relate occurred in antediluvian times, whenthere were giants in the earth who lived a thousand years. Then matterreigned, not mind. It was the age of brawn. Everything material existedon a gigantic scale, and man's architectural works, rude in design butwell adapted for shelter and protection, were proportioned to his ownstature and rivaled the everlasting hills in size and solidity. And theyneeded something substantial for protection, for war was their businessand their pass time. They lived for nothing but to fight. It was brotheragainst brother, neighbor against neighbor, tribe against tribe; and theman who could not fight, and fight hard, had no excuse for living. Warwas not an art, but a natural outburst of brutal instincts. A giantglories in his strength and cultivates it as naturally as a bird itssong. But it is pleasant to consider the fact that as man's mentaland moral qualities have developed his body has become smaller. As thenecessity for that immense physical strength gradually passed away,nature, abhorring such unnecessary waste of material, applied to us herinexorable laws whereby a thing or a state of things no longer usefulslowly fades away, and our bodies accommodated themselves to newconditions.
"But in those early times men needed great physical strength and longlife to bring the world into subjection, and until that was done theycould give little attention to the cultivation of the finer qualitiesof their incipient manhood. They were handicapped by the fact that thelower animals had had the earth to themselves a few million years, moreor less, and no puny race could ever have driven them to the wall.
"At length, when the conflict was well nigh over, with victory in sight,men had abandoned the struggle and were using all their fierce strengthin fighting each other. This had been going on so long and with suchdeadly results that it seemed as if the race must be exterminated unlesssome superior power could step in from the outside and prevent it.
"We can easily understand that there was no such thing as science then.Men considered the sun, for example, only as a very useful thing whichbrought them light with which they could see their foe, and the moon asa mysterious object sent to make the night a little less dark. Sunand moon and shining stars were all set in the sky for them, and wentthrough their wonderful and complicated movements solely for theiramusement.
"But what was the real condition of things on the moon at thattime? Why, there was a race of people there of such intelligence andscientific attainments that they were seeing plainly enough everythingthat was taking place on the earth. This will not appear very strangewhen we consider our remarkable success in scanning the surface of themoon at the present day, and remember that the inhabitants of the moonwere then nearing the close of their history, and so at the height oftheir civilization.
"Yes, they had watched the coming of man upon the stage with the deepestinterest--with a neighborly interest, in fact--seeing in him the promiseof a companion race and one worthy of the magnificent globe which theycould see was so much larger than their own. Their powerful instrumentsenabled them to see objects on the earth as distinctly as we now seethrough our telescopes the features of a landscape a few miles distant.
"Keeping thus so close an acquaintance with man and all his works, theyrejoiced at every success he achieved over the lower forms of life, andgrieved at all his failures. Especially were they pained when he tiredof the conflict with his natural foe, and began to battle with his ownkind. As this inhuman strife continued, the folly and wickedness ofit roused to the fullest extent the interest and sympathy of themoon-dwellers, and they began to ask each other what they could do toput a stop to it. They themselves had long since given up war and hadeven outgrown all individual quarrels, and they could not endure withpatience what was then taking place right under their eyes. Butthey found it easier to declaim against the evil than to suggest anypractical method of stopping it. Although so near them in one sense, tothe other senses the field of conflict was some two hundred and fortythousand miles away.
"However, of what value is a high state of civilization if it cannothelp a neighboring world in
such an emergency as this? If they couldonly communicate in some way with men they could soon make themunderstand that it would be better for them to cease their fighting andfinish their legitimate work of subduing the lower forms of creation.But how to open communication! The problem long remained unsolved,the condition of things on the earth in the meantime growing worse andworse. At last it was suggested that a shot might be fired which wouldreach the earth. This was a bold suggestion, but it was well known thatthey had explosives powerful enough to carry a projectile beyond themoon's attraction, and no one could give any good reason why such aprojectile, being entirely free of the moon, should not reach the earthunder the power of gravitation. It was determined to try the experiment,and after due preparation, which was comparatively easy with theirfacilities, an enormous shot was hurled forth. It was large enough to beseen by the aid of their powerful telescopes as it sped on its way,and it was with intense interest that they saw it enter the earth'sattraction and finally strike the surface of that globe. Now that somuch had been accomplished, they saw immense possibilities before them.What they now wanted to do was to use their discovery to make men giveup their fighting and turn to the arts of peace.
"How could they do this? Some proposed that they should make hollowshot, fill them with Bibles and other books, and bombard the earth withgood precepts till men should learn and be tamed. But from their closeobservation of mankind the moon-dwellers knew they were too uncivilizedto get any good from books, and that they certainly could not learnwithout a teacher. Hence arose the suggestion that missionaries besent in place of books. As soon as this idea was broached thousands ofvolunteers offered themselves, and the plan would certainly have beenattempted if there had been the slightest possibility that one couldlive to reach the earth.
"The next proposal came from the medical profession. Long before thistime, when the inhabitants of the moon were sometimes governed by theirpassions and before the day of peace and good will had fully arrived, ithad been discovered that what was known as the pugnacious instinct wasonly a disease, bad blood in fact as well as in name, and a remedy hadbeen found for it. This was nothing less than the bi-chloride of comet.Small comets, such as we call meteorites, were picked up on the surfaceof the moon and put to this practical use. This medicine, administeredas an hypodermic injection, produced wonderful effects, the patient,although afflicted with the most quarrelsome disposition, becoming asmild and harmless as a lamb. However warlike one might be, a few days'treatment would take the fighting spirit out of him so completely thatthe mere doubling up his fists and placing them in front of his facewould make him feel ill. Peace societies got hold of the remedy andtried it on the soldiers of the standing armies with such success thatwar had to be abandoned because the men would not fight.
"And now the old recipe was brought out, a large quantity of themedicine manufactured, and bombs made and filled with it, each onecontaining full directions for its use written in Volapiik. These werefired to the earth, and, strange to say, the simple language was soonlearned, and the moon-dwellers had the satisfaction of seeing menrapidly metamorphosed into a peaceable, friendly race. Thus the moondirectly influenced and governed affairs on the earth. Looked at fromthat distance it seems to have been the most remarkable case of the tailwagging the dog that the earth had ever seen.
"But we may as well relate the sequel. The effect of the treatmentlasted only a few hundred years, and as it was the moon's policy neverto repeat a cure, men in time became as bad as ever again, and so atlast the flood had to come and wipe them off the face of the earth."