Across the Zodiac (49 page)

"Rescind our contract," she insisted, pleading, with the overpowering
vehemence of a love absolutely unselfish, against love's deepest
instincts and that egotism which is almost inseparable from it; giving
passionate utterance to an affection such as men rarely feel for
women, women perhaps never for men. "Divorce me; force the enemy to
believe that you have broken with my father and with his Order; and,
favoured as you are by the Sovereign, you will be safe. Give what
reason you will; say that I have deserved it, that I have forced you
to it. I know that contracts
are
revoked with the full approval of
the Courts and of the public, though I hardly know why. I will agree;
and if we are agreed, you can give or withhold reasons as you please.
Nay, there can be no wrong to me in doing what I entreat you to do. I
shall not suffer long—no, no, I
will
live, I will be happy"—her
face white to the lips, her streaming tears were not needed to belie
the words! "By your love for me, do not let me feel that you are to
die—do not keep me in dread to hear that you have died—for me and
through me."

If it had been in her power to leave me, if one-half of the promised
period had not been yet to run, she might have enforced her purpose in
despite of all that I could urge;—of reason, of entreaty, of the
pleadings of a love in this at least as earnest as her own. Nay, she
would probably have left me, in the hope of exhibiting to the world
the appearance of an open quarrel, but for a peculiarity of Martial
law. That law enforces, on the plea of either party, "specific
performance" of the marriage contract. I could reclaim her, and call
the force of the State to recover her. When even this warning at first
failed to enforce her submission, I swore by all I held sacred in my
own world and all she revered in hers—by the symbols never lightly
invoked, and never, in the course of ages that cover thrice the span
of Terrestrial history and tradition, invoked to sanction a lie;
symbols more sacred in her eyes than, in those of mediæval
Christendom, the gathered relics that appalled the heroic soul of
Harold Godwinsson—that she should only defeat her own purpose; that I
would reclaim my wife before the Order and before the law, thus
asserting more clearly than ever the strength of the tie that bound me
to her and to her house. The oath which it was impossible to break,
perhaps yet more the cold and measured tone with which I spoke, in
striving to control the white heat of a passion as much stronger as it
was more selfish than hers—a tone which sounded to myself unnatural
and alien—at last compelled her to yield; and silenced her in the
only moment in which the depths of that nature, so sweet and soft and
gentle, were stirred by the violence of a moral tempest....
A marvellously perfect example of Martial art and science is furnished
by the Observatory of the Astronomic Academy, on a mountain about
twenty miles from the Residence. The hill selected stands about 4000
feet above the sea-level, and almost half that height above any
neighbouring ground. It commands, therefore, a most perfect view of
the horizon all around, even below the technical or theoretic horizon
of its latitude. A volcano, like all Martial volcanoes very feeble,
and never bursting into eruptions seriously dangerous to the dwellers
in the neighbouring plains, existed at some miles' distance, and
caused earthquakes, or perhaps I should more properly say disturbances
of the surface, which threatened occasionally to perturb the
observations. But the Martialists grudge no cost to render their
scientific instruments, from the Observatory itself to the smallest
lens or wheel it contains, as perfect as possible. Having decided that
Eanelca was very superior to any other available site, they were not
to be baffled or diverted by such a trifle as the opposition of
Nature. Still less would they allow that the observers should be put
out by a perceptible disturbance, or their observations falsified by
one too slight to be realised by their senses. If Nature were
impertinent enough to interfere with the arrangements of science,
science must put down the mutiny of Nature. As seas had been bridged
and continents cut through, so a volcano might and must be suppressed
or extinguished. A tunnel thirty miles in length was cut from a great
lake nearly a thousand feet higher than the base of the volcano; and
through this for a quarter of a year, say some six Terrestrial months,
water was steadily poured into the subterrene cavities wherein the
eruptive forces were generated—the plutonic laboratory of the
rebellious agency. Of course previous to the adoption of this measure,
the crust in the neighbourhood had been carefully explored and tested
by various wonderfully elaborate and perfect boring instruments, and a
map or rather model of the strata for a mile below the surface, and
for a distance around the volcano which I dare not state on the faith
of my recollection alone, had been constructed on a scale, as we
should say, of twelve inches to the mile. Except for minor purposes,
for convenience of pocket carriage and the like, Martialists disdain
so poor a representation as a flat map can give of a broken surface.
On the small scale, they employ globes of spherical sections to
represent extensive portions of their world; on the large scale (from
two to twenty-four inches per mile), models of wonderfully accurate
construction. Consequently, children understand and enjoy the
geographical lesson which in European schools costs so many tears to
so little purpose. A girl of six years knows more perfectly the whole
area of the Martial globe than a German Professor that of the ancient
Peloponnesus. Eivé, the dunce of our housed hold, won a Terrestrial
picture-book on which she had set her fancy by tracing on a forty-inch
globe, the first time she saw it, every detail of my journey from
Ecasfe as she had heard me relate it; and Eunané, who had never left
her Nursery, could describe beforehand any route I wished to take
between the northern and southern ice-belts. Under the guidance
afforded by the elaborate model abovementioned, all the hollows
wherein the materials of eruption were stored, and wherein the
chemical forces of Nature had been at work for ages, were thoroughly
flooded. Of course convulsion after convulsion of the most violent
nature followed. But in the course of about two hundred days, the
internal combustion was overmastered for lack of fuel; the chemical
combinations, which might have gone on for ages causing weak but
incessant outbreaks, were completed and their power exhausted.

This source of disturbance extinguished in the reign of the
twenty-fifth predecessor of my royal patron, the construction of the
great Observatory on Eanelca was commenced. A very elaborate road,
winding round and round the mountain at such an incline as to be
easily ascended by the electric carriages, was built. But this was
intended only as a subsidiary means of ascent. Eight into the bowels
of the mountain a vast tunnel fifty feet in height was driven. At its
inner extremity was excavated a chamber whose dimensions are
imperfectly recorded in my notes, but which was certainly much larger
than the central cavern from which radiate the principal galleries of
the Mammoth Cave. Around this were pierced a dozen shafts, emerging at
different heights, but all near the summit, and all so far outside the
central plateau as to leave the solid foundation on which the
Observatory was to rest, down to the very centre of the planet, wholly
undisturbed. Through each of these, ascending and descending
alternately, pass two cars, or rather movable chambers, worked by
electricity, conveying passengers, instruments, or supplies to and
from the most convenient points in the vast structure of the
Observatory itself. The highest part of Ranelca was a rocky mass of
some 1600 feet in circumference and about 200 in height. This was
carved into a perfect octagon, in the sides of which were arranged a
number of minor chambers—among them those wherein transit and other
secondary observations were to be taken, and in which minor magnifying
instruments were placed to scan their several portions of the heavens.
Within these was excavated a circular central chamber, the dome of
which was constructed of a crystal so clear that I verily believe the
most exacting of Terrestrial astronomers would have been satisfied to
make his observations through it. But an opening was made in this
dome, as for the mounting of one of our equatorial telescopes, and
machinery was provided which caused the roof to revolve with a touch,
bringing the opening to bear on any desired part of the celestial
vault. In the centre of the solid floor, levelled to the utmost
perfection, was left a circular pillar supporting the polar axis of an
instrument widely differing from our telescopes, especially in the
fact that it had no opaque tube connecting the essential lenses which
we call the eye-piece and the object-glass, names not applicable to
their Martial substitutes. On my visit to the Observatory, however, I
had not leisure to examine minutely the means by which the images of
stars and planets were produced. I reserved this examination for a
second opportunity, which, as it happened, never occurred.

On this occasion Eveena and Eunané were with me, and the astronomic
pictures which were to be presented to us, and which they could enjoy
and understand almost as fully as myself, sufficiently occupied our
time. Warned to stand at such a distance from the central machinery
that in a whole revolution no part of it could by any possibility
touch us, we were placed near an opening looking into a dark chamber,
with our backs to the objects of observation. In this chamber, not
upon a screen but suspended in the air, presently appeared an image
several thousand times larger than that of the crescent Moon as seen
through a tube small enough to correct the exaggeration of visual
instinct. It appeared, however, not flat, as does the Moon to the
naked eye, but evidently as part of a sphere. At some distance was
shown another crescent, belonging to a sphere whose diameter was a
little more than one-fourth that of the former. The light reflected
from their surfaces was of silver radiance, rather than the golden hue
of the Moon or of Venus as seen through a small telescope. The smaller
crescent I could recognise at once as belonging to our own satellite;
the larger was, of course, the world I had quitted. So exactly is the
clockwork or its substitute adapted to counteract both the rotation
and revolution of Mars, that the two images underwent no other change
of place than that caused by their own proper motion in space; a
movement which, notwithstanding the immense magnifying power employed,
was of course scarcely perceptible. But the rotation of the larger
sphere was visible as we watched it. It so happened that the part
which was at once lighted by the rays of the Sun and exposed to our
observation was but little clouded. The atmosphere, of course,
prevented its presenting the clear, sharply-defined outlines of lunar
landscapes; but sea and land, ice and snow, were so clearly defined
and easily distinguishable that my companions exclaimed with
eagerness, as they observed features unmistakably resembling on the
grand scale those with which they were themselves familiar. The Arctic
ice was scarcely visible in the North. The vast steppes of Russia, the
boundary line of the Ural mountains, the greyish-blue of the Euxine,
Western Asia, Arabia, and the Red Sea joining the long water-line of
the Southern Ocean, were defined by the slanting rays. The Antarctic
ice-continent was almost equally clear, with its stupendous glacier
masses radiating apparently from an elevated extensive land, chiefly
consisting of a deeply scooped and scored plateau of rock, around the
Pole itself. The terminator, or boundary between light and shade, was
not, as in the Moon, pretty sharply defined, and broken only by the
mountainous masses, rings, and sea-beds, if such they are, so
characteristic of the latter. On the image of the Moon there
intervened between bright light and utter darkness but the narrow belt
to which only part of the Sun was as yet visible, and which,
therefore, received comparatively few rays. The twilight to north and
south extended on the image of the Earth deep into that part on which
as yet the Sun was below the horizon, and consequently daylight faded
into darkness all but imperceptibly, save between the tropics. We
watched long and intently as league by league new portions of Europe
and Africa, the Mediterranean, and even the Baltic, came into view;
and I was able to point out to Eveena lands in which I had traveller,
seas I had crossed, and even the isles of the Aegean, and bays in
which my vessel had lain at anchor. This personal introduction to each
part of the image, now presented to her for the first time, enabled
her to realise more forcibly than a lengthened experience of
astronomical observation might have done the likeness to her own world
of that which was passing under her eyes; and at once intensified her
wonder, heightened her pleasure, and sharpened her intellectual
apprehension of the scene. When we had satiated our eyes with this
spectacle, or rather when I remembered that we could spare no more
time to this, the most interesting exhibition of the evening, a turn
of the machinery brought Venus under view. Here, however, the cloud
envelope baffled us altogether, and her close approach to the horizon
soon obliged the director to turn his apparatus in another direction.
Two or three of the Asteroids were in view. Pallas especially
presented a very interesting spectacle. Not that the difference of
distance would have rendered the definition much more perfect than
from a Terrestrial standpoint, but that the marvellous perfection of
Martial instruments, and in some measure also the rarity of the
atmosphere at such a height, rendered possible the use of far higher
magnifying powers than our astronomers can employ. I am inclined to
agree, from what I saw on this occasion, with those who imagine the
Asteroids to be—if not fragments of a broken planet which once
existed as a whole—yet in another sense fragmentary spheres, less
perfect and with surfaces of much greater proportionate irregularity
than those of the larger planets. Next was presented to our view on a
somewhat smaller scale, because the area of the chamber employed would
not otherwise have given room for the system, the enormous disc and
the four satellites of Jupiter. The difference between 400 and 360
millions of miles' distance is, of course, wholly unimportant; but the
definition and enlargement were such that the image was perfect, and
the details minute and distinct, beyond anything that Earthly
observation had led me to conceive as possible. The satellites were no
longer mere points or tiny discs, but distinct moons, with surfaces
marked like that of our own satellite, though far less mountainous and
broken, and, as it seemed to me, possessing a distinct atmosphere. I
am not sure that there is not a visible difference of brightness among
them, not due to their size but to some difference in the reflecting
power of their surfaces, since the distance of all from the Sun is
practically equal That Jupiter gives out some light of his own, a
portion of which they may possibly reflect in differing amount
according to their varying distance, is believed by Martial
astronomers; and I thought it not improbable. The brilliant and
various colouring of the bands which, cross the face of the giant
planet was wonderfully brought out; the bluish-grey around the poles,
the clear yellowish-white light of the light bands, probably belts of
white cloud, contrasted signally the hues—varying from deep
orange-brown to what was almost crimson or rose-pink on the one hand
and bright yellow on the other—of different zones of the so-called
dark belts. On the latter, markings and streaks of strange variety
suggested, if they failed-to prove, the existence of frequent spiral
storms, disturbing, probably at an immense height above the surface,
clouds which must be utterly unlike the clouds of Mars or the Earth in
material as well as in form and mass. These markings enabled us to
follow with clear ocular appreciation the rapid rotation of this
planet. In the course of half-an-hour several distinct spots on
different belts had moved in a direct line across a tenth of the face
presented to us—a distance, upon the scale of the gigantic image, so
great that the motion required no painstaking observation, but forced
itself upon the notice of the least attentive spectator. The belief of
Martial astronomers is that Jupiter is not by any means so much less
dense than the minor planets as his proportionately lesser weight
would imply. They hold that his visible surface is that of an
enormously deep atmosphere, within which lies, they suppose, a central
ball, not merely hot but more than white hot, and probably, from its
temperature, not yet possessing a solid crust. One writer argues that,
since all worlds must by analogy be supposed to be inhabited, and
since the satellites of Jupiter more resemble worlds than the planet
itself, which may be regarded as a kind of secondary sun, it is not
improbable that the former are the scenes of life as varied as that of
Mars itself; and that infinite ages hence, when these have become too
cold for habitation, their giant primary may have gone through those
processes which, according to the received theory, have fitted the
interior planets to be the home of plants, animals, and, in two cases
at least, of human beings.