The Mammoth Book of New Jules Verne Adventures (23 page)

“I would say,” interrupted Michel Ardan, “that I wouldn’t make a blanket of it!”

In the hermetically-sealed shell, closed by an aluminium panel held fast by powerful pressure screws, we had nothing to fear from the lichen. We decided to shut ourselves up there and give ourselves time for several hours of rest, as we were beginning to suffer badly from sleep-deficiency.

We had (it seemed to me) hardly closed our eyes when a shock-wave shook the shell. Scraping noises reached us through the twelve-inch-thick walls, indicating the enormous force that was being exerted on the shell. The floor began to pitch. Without wishing it, had we provoked a landslide?

I threw myself towards the porthole and let out a cry of amazement: huge claws, shiny and black, had seized our dwelling. We were flying over the floor of a crater at an altitude of nearly a thousand feet.

“Look, out of the upper porthole!”

A phenomenal abdomen, segmented like that of an insect, was wavering close to the point of the shell and covered us completely with its shadow. Through one of the lateral portholes, we could see the beating of wings like cathedral windows, overhung by wing-cases as large as ships, and, finally, part of a head with globular eyes.

I imagined the extraordinary strength of this creature, which was able to lift the 19,250 pounds of the projectile . . . But no, I was forgetting that on the Moon one had to subtract five-sixths of this weight, which left 3,208 pounds. This still remained considerable, out of all proportion for any terrestrial animal,
a fortiori
an aerian one. To be sure, we were like Hercules in this world. But it was one inhabited by Titans.

“Can this monster have taken us for one of its eggs?” Michel Ardan asked.

No-one replied, for the animal, whose general form resembled that of a
Lucanus cervus
(a beetle commonly called a flying-kite), bent its flight towards a hole, hardly larger than the diameter of our shell. It deposited us in this rocky declivity with all the delicacy of an entomologist handling a rare specimen.

The fall into the shadows was brief and, against expectation, quite gentle. Michel Ardan stood up, pulling himself together.

“This time, I think we have well and truly arrived.”

3 The Selenites

“Here we are under the moon’s crust,” I murmured.

The portholes revealed the interior of a cavern some quarter of a mile in diameter, sealed above by a dome and pierced by holes where shadows moved. The prospect of being confronted by the larvae of a giant insectoid cooled our enthusiasm, but Michel Ardan remarked that there was nothing to be gained by remaining enclosed.

Barbicane opened the shutter and we stepped outside.

I cursed myself for not having brought a daguerreotype — or better still, a talbotype — to photograph the Selenite who was approaching us with the hopping gait of a bird. But the latter would doubtless not have allowed me to photograph it — something that was confirmed later on.

Perched on spindly legs, the Selenite was perhaps four feet high (which, by the way, reduced to nothing my theory that their size should have been in proportion to the mass of their globe, and consequently should not have exceeded one foot. Reality proved more complex: a Selenite could be either Lilliputian or Brobdingnagian, according to his role in society). It was a compact creature, which had much in common with a cockroach raised up on its back legs, from the chitinous integument that served simultaneously as skeleton, clothing, or armour, to the head capped by a helmet spiked with antennae above, and mandibles below. On its chest hung what I identified as a little fairground drum. The Selenite held out a truncated hand towards Barbicane. Automatically, the savant seized it . . . and gave it a vigorous handshake!

Visibly satisfied, the Selenite proceeded to tap on his drum. It only took me a few seconds to realize that the rhythm, had nothing in common with African tribal music, but was quite simply Morse code! This was the method this individual had found to compensate for its inability to articulate audible sounds. But it heard and understood everything we said to it.

I only had the vaguest notion of this codified language. Fortunately, Michel Ardan knew it, and agreed to act as interpreter.

“In the name of the people of the Moon . . . I bid you welcome . . . Soon we will be able to speak aloud.”

I don’t know whether the greatest surprise was that the Selenite expressed itself in perfect English, or that it shook each of us in turn by the hand. But the frontiers of the absurd had been crossed so long ago that we found all of this quite natural. Our guide emitted a trill through its mandibles, at the limit of audibility. Straight away another Selenite appeared, one of quite a different make-up, resembling a horse (carriage included) and a beetle.

“One would swear that its carapace had been moulded to hold us comfortably,” Ardan mumbled.

There was nothing to do but to seat ourselves on this unusual vehicle. The seats proved comfortable, endowed with rolls of chitin in the guise of armrests. The animal-vehicle set off by itself. It was silent and extremely fast. Barbicane entered into conversation with our guide, who replied without standing on ceremony. The Selenites comprised a united society, based on the perpetual progress of industry and aiming at the complete development of the Moon. They had learned our language by observing us through immense telescopes. These offered a magnification sufficient to scrutinize a fellow in the street, in London or in Peking, and to read his lips. Consequently, our arts, history and customs were by no means unknown to them. The Selenites had set up hundreds of such telescopes, spread across the surface of the Moon, which transmitted their received images with the aid of mirrors and projected them on to enormous public screens. A highly entertaining spectacle, no doubt.

It was in this way that they had had wind of our attempt to make a landing on the night star. Not wishing to be discovered, they had sent an asteroid designed to throw us off our linear trajectory. The manoeuvre had succeeded, but the plan had failed: they had hoped that we would use the shell’s rockets to return to Earth, yet the opposite had occurred, despite the second meteor that their pyrotechnicians had caused to explode some hundreds of miles ahead of the shell.

“But why should you wish to remain hidden at all cost?” Barbicane questioned.

The Selenite drummed in reply that the Great Planner judged that humanity was not ready for a fruitful exchange. In the light of past history, we had been compared to a rudderless ship that no longer responded. On the other hand, certain Selenites saw the appearance of a few frail barques, but our guide remained evasive on this point. It did, however, make a comment that left me thoughtful, and a little shocked: pursuing the marine analogy, some Selenites had formed the hypothesis that the visitors — ourselves, in fact — were “rats leaving the sinking ship”. Michel Ardan hastened to disabuse it. Moreover, added the Selenite, no representative of the feminine gender formed part of our expedition. I must admit that this point plunged us into embarrassment. Despite a few exceptions, science remained, and was destined to remain, a masculine affair.

Our curious equipage traversed a series of amphitheatres teeming with Selenites of different sizes, occupied with various tasks. The amphitheatre appeared to be at the heart of Selenite architecture, in imitation of the natural formations on the surface. They had known of electricity since time immemorial, and made abundant use of it. I wondered who this Great Planner could be, who was obeyed by thousands of creatures, each one different from the other.

We were quite rightly being taken to it. Before this, our equipage came to a halt in front of an incubator, a monstrous building pierced with holes of all sizes. A Selenite quite similar to the first came from it, to replace the latter.

This one was provided with a phonatory organ, a muddle of palpes and mandibles that produced a voice like an oboe. In the meantime, Michel, Impey, and I had worked out a system for naming the Selenites we met, from the noise of their carapaces as they moved. Thus, our new interpreter was called Krrak’ack.

“Krrak’ack . Good day,” said Krrak’ack with an upper-class English accent. “I am charged with taking you. to the Great Planner, so your fate may be decided.”

“Our fate?” repeated Ardan, with an imperceptible frown.

“It has not been decided whether it would be better to allow you to leave, or to keep you here. It is vital that our existence remain secret.”

“By my faith,” said Barbicane, “if the guest quarters are agreeable . . .”

Ardan and I jumped in at these words.

“It is out of the question! We are expected
below.
Our friends in the Gun Club would be inconsolable . . . and they would definitely send a rescue expedition!”

Krrak’ack seemed responsive to this argument, as far as the frantic ballet of his antennae revealed. The reproduction of this species, which manifested a stupefying intelligence in many respects, interested me greatly. This differed from that of all other species on Earth. Selenite scientists were able to take a standard egg (and they were all so) and modify the characteristics, be they physical or mental, of the young creature prior to birth. Krrak’ack had been conceived a few days before our arrival. His carapace was as fine and supple as a leather suit, for he would do no manual work. Thanks to his enlarged brain, his learning had been accelerated, and it had taken him only two hours to master English and to assimilate the rudiments of our culture. The Selenite vehicle that had transported us had been manipulated in the same manner. Its brain was no more than a ganglion of nerves, hardly bigger than a nut.

Their system of reproduction, or rather of production, assured the continuity of their society, as far as their descendants were concerned. Each individual corresponded to a metier, or sometimes even a specific task: there were Selenite hammers, and even Selenites in the form of gearwheels. The disproportionate beetle that had transported our shell had been conceived with this aim. Then it had died a natural death.

Perhaps one day, with the power of technology, mankind would be able to achieve the same result. Michel Ardan stared at me, horrified.

“And would you deny your humanity? I can hardly see myself in the skin of a Selenite-tool, sensible though it may be, for I have no such calling. At least not unless there exist Selenite adventurers!”

Krrak’ack ignored him.

“That is not quite accurate,” objected Barbicane, “The Selenites are tools, certainly, but also, and inextricably, blacksmiths.”

When I asked to visit one of these incubator-factories, in order to examine the marvellous machines that were able to model the foetus in the egg without killing it, Krrak’ack proved intractable. Michel Ardan had a saucy smile for my complaints.

“You Americans are astounded at nothing . . . Would you coldly display a man and a woman in the act of procreation just to satisfy the curiosity of a Selenite scientist visiting us?”

“Well . . . why not?”

This time, Ardan burst out laughing.

“All the same! Scientists are incorrigible, no matter what planet they come from. I had forgotten that you were lunatic by calling . . .”

I hardly paid attention to his joke, and forgot it quickly, as our equipage had begun its mad course again. All around us, Selenites were digging galleries and amphitheatres, making greenhouses where they cultivated a kind of cactus that produced quantities of air from the rocks. For me, this industrious civilization was a marvellous symbol of progress. The variety of the Selenites seemed inexhaustible.

We were surprised to see, in the middle of an amphitheatre, a life-size replica of the White House in Washington. And, further on, an Arc de Triomphe.

“Can they have discovered the means of transporting our monuments from the Earth to the Moon?” asked Barbicane, truly impressed.

We were all impressed. And even more so when Krrak’ack told us that all these monuments had been sculpted from giant gold-bearing nodules, extracted from the heart of the satellite. These gigantic masses were of gold! I immediately tried to exchange one of them for tools and instruments from the shell. Krrak’ack remarked without irony that Selenite science surpassed ours by far. Their capacity, in terms of invention and fabrication, out-measured American industrial genius (it’s quite true to say) by 100,000 times.

Michel Ardan had no more luck in his offer of the shrubs he had taken care to bring.

“In a few decades,” he said, “green prairies will stretch across the Moon.”

Krrak’ack declared himself tempted, but upon reflection declined the offer. The Moon’s gold could easily provoke a human invasion, such as that which was taking place at that very moment in the Western United States. We should not take anything from the Moon.

The vehicle stopped at the entry to a passage, where there stood an enormous machine.

4 The Philosophical Calculator

Barbicane — as the pyrotechnician he was — identified it as an “iron bullet”. It was a kind of spherical locomotive. There was no need for carriages, as a portion of the interior was fitted out with Spartan compartments. In place of bogeys, there were toothed wheels arranged around its circumference. No rails, but grooves cut all along a smooth passage, which served as a rail-track and a guide.

The passage plunged into the depths of the substratum. Barbicane and I asked Krrak’ack numerous questions, which he translated to the mechanic with much recourse to fluting whistles. The Selenite mechanic was reminiscent of octopuses and spiders, and was so much at one with the machine that it would have been impossible to extricate him from it.

A clever hydraulic system allowed the passenger section to remain always facing forward. The iron bullet reached a phenomenal speed, thanks to the lightness of its weight, but also thanks to the engine’s fuel, whose name had no equivalent in our language. Always careful, Krrak’ack refused to reveal anything further about it.

“The Great Planner must be awaiting us on the other side of the Moon,” Michel Ardan said with resignation, “Perhaps he will be more loquacious.”