The Mammoth Book of New Jules Verne Adventures (26 page)

“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.

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.”

We installed ourselves
as comfortably as possible. The Selenites had had the goodness to bring along
the provisions stored in the shell, and so we were able to restore ourselves.
Michel Ardan concocted one of his secret recipes, which he washed down with a
glass of brandy as dessert.

On pouring the beverage,
several drops fell on to the little table, made from a Selenite carapace. The
drops drove themselves into it, bubbling furiously, melting all underneath them
with the alacrity of boiling water poured on a sugar-cube.

“By God!” Barbicane
swore religiously, “Alcohol attacks lunar chitin!”

“It’s like the effect of
add,” I confirmed, probing the holes.

“Or rather a powerful
solvent. This could certainly be of use, if the need arose.”

We decided to keep a
litre of brandy on us at all times.

While my companions were
slumbering, replete, I lost myself in contemplating the landscape which could
be seen through a window, or, rather, a peep-hole.

I will not enter into
detail of the tableaux which opened up as the successive strata passed rapidly
before my eyes, for our journey sometimes took the form of a vertiginous fall.
What I did see were fossils of monsters, each more exotic than the last, each
more gigantic, such as the half-mile-long skull which served as a transit
station at the centre of the Moon. Sometimes, a transparent tube replaced the
rocky passage, and we plunged into huge lakes which filled immense caverns,
furrowed by enormous machines with paddles. We passed through greenhouses full
of giant cacti, empty, misty spaces of fearful dimensions; we passed
cylindrical, bottomless wells where hoist-Selenites criss-crossed each other,
using their abdomens like Montgolfiers.

Thanks to the speed of
the machine, it only took us eleven hours and fifty minutes to traverse the
Moon from side to side, taking account of the delays caused by the periodic
changing of tracks.

On arrival at the terminus,
Krrak’ack approached a kind of telegraph-machine, upon which he tapped, using
his antennae. He was replied by a crackling. After five minutes of
conversation, he turned his blank face towards us.

“The Great Planner is
ready to receive you. He can only grant you a little time, as many tasks across
the whole Moon monopolise his attention.”

“Oh, what it is to be a
potentate!” Ardan joked.

A new living carriage,
similar to the first, came to pick us up, then deposited us in a monumental
amphitheatre, opposite a kind of temple with pagodas. It took me a moment to
realize that these seeming pagodas were in reality bundles of metal wires,
which stretched in their millions from the interior of the tall building. A
buzzing arose like a hive of bees.

As soon as we had
penetrated the temple’s interior, a hallowed silence fell.

Without the slightest
consultation with each other, we had anticipated a Selenite with a huge head
and an atrophied body. But it was not such a prodigious super-being that
reigned over life on the Moon.

Nothing we already knew
could have prepared us for the confrontation. The feeling that enveloped me
when I saw the Great Planner (or at least a part of it) was a singular emotion,
so rare that it has no name: a mixture of fear and ecstasy, of repugnance and
of marvelling at the unknown. (Later, Michel Ardan confided to me that it gave
him the feeling of an Iroquois at the court of Louis XIV).

The temple was no more
than a wall buzzing with insects, minuscule Selenites ranged side by side, legs
interlaced like the mesh of a net. The wall rose into darkness, and seemed to
have no end. The first image that came to mind was that of a mechanical
calculator, such as had existed for two centuries. This one was not mechanical,
but organic-electrical. Each cog, each belt, each relay was replaced by a
miniature Selenite whose eight or ten legs were connected to those of his
fellow creatures. Individually, each would have had no more intelligence than a
fly, but they had found the means to apply themselves in sequence. Each time a
piece of information was transmitted to one of them, its abdomen lit up like a
firefly. The wall blinked with a thousand fires.

“See their Great
Planner,” cried Barbicane, accompanying his exclamation with an all-embracing
sweep of the arm. “Not an individual, but a colony-organism, composed of a
collective brain spread out before us . . . A philosophical calculator,
sheltered from all passions of the flesh, and thus able to resolve all the
problems of an evolved society. Is it not amazing?”

“You mean to say that
this creature exists with the aim of producing thought, as a plant produces
roots and leaves? You are right, Barbicane, that is the marvel.”

Michel Ardan did not
share our opinion, and Krrak’ack did not give him the chance to develop his
own. The creature tapped several words into the temple telegraph, and received
a reply which he translated straight away. “The Great Planner has decided to
keep you among us, to ensure our safety.”

Temperance was not one
of Michel Ardan’s cardinal virtues. Upon hearing the verdict of the
philosophical calculator, he swelled his cheeks with a glassful of brandy. In a
single movement, he leapt in the air and sprayed a Selenite-relay, which
immediately began to melt and shrivel up, a network of organs running away
below it. The sudden recurrence of activity on the part of the fireflies
revealed that the blow had struck home.

“What are you doing!”
cried Krrak’ack, in a deluge of maddened whistling, “You are destroying the
memory of the Great Planner . . .”

Barbicane had understood
his friend’s action. He set himself in front of Krrak’ack, with a series of
appeasing gestures. Then he asked for his speech to be translated word for
word.

“The Great Planner has
everything to fear if he keeps us by his side. Our saliva can destroy the
substance that forms your carapaces. We will be a constant menace to the
community. Alternatively, if he lets us go, he has our word as gentlemen that
we will never speak a word of what we have seen on the Moon.”

There remained fifty
gallons of brandy with which to carry out our threat.

The philosophical
calculator’s reply only took several seconds to reach us, and it relieved
everything.

“He has decided that you
will leave in two hours. The workers have just been notified.”

“Two hours!” repeated
Barbicane, “But that’s impossible; it took us almost ten hours to reach you,
and our shell is still on the other side of the Moon! How will you set us
en
route
in such a short time?”

I suggested that the
Selenites could re-launch the shell into orbit, and make it land on our side of
the Moon. The Planner, however, had a different idea, which reflected their industrial
genius: it was intending to construct a shell exactly like the
Columbiad.
No,
not intending: the orders had been given, and they were already working on it.
The original had been taken apart several minutes ago, and the plans had been
transmitted by telegraph to the different units of production, which were at
that very moment working on it.

Meanwhile, our host
questioned us on the most wide-ranging subjects, from the pronunciation of
certain slang-terms to our favourite colours!

“Has not a creature as
ingenious and all-powerful as yourself ever had the wish to send an expedition
to Earth?” Barbicane wondered.

The Great Planner told
us that in the course of a past that was not counted in years, but in
geological eras, the Selenites had visited the large blue planet. At that time
it was covered by luxuriant forests, bereft of intelligent life except for a
kind of octopus, very cunning, but with a limited consciousness. These had not
survived the globe’s glaciation. The Selenites, crushed by a gravity six times
stronger than their own, had been incapable of leaving and had perished. The
Earth had been declared a forbidden planet. Since then, only the large
telescopes continued their observation.

Michel Ardan, always the
practical one, asked how many Selenites there were on the Moon. The Great
Planner kept us waiting for several seconds, then: “At this second, there are
1,387,180,000,512 of us.”

Michel opened his mouth,
then closed it, subdued.

I asked him about the
formation of the Moon, which no specialist had as yet been able to demonstrate
in any definitive way. The perfection of the Selenite civilization suggested
the ancient nature of the globe. Once more the infinite carpet of fireflies
began to shine in every direction.

“Long before the
creation of the Planner,” Krrak’ack translated, “the surface of the Moon was
hot, and our ancestors frolicked in the sun. Then the Earth came into being,
and our atmosphere began to disappear, breathed in by the new planet. We had to
take refuge in the sublunar grottoes. Our survival depended upon the strength
of our industry, so our
ancestors developed the
machines that surround us. And they created myself.”

The idea that in times
past the Moon’s air had been captured — stolen in fact! — by the Earth,
affected us all.

“It is we,” said Michel
Ardan, cast into the deepest depths of sadness, “we who have forced these brave
Selenites to leave their welcoming sun and live like hermits or moles. Shame
upon you, Earth, and all your generations!”

Time had run out; we had
to leave. The cosmos has its laws, stronger than those of men or of Selenites.
The new shell was ready, the provisions aboard. A cannon had just been loaded,
one sufficiently powerful to propel us beyond the Moon’s field of gravity. The
fuel mixture was not of guncotton, or some other derivative of pyroxilite, but
a gas solution whose combustion produced nothing other than water!

We made our farewells to
the Great Planner, then the Selenite-carriage set us down in an amphitheatre.
In its centre was a steel pole which rose to a vaulted ceiling. An opening
yawned at its base. A Selenite showed us into the interior.

“But it’s our shell,”
cried Michel Ardan.

Slight differences, in
the grain of the leather, or the greater fineness of the porthole-glass,
witnessed the fact that it was a replica. Before the door closed upon us, I
saluted our guide, Krrak’ack, with a pang. I knew that upon our departure his
job as translator would cease, and quite naturally, his existence would too. It
was out of the question to take him with us: we had promised that our voyage
would leave no trace.

The Selenite who had
shown us into the shell informed us that there remained twelve minutes before
the shot that would fire us into space.

We seated ourselves, and
Michel Ardan sighed, “Farewell, Moon,”

“Yes, farewell . . .”