On One of Mars' Moons.
Deimos proved to be, as we had expected, about six miles in diameter. Its
mean density is not very great so that the acceleration of gravity did
not exceed one two-thousandths of the earth's. Consequently the weight
of a man turning the scales at 150 pounds at home was here only about
one ounce.
The result was that we could move about with greater ease than on the
golden asteroid, and some of the scientific men eagerly resumed their
interrupted experiments.
But the attraction of this little satellite was so slight that we had to
be very careful not to move too swiftly in going about lest we should
involuntarily leave the ground and sail out into space, as, it will be
remembered, happened to the fugitives during the fight on the asteroid.
Not only would such an adventure have been an uncomfortable experience,
but it might have endangered the success of our scheme. Our present
distance from the surface of Mars did not exceed 12,500 miles, and we had
reason to believe that Martians possessed telescopes powerful enough to
enable them not merely to see the electrical ships at such a distance,
but to also catch sight of us individually. Although the cloud curtain
still rested on the planet it was probable that the Martians would send
some of their airships up to its surface in order to determine what
our fate had been. From that point of vantage, with their exceedingly
powerful glasses, we feared that they might be able to detect anything
unusual upon or in the neighborhood of Deimos.
The Ships are Moored.
Accordingly strict orders were given, not only that the ships should be
moored on that side of the satellite which is perpetually turned away
from Mars, but that, without orders, no one should venture around on
the other side of the little globe, or even on the edge of it, where he
might be seen in profile against the sky.
Still, of course, it was essential that we, on our part, should keep a
close watch, and so a number of sentinels were selected, whose duty it
was to place themselves at the edge of Deimos, where they could peep over
the horizon, so to speak, and catch sight of the globe of our enemies.
The distance of Mars from us was only about three times its own diameter,
consequently it shut off a large part of the sky, as viewed from our
position.
But in order to see its whole surface it was necessary to go a little
beyond the edge of the satellite, on that side which faced Mars. At the
suggestion of Colonel Smith, who had so frequently stalked Indians that
devices of this kind readily occurred to his mind, the sentinels all
wore garments corresponding in color to that of the soil of the asteroid,
which was of a dark, reddish brown hue. This would tend to conceal them
from the prying eyes of the Martians.
The commander himself frequently went around the edge of the planet in
order to take a look at Mars, and I often accompanied him.
Marvellous Discoveries.
The Martians Were the Builders of the Great Sphinx and the
Pyramids.
I shall never forget one occasion, when, lying flat on the ground,
and cautiously worming our way around on the side toward Mars, we had
just begun to observe it with our telescopes, when I perceived, against
the vast curtain of smoke, a small, glinting object, which I instantly
suspected to be an airship.
I called Mr. Edison's attention to it, and we both agreed that it was,
undoubtedly, one of the Martians' aerial vessels, probably on the lookout
for us.
A short time afterward a large number of airships made their appearance
at the upper surface of the clouds, moving to and fro, and although,
with our glasses, we could only make out the general form of the ships,
without being able to discern the Martians upon them, yet we had not the
least doubt but they were sweeping the sky in every direction in order
to determine whether we had been completely destroyed or had retreated
to a distance from the planet.
Even when that side of Mars on which we were looking had passed into
night, we could still see the guardships circling above the clouds,
their presence being betrayed by the faint twinkling of the electric
lights that they bore.
Finally, after about a week had passed, the Martians evidently made up
their minds that they had annihilated us, and that there was no longer
danger to be feared. Convincing evidence that they believed we should
not be heard from again was furnished when the withdrawal of the great
curtain of cloud began.
A Great Phenomenon.
This phenomenon first manifested itself by a gradual thinning of the
vaporous shield, until, at length, we began to perceive the red surface
of the planet dimly shining through it. Thinner and rarer it became, and,
after the lapse of about eighteen hours, it had completely disappeared,
and the huge globe shone out again, reflecting the light of the sun
from its continents and oceans with a brightness that, in contrast with
the all-enveloping night to which we had so long been subjected, seemed
unbearable to our eyes.
Indeed, so brilliant was the illumination which fell upon the surface of
Deimos that the number of persons who had been permitted to pass around
upon the exposed side of the satellite was carefully restricted. In
the blaze of light which had been suddenly poured upon us we felt
somewhat like malefactors unexpectedly enveloped in the illumination of
a policeman's dark lantern.
Meanwhile, the object which we had in view in retreating to the satellite
was not lost sight of, and the services of the chief linguists of the
expedition were again called into use for the purpose of acquiring a
new language. The experiment was conducted in the flagship. The fact
that this time it was not a monster belonging to an utterly alien race
upon whom we were to experiment, but a beautiful daughter of our common
Mother Eve, added zest and interest as well as the most confident hopes
of success to the efforts of those who were striving to understand the
accents of her tongue.
Lingual Difficulties Ahead.
Still the difficulty was very great, notwithstanding the conviction
of the professors that her language would turn out to be a form of the
great Indo-European speech from which the many tongues of civilized men
upon the earth had been derived.
The learned men, to tell the truth, gave the poor girl no rest. For hours
at a time they would ply her with interrogations by voice and by gesture,
until, at length, wearied beyond endurance, she would fall asleep before
their faces.
Then she would be left undisturbed for a little while, but the moment her
eyes opened again the merciless professors flocked about her once more,
and resumed the tedious iteration of their experiments.
Our Heidelberg professor was the chief inquisitor, and he revealed
himself to us in a new and entirely unexpected light. No one could have
anticipated the depth and variety of his resources. He placed himself
in front of the girl and gestured and gesticulated, bowed, nodded,
shrugged his shoulders, screwed his face into an infinite variety of
expressions, smiled, laughed, scowled and accompanied all these dumb
shows with posturings, exclamations, queries, only half expressed in
words, and cadences which, by some ingenious manipulation of the tones
of the voice, he managed to make as marvellous expressive of his desires.
He was a universal actor--comedian, tragedian, buffoon--all in one. There
was no shade of human emotion which he did not seem capable of giving
expression to.
The Professor Does His Best.
His every attitude was a symbol, and all his features became in quick
succession types of thought and exponents of hidden feelings, while his
inquisitive nose stood forth in the midst of their ceaseless play like
a perpetual interrogation point that would have electrified the Sphinx
into life, and set its stone lips gabbling answers and explanations.
The girl looked on, partly astonished, partly amused, and partly
comprehending. Sometimes she smiled, and then the beauty of her face
became most captivating. Occasionally she burst into a cheery laugh
when the professor was executing some of his extraordinary gyrations
before her.
It was a marvellous exhibition of what the human intellect, when all its
powers are concentrated upon a single object, is capable of achieving. It
seemed to me, as I looked at the performance, that if all the races of
men, who had been stricken asunder at the foot of the Tower of Babel by
the miracle which made the tongues of each to speak a language unknown
to the others, could be brought together again at the foot of the same
tower, with all the advantages which thousands of years of education
had in the meantime imparted to them, they would be able, without any
miracle, to make themselves mutually understood.
And it was evident that an understanding was actually growing between
the girl and the professor. Their minds were plainly meeting, and when
both had become focused upon the same point, it was perfectly certain
that the object of the experiment would be attained.
Whenever the professor got from the girl an intelligent reply to his
pantomimic inquiries, or whenever he believed that he got such a reply,
it was immediately jotted down in the ever open notebook which he
carried in his hand.
And then he would turn to us standing by, and with one hand on his heart,
and the other sweeping grandly through the air, would make a profound
bow and say:
"The young lady and I great progress make already. I have her words
comprehended. We shall wondrous mysteries solve. Jawohl! Wunderlich!
Make yourselves gentlemen easy. Of the human race the ancestral stem
have I here discovered."
Once I glanced over a page of his notebook, and there I read this:
"Mars--Zahmor."
"Copper--Hayez."
"Sword--Anz."
"I jump--Altesna."
"I slay--Amoutha."
"I cut off a head--Ksutaskofa."
"I sleep--Zlcha."
"I love--Levza."
Aha, Professor Heidelberg!
When I saw this last entry I looked suspiciously at the professor.
Was he trying to make love without our knowing it to the beautiful
captive from Mars?
If so, I felt certain that he would get himself into difficulty. She
had made a deep impression upon every man in the flagship, and I knew
that there was more than one of the younger men who would have promptly
called him to account if they had suspected him of trying to learn from
those beautiful lips the words, "I love."
I pictured to myself the state of mind of Colonel Alonzo Jefferson
Smith if, in my place, he had glanced over the notebook and read what
I had read.
And then I thought of another handsome young fellow in the
flagship--Sidney Phillips--who, if mere actions and looks could make
him so, had become exceedingly devoted to this long lost and happily
recovered daughter of Eve.
In fact, I had already questioned within my own mind whether the peace
would be strictly kept between Colonel Smith and Mr. Phillips, for the
former had, to my knowledge, noticed the young fellow's adoring glances,
and had begun to regard him out of the corners of his eyes as if he
considered him no better than an Apache or a Mexican greaser.
Jealousy Crops Out.
"But what," I asked myself, "would be the vengeance that Colonel Smith
would take upon this skinny professor from Heidelberg if he thought that
he, taking advantage of his linguistic powers, had stepped in between
him and the damsel whom he had rescued?"
However, when I took a second look at the professor, I became convinced
that he was innocent of any such amorous intention, and that he had
learned, or believed he had learned, the word for "love" simply in
pursuance of the method by which he meant to acquire the language of
the girl.
There was one thing which gave some of us considerable misgiving, and
that was the question whether, after all, the language the professor was
acquiring was really the girl's own tongue or one that she had learned
from the Martians.
But the professor bade us rest easy on that point. He assured us, in the
first place, that this girl could not be the only human being living upon
Mars, but that she must have friends and relatives there. That being so,
they unquestionably had a language of their own, which they spoke when
they were among themselves. Here finding herself among beings belonging
to her own race, she would naturally speak her own tongue and not that
which she had acquired from the Martians.
"Moreover, gentlemen," he added, "I have in her speech many roots of
the great Aryan tongue already recognized."
We were greatly relieved by this explanation, which seemed to all of us
perfectly satisfactory.
Yet, really, there was no reason why one language should be any better
than the other for our present purpose. In fact, it might be more useful
to us to know the language of the Martians themselves. Still, we all
felt that we should prefer to know her language rather than that of the
monsters among whom she had lived.
Colonel Smith expressed what was in all our minds when, after listening
to the reasoning of the Professor, he blurted out:
"Thank God, she doesn't speak any of their blamed lingo! By Jove, it
would soil her pretty lips."
"But also that she speaks, too," said the man from Heidelberg, turning
to Colonel Smith with a grin. "We shall both of them eventually learn."
A Tedious Language Lesson.
Three entire weeks were passed in this manner. After the first week
the girl herself materially assisted the linguists in their efforts to
acquire her speech.
At length the task was so far advanced that we could, in a certain sense,
regard it as practically completed. The Heidelberg Professor declared
that he had mastered the tongue of the ancient Aryans. His delight was
unbounded. With prodigious industry he set to work, scarcely stopping
to eat or sleep, to form a grammar of the language.
"You shall see," he said, "it will the speculations of my countrymen
vindicate."
No doubt the Professor had an exaggerated opinion of the extent of his
acquirements, but the fact remained that enough had been learned of
the girl's language to enable him and several others to converse with
her quite as readily as a person of good capacity who has studied under
the instructions of a native teacher during a period of six months can
converse in a foreign tongue.
Immediately almost every man in the squadron set vigorously at work to
learn the language of this fair creature for himself. Colonel Smith and
Sidney Phillips were neck and neck in the linguistic race.
One of the first bits of information which the Professor had given out
was the name of the girl.
We Learn Her Name.
It was Aina (pronounced Ah-ee-na).
This news was flashed throughout the squadron, and the name of our
beautiful captive was on the lips of all.
After that came her story. It was a marvellous narrative. Translated
into our tongue it ran as follows:
"The traditions of my fathers, handed down for generations so many that
no one can number them, declare that the planet of Mars was not the
place of our origin."
"Ages and ages ago our forefathers dwelt on another and distant world
that was nearer to the sun than this one is, and enjoyed brighter daylight
than we have here."
"They dwelt--as I have often heard the story from my father, who had
learned it by heart from his father, and he from his--in a beautiful
valley that was surrounded by enormous mountains towering into the clouds
and white about their tops with snow that never melted. In the valley
were lakes, around which clustered the dwellings of our race."
"It was, the traditions say, a land wonderful for its fertility, filled
with all things that the heart could desire, splendid with flowers and
rich with luscious fruits."
"It was a land of music, and the people who dwelt in it were very happy."
While the girl was telling this part of her story the Heidelberg Professor
became visibly more and more excited. Presently he could keep quiet no
longer, and suddenly exclaimed, turning to us who were listening, as the
words of the girl were interpreted for us by one of the other linguists:
"Gentlemen, it is the Vale of Cashmere! Has not my great countryman,
Adelung, so declared? Has he not said that the Valley of Cashmere was
the cradle of the human race already?"
"From the Valley of Cashmere to the planet Mars--what a
romance!" exclaimed one of the bystanders.
Colonel Smith appeared to be particularly moved, and I heard him humming
under his breath, greatly to my astonishment, for this rough soldier
was not much given to poetry or music:
"Who has not heard of the Vale of Cashmere,
With its roses the brightest that earth ever gave;
Its temples, its grottoes, its fountains as clear,
As the love-lighted eyes that hang over the wave."
Mr. Sidney Phillips, standing by, and also catching the murmur of Colonel
Smith's words, showed in his handsome countenance some indications of
distress, as if he wished he had thought of those lines himself.
Aina Tells Her Story.
The girl resumed her narrative:
"Suddenly there dropped down out of the sky strange gigantic enemies,
armed with mysterious weapons, and began to slay and burn and make
desolate. Our forefathers could not withstand them. They seemed like
demons, who had been sent from the abodes of evil to destroy our race."
"Some of the wise men said that this thing had come upon our people
because they had been very wicked, and the gods in Heaven were angry. Some
said they came from the moon, and some from the far-away stars. But of
these things my forefathers knew nothing for a certainty."
"The destroyers showed no mercy to the inhabitants of the beautiful
valley. Not content with making it a desert, they swept over other parts
of the earth."
"The tradition says that they carried off from the valley, which was
our native land, a large number of our people, taking them first into
a strange country, where there were oceans of sand, but where a great
river, flowing through the midst of the sands, created a narrow land of
fertility. Here, after having slain and driven out the native inhabitants,
they remained for many years, keeping our people, whom they had carried
into captivity, as slaves."
"And in this Land of Sand, it is said, they did many wonderful works."
"They had been astonished at the sight of the great mountains which
surrounded our valley, for on Mars there are no mountains, and after
they came into the Land of Sand they built there with huge blocks of
stone mountains in imitation of what they had seen, and used them for
purposes that our people did not understand."
"Then, too, it is said they left there at the foot of these mountains
that they had made a gigantic image of the great chief who led them in
their conquest of our world."
At this point in the story the Heidelberg Professor again broke in,
fairly trembling with excitement:
The Wonders of the Martians!
"Gentlemen, gentlemen," he cried, "is it that you do not understand? This
Land of Sand and of a wonderful fertilizing river--what can it
be? Gentlemen, it is Egypt! These mountains of rock that the Martians
have erected, what are they? Gentlemen, they are the great mystery of the
land of the Nile, the Pyramids. The gigantic statue of their leader that
they at the foot of their artificial mountains have set up--gentlemen,
what is that? It is the Sphinx!"
The Professor's agitation was so great that he could go no further. And
indeed there was not one of us who did not fully share his excitement. To
think that we should have come to the planet Mars to solve one of the
standing mysteries of the earth, which had puzzled mankind and defied
all their efforts at solution for so many centuries! Here, then, was
the explanation of how those gigantic blocks that constitute the great
Pyramid of Cheops had been swung to their lofty elevation. It was not the
work of puny man, as many an engineer had declared that it could not be,
but the work of these giants of Mars.
Aina's Wonderful Story.
The Martians' Beautiful Prisoner Recounts Her Marvellous
Adventures.
Aina resumed her story.
"At length, our traditions say, a great pestilence broke out in the Land
of Sand, and a partial vengeance was granted to us in the destruction
of the larger number of our enemies. At last the giants who remained,
fleeing before this scourge of the gods, used the mysterious means at
their command, and, carrying our ancestors with them, returned to their
own world, in which we have ever since lived."
"Then there are more of your people in Mars?" said one of the professors.
"Alas, no," replied Aina, her eyes filling with tears, "I alone am left."
For a few minutes she was unable to speak. Then she continued:
An Ancient Martian Conquest.
"What fury possessed them I do not know, but not long ago an expedition
departed from the planet, the purpose of which, as it was noised about
over Mars, was the conquest of a distant world. After a time a few
survivors of that expedition returned. The story they told caused great
excitement among our masters. They had been successful in their battles
with the inhabitants of the world they had invaded, but as in the days
of our forefathers, in the Land of Sand, a pestilence smote them, and
but few survivors escaped."
"Not long after that, you, with your mysterious ships, appeared in the
sky of Mars. Our masters studied you with their telescopes, and those
who had returned from the unfortunate expedition declared that you
were inhabitants of the world which they had invaded, come, doubtless,
to take vengeance upon them."
"Some of my people who were permitted to look through the telescopes of
the Martians, saw you also, and recognized you as members of their own
race. There were several thousand of us, altogether, and we were kept by
the Martians to serve them as slaves, and particularly to delight their
ears with music, for our people have always been especially skilful in
the playing of musical instruments, and in songs, and while the Martians
have but little musical skill themselves, they are exceedingly fond of
these things."
Awaiting a Rescue.
"Although Mars had completed not less than five thousand circuits about
the sun since our ancestors were brought as prisoners to its surface, yet
the memory of our distant home had never perished from the hearts of our
race, and when we recognized you, as we believed, our own brothers, come
to rescue us from long imprisonment, there was great rejoicing. The news
spread from mouth to mouth, wherever we were in the houses and families
of our masters. We seemed to be powerless to aid you or to communicate
with you in any manner. Yet our hearts went out to you, as in your ships
you hung above the planet, and preparations were secretly made by all the
members of our race for your reception when, as we believed, would occur,
you should effect a landing upon the planet and destroy our enemies."
"But in some manner the fact that we had recognized you, and were
preparing to welcome you, came to the ears of the Martians."
At this point the girl suddenly covered her eyes with her hands,
shuddering and falling back in her seat.
"Oh, you do not know them as I do!" at length she exclaimed. "The
monsters! Their vengeance was too terrible! Instantly the order went forth
that we should all be butchered, and that awful command was executed!"
"How, then, did you escape?" asked the Heidelberg Professor.
Aina seemed unable to speak for a while. Finally mastering her emotion,
she replied:
Her Fortunate Escape.
"One of the chief officers of the Martians wished me to remain alive. He,
with his aides, carried me to one of the military depot of supplies,
where I was found and rescued," and as she said this she turned toward
Colonel Smith with a smile that reflected on his ruddy face and made it
glow like a Chinese lantern.
"By ----!" muttered Colonel Smith, "that was the fellow we blew into
nothing! Blast him, he got off too easy!"
The remainder of Aina's story may be briefly told.
When Colonel Smith and I entered the mysterious building which, as it
now proved, was not a storehouse belonging to a village, as we had
supposed, but one of the military depots of the Martians, the girl,
on catching sight of us, immediately recognized us as belonging to the
strange squadron in the sky. As such she felt that we must be her friends,
and saw in us her only possible hope of escape. For that reason she had
instantly thrown herself under our protection. This accounted for the
singular confidence which she had manifested in us from the beginning.
Her wonderful story had so captivated our imaginations that for a long
time after it was finished we could not recover from the spell. It was
told over and over again from mouth to mouth, and repeated from ship to
ship, everywhere exciting the utmost astonishment.
Destiny seemed to have sent us on this expedition into space for the
purpose of clearing off mysteries that had long puzzled the minds
of men. When on the moon we had unexpectedly to ourselves settled the
question that had been debated from the beginning of astronomical history
of the former habitability of that globe.
A Question Settled.
Now, on Mars, we had put to rest no less mysterious questions relating to
the past history of our own planet. Adelung, as the Heidelberg Professor
asserted, had named the Vale of Cashmere as the probable site of the
Garden of Eden, and the place of origin of the human race, but later
investigators had taken issue with this opinion, and the question where
the Aryans originated upon the earth had long been one of the most
puzzling that science presented.
This question seemed now to have been settled.
Aina had said that Mars had completed 5,000 circuits about the sun since
her people were brought to it as captives. One circuit of Mars occupies
687 days. More than 9,000 years had therefore elapsed since the first
invasion of the earth by the Martians.
Another great mystery--that of the origin of those gigantic and
inexplicable monuments, the great pyramids and the Sphinx, on the banks of
the Nile, had also apparently been solved by us, although these Egyptian
wonders had been the furthest things from our thoughts when we set out
for the planet Mars.
We had travelled more than thirty millions of miles in order to get
answers to questions which could not be solved at home.
But from these speculations and retrospects we were recalled by the
commander of the expedition.
Does Aina Hold the Secret?
"This is all very interesting and very romantic, gentlemen," he said,
"but now let us get at the practical side of it. We have learned Aina's
language and have heard her story. Let us next ascertain whether
she cannot place in our hands some key which will place Mars at our
mercy. Remember what we came here for, and remember that the earth
expects every man of us to do his duty."
This Nelson-like summons again changed the current of our thoughts,
and we instantly set to work to learn from Aina if Mars, like Achilles,
had not some vulnerable point where a blow would be mortal.