AN UNLIKELY STORY
“If the doctor,” I said, “will pardon me, I will say, in relation to
the origin of meteorites, that our scientific men have held from time
to time many different theories. Some have believed that they are
aggregations of metallic vapors which, meeting in the atmosphere,
solidify there and fall, just as watery vapors solidify and come down in
the form of hailstones. Others have held that they are thrown out from
the center of the earth by volcanic action; and others still that they
all came from the moon when her volcanoes were active. These latter
theories imply that the meteorites in immense quantities are revolving
around the earth, and that occasionally they become entangled in her
atmosphere and fall to the surface.
“And now, Thorwald, I am tempted to repay all your great kindness to us
with 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 not
sure 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 explain
to him at some future time. The fact is, I was so disturbed in my mind
about 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 a
dry scientific discussion. It seemed to me that I could stand it better
if I could do part of the talking myself, and so I took advantage of the
subject before us to propose relating an extravagant tale that I once
had heard.
In contrast with the doctor’s frowns, Thorwald showed a lively
appreciation 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 rashly
called a story is only a fancy founded on the idea that the meteorites
were at some time shot out of the volcanoes of the moon. I had it from a
friend of mine, whose mind is evidently more open to the notion of life
in other worlds than is that of my companion here. As the story was
written long before the moon came down to visit the people of the
earth in their own home, the writer did not have the advantage of the
discoveries made by the doctor and myself, and it is well for me that
the doctor’s friend, Mona, is not here to disprove any of my statements.
“On account of the smaller volume of the moon, the attraction of
gravitation on its surface is only one-quarter that of the earth, and it
is estimated that, if a projectile were hurled from the moon with two or
three times the velocity of a cannon ball, it would pass entirely beyond
her attraction and be drawn to the earth, reaching it at the rate of
some seven miles a second.
“Now we all know--this is the way the story runs--that the moon was once
inhabited by a highly intelligent race. They tell us it is a cold, dead
world now, not at all fit for inhabitants. But that is because its day
is passed. Being so much smaller than the earth it cooled off quicker,
and its life-bearing period long since found its end. Men have often
speculated on the idea that our race will one day fail and the time come
when the last generation shall pass away and leave the earth a bare and
ugly thing, to continue yet longer its lonely, weary journey around a
failing sun. That day the moon has seen. That direful fate the race of
moon men have experienced. Some poor being, the last of his kind, was
left sole monarch of a dying world, and with the moon all before him
where to choose, chose rather to die with the rest and leave his world
to cold and darkness.
“From our own experience we do not know how high a state of civilization
can be reached by giving a race all the time that is needed. But we know
that before the inhabitants of the moon passed off the stage they had
attained to the highest possible degree of intelligence. They began
existence at a very low plane, developed gradually through long periods
of time--there has never been any haste in these matters--and when they
had reached their maturity as a race of intellectual and moral beings,
primitive man was just beginning on the vast undertaking of subduing the
earth, a task not yet accomplished.
“The incident I propose to relate occurred in antediluvian times, when
there were giants in the earth who lived a thousand years. Then matter
reigned, not mind. It was the age of brawn. Everything material existed
on a gigantic scale, and man’s architectural works, rude in design but
well adapted for shelter and protection, were proportioned to his own
stature and rivaled the everlasting hills in size and solidity. And they
needed something substantial for protection, for war was their business
and their pass time. They lived for nothing but to fight. It was brother
against brother, neighbor against neighbor, tribe against tribe; and the
man who could not fight, and fight hard, had no excuse for living. War
was not an art, but a natural outburst of brutal instincts. A giant
glories in his strength and cultivates it as naturally as a bird its
song. But it is pleasant to consider the fact that as man’s mental
and moral qualities have developed his body has become smaller. As the
necessity for that immense physical strength gradually passed away,
nature, abhorring such unnecessary waste of material, applied to us her
inexorable laws whereby a thing or a state of things no longer useful
slowly fades away, and our bodies accommodated themselves to new
conditions.
“But in those early times men needed great physical strength and long
life to bring the world into subjection, and until that was done they
could give little attention to the cultivation of the finer qualities
of their incipient manhood. They were handicapped by the fact that the
lower animals had had the earth to themselves a few million years, more
or 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 strength
in fighting each other. This had been going on so long and with such
deadly results that it seemed as if the race must be exterminated unless
some 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 which
brought them light with which they could see their foe, and the moon as
a mysterious object sent to make the night a little less dark. Sun
and moon and shining stars were all set in the sky for them, and went
through their wonderful and complicated movements solely for their
amusement.
“But what was the real condition of things on the moon at that
time? Why, there was a race of people there of such intelligence and
scientific attainments that they were seeing plainly enough everything
that was taking place on the earth. This will not appear very strange
when we consider our remarkable success in scanning the surface of the
moon at the present day, and remember that the inhabitants of the moon
were then nearing the close of their history, and so at the height of
their civilization.
“Yes, they had watched the coming of man upon the stage with the deepest
interest--with a neighborly interest, in fact--seeing in him the promise
of a companion race and one worthy of the magnificent globe which they
could see was so much larger than their own. Their powerful instruments
enabled them to see objects on the earth as distinctly as we now see
through our telescopes the features of a landscape a few miles distant.
“Keeping thus so close an acquaintance with man and all his works, they
rejoiced at every success he achieved over the lower forms of life, and
grieved at all his failures. Especially were they pained when he tired
of the conflict with his natural foe, and began to battle with his own
kind. As this inhuman strife continued, the folly and wickedness of
it roused to the fullest extent the interest and sympathy of the
moon-dwellers, and they began to ask each other what they could do to
put a stop to it. They themselves had long since given up war and had
even outgrown all individual quarrels, and they could not endure with
patience what was then taking place right under their eyes. But
they found it easier to declaim against the evil than to suggest any
practical method of stopping it. Although so near them in one sense, to
the other senses the field of conflict was some two hundred and forty
thousand miles away.
“However, of what value is a high state of civilization if it cannot
help a neighboring world in such an emergency as this? If they could
only communicate in some way with men they could soon make them
understand that it would be better for them to cease their fighting and
finish 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 and
worse. At last it was suggested that a shot might be fired which would
reach the earth. This was a bold suggestion, but it was well known that
they had explosives powerful enough to carry a projectile beyond the
moon’s attraction, and no one could give any good reason why such a
projectile, being entirely free of the moon, should not reach the earth
under the power of gravitation. It was determined to try the experiment,
and after due preparation, which was comparatively easy with their
facilities, an enormous shot was hurled forth. It was large enough to be
seen 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’s
attraction and finally strike the surface of that globe. Now that so
much had been accomplished, they saw immense possibilities before them.
What they now wanted to do was to use their discovery to make men give
up their fighting and turn to the arts of peace.
“How could they do this? Some proposed that they should make hollow
shot, fill them with Bibles and other books, and bombard the earth with
good precepts till men should learn and be tamed. But from their close
observation of mankind the moon-dwellers knew they were too uncivilized
to get any good from books, and that they certainly could not learn
without a teacher. Hence arose the suggestion that missionaries be
sent in place of books. As soon as this idea was broached thousands of
volunteers offered themselves, and the plan would certainly have been
attempted if there had been the slightest possibility that one could
live to reach the earth.
“The next proposal came from the medical profession. Long before this
time, when the inhabitants of the moon were sometimes governed by their
passions and before the day of peace and good will had fully arrived, it
had been discovered that what was known as the pugnacious instinct was
only a disease, bad blood in fact as well as in name, and a remedy had
been 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 surface
of the moon and put to this practical use. This medicine, administered
as an hypodermic injection, produced wonderful effects, the patient,
although afflicted with the most quarrelsome disposition, becoming as
mild and harmless as a lamb. However warlike one might be, a few days’
treatment would take the fighting spirit out of him so completely that
the mere doubling up his fists and placing them in front of his face
would make him feel ill. Peace societies got hold of the remedy and
tried it on the soldiers of the standing armies with such success that
war had to be abandoned because the men would not fight.
“And now the old recipe was brought out, a large quantity of the
medicine manufactured, and bombs made and filled with it, each one
containing full directions for its use written in Volapiik. These were
fired to the earth, and, strange to say, the simple language was soon
learned, and the moon-dwellers had the satisfaction of seeing men
rapidly metamorphosed into a peaceable, friendly race. Thus the moon
directly influenced and governed affairs on the earth. Looked at from
that distance it seems to have been the most remarkable case of the tail
wagging the dog that the earth had ever seen.
“But we may as well relate the sequel. The effect of the treatment
lasted only a few hundred years, and as it was the moon’s policy never
to repeat a cure, men in time became as bad as ever again, and so at
last the flood had to come and wipe them off the face of the earth.”