IN order to adequately explain the origin of the peremptory recall
which, although of course he obeyed it without question, seemed so
incomprehensible to Alan, it will be necessary to go back to the night
of the 12th of May.
While all Aeria was rejoicing over the return of the exiles and
their restoration to the rights of citizenship, there was one of
the inhabitants of the Valley who took little or no part in the
festivities. This was Vassilis Cosmo, a man of between forty-six and
forty-seven, and elder brother of the George Cosmo who had been chief
engineer of the _Narwhal_, and was now first officer of the _Avenger_.
A striking distinction of personality and temperament had, ever since
he had reached a thinking age, marked him as one apart from the rest of
his fellow-countrymen.
He had little or none of the gaiety of disposition and social
cordiality that were the salient characteristics of the Aerians as a
people. He was serious almost to taciturnity, solitary and studious,
and wholly engrossed in a single pursuit--the study of astronomy in its
bearing on the great problem of interplanetary communication.
After twenty years of constant labour, assisted by all the knowledge
and inventive progress which had placed the Aerians so far ahead of the
rest of the world, he had at length solved this problem and realised
the dream of ages six years before Olga Romanoff had dropped her
defiance from the skies.
As yet, however, his success had been confined to one planet, and this,
as will have been learnt from the conversation between Alma and Isma on
that memorable night on which Alan’s letter had been received from the
island, was the planet Mars.
After infinite toil and innumerable failures, he had at length
succeeded in establishing an intelligible system of what may here be
described as photo-telegraphy, in which the rays of light passing
between the earth and Mars were made to perform the functions of the
electric wires in modern telegraphy.
His alphabet, so to speak, consisted of a hundred great electric suns
disposed at equal intervals on the mountain peaks round the great oval
of the Valley. These were in direct communication with the observatory
of Aeria, which was situated at a height of sixteen thousand feet on
Mount Austral, the highest of the two snow-capped peaks which stood at
the southern end of the Valley.
A single switch key enabled him, when sitting by the huge telescope
which embodied all the highest optical science of Aeria, to light
and extinguish these brilliant globes as he chose, and it was by
lighting and extinguishing them at certain intervals that he was able
to transmit his signals to the Martian astronomer, who was waiting to
receive them, and to reply to them by similar means across the gulf
of thirty-four million miles which separates the two planets at their
nearest approach to each other.
Momentous as were the events of the last few days, they were dwarfed
to utter insignificance by the irregular and apparently meaningless
recurrences of a tiny point of light in the centre of a great concave
mirror situated at the base of the huge barrel of the telescope,
through the side aperture of which Vassilis Cosmo was looking a few
minutes before midnight on that memorable 12th of May.
The point of light appeared and vanished, and reappeared again at
irregular intervals, which the astronomer noted on an automatic
registering instrument beside him. The moment the flash appeared
he pressed a button, which he held down till it disappeared, then
he released it, waited till the flash reappeared, and repeated the
operation so long as the signals came.
For nearly five hours he received and registered the signals recorded
by his reflector in silence, broken only by the monotonous ticking
of the clockwork which, working synchronously with the movements of
the two orbs, kept the image of Mars exactly in the centre of the
object-glass, and by the soft whirring of the registering instrument.
Never before had human eyes read such a message as he read, sitting
that night in silence and solitude in his observatory amid the snows,
far above the lovely valley in which his countrymen were still holding
high revel.
Well might his hands tremble and his eyes grow dim with something more
than long watching when he reversed the mechanism of the register and a
narrow slip of paper, divided by cross-lines into equal spaces a tenth
of an inch long, issued from a slit in one end, and began to run slowly
over a revolving drum.
On the tape was a series of straight black lines running longitudinally
along it. They were of unequal length, and divided from each other
by unequal spaces. Before the exact import of the message could be
gained the length of each of these lines, and that of the space
which separated it from the next, had to be accurately measured, but
Vassilis knew his own code so perfectly that he had been able to read
the general drift of the communication that had been sent along the
light-rays from the sister world by approximately guessing the duration
of the flashes and the intervals between them.
Day was beginning to dawn by the time the long tape had been unrolled
and pinned down in equal lengths on a board for measuring. For more
than five hours he had not uttered a syllable or even an exclamation,
although he had received from another world what appeared to be
tantamount, not only to his own death-sentence, but to that of the
whole human race.
But when the slips were at length pinned out and he had run his
practised eye deliberately over the fatal marks, his white lips parted
and a deep groan broke from his chest. He was alone in the observatory,
or perhaps not even this sign of emotion would have escaped him.
With his hands pressed to his temples as though his brain were reeling
under the frightful intelligence that had just been conveyed to it, he
stood in front of the board and gasped in short, broken sentences--
“God of mercy, can that be really true! Has the world only four months
more to live? Surely I have made some mistake--and yet everything
has worked as usual. There has been no hitch. It has been a splendid
night for transmission and they--no, they had not made a mistake for
a thousand years, they are past it. It must--but no, I can do nothing
more this morning. I should go mad if I did. I must think of it quietly
and sleep a little if I can, and then I will transcribe it.”
He left the telescope tower and went out on to a little platform at the
rear of the observatory which commanded a view of the whole Valley. He
looked out over the lovely landscape lying calm and silent beneath the
paling stars, and involuntarily exclaimed aloud--
“Is it for this that we have conquered the earth and bridged the
abysses of space--for this that we have made ourselves as gods among
men and throned ourselves here in this lovely land, lords of the world
and masters of the nations?
“How shall I tell them down yonder? And yet, has not the Master told
them already: ‘His shape shall be that of a flaming fire.’ ‘Your
children of the fifth generation shall behold his approach’? Yes, the
two exiles we welcomed back last night are the fifth generation from
the Angel, and _that_ will truly be a flaming fire, and truly it will
go hard with this world and the men of it in the hour of its passing,
as the Master has said.”
After a vain attempt to seek refuge from his thoughts in sleep he
boarded his aerial yacht and went to the city to mingle with the
merry-makers, more for appearance’ sake than from inclination, but he
kept his own counsel strictly, for more reasons than one. The next
night, as soon as Mars was high enough in the heavens, about half-past
ten, the dwellers in the Valley saw the great lights on the mountain
tops flash out and darken at irregular intervals time after time and
hour after hour, until all but those in the sentinel ships went to
rest, saying--
“Vassilis is talking to our neighbours in Mars. He will have something
to tell us to-morrow.”
But when the next day came he had nothing to tell. He had spent the
night repeating the message, sign for sign and word for word, and
asking for confirmation lest he should have made any mistake in
receiving it. Then in agonised anxiety he had waited for the reply on
which he now felt the fate of mankind depended. It came with a terrible
clearness and brevity, which left no room for doubt--
“Message read correctly. There is no error in our calculations.
Terrestrial humanity is doomed, and must prepare to meet its fate.”
So far as he was concerned he was satisfied. He knew that a mistake was
impossible to the finished science of the Martian astronomers, compared
with whom he was but as a little child in knowledge. But still he kept
his own counsel, for there was no need for him to cast the sudden
shadow of death over the rejoicings of his countrymen.
At length the fleets departed, and Aeria, armed at all points, was
awaiting the possible onslaught of her foes. These she would doubtless
hurl back in triumphant disdain from her bulwarks, but far, far away in
the depths of space, beyond even the range of the great equatorial on
Mount Austral, there was approaching an enemy whose assault men could
only meet with resignation or despair, as the case might be. Resistance
was as much out of the question as escape.
Early on the morning of the 16th, soon after the _Avenger_ had struck
the first blow in the world-war, Vassilis presented himself at the
President’s palace and asked for an interview with him.
The President received him a few minutes later in his private room. It
was the first time in his life that the silent, reserved astronomer had
ever asked for an official interview, and as the President entered the
room he held out his hand, saying--
“Good morning, Vassilis. We have seen very little of you lately, even
less than usual. Have you come to see me about the work which has kept
you from joining in the general rejoicings? I’m sure it must have been
very important.”
“Yes, President, it was--the most important that a terrestrial student
of astronomy could be engaged upon,” replied Vassilis, speaking slowly
and very gravely.
The President looked curiously for a moment into his clear, thoughtful
eyes, and noticed the lines of care on his pale, worn features, so
different to those of the rest of his countrymen. Then he said, with an
anxious ring in his voice--
“What is the matter, Vassilis? You look worn and ill, as though you had
just passed through some great sorrow. Have you been keeping too long
vigils with the stars? Tell me, what is it?”
Vassilis was silent for a moment as though he might have been wondering
whether the President, strong as he was, would have strength to bear
the blow that he must strike in his next sentence. The awful news had
come to him slowly, sign by sign and word by word, and so he had been
in a measure prepared for it when its full meaning became clear. But
upon Alan Arnold it must fall at a single stroke. Still the words had
to be spoken, and after a good minute’s pause he said--
“President, I bring you the most terrible news that one man can bring
to another. The Master’s prophecy is about to be fulfilled. Three
nights ago I received through the photo-telegraph what I believe to be
the death-sentence of humanity upon earth. Here is the transcript of
the message.”
Save for a sudden pallor and a quick uplifting of the eyelids, Alan
Arnold betrayed no more emotion as he took the roll of paper which
Vassilis handed to him, than he had done when he received his son’s
letter from the island.
“It does not come to me unexpected,” he said in his firm quiet tones.
“Your children and mine, Vassilis, are of the fifth generation, and
it was foretold that they should see the sign in the sky. And so the
threatened doom is not to pass us by?”
“No,” replied Vassilis. “Not unless some miracle happens, and there are
no miracles in the astronomy or the mathematics of Mars. The Martians
are long past the age of miracles or mistakes. These are the data and
the calculations upon which the conclusion is based. I have repeated
them back to Mars and received confirmation of them.
“I have also verified the times and distances and velocities myself,
and have been unable to find the slightest error. As far as I can see,
there is not the remotest chance of escape. The human race has only
four months, five days, and twenty-three hours to live from midnight
to-night.”
“It is the will of God!” said the President solemnly, slightly bending
his head as he spoke. “It is not for us to question the designs of
Eternal Wisdom, save in so far as we may strive to understand them.
Death has always been inevitable to all of us, and this will only be
dying together instead of alone. Do you wish anything done with these
calculations?”
“Yes,” said Vassilis. “I would suggest that you appoint a committee of
our best mathematicians and astronomers to examine and verify them once
more, detail by detail, so that assurance may, if possible, be made
surer. I shall receive another message from Mars to-night, and it will
be well for the committee to be with me in the observatory. With the
public aspect of the question I have, of course, nothing to do, that
lies in the hands of yourself and the Council.”
“Very well,” said the President, “what you wish shall be done at once,
and the Council will meet this morning to consider what public steps
are to be taken.”
Within half an hour after the conclusion of the momentous interview the
Council had met, and the most immediate result of its deliberations
on the tremendous tidings that had come from the sister world was the
issue of the order for the instant return of all Aerians who were
abroad which had been delivered to Alan on the deck of the _Avenger_ on
the morning of the 18th.
Immediately on receiving his father’s letter, Alan signalled, “Cease
firing and follow,” to the _Isma_, and the three Aerian vessels started
southward towards Gibraltar, leaving Paris to its fate. At Gibraltar,
which was reached in two hours and a half, he found that, in accordance
with the orders of the Council, messages had already been sent out to
all the stations within the European area of the Federation for all
Aerians to rendezvous at the Rock as soon as possible.
The same orders had been transmitted along the telephonic cables
which connected the marine stations of the Mediterranean for all the
battleships on service to go into their respective harbours, so that
their crews might land and be picked up by air-ships which had already
been despatched for them.
Before the evening Aerian vessels had begun to come in from all parts
of Europe, where they had been stationed, and their crews brought
terrible descriptions of the scenes of carnage and destruction they had
left to obey the summons. The Federation leaders were in despair at
their apparent desertion by their potent allies, while their enemies
were already rejoicing at the disappearance of the Aerian warships from
all points of the scene of war.
By midnight the last Aerian vessel had come in, and, after the command
of the Rock, the last station of which the Aerians retained command,
had been handed over to the British forces, the flotilla, numbering
nearly four hundred warships, rose into the air just as two large
Moslem squadrons, one fresh from the destruction of Paris, and the
other from Alexandria and the east of Europe, converged upon the
Rock, and, without warning, opened a furious fire of shells upon it.
The great guns from the batteries replied, and the fleets, under the
command of Alan and Alexis, after sending a rapid hail of shells among
the Moslem vessels as a parting salute, soared into the upper regions
of the air and headed southward for home, leaving a fiery chaos of
death and destruction behind them.
Two hours after daybreak on the 19th the fleet crossed the Northern
Ridge, and sank to earth on the sloping plateau behind the city. Alan
at once disembarked, and went to his father’s palace to report himself.
The sudden and unexpected return of the fleet, which had left to do
battle for the empire of the world but three days and a half before,
filled all the inhabitants of the Valley with amazement, for no one
outside the Council and the committee appointed to verify the message
received from Mars yet knew of the doom that was menacing the world.
Alan was received at the door of his palace by his father, who, after
their greetings had been exchanged, took him at once to the room in
which the Council were already assembled, and there in the presence of
his colleagues made him acquainted with the reason for his recall.
Inured as he was to the unsparing warfare in which human life had to be
counted as almost a negligible quantity, a warfare in which there was
no middle course between life and death, Alan, after the first shock
of surprise and horror had passed, faced the tremendous crisis with a
calmness and resignation worthy of the traditions of his family and his
race.
For years he had carried his life in his hands, and now that the end of
all things seemed near he was prepared to look inevitable death calmly
in the face. He heard the reading of the message in silence, and then,
when he saw that they were waiting for him to speak, he said quietly--
“What is to be must be! We cannot argue with the workings of the
universe.” Then he paused for a moment, and went on--“I have come back
with my comrades in obedience to orders. May I now ask why, if death is
coming to the whole human race, we were not permitted to die in battle
for the right against the wrong rather than to wait here in inaction
and suspense until we are burnt to death on the funeral pyre of the
world?”
He spoke the last words almost hotly, for the first thought that had
risen in his mind after hearing the doom that was about to overtake
humanity was that the debt he owed to Olga Romanoff must now for ever
remain unpaid at his hands. This thought was so unbearable to him that
before any reply could be made to his question he broke out again, this
time speaking rapidly and almost angrily--
“If, as you tell me, the world has only a few weeks to live, why should
I wait here for death when I have work to do elsewhere? What does it
matter whether I die scorched to a cinder in the fire-mist or am blown
to pieces by a Russian shell? I have a debt to pay, a stain upon my
honour and my manhood to wipe out before I die.
“And so, too, has Alexis. Will you not give us an air-ship and let us
find a crew of volunteers that we may go back to the war and hunt our
enemy, and the enemy of humanity, down, and either destroy her or find
an honourable death in the attempt to do so?”
As he ended his impassioned appeal his father rose from his seat, and
laid his hand upon his shoulder and said gravely, and yet not without a
note of admiration in his voice--
“My son, those are brave and honourable words, and they prove that you
are no unworthy son of the race you belong to. But they are still the
words of passion rather than reason. Remember that in the presence
of the universal doom that now overhangs the human race not only
private vengeance but even the strife of nations sinks into utter
insignificance. A heavier hand than yours will punish the sin for which
she who has wronged you will soon have to answer at the bar of Eternal
Justice. Remember how it was said of old, ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the
Lord. I will repay.’”
“That is true, father,” replied Alan, now speaking in his habitual tone
of respect. “But why should not the instrument of that vengeance be the
hand of him whom she has so bitterly wronged? You know what I mean, and
so do all in this room.
“Has she not so polluted my manhood and stained my honour that I must
meet, apart from Alma, the fate that I could have shared with her with
no more regret than that we had to die instead of live together? Is
it not better that she should know I died in the attempt to wipe that
stain away than see me waiting for death with it still upon me?”
“That is for Alma as well as for you to decide,” said Francis Tremayne,
rising from his seat as he spoke. “How do you know that she is
unwilling to meet her end hand-in-hand with you?”
“I have looked into her eyes and seen no love in them,” replied Alan,
flushing to his temples with shame and anger. “Her old love for me is
dead, as it may well be. How could I expect her purity to mate with
my”--
“Stop, Alan!” exclaimed his father before he had time to utter the
shameful word that was on his lips. “Those are no words for you to
speak or for me to hear, especially at such a time as this. If any
stain ever rested upon you you have more than purged it already. The
man who is found worthy the confidence of the rulers of Aeria is worthy
the respect, if not the love, of any woman in the State. Whether Alma
loves you still or not is a question for her own heart to answer, but
you must not call yourself unworthy in my hearing.”
“Nor yet in mine,” said Alma’s father warmly. “If the shadow of death
had not fallen across all our life-ways as it has done, there is no
man who wears the Golden Wings that I would so willingly see Alma join
hands with as yourself. If I, her father, hold you worthy to live with
her, surely you cannot hold yourself unworthy to die with her.”
As he spoke he held out his hand to Alan, and he, unable to find words
to answer him, grasped it in silence, broken only by a murmur of
approval from the assembled members of the Council.
“Thank you, my friend, for saying that!” said the President to
Tremayne. “Alan can ask no better assurance unless he has it from
Alma’s own lips. But now I have something more to say, something
that will give the true reason for my recall of all the Aerians who
were beyond our borders. Let the words you are now going to hear be
heard with all respect, for they are not mine but those of the Master
himself.”
Amidst an expectant silence he now resumed his place at the head of the
Council table, and bidding Alan and the Vice-President to be seated,
took a long parchment envelope brown with age from the breast of his
tunic and said--
“This contains the last words of him who prophesied the doom with
which humanity now stands confronted, and who thus speaks to us from
the past, and gives us good counsel and comfort in the hour of our
perplexity and sorrow. It has been handed down with its seal unbroken
from father to son for four generations, and now it has fallen to me to
break the seal and read what no eyes but those of Natas and my own have
ever seen. This is the endorsement upon the cover--
‘_To the son or daughter of my line who shall be the head of the
House of Arnold in the fifth generation from me:--When the world is
threatened with the final ruin that I have foreshadowed, open this
and read my words to all who are then dwelling in Aeria._
NATAS.’”
The President paused, and everyone waited with most anxious expectation
as he opened the envelope and took from it four square sheets of
parchment. He unfolded them and went on--
“When Vassilis Cosmo brought me the transcription of the message from
Mars I saw that the time had come to obey the injunction endorsed on
this envelope. I opened it, and this is what I read:--
‘The interpretation of the prophecy concerning the possible
destruction of the world in the fifth generation from now, written by
me in the twenty-fifth year of the Peace, and commanded to be read
every fifth year in the ears of the descendants of those now dwelling
in Aeria.
‘When the War of the Terror was over, and there was peace on earth,
I devoted the declining years of my life to the study of that
noblest of all sciences which teaches the lore of the stars and the
constitution of the universe. In the fifteenth year of the Peace,
that is to say, in the year of the Christian Era 1920, a new star
appeared towards the constellation of Andromeda, which shone with
great brilliancy for thirty-five nights, and then faded gradually
away into the abysses of space.
‘Seeking into the causes of this phenomenon, I found that it was due
to the collision of two opaque bodies beyond the bounds of the solar
system, which doubtless had been travelling towards each other for
centuries through space. So enormous was the heat evolved by the
conversion of the motion of the two bodies, that their materials
were resolved into their component elements, and what had been two
bodies as solid as the earth, though immensely larger, now became an
enormous fire-mist, a chaos of blazing storms and burning billows of
incandescent matter.
‘I observed it closely from the time of its first appearance until
the most powerful telescope at my command could no longer detect it.
I found that, vastly remote as it was, the course which it pursued
until it was lost to view proved that it was still within the sphere
of the sun’s attraction, and that therefore a time must come when it
would reach its point of greatest distance, and return.
‘Such calculations as I was able to make during the brief period
of my observation, showed that it would re-enter the confines of
the solar system in one hundred and twelve years from then, and,
travelling with constantly accelerated motion would become visible to
the inhabitants of the earth five years later. I learnt, too, that
unless it should be deflected from its path by the attraction of
bodies unknown to terrestrial astronomers it would cross the orbit of
the earth in the month of September in the year 2037, that is to say,
in the fifth generation of men from my own day.
‘If my calculations are correct, the earth will during that month
pass through an ocean of fire that will destroy all living things
upon its surface, both plants and animals.
‘For the space of ten hours, or, it may well be, more, while the
planet is passing through the fire-mist, there will be no water upon
the face of the earth, but the whole globe will be surrounded with a
vast nebulous mantle of steam. At the end of this time it will emerge
from the fiery sea, the steam-cloud will be recondensed and fall in
a deluge upon the land, and the world, with a changed face, with new
oceans and new continents, will pursue her impassive way, lifeless,
through space.
‘But even in the face of so tremendous a cataclysm as this, it is
not for human genius to despair or human faith to be confounded. The
new earth may be repeopled, and you may be the parents of the new
humanity. Though innumerable millions shall die, yet the chosen few
will be saved, if the Master of Destiny shall permit, and from among
you the chosen few shall come.
‘The caverns of Mount Austral are deep and cool, and enclosed by
walls of living rock, deep rooted in the foundations of the world. In
those days, if you shall have made good use of the heritage we leave
you, you shall be almost as gods in skill and knowledge, and you
shall find a means to make this a fortress whose strength shall defy
the convulsions of the elements and preserve a remnant of human life
upon the earth.
‘When you have done this, you that remain shall prepare to meet
the inevitable end, for only a few among your many thousands can
be saved. Yet, if you have grown in wisdom and faith as well as in
knowledge and skill, you shall not disquiet yourselves about this,
for sooner or later death is certain to all, and you will but pass
together through the shadows instead of singly.
‘When the final hour comes, and the breath of the blazing firmament
is hot upon your brows, may He in whose Hand the fate of worlds and
races lies, give you strength and wisdom to compose yourselves for
death as men who know that it is but the dreamless sleep that parts
to-morrow from to-day.’
“Those are the words of the Master,” said the President, reverently
laying down the parchment sheets on the table before him. “And it is
for us to hear and obey. You will now see why it was necessary for all
our sons that had gone forth to battle to be recalled, for among them
there are many who can justly lay claim to be of the flower of Aerian
manhood.
“To-morrow I will read the message from Mars and the commands of the
Master, in the temple, to a congregation of all the fathers and mothers
in Aeria, and then it shall be their task to prepare their children for
the doom which awaits them in common with the rest of humanity. The
remainder of to-day we will devote to the task of considering how the
commands of the Master may be best obeyed.”