It was while they were struggling in the grip of this vast social
melancholy, and anxiously craving some new vision by which to
reinterpret or transcend the agony of the past, that the Fifth Men were
confronted with a most unexpected physical crisis. It was discovered
that something queer was happening to the moon; in fact, that the orbit
of the satellite was narrowing in upon the earth in a manner contrary to
all the calculations of the scientists.
The Fifth Men had long ago fashioned for themselves an all-embracing and
minutely coherent system of natural sciences, every factor in which had
been put to the test a thousand times and had never been shaken.
Imagine, then, their bewilderment at this extraordinary discovery. In
ages when science was still fragmentary, a subversive discovery entailed
merely a reorganization of some one department of science; but by now,
such was the coherence of knowledge, that any minute discrepancy of fact
and theory must throw man into a state of complete intellectual vertigo.
The evolution of the lunar orbit had, of course, been studied from time
immemorial. Even the First Men had learned that the moon must first
withdraw from and subsequently once more approach the earth, till it
should reach a critical proximity and begin to break up into a swarm of
fragments like the rings of Saturn. This view had been very thoroughly
confirmed by the Fifth Men themselves. The satellite should have
continued to withdraw for yet many hundreds of millions of years; but in
fact it was now observed that not only had the withdrawal ceased, but a
comparatively rapid approach had begun.
Observations and calculations were repeated, and ingenious theoretical
explanations were suggested; but the truth remained completely hidden.
It was left to a future and more brilliant species to discover the
connexion between a planet’s gravitation and its cultural development.
Meanwhile, the Fifth Men knew only that the distance between the earth
and the moon was becoming smaller with ever-increasing rapidity.
This discovery was a tonic to a melancholy race. Men turned from the
tragic past to the bewildering present and the uncertain future.
For it was evident that, if the present acceleration of approach were to
be maintained, the moon would enter the critical zone and disintegrate
in less than ten million years; and, further, that the fragments would
not maintain themselves as a ring, but would soon crash upon the earth.
Heat generated by their impact would make the surface of the earth
impossible as the home of life. A short-lived and short-sighted species
might well have considered ten million years as equivalent to eternity.
Not so the Fifth Men. Thinking primarily in terms of the race, they
recognized at once that their whole social policy must now be dominated
by this future catastrophe. Some there were indeed who at first refused
to take the matter seriously, saying that there was no reason to believe
that the moon’s odd behaviour would continue indefinitely. But as the
years advanced, this view became increasingly improbable. Some of those
who had spent much of their lives in exploration of the past now sought
to explore the future also, hoping to prove that human civilization
would always be discoverable on the earth in no matter how remote a
future. But the attempt to unveil the future by direct inspection failed
completely. It was surmised, erroneously, that future events, unlike
past events, must be strictly non-existent until their creation by the
advancing present.
Clearly humanity must leave its native planet. Research was therefore
concentrated on the possibility of flight through empty space, and the
suitability of neighbouring worlds. The only alternatives were Mars and
Venus. The former was by now without water and without atmosphere. The
latter had a dense moist atmosphere, but one which lacked oxygen. The
surface of Venus, moreover, was known to be almost completely covered
with a shallow ocean. Further the planet was so hot by day that, even at
the poles, man in his present state would scarcely survive.
It did not take the Fifth Men many centuries to devise a tolerable means
of voyaging in interplanetary space. Immense rockets were constructed,
the motive power of which was derived from the annihilation of matter.
The vehicle was propelled simply by the terrific pressure of radiation
thus produced. ‘Fuel’ for a voyage of many months, or even years, could,
of course, easily be carried, since the annihilation of a minute amount
of matter produced a vast wealth of energy. Moreover, when once the
vessel had emerged from the earth’s atmosphere, and had attained full
speed, she would, of course, maintain it without the use of power from
the rocket apparatus. The task of rendering the ‘ether-ship’ properly
manageable and decently habitable proved difficult, but not
insurmountable. The first vessel to take the ether was a cigar-shaped
hull some three thousand feet long, and built of metals whose artificial
atoms were incomparably more rigid than anything hitherto known.
Batteries of ‘rocket’ apparatus at various points on the hull enabled
the ship not only to travel forward, but to reverse, turn in any
direction, or side-step. Windows of an artificial transparent element,
scarcely less strong than the metal of the hull, enabled the voyagers to
look around them. Within there was ample accommodation for a hundred
persons and their provisions for three years. Air for the same period
was manufactured in transit from protons and electrons stored under
pressure comparable to that in the interior of a star. Heat was, of
course, provided by the annihilation of matter. Powerful refrigeration
would permit the vessel to approach the sun almost to the orbit of
Mercury. An ‘artificial gravity’ system, based on the properties of the
electro-magnetic field, could be turned on and regulated at will, so as
to maintain a more or less normal environment for the human organism.
This pioneer ship was manned with a navigating crew and a company of
scientists, and was successfully dispatched upon a trial trip. The
intention was to approach close to the surface of the moon, possibly to
circumnavigate it at an altitude of ten thousand feet, and to return
without landing. For many days those on earth received radio messages
from the vessel’s powerful installation, reporting that all was going
well. But suddenly the messages ceased, and no more was ever heard of
the vessel. Almost at the moment of the last message, telescopes had
revealed a sudden flash of light at a point on the vessel’s course. It
was therefore surmised that she had collided with a meteor and fused
with the heat of the impact.
Other vessels were built and dispatched on trial voyages. Many failed to
return. Some got out of control, and reported that they were heading for
outer space or plunging towards the sun, their hopeless messages
continuing until the last of the crew succumbed to suffocation. Other
vessels returned successfully, but with crews haggard and distraught
from long confinement in bad atmosphere. One, venturing to land on the
moon, broke her back, so that the air rushed out of her, and her people
died. After her last message was received, she was detected from the
earth, as an added speck on the stippled surface of a lunar ‘sea’.
As time passed, however, accidents became rarer; indeed, so rare that
trips in the void began to be a popular form of amusement. Literature of
the period reverberates with the novelty of such experiences, with the
sense that man had at last learned true flight, and acquired the freedom
of the solar system. Writers dwelt upon the shock of seeing, as the
vessel soared and accelerated, the landscape dwindle to a mere
illuminated disc or crescent, surrounded by constellations. They
remarked also the awful remoteness and mystery which travellers
experienced on these early voyages, with dazzling sunlight on one side
of the vessel and dazzlingly bespangled night on the other. They
described how the intense sun spread his corona against a black and
star-crowded sky. They expatiated also on the overwhelming interest of
approaching another planet; of inspecting from the sky the still visible
remains of Martian civilization; of groping through the cloud banks of
Venus to discover islands in her almost coastless ocean; of daring an
approach to Mercury, till the heat became insupportable in spite of the
best refrigerating mechanism; of feeling a way across the belt of the
asteroids and onwards toward Jupiter, till shortage of air and
provisions forced a return.
But though the mere navigation of space was thus easily accomplished,
the major task was still untouched. It was necessary either to remake
man’s nature to suit another planet, or to modify conditions upon
another planet to suit man’s nature. The former alternative was
repugnant to the Fifth Men. Obviously it would entail an almost complete
refashioning of the human organism. No existing individual could
possibly be so altered as to live in the present conditions of Mars or
Venus. And it would probably prove impossible to create a new being,
adapted to these conditions, without sacrificing the brilliant and
harmonious constitution of the extant species.
On the other hand, Mars could not be made habitable without first being
stocked, with air and water; and such an undertaking seemed impossible.
There was nothing for it, then, but to attack Venus. The polar surfaces
of that planet, shielded by impenetrable depths of cloud, proved after
all not unendurably hot. Subsequent generations might perhaps be
modified so as to withstand even the sub-arctic and ‘temperate’
climates. Oxygen was plentiful, but it was all tied up in chemical
combination. Inevitably so, since oxygen combines very readily, and on
Venus there was no vegetable life to exhale the free gas and replenish
the ever-vanishing supply. It was necessary, then, to equip Venus with
an appropriate vegetation, which in the course of ages should render the
planet’s atmosphere hospitable to man. The chemical and physical
conditions on Venus had therefore to be studied in great detail, so that
it might be possible to design a kind of life which would have a chance
of flourishing. This research had to be carried out from within the
ether-ships, or with gas helmets, since no human being could live in the
natural atmosphere of the planet.
We must not dwell upon the age of heroic research and adventure which
now began. Observations of the lunar orbit were showing that ten million
years was too long an estimate of the future habitability of the earth;
and it was soon realized that Venus could not be made ready soon enough
unless some more rapid change was set on foot. It was therefore decided
to split up some of the ocean of the planet into hydrogen and oxygen by
a vast process of electrolysis. This would have been a more difficult
task, had not the ocean been relatively free from salt, owing to the
fact that there was so little dry land to be denuded of salts by rain
and river. The oxygen thus formed by electrolysis would be allowed to
mix with the atmosphere. The hydrogen had to be got rid of somehow, and
an ingenious method was devised by which it should be ejected beyond the
limits of the atmosphere at so great a speed that it would never return.
Once sufficient free oxygen had been produced, the new vegetation would
replenish the loss due to oxidation. This work was duly set on foot.
Great automatic electrolysing stations were founded on several of the
islands; and biological research produced at length a whole flora of
specialized vegetable types to cover the land surface of the planet. It
was hoped that in less than a million years Venus would be fit to
receive the human race, and the race fit to live on Venus.
Meanwhile a careful survey of the planet had been undertaken. Its land
surface, scarcely more than a thousandth that of the earth, consisted of
an unevenly distributed archipelago of mountainous islands. The planet
had evidently not long ago been through a mountain-forming era, for
soundings proved its whole surface to be extravagantly corrugated. The
ocean was subject to terrific storms and currents; for since the planet
took several weeks to rotate, there was a great difference of
temperature and atmospheric pressure between the almost Arctic
hemisphere of night and the sweltering hemisphere of day. So great was
the evaporation, that open sky was almost never visible from any part of
the planet’s surface; and indeed the average daytime weather was a
succession of thick fogs and fantastic thunderstorms. Rain in the
evening was a continuous torrent. Yet before night was over the waves
clattered with fragments of ice.
Man looked upon his future home with loathing, and on his birthplace
with an affection which became passionate. With its blue sky, its
incomparable starry nights, its temperate and varied continents, its
ample spaces of agriculture, wilderness, and park, its well-known beasts
and plants, and all the material fabric of the most enduring of
terrestrial civilizations, it seemed to the men and women who were
planning flight almost a living thing imploring them not to desert it.
They looked often with hate at the quiet moon, now visibly larger than
the moon of history. They revised again and again their astronomical and
physical theories, hoping for some flaw which should render the moon’s
observed behaviour less mysterious, less terrifying. But they found
nothing. It was as though a fiend out of some ancient myth had come to
life in the modern world, to interfere with the laws of nature for man’s
undoing.