The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars Part 9

"Again the evening fell. We arrived at the entrance of a gloomy and stupendous gorge. It was the wonderful pa.s.sage driven through the first area of igneous rocks before we reached the quarry country of the Tiniti. It pierced the dark and stubborn dike that rose in sheer walls like the Palisades on the Hudson, 1,000 and 1,200 feet above our heads, and it seemed that the darkening tide was carrying us into the bowels of the sphere. As the precipitous walls rose on either side, a loud report, followed by another more m.u.f.fled, startled us. Looking upward, Chapman, shouting '_Golki, tanto_,' with outstretched hand pointed to a flaming missile pa.s.sing over our heads, and apparently in the direction we were heading.

"It was a meteor. It was just such a phenomenon as we know of on the Earth. I felt certain that it was a bolide from s.p.a.ce, one of those fiery visitors of stone and iron that collide occasionally with our Earth, and that somewhere before us, in the country we were approaching, it would be found.

"Later a few straggling shooting stars appeared. The languor of fatigue overcame me, and I slept prostrate on the cus.h.i.+ons of the deck as the murmurous reverberations from the walls of the rock-bound ca.n.a.l rose and fell, with the cadence of the waves, splas.h.i.+ng softly against their feet.

"I dreamt of the Earth, the pictures naturally recalled, by these surroundings, of my life on the Hudson River in New York, and it seemed so real, that I should find myself with you working away in the old laboratory at Yonkers near the Albany Road. Suddenly I was shaken, and opening my eyes I beheld the firmament of heaven falling in coruscating cascades about us. Starting up, I found myself clutching Chapman, who had called to the pilot to stop the boat. A few of the attendants were grouped near us, and the loudly suppressed exclamations made me realize that these visitations were perhaps infrequent upon Mars.

"It was a meteoric shower, like our leonids in November. It rained pellets or b.a.l.l.s of fire, these phosph.o.r.escent trains gleaming spectrally, while a kind of half audible crackling accompanied the fall.

Shooting in irregular shoals or volleys, they would increase and diminish, and recurrent explosions announced the arrival at the ground of some meteoric ma.s.s.

"It was a marvellous and splendid scene. It lasted till the dawn. We remained almost unchanged in position, while the tiny comets crowded the sky with their uninterrupted march, and the air was shot through with intermingled lanes of light.

"As the morning broke, we had pa.s.sed the great gorge in the ca.n.a.l, and had entered a wild, savage, almost treeless country. Great weathered columns of rock stood alone in the debris of their own dismemberment, the bare gray or rusty and jagged expanses sloping up steeply from the edge of the ca.n.a.l, sparingly dotted over with gray bushes, and covered with an ashen colored lichen.

"The scene was here forbidding and desolate. We moved for miles through the waste of a ruined world. The whole region had been the stage of great volcanic activity, and the monticules of scoriaceous rock, the broad plains excavated with deep pools that reflected their dismal, untenanted borders in the black depths of unruffled water, spoke of meteorological conditions long prolonged and intense. It was a weird, strange place, silent and dead. But amongst these vast ejections, these truncated fossil craters were embedded ma.s.ses of the rare self-luminous stone that made the City of Light. Chapman told me how in pockets or huge amygdaloidal cavities, this white phosph.o.r.escent substance was quarried, brought up bodily perhaps in the slow upheaval of the region from the deep-seated sources of this mineral flood.

"The ca.n.a.l pa.s.sed along for miles in the depression between two folds of the surface. Finally, gazing ahead, there slowly came into view a huge _rictus_, a gaping rent in the side of the black and gray and red walls to our right, and a minute movement of living forms, scarcely discernible, revealed the first quarry near the little town of Sinsi.

"As we drew nearer I descried a slant incline from the open excavation down which the blocks of stone were slid. They were brought to the surface by hoisting cranes, and just as our little porcelain c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.l glided to the dock, an enormous fragment rudely shaped into a cubical form, was moving down the metal road bed to the edge of the ca.n.a.l.

"Here we landed, and a crowd of people hailed us, and amongst them were many of the prehistoric people, the short, st.u.r.dy brown or copper colored northerners who work in the quarries and mines. It was nightfall. Their day's work was over, and they crowded around us with interest. They were good-natured, but quiet, and dressed in a kind of overalls that was made in one garment from head to feet.

"Chapman pushed amongst them, followed by me. We made our way to a pleasant house, built of the quarried volcanic rock, alternating with the white stone of the quarry, and covered with an almost flat roof of the blue metal. In this house we were received by the Superintendent of Quarries, a supernatural, who still retained a mechanical apt.i.tude, brought with him from the earth. The greetings were pleasant, and as the Superintendent spoke his former earth language, which had been French, we got along intelligibly.

"The rooms of this house were large, square apartments, simply furnished with the white chairs, tables and couches I had seen in the City of Light, but on its walls were drawings and photographs of the quarry, the country, and groups of the workmen. Amongst the pictures were some wonderful large scenes of an ice country, and the l.u.s.trous high wall of a gigantic glacier. I pointed these out to Chapman. He told me that to the north of the mountains lay the great northern sea, in winter a sea of ice, and that from continental elevations within it glacial ma.s.ses pushed outward, invading the southern country. A road led over the mountain from Sinsi to regions beyond, where there were fertile intervals and plains inhabited by populations of the small, early people we had met.

"Here were their settlements, from which the workmen of the quarries had been brought. Beyond this again lay the margins of the polar sea. The Superintendent--his name was Alca--had visited this region, and probably made the pictures I wondered at. The Superintendent said we should visit the great quarry in the morning before we started again for Scandor. And he showed us, as the darkness descended about us, a marvellous phenomenon. Standing on the roof of his house, we looked up the mountain side to the immense opening forced in its flank, and it had become a great surface of palpitating, rising and falling light. The waves of glorious soft radiance bathed the village about us, the waters of the ca.n.a.l, and the arid crusts of rock beyond, the circle of encompa.s.sing darkness straining like a great black wall, on its spent edges.

"Song and music closed the day, and after eating the wine-soaked cakes of Pintu, we made our way to the white and simple bedchamber and waited for the morning.

"It came, fresh and splendid. The air of this lat.i.tude of Mars is so pure, vivid and dustless! My strength and power and vitality seemed boundless. And as in the broad mirror of my bedchamber I viewed my reflection, I leaped with wonder to see the youth I had been, formed anew in lineaments, fairer than Earth's. My son, I have become younger than yourself, age has vanished, and all the restraint of differing years between has vanished with it.

"Alca, Chapman and myself, as is the Martian habit, walked to the quarry mouth, up a winding and hard stone road. This dreary and desolate region seemed to have a charm. Its expanse of rigid waves of stone, pimpled with sharp excrescences, and as deeply pitted with cavernous grottoes, where no life seemed able to survive, save a stunted herbage, spa.r.s.ely a.s.sembled in vagrant groups, or gathered in thirsty lines around the lip of the still pools, was full of scenic interest, but more deeply eloquent of great geological convulsions.

"Chapman and Alca were in front of me, speaking the Martian tongue, while I stood looking backward every few steps, delighted to trace the broad river of the ca.n.a.l winding through the desolation for miles beyond. Then I noticed how rapid and effortless is motion in Mars.

Volition is so easy and penetrating, the body becomes a mere plaything for the mind. Every function, every part is swayed into vitality by the mind. There is the apparent motion of the limbs, but really the whole frame sweeps on as by an intangible process of translation, and the body is transferred to the point the mind desires it to reach almost without fatigue. This gives strength exactly proportioned to Will, and the shorn powers of disease and Time proceed from the creative faculty of thought.

The disabling of the body in Mars by weakness or disease, or accident or age, sprang front a mental discord, an emotional dissonance. Here was the explanation of those disorders that still cling to the Martian life.

In this lay also the secret of crime.

"I looked upward to Chapman, who was then peering with hand raised to his eyes at some object before him which the Superintendent had pointed out, and I felt sorrowful that he should be in disagreement with this life. It boded ill. I had begun to love Chapman, and the first sense of suffering I had felt seemed now awakened at the thought of harm coming to him.

"But there was no time for meditation. Chapman and Alca were looking backward and shouting. They beckoned with their arms, and as I gazed I saw between them, and ahead of them a great black object, about which a number of the little workmen were running excitedly like a swarm of ants. I leaped to their position. Chapman exclaimed: 'You remember the meteor we saw. Well, there it is.'

"Extended like a gigantic and deformed missile lay an iron meteorite before us, the same thing as the Siderites that appear in your Museums on Earth. It was yet warm, a crevice spread down into its interior, and it had apparently rolled from the spot of its first impact, since a hammered side, abraded and worn on the hard rock, lay uppermost. It bore the significant pits, thumb-marks and depressions of the terrestrial objects, while streaming striations spread from its front breast where the iron in melting had run like tears over its surface. It measured some four feet in length, and must have weighed many tons.

"Then a curious thing happened, or seemed to happen. Alca, the Superintendent, advanced to it, and bending against it with outstretched arm, muttered a few words, frowned as if in concentrated thought, and--was it credible--the iron object moved. I looked aghast at Chapman, who turned away with what I dismally interpreted was an expression of disgust. I pressed up close to him, and he murmured, 'Was that a miracle? If it was I should like to get back to common sense and jack-screws.'

"We continued upward, and now the terrific gulf piercing the ground for over two terrestrial miles yawned at our feet. The steep precipice, lost in a twilight dusk below, was disconcerting. The blocks of stone were hoisted from the gigantic pit by hoists worked by hand. Here is one of the anomalies of this existence in Mars. Electrical science and its application is understood, great stores of mechanical experience and wisdom can be drawn on, and yet in most of the mechanical work, hand work, the toilsome method of the Pharaohs of Egypt prevails. There are no railroads or trolleys or steam vehicles. The boats are driven by explosive engines, and there are electric carriages of velocity and power. But the latter are infrequent. The ca.n.a.ls are numerous, especially about Scandor, and the great trunk ca.n.a.ls are broad avenues of traffic.

"The intense swift motion of the Martians meets their needs in most cases. Where hard labor on a mammoth scale is necessary, the little race of _prehistorics_ serves all their purposes. The ca.n.a.ls are their great engineering feats, and the wonderful telescopes, their triumphs in applied science, their knowledge of the trans.m.u.tation of the elements,--their greatest intellectual victory,--and Scandor, the City of Gla.s.s, their architectural gem and miracle.

"We stood in a line gazing upon the receding roof of the great cavern, the heavy walls left like b.u.t.tresses to hold up the overlying mountain ridge, and the tiny figures dimly swarming on the distant floor.

"The quarry extends far in under the ridge. Much barren rock is taken out, for the Phosphori rock occurs variously in ma.s.ses, layers, lenticles, and almond shaped inclusions in the igneous matrix.

"We were to descend, but before we did so the Superintendent led us to the summit of the ridge. From here, with a superb hand telescope, we gazed up a distant land beyond the volcanic area we had surmounted, occupied by farms and villages. It was the North country where the prehistorics dwelt. It seemed peaceful and attractive. Beyond this again we just discerned the s.h.i.+mmering surface of the Great Glacier, the superb train of ice, that comes southward in the winter, and encroaches even upon some of the exposed margins of the land of the prehistorics.

Its retreat is rapid in the warm season, and its broad tract is broken by emergent backs of rocks and land, that are seamed with wild flowers.

The Martians travel to these oases in the Ocean of Ice, and it is from these flowers that an entrancing perfume is extracted, of which the Martians are extremely fond.

"We lingered on this pinnacle of rock and surveyed a prospect on either side of contrasted and great interest. The land of the Zinipi north of us resembled the fertile hill and valley country of the Genesee River in western New York, the great region south of us a combination of the Snake River country in Idaho, and the fissured ranges of the Silverton Quadrangle in Colorado.

"Between these rose this high part.i.tion of castellated rock.

"We descended again to the mouth of the quarry, and, led by the Superintendent, were swung far out from its dizzy sides into the lake of air between them upon a platform, used for an aerial elevator. Chapman clung nervously to me, and complained of a light nausea and dread. I felt only a tonic exhilaration, and as we slowly sank through the shaft of air, crossed by sunlight for some distance, and then pa.s.sed into the cooler shadows of its deeper parts, where the yet level sun failed to penetrate, I cried aloud with delight, and the abyss around us shouted its salutation back.

"Still we descended, and soon saw back in the deep prolongations of the tunnel the s.h.i.+ning walls of this phosph.o.r.escent cave. The light glowed so effulgently that it seemed a soft radiant haze, through which came the sound of voices, and in it black figures moved incessantly.

"The method of quarrying is not unlike that of the marble quarries on the earth. Drilling long holes in and under the stone, which from pressure has a.s.sumed a rudely cubical cleavage, separates the rock into heavy pieces. These holes are wedged, and the rocks forced off into useful blocks. All is done by hand, and the picture of activity, with workers constantly engaged at their various duties made a singular scene. We walked far into the ever deepening womb of the mountain, while on either hand lateral tunnels, or rather avenues had been pushed, penetrating rich segregations wherever they had been traced, and where also glowed the welcome glow of this lithic lamp.

"The Superintendent explained that the stone was quite unequal in quality, and he told us how the illuminating power of the stone was actually tested in what on the Earth we would call candle powers, but is known on Mars as Ki-kans, or a unit of light derived from a platinum wire one millimetre thick, carrying 100 volts current. We could see the varying radiations, and came upon rayless sections, which from admixture of impurities or imperfect chemical perfection, were deprived of all luminousness.

"Returning, it seemed as if in the sharp convulsions of the crust a flood of light had been somehow absorbed by the rock, and then this light-saturated rock had been overwhelmed and buried out of sight, only to be painfully restored to its first home, in the open skies, by the labor of men.

"But time was pressing. Chapman must reach Scandor, his envoy's errand was important, and bidding the kind Alca good-bye, which the Martians execute by a kiss and an embrace, we came out again into the deep well, and gazed upward past the glistening precipices, irregular with little ledges, and over-reaching cavities, to the distant sky.

"And now a terrible calamity befell us. The Superintendent pointed out a narrow path that led circuitously around the great crags of rock to the top. It was a narrow winding ledge, rising by a mild incline, and circling the pit before it finally reached its brim. In parts it was quite unprotected, but the extraordinary nerves of the men made the achievement of pa.s.sing out or in the quarry by this means a very simple test of endurance. Even as the Superintendent alluded to its use, a file of dark figures was just above us, with soldierlike precision marching down to the level we occupied. Chapman banteringly asked me to try it, and I accepted the challenge, urging him to follow.

"We started up. At first the ascent was simple, and the view backward just a little exciting. We continued, and I noticed that the path contracted, and nervously looking on ahead, was startled to find it broken with short gaps, which must be crossed by jumping. I had felt the vague premonitions about Chapman increasing, and somehow, by that intuition which becomes prophetic, in this semi-etherealized const.i.tution of our bodies and minds, in Mars, I knew an impending blow hung over us.

"I looked back and saw Chapman gravely following me. The cheer and laughter had disappeared from his face, the jesting gayety had fled, and he seemed enfeebled. I hastened to him, and he raised his face with a rea.s.suring smile.

"'Dodd,' he said, 'I am dizzy. I feel strangely here,' and he felt his forehead. 'I wonder that it is so. But come! Don't be frightened. It will pa.s.s over.' He pushed me from him. For an instant we stood and gazed around us. Far up we saw the outer sunlight beating on the barren exposures of the mountain, around us was black excavated rock, and below the s.h.i.+ning walls, faintly blue and pink.

"'Chapman,' I said, 'let us go back. The hoists will take us out.'

'Folly,' was the answer. 'I shall be all right. Why, a Martian has no physical weakness or dread. Come, Dodd, you have not yet acquired the Martian defiance of accident, disease, or death. You are sneaking back under the cover of fear for me.'

"His voice seemed peevish. I looked at him with wonder. He leaped past me, with a forced agility, and sprang on upward. I followed with lightness born of thought, with which the true Martians move.

"On, on, we sped. The narrowing path carried us up until one of those gaps I had noticed came in view. Chapman stopped, and then hearing my approaching steps, ran forward and jumped. His calculation and strength were yet secure and adequate. He safely pa.s.sed the first break in the pathway, and, as I crossed it with a wide leap, we both still sped on upon an even narrower shelf, which also was more steeply inclined about the jutting prominences of the rocky cliff.

"The next gap was reached, and now the edge of the succeeding length of pathway was not only farther away, but higher up. Chapman, I could see imperfectly, because of a slim projection in my way, had reached the lower side, and, hesitatingly, drew backward. It was his preparation for the leap. He launched forward. I rushed precipitately upward, feeling the air about me vibrating, it seemed, with an impending disaster.

Chapman had landed on the further side of the break, but the cruel, treacherous rock crumbled beneath his impact, and I saw his staggering form turning backward. Another instant and his descending body was below me, plunging to the floor of the abyss. I turned, and then, my son, I felt the marvel of the mind's creative power over matter. I wished myself at the bottom of the quarry where Chapman had fallen, and although the movement of the translation down the pathway seemed apparent, yet I was scarcely parted from him an instant before I was standing and leaning over him in a group of astonished workmen, at the very spot where he lay. He was conscious, but gravely injured. I knelt beside him, and as I raised his head upon my knee, he looked up, and his lips moved; at first he was inarticulate, but soon his words became audible and intelligent.

"'Dodd,' he said, 'this ends me for Mars. Take the papers to the Council at Scandor. They are in the cabin in my desk. They are sealed. I know there is a celestial runaway that is going to strike this planet. I overheard that much at the Patenta. And its direct path, the point of impingement, will be at Scandor. The fires ascending from Scandor are signals that they, too, have divined the disaster. I think so at least!

Hurry on! You may see the strangest phenomenon eyes have ever seen. But, Dodd, enough of that. I am turned down for this world. I was not in agreement, as the philosophers call it, and the true mental Martian immunity from accident was not in me. I am injured mortally.'

"He groaned and tried to rise, but his crushed body was incapable. The Superintendent, Alca, had hurried to the spot where the crowding men stood around us e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.n.g. their amazement. Alca tore open the garment about Chapman, and placing his forehead on the body, poured out as it were, the full tide of his mental sympathy and power.