CHAPTER XXV. A MESSAGE FROM MARS.

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[290] 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[291] 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[292] 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.”

[293]

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[294] 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.”

[295]

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.”

[296]

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[297] 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?”

[298]

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[299] 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.”

[300]

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,[301] 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[302] 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.”