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Chapter XVIII. Grave Questions
But the projectile had passed the enceinte of Tycho, and
Barbicane and his two companions watched with scrupulous attention
the brilliant rays which the celebrated mountain shed so curiously
over the horizon.
What was this radiant glory? What geological phenomenon had
designed these ardent beams? This question occupied
Barbicane’s mind.
Under his eyes ran in all directions luminous furrows, raised at
the edges and concave in the center, some twelve miles, others
thirty miles broad. These brilliant trains extended in some places
to within 600 miles of Tycho, and seemed to cover, particularly
toward the east, the northeast and the north, the half of the
southern hemisphere. One of these jets extended as far as the
circle of Neander, situated on the 40th meridian. Another, by a
slight curve, furrowed the “Sea of Nectar,” breaking
against the chain of Pyrenees, after a circuit of 800 miles.
Others, toward the west, covered the “Sea of Clouds”
and the “Sea of Humors” with a luminous network. What
was the origin of these sparkling rays, which shone on the plains
as well as on the reliefs, at whatever height they might be? All
started from a common center, the crater of Tycho. They sprang from
him. Herschel attributed their brilliancy to currents of lava
congealed by the cold; an opinion, however, which has not been
generally adopted. Other astronomers have seen in these
inexplicable rays a kind of moraines, rows of erratic blocks, which
had been thrown up at the period of Tycho’s formation.
“And why not?” asked Nicholl of Barbicane, who was
relating and rejecting these different opinions.
“Because the regularity of these luminous lines, and the
violence necessary to carry volcanic matter to such distances, is
inexplicable.”
“Eh! by Jove!” replied Michel Ardan, “it seems
easy enough to me to explain the origin of these rays.”
“Indeed?” said Barbicane.
“Indeed,” continued Michel. “It is enough to
say that it is a vast star, similar to that produced by a ball or a
stone thrown at a square of glass!”
“Well!” replied Barbicane, smiling. “And what
hand would be powerful enough to throw a ball to give such a shock
as that?”
“The hand is not necessary,” answered Nicholl, not
at all confounded; “and as to the stone, let us suppose it to
be a comet.”
“Ah! those much-abused comets!” exclaimed Barbicane.
“My brave Michel, your explanation is not bad; but your comet
is useless. The shock which produced that rent must have some from
the inside of the star. A violent contraction of the lunar crust,
while cooling, might suffice to imprint this gigantic
star1.”
“A contraction! something like a lunar
stomach-ache.” said Michel Ardan.
“Besides,” added Barbicane, “this opinion is
that of an English savant, Nasmyth, and it seems to me to
sufficiently explain the radiation of these mountains.”
“That Nasmyth was no fool!” replied Michel.
Long did the travelers, whom such a sight could never weary,
admire the splendors of Tycho. Their projectile, saturated with
luminous gleams in the double irradiation of sun and moon, must
have appeared like an incandescent globe. They had passed suddenly
from excessive cold to intense heat. Nature was thus preparing them
to become Selenites. Become Selenites! That idea brought up once
more the question of the habitability of the moon. After what they
had seen, could the travelers solve it? Would they decide for or
against it? Michel Ardan persuaded his two friends to form an
opinion, and asked them directly if they thought that men and
animals were represented in the lunar world.
“I think that we can answer,” said Barbicane;
“but according to my idea the question ought not to be put in
that form. I ask it to be put differently.”
“Put it your own way,” replied Michel.
“Here it is,” continued Barbicane. “The
problem is a double one, and requires a double solution. Is the
moon habitable? Has the moon ever been inhabitable?”
“Good!” replied Nicholl. “First let us see
whether the moon is habitable.”
“To tell the truth, I know nothing about it,”
answered Michel.
“And I answer in the negative,” continued Barbicane.
“In her actual state, with her surrounding atmosphere
certainly very much reduced, her seas for the most part dried up,
her insufficient supply of water restricted, vegetation, sudden
alternations of cold and heat, her days and nights of 354
hours— the moon does not seem habitable to me, nor does she
seem propitious to animal development, nor sufficient for the wants
of existence as we understand it.”
“Agreed,” replied Nicholl. “But is not the
moon habitable for creatures differently organized from
ourselves?”
“That question is more difficult to answer, but I will
try; and I ask Nicholl if motion appears to him to be a necessary
result of life, whatever be its organization?”
“Without a doubt!” answered Nicholl.
“Then, my worthy companion, I would answer that we have
observed the lunar continent at a distance of 500 yards at most,
and that nothing seemed to us to move on the moon’s surface.
The presence of any kind of life would have been betrayed by its
attendant marks, such as divers buildings, and even by ruins. And
what have we seen? Everywhere and always the geological works of
nature, never the work of man. If, then, there exist
representatives of the animal kingdom on the moon, they must have
fled to those unfathomable cavities which the eye cannot reach;
which I cannot admit, for they must have left traces of their
passage on those plains which the atmosphere must cover, however
slightly raised it may be. These traces are nowhere visible. There
remains but one hypothesis, that of a living race to which motion,
which is life, is foreign.”
“One might as well say, living creatures which do not
live,” replied Michel.
“Just so,” said Barbicane, “which for us has
no meaning.”
“Then we may form our opinion?” said Michel.
“Yes,” replied Nicholl.
“Very well,” continued Michel Ardan, “the
Scientific Commission assembled in the projectile of the Gun Club,
after having founded their argument on facts recently observed,
decide unanimously upon the question of the habitability of the
moon— ‘No! the moon is not habitable.’”
This decision was consigned by President Barbicane to his
notebook, where the process of the sitting of the 6th of December
may be seen.
“Now,” said Nicholl, “let us attack the second
question, an indispensable complement of the first. I ask the
honorable commission, if the moon is not habitable, has she ever
been inhabited, Citizen Barbicane?”
“My friends,” replied Barbicane, “I did not
undertake this journey in order to form an opinion on the past
habitability of our satellite; but I will add that our personal
observations only confirm me in this opinion. I believe, indeed I
affirm, that the moon has been inhabited by a human race organized
like our own; that she has produced animals anatomically formed
like the terrestrial animals: but I add that these races, human and
animal, have had their day, and are now forever extinct!”
“Then,” asked Michel, “the moon must be older
than the earth?”
“No!” said Barbicane decidedly, “but a world
which has grown old quicker, and whose formation and deformation
have been more rapid. Relatively, the organizing force of matter
has been much more violent in the interior of the moon than in the
interior of the terrestrial globe. The actual state of this
cracked, twisted, and burst disc abundantly proves this. The moon
and the earth were nothing but gaseous masses originally. These
gases have passed into a liquid state under different influences,
and the solid masses have been formed later. But most certainly our
sphere was still gaseous or liquid, when the moon was solidified by
cooling, and had become habitable.”
“I believe it,” said Nicholl.
“Then,” continued Barbicane, “an atmosphere
surrounded it, the waters contained within this gaseous envelope
could not evaporate. Under the influence of air, water, light,
solar heat, and central heat, vegetation took possession of the
continents prepared to receive it, and certainly life showed itself
about this period, for nature does not expend herself in vain; and
a world so wonderfully formed for habitation must necessarily be
inhabited.”
“But,” said Nicholl, “many phenomena inherent
in our satellite might cramp the expansion of the animal and
vegetable kingdom. For example, its days and nights of 354
hours?”
“At the terrestrial poles they last six months,”
said Michel.
“An argument of little value, since the poles are not
inhabited.”
“Let us observe, my friends,” continued Barbicane,
“that if in the actual state of the moon its long nights and
long days created differences of temperature insupportable to
organization, it was not so at the historical period of time. The
atmosphere enveloped the disc with a fluid mantle; vapor deposited
itself in the shape of clouds; this natural screen tempered the
ardor of the solar rays, and retained the nocturnal radiation.
Light, like heat, can diffuse itself in the air; hence an equality
between the influences which no longer exists, now that atmosphere
has almost entirely disappeared. And now I am going to astonish
you.”
“Astonish us?” said Michel Ardan.
“I firmly believe that at the period when the moon was
inhabited, the nights and days did not last 354 hours!”
“And why?” asked Nicholl quickly.
“Because most probably then the rotary motion of the moon
upon her axis was not equal to her revolution, an equality which
presents each part of her disc during fifteen days to the action of
the solar rays.”
“Granted,” replied Nicholl, “but why should
not these two motions have been equal, as they are really
so?”
“Because that equality has only been determined by
terrestrial attraction. And who can say that this attraction was
powerful enough to alter the motion of the moon at that period when
the earth was still fluid?”
“Just so,” replied Nicholl; “and who can say
that the moon has always been a satellite of the earth?”
“And who can say,” exclaimed Michel Ardan,
“that the moon did not exist before the earth?”
Their imaginations carried them away into an indefinite field of
hypothesis. Barbicane sought to restrain them.
“Those speculations are too high,” said he;
“problems utterly insoluble. Do not let us enter upon them.
Let us only admit the insufficiency of the primordial attraction;
and then by the inequality of the two motions of rotation and
revolution, the days and nights could have succeeded each other on
the moon as they succeed each other on the earth. Besides, even
without these conditions, life was possible.”
“And so,” asked Michel Ardan, “humanity has
disappeared from the moon?”
“Yes,” replied Barbicane, “after having
doubtless remained persistently for millions of centuries; by
degrees the atmosphere becoming rarefied, the disc became
uninhabitable, as the terrestrial globe will one day become by
cooling.”
“By cooling?”
“Certainly,” replied Barbicane; “as the
internal fires became extinguished, and the incandescent matter
concentrated itself, the lunar crust cooled. By degrees the
consequences of these phenomena showed themselves in the
disappearance of organized beings, and by the disappearance of
vegetation. Soon the atmosphere was rarefied, probably withdrawn by
terrestrial attraction; then aerial departure of respirable air,
and disappearance of water by means of evaporation. At this period
the moon becoming uninhabitable, was no longer inhabited. It was a
dead world, such as we see it to-day.”
“And you say that the same fate is in store for the
earth?”
“Most probably.”
“But when?”
“When the cooling of its crust shall have made it
uninhabitable.”
“And have they calculated the time which our unfortunate
sphere will take to cool?”
“Certainly.”
“And you know these calculations?”
“Perfectly.”
“But speak, then, my clumsy savant,” exclaimed
Michel Ardan, “for you make me boil with
impatience!”
“Very well, my good Michel,” replied Barbicane
quietly; “we know what diminution of temperature the earth
undergoes in the lapse of a century. And according to certain
calculations, this mean temperature will after a period of 400,000
years, be brought down to zero!”
“Four hundred thousand years!” exclaimed Michel.
“Ah! I breathe again. Really I was frightened to hear you; I
imagined that we had not more than 50,000 years to live.”
Barbicane and Nicholl could not help laughing at their
companion’s uneasiness. Then Nicholl, who wished to end the
discussion, put the second question, which had just been considered
again.
“Has the moon been inhabited?” he asked.
The answer was unanimously in the affirmative. But during this
discussion, fruitful in somewhat hazardous theories, the projectile
was rapidly leaving the moon: the lineaments faded away from the
travelers’ eyes, mountains were confused in the distance; and
of all the wonderful, strange, and fantastical form of the
earth’s satellite, there soon remained nothing but the
imperishable remembrance.
1 The current explanation is the impact of an asteroid of course.
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