The Navigators of Space Read online

  One evening, after an excursion to Devastation, Targ was sitting up on his own in the dark. Through the transparent metal of his window, a constellation was visible that had been known in the Age of Fable as Canis Major. It included the brightest of all stars, a sun much vaster than our own. Targ extended his inextinguishable desire toward it, and thought of what he had seen in the middle of the day, while he was flying close to the ground.

  It was in an exceedingly bleak plain, where only a few solitary stone blocks stood forth. The ferromagnetals displayed their violet agglomerations everywhere. He scarcely paid any heed when he perceived to the south, on a bright yellow surface, a variety with which he was unfamiliar. It produced individuals of considerable height, each formed of eighteen groups. Some attained a total length of three meters. Targ calculated that the mass of the largest could not be less than forty kilograms. They moved more easily than the previously-known ferromagnetals; in fact, their velocity reached half a kilometer per hour.

  “That’s frightful,” murmured the watchman. “If they got into the oasis, might we be vanquished? The smallest gap in the encircling wall might put us in mortal danger.”

  He shivered; an anxious tenderness drew him into the neighboring rooms. By the orange light of a Radiant he contemplated Erê’s astonishingly luminous hair, and the innocent faces of his children. His heart melted. Merely in seeing them alive, he could not imagine the end of humankind. What! The youth and mysterious power of generations was within them, so full of energy—and all that was to vanish? That a valetudinarian race, slowly broken by decadence, should do that was logical—but not them, not their flesh, as pretty and as new as that of the people of the pre-radioactive era.

  As he returned, thoughtfully, a slight tremor shook the ground. He scarcely had time to notice it before the immense calm descended on the oasis again—but Targ was full of suspicion. He waited for some time, with his ear cocked, listening. Everything remained peaceful; the grey masses of the location, profiled by the powdery light of the stars, seemed immutable, and in the implacably pure sky, Aquila, Pegasus, Perseus and Sagittarius were inscribing the passing minutes on the clock-face of infinity.

  Am I mistaken? The watchman thought. Or will the quake prove to be genuinely insignificant?

  He shrugged his shoulders, with a slight frisson. How could he even dare to think that an earthquake might be insignificant? The most infinitesimal was full of menacing mystery!

  Anxiously, he went to consult the seismographs. The first apparatus had registered a slight tremor—a delicate trace scarcely a millimeter long. The second apparatus gave no evidence of any sequel to the phenomenon.

  Targ went to the bird-house; they no longer kept more than twenty. When he arrived they were all asleep; they scarcely raised their heads when the watchman switched on the light. They must, therefore, have scarcely felt the tremor, very briefly, and they were not anticipating a second.

  Even so, Targ thought that he ought to alert the chief watchman. The man in question—an inert person with slow wits—had not noticed anything.

  “I’ll make my rounds,” he said. “We’re checking the levels every hour.”

  Targ was reassured by these words.

  XI. The Fugitives

  Targ was still asleep when someone touched his shoulder. When he opened his eyes, he saw his sister Arva, who was very pale, looking at him. That was a sure sign that something was wrong; he sat up abruptly.

  “What’s happening?”

  “Fearful things,” the young woman replied. “You know that there was an earthquake last night, since it was you who recorded the fact?”

  “A very slight tremor.”

  “So slight that no one, apart from you, even noticed it—but its consequences are terrible. The water in the large reservoir has disappeared! And the southern reservoir has three large cracks!”

  Targ had gone as pale as Arva. Hoarsely, he said: “No one was checking the levels, then?”

  “Yes. Until this morning, the levels didn’t vary. Only then did the large reservoir suddenly begin to empty. In ten minutes, the water was gone. In the southern reservoir, the cracks revealed themselves half an hour ago. At most, we’ll be able to save a third of its contents.”

  Targ’s head was bowed and his shoulders hunched. He looked like a man who was about to collapse. Full of horror, he murmured: “Is this, finally, the end of the human race?”

  The catastrophe was complete. As they had exhausted, for the requirements of the oasis, all the granite reservoirs except for those that had just been struck by the accident, the only water they had left was that held in arcum basins. It was sufficient to quench the thirst of 500 or 600 human beings for a year.

  The Grand Council met. It was a glacial and almost taciturn assembly. The people who composed it, apart from Targ, had reached a state of perfect resignation. There was scarcely any discussion: nothing but the reading of laws and a calculation based on invariable givens. The resolutions were, in consequence, simple, clear and pitiless.

  Rem, the senior supervisor of waters, summarized them: “The population of Redlands still amounts to seven thousand inhabitants. Six thousand must submit to euthanasia this very day. Five hundred must die before the end of the month. The remainder will decrease week by week, in such a manner as to maintain 50 people until the end of the fifth year. If no new water has been discovered by then, it will be the end of humankind.”

  The assembly listened impassively. All reflection was vain; an incommensurable fatality enveloped their souls. And Rem continued: “Men and women over 40 cannot continue living. Except for 50, they must all accept euthanasia today. As for children, nine families out of ten cannot retain any; the others may only keep one. The choice of adults is determined in advance; we have only to consult the medical lists.”

  A feeble stir of emotion ran through the assembly. Then the heads nodded, as a sign of submission, and the crowd outside, to whom the radiolinks had communicated the deliberation, fell silent. Only a slight melancholy darkened the youngest faces.

  But Targ was not resigned. He ran back to his home, where Arva and Erê were waiting fearfully. They clutched their children; emotion welled up in them—young and tenacious emotion, the source of ancient life and vast futures.

  Beside them, Mano was dreaming. Their anxiety had only surprised him momentarily. Fatalism lay upon his shoulders like a boulder.

  At the sight of Targ, Arva cried: “I don’t want to! I don’t want to! We shan’t die this way!”

  “You’re right,” Targ replied. “We’ll meet misfortune head on.”

  Mano came out of his torpor to say: “What will you do? Death is closer than if we were 100 years old.”

  “It doesn’t matter!” cried Targ. “We’re leaving!”

  “The Earth is empty, so far as humans are concerned,” said Mano. “It will kill you painfully. Here, at least the end will be gentle.”

  Targ was no longer listening. He was absorbed by the urgency of action; it was necessary to flee before midday, the hour appointed for the sacrifice.

  Having visited the gliders and the electric cars with Arva, he made his choice. Then he divided between the vehicles the water and foodstuffs he had in store, while Arva topped up the fuel. Their work was rapid. By 9 a.m., everything was ready.

  They found Mano still plunged in his torpor, and Erê packing useful clothing.

  “We’re about to go, Mano,” said Targ, touching his brother-in-law’s shoulder. “Come with us!”

  Mano slowly shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t want to die in the desert!” he declared.

  Arva threw herself upon him and hugged him with all her affection. A little of his former love warmed him up, but he was immediately seized again by the inevitable. “I don’t want to!” he said.

  They all begged him, for some time. Targ even tried to drag him away by force; Mano resisted with the invincible power of inertia.

  As it was getting late, they unloaded the provisions from t
he fourth glider and, after one last plea, Targ gave the signal to depart. The aircraft took off in the sunlight. Arva directed a long glance at the dwelling where her husband was awaiting euthanasia, then, shaken by sobs, she flew off into the boundless wilderness.

  XII. Toward the Equatorial Oases

  Targ headed for the equatorial oases; the others harbored nothing but death.

  In the course of his explorations, he had visited Devastation, High Springs, Great Dale, Blue Sands, Bright Oasis and Brimstone Valley; they contained some nourishment, but not a drop of water. Only the two equatorial oases retained meager reserves. The nearer of the two, the Equatorial of the Dunes, 4500 kilometers away, could be reached the following morning.

  The journey was abominable. Arva never stopped thinking about Mano’s death. When the Sun reached its zenith, she uttered a long funereal wail—it was the hour of euthanasia! Never again would she see the man with whom she had lived the loving adventure.

  The desert extended its vast expanse. To human eyes, the ground was terribly dead. The other life was, however, increasing there, for it was the time of reproduction. They could see it swarming over the plain and the hills, redoubtable and incomprehensible. Sometimes Targ cursed it; sometimes a fearful sympathy awoke in his soul. Was there not a mysterious analogy, and even an obscure fraternity, between these creatures and humans? Certainly, the two realms were less distant from one another than either was from the inert mineral realm. Who could tell whether their consciousnesses, in the fullness of time, might have reached an understanding?

  Thinking about that, Targ sighed—and the gliders continued to plough through the blue oxygen, toward an unknown so terrible that merely thinking about it caused the travelers to feel a numb chill in their flesh.

  In order to guard against surprises, they made a halt before dusk. Targ selected a hill surmounted by a plateau. The ferromagnetals seemed to be scarce there, of species easy to displace. On the plateau itself there was a crag of green porphyry with propitious hollows. The gliders landed; they were secured with the aid of arcum ropes. Being made of materials chosen for their extreme resistance, they were, in any case, virtually invulnerable.

  It transpired that the rock and its surroundings only sheltered a few groups of ferromagnetals of the smallest size. Within a quarter of an hour they had been expelled and it was possible to set up the camp.

  Having had a meal of concentrated gluten and essential hydrocarbons, the fugitives waited for nightfall. How many other creatures similar to themselves had suffered analogous distresses in the immense ocean of the ages? When scarce and solitary family groups roamed the hostile land with wooden clubs and frail stone tools, there had been nights when humans trembled with hunger, cold and fear at the approach of lions and rainstorms. Later, shipwreck victims had wailed on desert islands or on the rocks of some murderous shore; travelers had become lost in the bosom of carnivorous forests or marshes. The dramas of distress were innumerable! But all those unfortunates had the prospect of a life without limits before them; Targ and his companions could not anticipate anything but death.

  Even so, thought the watchman, looking at Erê’s and Arva’s children, this tiny group contains all that is necessary to remake humankind. He uttered a groan.

  The polar stars rotated around their narrow track; for a long time, Targ and Arva meditated, wretchedly, next to the sleeping family.

  The next day, they arrived at the Equatorial of the Dunes. It lay in the heart of a desert that had once been formed of sand, but which the millennia had hardened. The landing chilled the hearts of the new arrivals; the cadavers of the last people to yield to euthanasia still lay there, unburied. Many Equatorials, having preferred to die beneath the open sky, were visible amid the ruins, motionless in their terrible slumber. The dry air, infinitely pure, had mummified them. They could have stayed in that state for an interminable time, supreme witnesses of the end of humankind.

  A more menacing spectacle disturbed the sadness of the fugitives: swarming ferromagnetals. Their violet colonies were visible on all sides, and many of them were considerable in size.

  “Forward march!” said Targ, with enthusiasm and anxiety.

  He had no need to insist. Aware of the peril, Arva and Erê hurried the children along, while Targ studied the location. The oasis had only suffered minor damage. Storms had damaged a few dwellings and knocked over planetaries and radiolinks; the majority of the machines and power-generators should be intact—but the watchman was particularly worried about the arcum reservoirs. There were two of them, largely depleted, whose location he knew. When he reached them, he dared not touch them at first; his heart was beating fearfully. When he finally made the decision, though, he shouted, in a paroxysm of excitement: “Intact! We have water for two years—now let’s find shelter.”

  After a long search, he chose a tongue of land close to the western wall. There were only small numbers of ferromagnetals there; a protective barrier could be constructed within a few days. Two spacious dwellings spared by the weather were available.

  Targ and Arva explored the larger of the two. The furniture and the instruments proved to be solid, scarcely covered by fine dust; a certain subtle presence was perceptible everywhere. As they entered one of the rooms the visitors were gripped by a profound melancholy; two humans were lying side by side on the arcum bed. For some time, Targ and Arva contemplated the peaceful forms, which life had once inhabited, and which had been stirred by joy and pain.

  Others would have taken a lesson in resignation from that, but they—full of bitterness and horror—stiffened themselves for the struggle to come. They got rid of the corpses and, after making sure that Erê and the children were safe, expelled a few groups of ferromagnetals. Then they had their first meal on the new land.

  “Courage!” murmured Targ. “There was a time, in the depths of Eternity, when a single human couple existed; our entire species is descended from them! We are stronger than that couple, for if it had perished, humankind would have perished. Here, several might die without destroying all hope.”

  “Yes,” sighed Erê, “but water covered the Earth!”

  Targ looked at her with a boundless affection. “Have we not found water once already?” he said, in a low voice.

  He remained motionless, as if his eyes were blinded by an internal dream—but he roused himself to say: “While you look after the house, I shall examine our resources.”

  He explored the oasis in every direction, evaluating the provisions left behind by the Equatorials, making sure that the power-generators, machines, planetaries and radiolinks were working. The industrial treasure of the Last Men was there, ready to support any renaissance. Besides, Targ had brought his technical books from Redlands, and annals rich in ideas and memories.

  The presence of the ferromagnetals worried him. In some areas they were accumulated in redoubtable masses; he had only to pause for a few minutes to sense their muted labor.

  If we have any descendants, he thought, the war will be long and hard!

  He eventually arrived at the southern tip of the Equatorial. There he stopped; in a field that had once contained cereals he had just perceived ferromagnetals of the large variety that he had discovered in the desert near High Springs. He felt a tightness in his chest, and a cold breath passed over the back of his neck.

  XIII. The Interim

  The seasons went by in the eternal gulf. Targ and his relatives were still alive. The vast world enveloped them with its menace. Before, when they had been living in Redlands, they had already been subject to the melancholy of the deserts that announced the end of humankind, but thousands of their peers had, after all, occupied the supreme refuge along with them. Now, they fell victim to a more complete distress; they were no more than a minuscule trace of the former life. From one pole to the other, in all the plains and on all the mountains, every part of the planet was hostile, save for that other oasis in which euthanasia had devoured creatures who had abandoned all hope, without
remission.

  They had surrounded their chosen terrain with a protective wall, further consolidated the water reservoirs, assembled and sheltered the provisions—and Targ often left, with Erê or Arva, on missions of discovery across the desert expanse. While searching for the creative water, they collected hydrogenated matter everywhere. Such matter was rare; hydrogen, released in immense quantities in the times of human power, and also when attempts had been made to replace natural water with industrial water, had almost disappeared. According to the annals, the greater part of it had decomposed into subatomic particles and dissipated in interplanetary space. The rest had been drawn, by ill-defined reactions, into inaccessible depths. Targ, however, gleaned enough useful substances to increase the provision of water significantly—but it could only be a temporary expedient.

  Targ was particularly preoccupied with the ferromagnetals. They were prospering. This was because they had, beneath the oasis at a mediocre depth, considerable reserves of human iron. The ground and the surrounding plain covered a dead city. Now, the ferromagnetals extracted subterranean iron at a much greater distance as they grew in size themselves. The latest arrivals—the Tertiaries, as Targ named them—could, if they took their time about it, extract it from a depth of some eight meters. Furthermore, the displacements of metal eventually opened breaches in the earth into which the Tertiaries could introduce themselves. The other ferromagnetals were contriving similar effects, but incomparably weaker—besides, they never descended to depths of more than two or three meters.

  With respect to the Tertiaries, Targ soon observed that there were scarcely any limits to their penetration; they descended as far as the fissures would permit. It was necessary to take special measures to prevent them from mining the ground on which the two families lived. The machines hollowed out tunnels within the enclosing wall, whose walls were lined with arcum and bismuth plates. Pillars of granite cement, bedded in the rock, ensured the solidity of the vaults. This vast project lasted several, months; the power-generators, together with flexible and subtle machines, allowed the work to be carried out without fatigue. According to Targ’s calculations, it ought to resist all the damaging effects of the ferromagnetals for 30 years, even on the hypothesis that the latter’s multiplication was fairly prolific.