drowned
by disturbing chords of music that followed a loud click on the dial of the
galactic clock.
"Warning for all Earth. All power stations, all factories, transport
and radiostations! In half an hour from now cease the output of all energy
and accumulate it in high-capacity condensers till there is enough for a
radiation channel to penetrate the atmosphere. The transmission will take 43
per cent of Earth's power resources. The reception will need only 8 per cent
for the maintenance of the channel," explained Darr Veter.
"That's just as I imagined it would be," said Mven Mass, nodding his
head. Suddenly his glance became fixed and his face glowed with admiration.
Darr Veter looked round. Unobserved by them Veda Kong had arrived and was
standing beside a luminescent column. For her lecture she had donned the
costume that adds mostly to the beauty of women, a costume invented
thousands of years before at the time of the Cretan Civilization. The heavy
knot of ash-blonde hair piled high on the back of her head did not detract
from her strong and graceful neck. Her smooth shoulders were bare and the
bosom was open and supported by a corsage of cloth of gold. A wide, short
silver skirt embroidered with blue flowers, exposed bare, sun-tanned legs in
slippers of cherry-coloured silk. Big cherry-coloured stones brought from
Venus, set with careful crudeness in a gold chain, were like balls of fire
on her soft skin and matched cheeks and tiny ears that were flaming with
excitement.
Mven Mass met the learned historian for the first time and he gazed at
her in frank admiration. Veda lifted her troubled eyes to Darr Veter. "Very
nice," he said in answer to his friend's unspoken question.
"I've spoken to many audiences, but not like this," she said.
"The Council is following a custom. Communications for the different
planets are always read by beautiful women. This gives them an impression of
the sense of the beautiful as perceived by the inhabitants of our world, and
in general it tells them a lot," continued Darr Veter. "The Council is not
mistaken in its choice!" exclaimed Mven Mass.
Veda gave the African a penetrating look. "Are you a bachelor?" she
asked softly and, acknowledging Mven Mass's nod of affirmation, smiled.
"You wanted to talk to me?" she asked, turning to Darr Veter. The
friends went out on to the circular verandah and Veda welcomed the touch of
the fresh sea breeze on her face.
The Director of the Outer Stations told her of his decision to go to
the dig; he told her of the way he had wavered between the 38th Cosmic
Expedition, the Antarctic submarine mines and archaeology.
"Anything, but not the Cosmic Expedition!" exclaimed Veda and Darr
Veter felt that he had been rather tactless.
Carried away by his own feelings he had accidentally touched the sore
spot in Veda's heart.
He was helped out by the melody of disturbing chords that reached the
verandah.
"It's time to go. In half an hour the Great Circle will be switched
on!"
Darr Veter took Veda Kong carefully by the arm. Accompanied by the
others they went down an escalator to a deep underground chamber, the Cubic
Hall, carved out of living rock.
There was little in the hall but instruments. The dull black walls had
the appearance of velvet divided into panels by clean lines of crystal.
Gold, green, blue and orange lights lit up the dials, signs and figures. The
emerald green points of needles trembled on black semicircles, giving the
broad walls an appearance of strained, quivering expectation.
The furniture consisted of a few chairs and a big black-wood table, one
end of which was pushed into a huge hemispherical screen the colour of
mother-of-pearl set in a massive gold frame.
Veda Kong and Mven Mass examined everything with rapt attention for
this was their first visit to the observatory of the Outer Stations.
Darr Veter beckoned to Mven Mass and pointed to high black armchairs
for the others. The African came towards him, walking on the balls of his
feet, just as his ancestors had once walked in the sunbaked savannas on the
trail of huge, savage animals. Mven Mass held his breath. Out of this
deeply-hidden stone vault a window would soon be opened into the endless
spaces of the Cosmos and people would join their thoughts and their
knowledge to that of their brothers in other worlds. This tiny group of five
represented terrestrial mankind before the whole Universe.
And from the next day on, he, Mven Mass, would be in charge of these
communications. He was to be entrusted with the control of that tremendous
power. A slight shiver ran down his back. He had probably only at that
moment realized what a burden of responsibility he had undertaken when he
had accepted the Council's proposal. As he watched Darr Veter manipulating
the control switches something of the admiration that burned in the eyes of
Darr Veter's young assistant could be seen in his.
A deep, ominous rumble sounded, as though a huge gong had been struck.
Darr Veter turned round swiftly and threw over a long lever. The gong ceased
and Veda Kong noticed that a narrow panel on the right-hand wall laid lit up
from floor to ceiling. The wall seemed to have disappeared into the
unfathomable distance. The phantom-like outlines of a pyramidal mountain
surmounted by a gigantic stone ring appeared. Below the cap of molten stone,
patches of pure white mountain snow lay here and there.
Mven Mass recognized the second highest mountain in Africa, Mount
Kenya.
Again the strokes of the gong resounded through the underground chamber
making all present alert and compelling them to concentrate their thoughts.
Darr Veter took Mven's hand and placed it on a handle in which a ruby
eye glowed. Mven obediently turned the handle as far as it would go. All the
power produced on Earth by 1,760 gigantic power stations was being
concentrated on the equator, on a mountain 5,000 metres high. A
multicoloured luminescence appeared over the peak, formed a sphere and then
surged upwards in a spearheaded column that pierced the very depths of the
sky. Like the narrow column of a whirlwind it remained poised over the
glassy sphere, and over its surface, climbing upwards, ran a spiral of
dazzlingly brilliant blue smoke.
The directed rays cut a regular channel through Earth's atmosphere that
acted as a line of communication between Earth and the Outer Stations. At a
height of 36,000 kilometres above Earth hung the diurnal satellite, a giant
station that revolved around Earth's axis once in twenty-four hours and kept
in the plane of the equator so that to all intents and purposes it stood
motionless over Mount Kenya in East Africa, the point that had been selected
for permanent communications with the Outer Stations. There was another
satellite, Number 57, revolving around the 90th meridian at a height of
57,000 kilometres and communicating with the Tibetan Receiving and
Transmitting Observatory. The conditions for the formation of a transmission
channel were better at the Tibetan station but communication was not
constant. These two giant satellites also maintained contact with a number
of automatic stations situated at various points round Earth.
The narrow panel on the right went dark, a signal that the transmission
channel had connected with the receiving station of the satellite. Then the
gold-framed, pearl screen lit up. In its centre appeared a monstrously
enlarged figure that grew clearer and then smiled with a big mouth. This was
Goor Hahn, one of the observers on the diurnal satellite, whose picture on
the screen grew rapidly to fantastic proportions. He nodded and stretched
out a ten-foot arm to switch on all the Outer Stations around our planet.
They were linked up in one circuit by the power transmitted from Earth. The
sensitive eyes of receivers turned in all directions into the Universe. The
planet of a dull red star in the Unicorn Constellation that had shortly
before sent out a call, had a better contact with Satellite 57 and Goor Hahn
switched over to it. This invisible contact between Earth and the planet of
another star would last for three-quarters of an hour and not a moment of
that valuable time could be lost.
Veda Kong, at a sign from Darr Veter, stood before the screen on a
gleaming round metal dais. Invisible rays poured down from above and
noticeably deepened the sun-tan of her skin. Electron machines worked
soundlessly as they translated her words into the language of the Great
Circle. In thirteen years' time the receivers on the planet of the dull-red
star would write down the incoming oscillations in universal symbols and, if
they had them, electron machines would translate the symbols into the living
speech of the planet's inhabitants.
"All the same, it is a pity that those distant beings will not hear the
soft melodious voice of a woman of Earth and will not understand its
expressiveness," thought Darr Veter. "Who knows how their ears may be
constructed, they may possess quite a different type of hearing. But vision,
which uses that part of the electromagnetic oscillations capable of
penetrating the atmosphere, is almost the same throughout the Universe and
they will behold the charming Veda in her flush of excitement...."
Darr Veter did not take his eyes off Veda's tiny ear, partly covered by
a lock of hair, while he listened to her lecture.
Briefly but clearly Veda Kong spoke of the chief stages in the history
of mankind. She spoke of the early epochs of man's existence, when there
were numerous large and small nations that were in constant conflict owing
to the economic and ideological hostility that divided their countries. She
spoke very briefly and gave the era the name of the Era of Disunity. People
living in the Era of the Great Circle were not interested in lists of
destructive wars and horrible sufferings or the so-called great rulers that
filled the ancient history books. More important to them was the development
of productive forces and the forming of ideas, the history of art and
knowledge and the struggle to create a real man, the way in which the
creative urge had been developed, and people had arrived at new conceptions
of the world, of social relations and of the duty, rights and happiness of
man, conceptions that had nurtured the mighty tree of communist society that
flourished throughout the planet.
During the last century of the Era of Disunity, known as the Fission
Age, people had at last begun to understand that their misfortunes were due
to a social structure that had originated in times of savagery; they
realized that all their strength, all the future of mankind, lay in labour,
in the correlated efforts of millions of free people, in science and in a
way of life reorganized on scientific lines. Men came to understand the
basic laws of social development, the dialectically contradictory course of
history and the necessity to train people in the spirit of strict social
discipline, something that became of greater importance as the population of
the planet increased.
In the Fission Age the struggle between old and new ideas had become
more acute and had led to the division of the world into two camps-the old
and the new states with differing economic systems. The first kinds of
atomic energy had been discovered by that time but the stubbornness of those
who championed the old order bad almost led mankind into a colossal
catastrophe.
The new social system was bound to win although victory was delayed on
account of the difficulty of training people in the new spirit. The
rebuilding of the world on communist lines entailed a radical economic
change accompanied by the disappearance of poverty, hunger and heavy,
exhausting toil. The changes brought about in economy made necessary an
intricate system to direct production and distribution and could only be put
into effect by the inculcation of social consciousness in every person.
Communist society had not been established in all countries and amongst
all nations simultaneously. A tremendous effort had been required to
eliminate the hostility and, especially, the lies that had remained from the
propaganda prevalent during the ideological struggle of the Fission Age.
Many mistakes had been made in this period when new human relations were
developing. Here and there insurrections had been raised by backward people
who worshipped the past and who, in their ignorance, saw a way out of man's
difficulties in a return to that past.
With inevitable persistence the new way of life had spread over the
entire Earth and the many races and nations were united into a single
friendly and wise family.
Thus began the next era, the Era of World Unity, consisting of four
ages-the Age of Alliance, the Age of Lingual Disunity, the Age of Power
Development and the Age of the Common Tongue.
Society developed more rapidly and each new age passed more speedily
than the preceding one as man's power over nature progressed with giant
steps.
In the ancient Utopian dreams of a happy future great importance was
attached to man's gradual liberation from the necessity to work. The
Utopians promised man an abundance of all he needed for a short working day
of two or three hours and the rest of his time lie could devote to doing
nothing, to the doice far niente of the novelists. This fantasy, naturally,
arose out of man's abhorrence of the arduous, exhausting toil of ancient
days.
People soon realized that happiness can derive from labour, from a
never-ceasing struggle against nature, the overcoming of difficulties and
the solution of ever new problems arising out of the development of science
and economy. Man needed to work to the full measure of his strength but his
labour had to be creative and in accordance with his natural talents and
inclinations, and it had to be varied and changed from time to time. The
development of cybernetics, the technique of automatic control, a
comprehensive education and the development of intellectual abilities
coupled with the finest physical training of each individual, made it
possible for a person to change his profession frequently, learn another
easily and bring endless variety into his work so that it became more and
more satisfying. Progressively expanding science embraced all aspects of
life and a growing number of people came to know the joy of the creator, the
discoverer of new secrets of nature. Art played a great part in social
education and in forming the new way of life. Then came the most magnificent
era in man's history, the Era of Common Labour consisting of four ages, the
Age of Simplification, the Age of Realignment, the Age of the First
Abundance and the Age of the Cosmos.
A technical revolution of the new period was the invention of
concentrated electricity with its high-capacity accumulators and tiny
electric motors. Before this, man had learned to use semi-conductors in
intricate weak-current circuits for his automated cybernetic machines. The
work of the mechanic became as delicate as that of the jeweller but at the
same time it served to subordinate energy on a Cosmic scale.
The demand that everybody should have everything required the
simplification of articles of everyday use. Man ceased to be the slave of
his possessions, and the elaboration of standard components enabled articles
and machines to be produced in great variety from a comparatively small
number of elements in the same way as the great variety of living organisms
is made up of a small number of different cells: the cells consist of
albumins, the albumins come from proteins and so on. Feeding in former ages
had been so wasteful that its rationalization made it easy to feed, without
detriment, a population that had increased by thousands of millions.
All the forces of society that had formerly been expended on the
creation of war machines, on the maintenance of huge armies that did no
useful labour and on propaganda and its trumpery, were channelled into
improving man's way of life and promoting scientific knowledge.
At a sign from Veda Kong, Darr Veter pressed a button and a huge globe
rose up beside her.
"We began," continued the beautiful historian, "with the complete
redistribution of Earth's surface into dewelling and industrial zones.
"The brown stripes running between thirty and forty degrees of North
and South latitude represent an unbroken chain of urban settlements built on
the shores of warm seas with a mild climate and no winters. Mankind no
longer spends huge quantities of energy warming houses in winter and making
himself clumsy clothing. The greatest concentration of people is around the
cradle of human civilization, the Mediterranean Sea. The subtropical belt
was doubled in breadth after the ice on the polar caps had been melted. To
the north of the zone of habitation lie prairies and meadows where countless
herds of domestic animals graze. The production of foodstuffs and trees for
timber is confined to the tropical belt where it is a thousand times more
profitable than in the colder climatic zones. Ever since the discovery was
made that carbohydrates, the sugars, could be obtained artificially from
sunlight and carbonic acid, agriculture has no longer had to produce all
man's food. Practically speaking, there is no limit to the quantities of
sugars, fats and vitamins that we can produce. For the production of
albumins alone we have huge land areas and huge fields of seaweed at our
disposal. Mankind has been freed from the fear of hunger that had been
hanging over it for tens of thousands of years.
"One of man's greatest pleasures is travel, an urge to move from place
to place that we have inherited from our distant forefathers, the wandering
hunters and gatherers of scanty food. Today the entire planet is encircled
by the Spiral Way whose gigantic bridges link all the continents." Veda ran
her finger along a silver thread and turned the globe round. "Electric
trains move along the Spiral Way all the time and hundreds of thousands of
people can leave the inhabited zone very speedily for the prairies, open
fields, mountains or forests.
"At last the planned organization of life put an end to the murderous
race for higher speeds, the construction of faster and faster vehicles.
Trains on the Spiral Way proceed at 200 kilometres an hour. Only on rare
occasions do we use aircraft with a speed of thousands of kilometres an
hour.
"A few centuries ago we made extensive improvements to the surface of
our planet. The energy of the atomic nucleus had been discovered long
before, in the Fission Age, when man learned to liberate a tiny part of its
energy to produce a burst of heat but with the harmful radiation of the
fall-out. It was soon realized that this meant danger to life on the planet
and nuclear power possibilities were greatly curtailed. Almost at the same
time astronomers studying the physics of distant stars discovered two new
ways of obtaining nuclear energy, Q and F, that were more effective than the
old methods and involved no harmful radiation.
"These two methods are now in use on Earth although our spaceships use
another form of nuclear energy, the anameson fuel, that became known to us
from our observations of the great stars of the Galaxy through the Great
Circle.
"It was decided to destroy all the stocks of thermo-'nuclear materials
that had been accumulating a long time-radioactive isotopes of uranium,
thorium, hydrogen, cobalt and lithium-as soon as a method of ejecting them
beyond Earth's atmosphere had been devised.
"In the Age of Realignment artificial suns were made and 'hung' over
the north and south polar regions. These greatly reduced the size of the
polar ice-caps that had been formed during the ice ages of the Quaternary
Period and brought about extensive climatic changes. The level of the oceans
was raised by seven metres, the cold fronts receded sharply and the ring of
trade winds that had dried up the deserts on the outskirts of the tropic
zone became much weaker. Hurricanes and, in general, stormy weather
manifestations ceased almost completely.
"The warm steppelands spread almost as far as the sixtieth parallels
north and south and beyond them the grasslands and forests of the temperate
zone passed the seventieth parallels.
"Three-quarters of the Antarctic Continent was freed from ice and
proved a treasure-house of minerals that were invaluable because resources
on the other continents had been almost completely exhausted by the reckless
destruction of metals in the universal wars of the past. The Spiral Way was
completed by carrying it across the Antarctic.
"Before this radical change in climate had been achieved canals had
been dug and mountain chains had had passages cut through them to balance
out the circulation of air and water on the planet. Even the high mountain
deserts of Asia had been irrigated by constantly operating dielectric pumps.
"The potential output of foodstuffs had grown very considerably and new
lands had become habitable.
"The frail and dangerous old planetships, poor as they were, enabled us
to reach the other planets of our system. Earth was encircled by a belt of
artificial satellites from which scientists were able to make a close study
of the Cosmos. And then, eight hundred and eight years ago, there occurred
an event of such great importance that it marked a new era in the history of
mankind-the Era of the Great Circle.
"For a long time the human intellect had laboured over the transmission
of images, sounds and energy over great distances. Hundreds of thousands of
the most talented scientists worked in a special organization that still
bears the name of the Academy of Direct Radiation. They evolved methods for
the directed transmission of energy over great distances without any form of
conductor. This became possible when ways were found to concentrate the
stream of energy in non-divergent rays. The clusters of parallel rays then
transmitted provided constant communication with the artificial satellites,
and, therefore, with the Cosmos. Long, long ago, towards the end of the Era
of Disunity, our scientists established the fact that powerful radiation
streams were pouring on to Earth from the Cosmos. Calls from the Cosmos and
the transmission round the Great Circle of the Universe were reaching us
together with radiation from the other constellations and galaxies. At that
time we did not understand them although we had learned to receive the
mysterious signals which we, at that time, thought to be natural radiation.
"Kam Amat, an Indian scientist, got the idea of conducting experiments
from the satellites with television receivers and with infinite patience
tried all possible wavelength combinations over a period of dozens of years.
"Kam Amat caught a transmission from the planetary system of the binary
star that had long been known as 61 Cygni. There appeared on the screen a
man, who was not like us but was undoubtedly a man, and he pointed to an
inscription made in the symbols of the Great Circle. Another ninety years
passed before the inscription was read and today it is inscribed in our
language, the language of Earth, on a monument to Kam Amat: 'Greetings to
you, our brothers, who are joining our family. Separated by space and time
we are united by intellect in the Circle of Great Power.'1
"The language of symbols, drawings and maps used by the Great Circle
proved easy to assimilate at the level of development then reached by man.
In two hundred years we were able to use translation machines to converse
with the planetary systems of the nearest stars and to receive and transmit
whole pictures of the varied life of different worlds. We recently received
an answer from the fourteen planets of Deneb, a first magnitude star and
tremendous centre of life in the Cygnus; it is 122 parsecs distant from us
and radiates as much light as 4,800 of our suns. Intellectual development
there has proceeded on different lines but has reached a very high level.
"Strange pictures and symbols come from immeasurable distances, from
the ancient worlds, from the globular clusters of our Galaxy and from the
huge inhabited area around the Galactic Centre, but we do not understand
them, and have not yet deciphered them. They have been recorded by the
memory machines and passed on to the Academy of the Bounds of Knowledge, an
institution that works on problems that our science can as yet only hint at.
We are trying to understand ideas that are far from us, millions of years
ahead of us, ideas that differ very greatly from ours due to life there
having followed different paths of development."
Veda Kong turned away from the screen into which she had been staring
as though hypnotized and cast an inquiring glance at Darr Veter. He smiled
and nodded his head in approval. Veda proudly raised her head, stretched out
her arms to those invisible and unknown beings who would receive her words
and her image thirteen years later.
"Such is our history, such is the difficult, devious and lengthy ascent
we have made to the heights of knowledge. We appeal to you-join us in the
Great Circle to carry to the ends of the tremendous Universe the gigantic
power of the intellect!"
Veda's voice had a triumphant sound to it, as though it were filled
with the strength of all the generations of the people of Earth who had
reached such heights that they now aspired to send their thoughts beyond the
bounds of their own Galaxy to other stellar islands in the Universe....
The bronze gong sounded as Darr Veter turned over the lever that
switched off the stream of transmitted energy. The screen went dark. The
luminescent column of the conductor channel remained on the transparent
panel on the right.
Veda, tired and subdued, curled up in the depths of her armchair. Darr
Veter turned the control desk over to Mven Mass and leaned over his shoulder
to watch him at work. The absolute silence was broken only by the faint
clicks of switches opening and closing.
Suddenly the screen in the gold frame disappeared and its place was
taken by unbelievable depths of space. It was the first time that Veda Kong
had seen this marvel and she gasped loudly. Even those well acquainted with
the method of the complex interference of light waves by means of which this
exceptional expanse and depth of vision was achieved, found the spectacle
amazing.
The dark surface of another planet was advancing from the distance,
growing in size with every second. It belonged to an extraordinarily rare
system of binary stars in which two suns so balanced each other that their
planet had a regular orbit and life was able to emerge on it. The two suns,
orange and crimson, were smaller than ours, and they lit up the ice of a
frozen sea that appeared crimson in colour. A huge, squat building standing
on the edge of a chain of flat-topped black hills, was visible through a
mysterious violet haze. The centre of vision was focussed on a platform on
the roof and then seemed to penetrate the building until the watchers saw a
grey-skinned man with round eyes like those of an owl surrounded by a fringe
of silvery down. He was very tall and exceedingly thin with tentacle-like
limbs. The man jerked his head ridiculously as though he were making a
hurried bow; turned listless, lens-like eyes to the screen and opened a
lipless mouth that was covered, by a flap of soft flesh that looked like a
nose.
"Zaph Phthet, Director of External Relations of 61 Cygni. Today we are
transmitting for yellow star STL 3388 + 04 JF.... We are transmitting for
..."-' came the gentle, melodious voice of the translation machine.
Darr Veter and Junius Antus exchanged glances and Mven Mass squeezed
Darr Veter's wrist for a second. That was the galactic call sign of Earth,
or rather, of the entire solar system, that observers in other worlds had
formerly regarded as one big planet rotating round the Sun once in 59
terrestrial years. Once in that period Jupiter and Saturn are in opposition
which displaces the Sun in the visible sky of other systems sufficiently for
astronomers on the nearer stars to observe. Our astronomers made the same
mistake in respect of many planetary systems that a number of stars had long
been known to possess.
Junius Antus checked up on the tuning of his memory machine with
greater celerity than he had shown at the beginning of the transmission and
also checked the watchful accuracy indicators.
The unchanging voice of the electron translator continued:
"We have received a transmission from star..." again a long string of
figures and staccato sounds, "by chance and not during the Great Circle
transmission times. They have not deciphered the language of the Circle and
are wasting energy transmitting during the hours of silence. We answered
them during their transmission period and the result will be known in
three-tenths of a second ...." The voice broke off. The signal lamps
continued to burn with the exception of the green electric eye that had gone
out.
"We get these unexplained interruptions in transmission, perhaps due to
the passage of the astronauts' legendary neutral fields between us," Junius
Antus explained to Veda.
"Three-tenths of a galactic second-that means waiting six hundred
years," muttered Darr Veter, morosely. "A lot of good that will do us!"
"As far as I can understand they are in communication with Epsilon
Tucanae in the southern sky that is ninety parsecs away from us and close to
the limit of our regular communications. So far we haven't established
contact. with anything farther away than Deneb," Mven Mass remarked.
"But we receive the Galactic Centre and the globular clusters, don't
we?" asked Veda Kong.
"Irregularly, quite by chance, or through the memory machines of other
members of the Great Circle that form a circuit stretching through the
Galaxy," answered Mven Mass.
"Communications sent out thousands and even tens of thousands of years
ago do not get lost in space but eventually reach us," said Junius Antus.
"So that means we get a picture of the life and knowledge of the
peoples of other, distant worlds, with great delay, for the Central Zone of
the Galaxy, for example, a delay of about twenty thousand years?"
"Yes, it doesn't matter whether they are the records of the memory
machines of other, nearer worlds, or whether they are received by our
stations, we see the distant worlds as they were a very long time ago. We
see people that have long been dead and forgotten in their own worlds."
"How is it that we are helpless in this field when we have achieved
such great power over nature?" Veda Kong asked, petulantly. "Why can't we
find some other means of contacting distant worlds, something not connected
with waves or photon ray equipment?"
"How well I understand you, Veda!" exclaimed Mven Mass.
"The Academy of the Bounds of Knowledge is engaged
on projects to overcome space, time and gravity," Darr Veter put in.
"They are working on the fundamentals of the Cosmos, but they have not yet
got even as far as the experimental stage and cannot...."
The green eye suddenly flashed on again and Veda once more felt giddy
as the screen opened out into endless space.
The sharply outlined edges of the image showed that it was the record
of a memory machine and not a transmission received directly.
At first the onlookers saw the surface of a planet, obviously as seen
from an outer station, a satellite. The huge, pale violet sun, spectral in
the terrific heat it generated, deluged the cloud envelope of the planet's
atmosphere with its penetrating rays.
"Yes, that's it, the luminary of the planet is Epsilon Tucanae, a high
temperature star, class B", 78 times as bright as our Sun," whispered Mven
Mass. Darr Veter and Junius Antus nodded in agreement.
The spectacle changed, the scene grew narrower and seemed to be
descending to the very soil of the unknown world.
The rounded domes of hills that looked as though they had been cast
from bronze rose high above the surrounding country. An unknown stone or
metal glowed like fire in the amazingly white light of the blue sun. Even in
the imperfect apparatus used for transmission the unknown world gleamed
triumphantly, with a sort of victorious magnificence.
The reflected rays produced a silver pink corona around the contours of
the copper-coloured hills and lay in a wide path on the slowly moving waves
of a violet sea. The water, of a deep amethyst colour, seemed heavy and
glowed from within with red lights that looked like an accumulation of
living eyes. The waves washed the massive pedestal of a gigantic statue that
stood in splendid isolation far from the coast. It was a female figure
carved from dark-red stone, the head thrown back and the arms extended in
ecstasy towards the naming depths of the sky. She could easily have been a
daughter of Earth, the resemblance she bore to our people was no less
astounding than the amazing beauty of the carving. Her body was the
fulfilment of an earthly sculptor's dream; it combined great strength with
inspiration in every line. The polished red stone of the statue emitted the
flames of an unknown and, consequently, mysterious and attractive life.
The five people of Earth gazed in silence at that astounding new world.
The only sound was a prolonged sigh that escaped the lips of Mven Mass whose
every nerve had been strained in joyful anticipation from his first glance
at the statue.
On the sea-coast opposite the statue, carved silver towers marked the
beginning of a wide, white staircase that swept boldly over a thicket of
stately trees with turquoise leaves.
"They ought to ring!" Darr Veter whispered in Veda's ear, pointing to
the towers and she nodded her head in agreement.
The camera of the new planet continued its consistent and soundless
journey into the country.
For a second the five people saw white walls with wide cornices through
which led a portal of blue stone; the screen carried them into a high room
filled with strong light. The dull, pearl-coloured, grooved walls lent
unusual clarity to everything in the hall. The attention of the
Earth-dwellers was attracted to a group of people standing before a polished
emerald panel.
The flame-red colour of their skin was similar to that of the statue in
the sea. It was not an unusual colour for Earth-coloured photographs that
had been preserved from ancient days recorded some tribes of Indians in
Central America whose skin was almost the same colour, perhaps just a little
lighter.
There were two men and two women in the hall. They stood in pairs
wearing different clothing. The pair standing closer to the emerald panel
wore short golden clothes, something like elegant overalls, fastened with a
number of clips. The other pair wore cloaks that covered them from head to
foot and were of the same pearl tone as the walls.
Those standing before the panel made some graceful movements, touching
some strings stretching diagonally from the left-hand edge of the panel. The
wall of polished emerald or glass became transparent and in time with the
movements of the man and woman, clearly defined pictures appeared in the
crystal. They appeared and disappeared so quickly that even such trained
observers as Junius Antus and Darr Veter had difficulty in following the
meaning of them.
In the procession of copper-coloured mountains, violet seas and
amethyst trees the history of the planet emerged. A chain of animal and
plant forms, sometimes monstrously incomprehensible, sometimes beautiful,
appeared as ghosts of the past. Many of the animals and plants seemed to be
similar to those that have been preserved in the record of the rocks on
Earth. It was a long ladder of ascending forms of life, the ladder of
developing living matter. The endlessly long path of development seemed even
longer, more difficult and more tortuous than the path of evolution known to
every Earth-dweller.
New pictures flashed through the phantom gleam of the apparatus: the
flames of huge fires, piled-up rocks on the plains, fights with savage
beasts, the solemn rites of funerals and religious services. The figure of a
man covered by a motley cloak of coloured skins filled the whole panel.
Leaning on a spear with one band and raising the other towards the stars in
an all-embracing gesture, be stood with his foot on the neck of a conquered
monster with a ridge of stiff hair down its back and long, bared fangs. In
the background a line of men and women had joined hands in pairs and seemed
to be singing something.
The picture faded away and the place of the tableaux was taken by a
dark surface of polished stone.
At this moment the pair in golden clothing moved away to the right and
their place was taken by the second pair. With a movement so rapid that the
eye could not follow it the cloaks were thrown aside and two dark-red bodies
gleamed like living fire against the pearl of the walls. The man held out
his two hands to the woman and she answered him with such a proud and
dazzling smile of joy that the Earth-dwellers responded with involuntary
smiles. And there, in the pearl hall of that immeasurably distant world, the
two people began a slow dance. It was probably not danced for the sake of
dancing, but was something more in the nature of eurhythmics, in which the
dancers strove to show their perfection, the beauty of the lines and the
flexibility of their bodies. A majestic and at the same time sorrowful music
could be felt in the rhythmic change of movement, as though recalling the
great ladder of countless unnamed victims sacrificed to the development of
life that had produced man, that beautiful and intelligent being.
Mven Mass fancied he could hear a melody, a movement in pure high tones
played against a background of the resonant and measured rhythm of low
notes. Veda Kong squeezed Darr Veter's hand but the latter did not pay her
any attention. Junius Antus stood motionless watching the scene, without
even breathing, and beads of perspiration stood out on his broad forehead.
The people of the Tucana planet were so like the people of Earth that
the impression of another world was gradually lost. The red people, however,
possessed bodies of refined beauty such as had not by that time been
universally achieved on Earth, but which lived in the dreams and the
creations of artists and was to be seen only in a small number of unusually
beautiful people.
"The more difficult and the longer the path of blind animal evolution
up to the thinking being, the more purposeful and perfected are the higher
forms of life and, therefore, the more beautiful," thought Darr Veter. "The
people of Earth realized a long time ago that beauty is an instinctively
comprehended purposefulness of structure that is adapted to definite
objectives. The more varied the objectives, the more beautiful the
form-these red people must be more versatile and agile than we are....
Perhaps their civilization has progressed mainly through the development of
man himself, the development of his spiritual and physic