The Fiery Wheel Read online

  The four men, their minds in chaos, had not lost consciousness. They had a sensation of falling through burning air. Then that sensation weakened, and they understood that they were falling more slowly.

  Where?

  Although closed, their eyes were hurting, assaulted by an intense light...

  They were suffocating...

  Then, a kind of twilight suddenly succeeded the violent light. The contrast was sharp enough to render Paul de Civrac all his presence of mind. He opened his eyes, and his thoughts succeeded one another, rapidly:

  We’re in a cloud…not as thick as that of the Fiery Wheel…it’s not as hot…we’re falling through extremely dense air…so dense that it’s slowing our fall…we must be much lighter than in the terrestrial atmosphere…the cloud has passed...

  Then, beneath him, at a great depth, he saw a red-brown prairie traversed by a golden yellow river...

  He was suffocating atrociously...

  He thought he was about to die, before even crashing into the ground far below. He hugged Lola more tightly to his bosom, and had the strength to apply his own lips to the young woman’s, in a unique and supreme kiss.

  Then, with one last glance, he embraced the spectacle: above him, a dark cloud; on every side, a sort of transparent mist; beneath him, the russet prairie...

  He felt Brad’s fingernails sink into his arm, while Bild’s arm squeezed his ribs and Francisco’s hands clung to his left ankle.

  There was a blinding light, an unsustainable heat, a supreme suffocation…and he lost consciousness.

  And the human cluster of five bodies suddenly came apart, continuing to fall slowly toward the mysterious land, indecisively, tossed around like sheets of paper thrown from the gondola of a balloon...

  PART TWO

  THE MYSTERIOUS PLANET

  Chapter One

  Which serves as an unusual introduction

  to what follows

  Jonathan Bild was the first to recover consciousness after the fall. He tried to open his eyes but he was blinded by a violent light, so he closed them again and shielded them with both hands. He remained lying down, without moving, for some time. At first, his bewildered intelligence could not contrive to reconstitute the events in consequence of which he seemed to be hurting all over. He felt an intolerable heat throughout his body, and he was choking.

  Gradually, his memory cleared. He remembered the night in Colombia, the Fiery Wheel, Lolla Mendès and her domestic, the revolver shots, the fall...

  “Good,” he said. “We’ve fallen on to a world, probably a planet. Why a planet? Bah! We’ll find out later. But where are the others? Damned light!”

  He had opened his eyes too abruptly again, had had the sensation of a red hot iron passing in front of his pupils. After that, he was more prudent. Gradually, parting his eyelids very slowly, he succeeded in keeping his eyes sufficiently open, although squinting, to be able to see clearly.

  He was then able to take account of the fact that he was lying on long red grass, that blades of which were scarcely curbed by his eight; it formed an extremely elastic mattress. The sky that was above his head was composed of enormous dense green clouds, without any gap permitting him to see beyond them.

  He raised himself up on his elbow and shouted, as loudly as he could: “Arthur Brad!”

  To his great astonishment, a powerful echo repeated: “Arthur Brad!” and immediately a second echo, and then a third, and then twenty others, repeated the three sonorous syllables with decreasing force. The strangest thing was that the echoes came from the sky, as if they had been produced by the bizarre green clouds.

  But no human voice succeeded the rumble of the echoes. Arthur Brad did not reply.

  Without renewing his appeal, Jonathan Bild tried to get up. He succeeded, but only after considerable effort, for all his limbs seemed weary. His feet and legs, not offering as large a resistant surface as his whole body, sank into the russet grass. His feet came to rest upon genuinely solid ground when the tops of the grass stalks had reached breast-height—and Jonathan Bild was a tall man! When he felt that he was steady on his feet, with his legs apart and his and his hands forming a shade over his eyes, he looked around.

  He found himself almost in the middle of a vast field of reddish grass, fairly similar, except for the color, to ripe wheat, but taller, stouter and more flexible. In front of him, the prairie was limited by a broad yellow ribbon—a golden river—beyond which sterile mountains rose up, as black and shiny as slate, whose summits were lost in the clouds.

  To the right was a metallic gray forest; to the left, a similar forest, and behind him—for he made a complete rotation—the American saw rounded hills covered in bright red vegetation. There were no animals anywhere: not a single bird, insect, biped or quadruped. And over the motionless solitude, unruffled by any gust of wind, there was a more-than-tropical heat and light, with a death-like silence.

  “Funny place!” murmured Bild. “But those damned clouds are the most disconcerting thing of all!”

  The clouds were green—bright green—indefinable and undulating, dark in the middle and bright at the edges. They seemed formidably thick and heavy, rolling heavily and slowly toward the slate mountains, against which they collided, rising up, to be incessantly replaced, without any gap, by other clouds surging from beyond the scarlet hills. The intense light—unbearable to fully open eyes and painful even for squinting eyes—which came from the extraordinarily cloudy sky, was also green: a very bright green that did not modify the color of objects.

  “How hot it is!” murmured Bild.

  It seemed to him that he was in an oven, and that his skull was about to burst as his brain boiled. His entire body was streaming with sweat.

  As rapidly as the pain in his limbs permitted, Jonathan got rid of his jacket and trousers; he remained in his jersey and long-johns, with his boots. He did not experience any relief. His mind slightly numbed, he was thinking about the exhausting heat when he heard a voice calling to weakly from his left: “Jonathan Bild!”

  Immediately, in the sky, the echoes repeated in a rapid roll: “Jonathan Bild…Nathan Bild!”

  “Ah! My old Brad!”

  “Jonathan! Jonathan!”

  There was such a din of echoes in the clouds that the American understood the necessity of not shouting. He turned in the direction from which the weak voice had come, and said, quietly: “Is that you, Brad?”

  “Yes, Bild, it’s me.”

  “How are you?”

  “Broken—bruised all over. But can you see me? Further to the left, Bild. I can’t open my eyes, but I can tell from your voice which way you’re facing.”

  With one stride, Jonathan crossed an enormous area of russet grass. He felt extremely light. Suddenly, in front of him, lying full length on a mattress of bent grass, he saw the stout body of Arthur Brad, his apoplectic face steaming with sweat.

  The sight of Brad, with his blinking eyes and mouth wide open, was so funny that Bild could not help laughing.

  When the aerial echoes of the laughter had died away, Brad said, in a low voice: “Where are we, damn it?”

  “Are you injured?” asked Bild, without replying.

  “I don’t think so?”

  “Try to get up, Arthur.”

  “I feel as if I’ve been beaten with sticks!”

  “Never mind, try! I felt the same as you, bruised all over. As you can see, I’m in one piece. It was the fall that...”

  “Yes, the fall! Aiee!” With an effort, in spite of the pain from which all his limbs were suffering, Brad succeeded in standing up. He sank chin-deep. He looked at the red field, the motionless golden river, the slate mountains, the steel-gray forests and the scarlet hills—and then, for a long time, at the thick and heavy green clouds.

  “Ludicrous country, eh, Bild?”

  “Yes, quite ludicrous.”

  “But where are the others?”

  “Civrac?”

  “Yes—Civrac, Lolla Mendès a
nd Francisco.”

  “I don’t know. Let’s look for them.”

  “Let’s—but tell me, Bild…I’m stifling…are you as hot as I am?”

  “As if I were under a grill.”

  “Worse than tropical temperature, to be sure, Bild...”

  “We must be on a planet closer to the sun than the Earth. And yet those clouds are filtering the heat and light. Otherwise, we’d be roasted like a chicken on a spit.”

  “In the oven, Bild, in the oven!” rectified the meticulous Arthur Brad.

  Bild shrugged his shoulders and took a step forward—but that single pace transported him at least five meters away from Brad, who had remained still.

  “Hey, Jonathan—by Jove, you’ve got seven-league boots on!”

  He bounded himself, and that single jump took him further than Bild.

  “Arthur,” said Jonathan, “we’re lighter than on Earth, as we were in the Fiery Wheel.”

  “Yes, obviously. Let’s calculate more carefully.”

  They came together again by means of prudent steps. As they were looking in the direction of the golden river they saw a human being emerge from the russet grass three paces away from them, leap six meters into the air, and fall back lightly.

  “Francisco!”

  “The very same—but by Santo Cristo, what does it mean? I jump to loosen my limbs and I fly up into the air like a balloon! Bonjour, Señores. Not bad—you too?”

  “No, not bad,” Brad replied.

  “Me neither. I woke up some time ago. I heard you talking. Those echoes, eh! What do you think of that? Then you spoke very quietly…and I understood—I’m doing the same, as you see. But come and help the Señorita—she’s over there, lying next to Monsieur Civrac. May the Blessed Virgin forgive me! I think I was lying on their legs. We fell from a long way up—Caramba! Look! The Señorita’s breathing, and Monsieur de Civrac too. I still have my flask, fortunately!”

  During this flood of speech, Bild and Brad leaned over Lola and Civrac, who were lying side by side in the russet grass. From one of the vast pockets of his jacket, Francisco had taken a small goatskin flask. He took out the cork and put the neck to Lolla’s lips.

  “It’s aguardiente.”

  “Cognac?” said Brad.

  “Yes, and good stuff. It would have resuscitated the dead in the times of Charles Quint. Look!”

  Lolla coughed, sneezed and opened fearful eyes, which she closed again immediately, dazzled as they were by the intense light falling from the green clouds.

  “Señorita! Señorita! You’re alive! We’re all alive! San Cristo be blessed!”

  And the petulant Francisco turned toward Civrac’s body—but he did not calculate his movement, with the result that he pirouetted on his axis four times.

  “Caramba! That’s devilment!”

  “No,” said Bild. And he explained that, because bodies on this unknown planet were much lighter than on Earth, muscular effort needed to be proportionate to the new weight.

  “Understood!” Francisco said—and with meticulous slowness, he turned to Civrac again.

  The young Frenchman took longer to recover consciousness than his friends. The top of his head was bloody; he had fallen awkwardly, in such a way that his head has made glancing contact with a big boulder. Francisco washed the wound with saliva and applied his handkerchief to it, slightly dampened with cognac. Then he poured a few drops of cordial between the young man’s lips.

  Bild and Brad waited anxiously, as did Lolla, who had sat up without difficulty.

  Finally, Civrac opened his mouth. “Lolla! Lolla!” he murmured.

  He too opened his eyes—but closed them again immediately, dazzled. A long interval of adaptation was necessary. Blinking one eye, and then the other, he gradually got used to the intense light, and when he was finally able to see between narrowed eyelids, he scanned his companions with his gaze, finally resting it on Lolla. Then his eyes cleared, sparkling with intelligence. Revitalized, Civrac smiled.

  “Safe and sound,” he murmured. “All of us!”

  “Yes, all of us,” said Brad.

  “Try to get up,” Bild advised.

  “But where are we?”

  “We haven’t had time to try to find out. Stand up! First you need to convince us that you aren’t injured.”

  “I don’t think so,” Civrac murmured. “I only feel a slight headache.”

  “Your head hit a stone,” Francisco explained, “but the wound’s superficial—it’s trivial.”

  Civrac stood up, without difficulty. He held out his hand to Lolla, who was the last to stand up. And the five Terrans looked around, mutely.

  The heat was so intense and the air so heavy that they were choking, suffocated. No sun was visible, however; there was only that terrible pale green light falling from the more intensely-colored clouds. An extraordinary silence reigned over everything, frightening because it was so absolute.

  “I’m choking!” said Lola, tugging at the neck of her bodice.

  “Me too,” said Civrac.

  Brad and Francisco had imitated Bild and taken off their jackets, to no avail.

  “Let’s head for that gray forest over there. Perhaps it won’t be so hot under the trees, and we can examine our situation.”

  “Let’s go,” said Bild. “But remember how light we are.”

  Briefly, Civrac explained the phenomenon of the reduced weight to Lolla. Then he took her by the hand, and the five Terrans moved toward one of the forests. Even though it was some three terrestrial kilometers away, they reached it in a few bounds. Every leap kept them suspended in the air for more than a minute; they flew as if they had wings. The sensation of floating made them burst out laughing, so new was it for them, and the aerial echoes multiplied their laughter to infinity.

  They felt a strange vitality then, joyful and insouciant, for which they could not quite account. The overexcitement doubtless stemmed from a greater proportion of oxygen contained in the air of the mysterious planet, and yet, by a bizarre contradiction, the air was so dense that it seemed to them to be too heavy, as if too material, to breathe...

  At the edge of the forest Civrac stopped and turned to his companions.

  “What about the Fiery Wheel?” he said.

  At that evocation, they all looked up—but there was nothing there except the eternal green clouds, very high and very dense, gliding ponderously toward the slate mountains.

  “We won’t see it again,” said Bild.

  At these words, a depressing impression of solitude gripped the Terrans. They remained silent for a time, their gazes lost in the unaccustomed sky from which they had arrived on that strange planet. Would they ever see the Earth again?

  Those terrible thoughts could not overwhelm their courage, however. Paul de Civrac was the first to lower his head and redirect his eyes toward the bizarre soil on which they would be living henceforth.

  “Let’s go,” he said, “and let’s not worry about the Fiery Wheel any more, not everything we’ve known until now. By virtue of an unexpected adventure, we’ve been thrown into a mysterious world. There’s no proof that it’ll be hospitable to us. Perhaps that field of red grass is the work of intelligent beings. We’ll meet them, and then...”

  He fell silent momentarily, and then resumed, forcefully: “Follow me!”

  Still holding Lolla Mendès’ hand, he plunged into the forest.

  It was made up of bizarre trees with rugged trunks that were reminiscent of metallic columns corroded with rust. Silvery foliage spread out in bouquets on stout, high branches, similar to those of terrestrial olive-trees, but which must have been made of a very different substance, for the leaves strewn on the ground were flexible underfoot, like steel blades; they too seemed to be covered in rust.

  The trees were very numerous and densely-packed, their foliage forming a continuous dome; beneath that thick vault, air currents circulated between the trunks, producing a relative coolness.

  Having walked for so
me time, followed by his companions, still holding Lolla Mendès by the hand, Paul de Civrac stopped. The Terrans were in the heart of the forest, and there was nothing around them but the infinite bleak succession of trees with rusty trunks.

  Chapter Two

  In which Terrans and Mercurians

  come into conflict

  In spite of the air currents and the shade, the heat was still so intense in the forest that the faces of the five Terrans were streaming with sweat. They were not suffocating quite as much, though, and their respiration was gradually becoming even, doubtless by virtue of the adaptation of their lungs to the new air.

  As if that air were nourishing them, they did not feel any hunger, although they had not eaten for a long time.

  “Let’s sit down,” said Paul. “We won’t suffer as much from the heat while we’re still. And let’s try to examine our situation calmly.”

  “”First of all,” said Jonathan Bild, when everyone was seated, “Where are we? On what planet?”

  “It’s not the Moon,” said Arthur Brad.

  “Nor Jupiter,” Paul affirmed.

  “Nor Saturn,” said Bild.

  “Why?” asked Lolla Mendès.

  “Yes, why?” added Francisco.

  “Because the climatic and atmospheric conditions of planets are known to us,” Paul explained. “What we find here isn’t in accord with what we know about Jupiter, Saturn and the Moon.”

  “We might be on Mars...”

  “Or Venus...”

  “Or Mercury...”

  “Let’s not dwell on that question too long,” said Paul. “It’s of secondary importance to us. The future will doubtless answer it. What we need to know first is whether we can find, hereabouts, what we need to live. The air, although different from Earth’s air, is breathable. Since there’s air, and clouds, there ought to be water here; will it drinkable?”