THEN I saw the Earth sinking down into the yawning depths of immensity; the cupolas of the observatory, Paris with its lights, were rapidly fading away. Although feeling as if I were motionless, I had the same sensation which one experiences on rising in a balloon and seeing the earth descend. I went up, up, in a magic flight toward the inaccessible zenith. Urania was with me, a little higher up, looking at me kindly and pointing out the kingdoms below. Day had come again. I recognized France, the Rhine, Germany, Austria, Italy, the Mediterranean, Spain, the Atlantic Ocean, the Channel, England. But all this liliputian geography soon shrank away. Speedily the terrestrial globe was reduced to the dimensions of the moon in its last quarter; then to a little full moon.
"There," said she, "is the famous terrestrial globe on which so many passions stir, within whose narrow limits the thought of so many millions of human beings is confined, whose sight cannot extend beyond it. See how its apparent size diminishes as our horizon develops. We can no longer distinguish Europe from Asia; and there is North America. How very small it all is!"
As we passed through the Moon's neighborhood I had noticed our satellite's hilly landscapes, the mountain crests radiant with light, deep valleys filled with shadows, and I should have liked to stop for a nearer study of the surroundings; but Urania did not deign to bestow so much as a passing glance at it, and drew me on in a rapid flight toward the sidereal regions.
We were still ascending. The Earth grew smaller and smaller as we receded from it, until it looked like a simple star shining from solar illumination on the bosom of dark and empty space. We turned toward the Sun, which shone in space, but without filling it with light, so that we could see stars and planets at the same time, no longer obscured by its rays, because it could not illumine empty space. The angelic goddess showed me Mercury, in close neighborhood to the Sun, Venus, shining on the other side, the Earth, equalling Venus in appearance and brilliancy, Mars, whose inland seas and canals I recognized, Jupiter, with its four enormous moons, Saturn, Uranus. "All these worlds," said she, "are upheld in vacancy by the attraction of the Sun, around which they revolve with great speed. It is an harmonious choir gravitating about its centre. The Earth is but a floating island, a little hamlet of this great solar country; and the solar empire itself is but a little province on the breast of sidereal vastness."
We rose still higher. The Sun and its system were rapidly passing. The Earth was but a little spot now; Jupiter himself, that colossal world, had melted away, like Mars and Venus, to a tiny little dot scarcely larger than the Earth. We passed within sight of Saturn, surrounded by his gigantic rings, whose study alone would be sufficient to prove the immense and unimaginable variety reigning in the universe. Saturn is a whole system in itself, with its rings composed of particles torn from it in its dizzy revolution, and with its eight satellites accompanying it like a celestial retinue.
As we soared aloft, our Sun decreased in grandeur. Soon it had descended to the rank of a planet, then lost all majesty, all superiority over the sidereal population, and was nothing more than a star, scarcely more brilliant than the others. I looked about me at all this vast extent, on whose spangled bosom we were still going upward, and tried to recognize the constellations; but their forms were beginning to change perceptibly, from the lengthening perspective caused by my journey. I thought I could see that our Sun had insensibly dwindled to a tiny star and joined the constellation of the Centaur; while a new light, pale, bluish, and very strange, seemed to greet me from the direction toward which Urania was bearing me. This new brightness had nothing terrestrial about it, and reminded me of no effect that I had ever seen on the Earth among the changing tints of the sunset after a storm, or in the undefined mists of morning, or during the calm and silent moonlight hours on the mirror of the sea. This last effect is nearer its appearance; but the strange light was, and became more and more, of a real blue,—blue, not like a reflection of celestial azure, nor like a contrast analogous to that produced by an electric light compared with gas, but blue, as if the Sun itself were blue.
Imagine my amazement when I discovered that we were approaching the influence of an absolutely blue sun, like a shining disk, which might have been cut from one of our most beautiful terrestrial skies, standing out luminously upon a perfectly black background all thickly studded with stars. This sapphire sun was the centre of a planetary system lighted by its rays. We were to pass quite near one of the planets. The blue sun increased perceptibly in size; but—another phenomenon as singular as the first—the light it threw upon this planet seemed to be tinged on one side with green. I looked into the sky again, and saw a second sun,—this one a beautiful emerald green. I could not believe my eyes!
Urania said: "We are crossing the solar system of Gamma AndromedÆ, of which you see but one part as yet; for it is made up, not of these two suns, but in reality of three,—one blue, one green, and one orange yellow. The blue sun, which is the smallest, turns around the green sun; and the latter gravitates with its companion around the great orange sun, which you will perceive in an instant."
Sure enough! A second later I saw a third sun, colored with a glowing radiancy, whose contrast with its two companions produced a most dazzling illumination. I knew about this interesting sidereal system from having observed it more than once through the telescope; but I had never suspected its real splendor. What fiery depths! what scintillations! what brilliancy of color in that strange source of blue light in the second sun's green illumination and the tawny, golden effulgence of the third!
But, as I have said, we were approaching one of the worlds belonging to the system of the sapphire sun. Everything was blue,—landscapes, water, plants, rocks,—slightly greenish on the side lighted by the second sun, and hardly touched by the rays of the orange sun, which was rising on the distant horizon. As we floated into the atmosphere of this world a soft, delicious music was wafted into the air like a perfume, a dream. Never had I heard anything like it. The sweet, deep, distant melody seemed to come from a choir of harps and violins, strengthened by an accompaniment of organs. It was an exquisite anthem, which charmed at once; it needed no analyzing to be understood; it filled the soul with ecstasy. It seemed to me that I could have lingered there listening for an eternity. I was so fearful of losing a single note that I dared not speak to my guide. Urania noticed it; stretching out her hand toward a lake, she pointed to a group of winged beings who were hovering over the blue waters.
They had not the earthly human form. They were beings who had evidently been created to live in air. They seemed woven out of light. At a distance I thought they were dragon-flies; they had their slender, graceful shape, the same wide wings, quickness, and lightness. But on examining them more closely I noticed their height, which was not inferior to our own, and realized from the expression of their eyes that they were not animals. Their heads were very like that of the dragon-fly, and like those aerial creatures they had no legs. The delicious music to which I had been listening was but the noise of their flight. They were very numerous,—perhaps many thousands.
From the mountain-tops could be seen plants which were neither trees nor flowers, whose slender stalks rose to an enormous height; the branched stems bearing, as though with outstretched arms, great tulip-shaped cups. These plants were alive, or as much so as our sensitive growths, perhaps more, and like the desmodium, with its moving leaves, showed their internal impressions by their motions. These groves formed actual vegetable cities. The inhabitants of this world had no other dwellings, but reposed among the fragrant sensitive-plants when not floating in the air.
"This seems a very strange world to you," said Urania; "you are wondering what kinds of ideas, habits, or history these people could have,—what kinds of arts, literature, and sciences. It would take a long time to answer all the questions you might ask. Know only that their eyes are superior to your finest telescopes; that their nervous system vibrates at the passing of a comet, and discovers by an electric sense facts which you on the Earth will never know. The organs which you see under their wings serve as hands, more skilful than yours. Instead of printing, they take the direct photography of events and the phonetic impression of words. They care very little for anything but scientific research; that is to say, the study of Nature. The three passions which absorb the greater part of earthly life—eager greed for fortune, political ambition, and love—are unknown to them, because they require nothing to live on, there are no international divisions nor government, except a council of administration, and because they are androgynous."
"Androgynous!" I repeated; and ventured to add, "Is that best?"
"It is different. It is a great deal of trouble saved to a humanity." "To be in a condition to understand the infinite diversity displayed in the different phases of creation," she continued, "it is necessary to cast aside all terrestrial feelings and ideas. Just as the species of your planet have changed in succeeding ages from the uncouth creatures of the first geological periods to the appearance of man, and as even now the animal and vegetable population of the Earth is still composed of the most widely varying forms, from man to the coral, from bird to fish, from an elephant to a butterfly, so on an incomparably vaster scale the forces of Nature have given birth to an infinite diversity of beings and things throughout the innumerable worlds of heaven. The form of its occupant is the result in each world of some element peculiar to that globe,—substance, heat, light, electricity, density, weight. Shape, functions, the number of the senses,—you have but five, and they are rather poor ones,—depend on the vital conditions of each sphere. Life is earthly on the Earth, Martial on Mars, Saturnian on Saturn, Neptunian on Neptune,—that is to say, appropriate to each habitation; or, to express it better, more strictly speaking, produced and developed by each world according to its organic condition, and following a primordial law which all Nature obeys,—the law of progress."
While she was speaking I had watched the flight of the aerial creatures toward the city of flowers, and saw with astonishment that the plants were moving, raising or lowering themselves to receive them. The green sun had sunk beneath the horizon, and the yellow sun had risen in the sky; the landscape was suffused with a fairy-like tinge, over which hung an enormous half-green, half-orange moon. Then the infinite melody which had been filling the air died away, and amid a profound silence I heard a song arise from so pure a voice that no human tones could be compared with it.
"What a marvellous system!" I cried,—"a world illumined by such glowing lights! It is having a close view of double, triple, and multiple stars."
"Splendid suns those stars," she answered, "gracefully united in the bonds of a mutual attraction; from the Earth you see them cradled two and two on the bosom of the sky, always beautiful, pure, and luminous. Hanging in the infinite, they lean to each other, but never touch, as though their union, more moral than material, were ordered by an invisible and superior power, and following harmonious curves, they gravitate in cadence around each other,—celestial couples which blossomed at the spring-time of creation in the constellated meadows of infinity. While simple suns like yours shine in the deserts of space solitary, fixed, and undisturbed, double and multiple suns seem to enliven the silent regions of the eternal void by their motion, color, and life. These sidereal time-keepers mark the centuries and eras of other worlds for you.
"But," she added, "let us continue our journey; we are but a few trillion leagues from the Earth."
"A few trillion?"
"Yes. If we could hear the sounds of your planet from here,—its volcanoes, cannonadings, and thunders, or the wild vociferations of its crowds in times of revolution, or the hymns which rise to heaven from the churches,—the distance is so great that, even admitting that the noises could surmount it with the speed of sound in the air, it would require not less than fifteen million years to reach here. We could hear to-day only what took place on Earth fifteen million years ago. And yet, compared with the immensity of the universe, we are still very near your home.
"You can still distinguish your Sun yonder,—that tiny little star. We have not been out of the universe to which it, with its system of planets, belongs. That universe is composed of several thousand milliards of suns, separated from each other by trillions of leagues. Its extent is so vast that it would take a flash of lightning fifteen thousand years to cross it, travelling at the rate of three hundred thousand kilometres a second.
"And suns everywhere, on all sides! In whatever direction we look, all about us are sources of light, heat, and life in inexhaustible variety,—suns of every lustre, of all magnitudes, all ages, upheld in the eternal void, in the luminous ether, by the mutual attraction of all and the motion of each. Your Sun moves and bears you away toward the constellation of Hercules; that one, whose system we have just crossed, goes south toward the Pleiades; Sirius hurries away toward the Dove; Pollux whirls swiftly toward the Milky Way. All these millions, these thousands of millions, of suns hasten through boundless space with a speed which attains a velocity of two, three, and even four thousand metres a second. Motion maintains the equilibrium of the universe, and constitutes its organization, energy, and life."
