THE PEOPLE OF THE COMET
9
we get to the secret is the old Sanscrit language. And this beautiful couple spoke Sanscrit! Was it possible that in the past there had been a wisdom and state far above our own vaunted civilization?
“I recalled the ice ages and the calamities that were visited upon the Earth before the coming of Man. The old Earth has had her vicissitudes. I could picture a great and wonderful civilization crushed by the hand of frost--the shifting of the poles—a few stragglers drifting, naked, before the avalanche of ice—millions of years. Man might have originated about the poles. We have never found his progenitor, simply because we have never looked in the right place. Was it possible?
“Whatever the tale that they had to tell, it would be interesting. I was all eagerness. A slight breeze was drifting through the open window, enough to catch in the downy feathers of their garments and to rustle in their purple softness. I wondered at their dress. Surely there was nothing on Earth like it.
“ 'I wish to ask you,” he said, ‘concerning your life. I am Alvas, the king of the Sansars, and this is Sora, who would haye been my Queen had everything turned out as I expected—were I not millions of years too late. I want you to tell me of your life.’
“ ‘What would you know?'
“ ‘Everything. For instance, how does it, come that you live so far south? L want to know about yourself and your civilization. How old is your civilization?'
““ 'That depends,’ I answered, ‘upon what you call civilization.’
“His face clouded, and the old puzzled look came back.
“ 'You seem civilized,’ he replied. 'Let me state it differently. How old is your history? You surely keep records, and have a knowledge of the past. How far back have you a record of Man?'
“ ‘Recorded history goes back about six thousand years,’ I replied, ‘or rather, I should say, traditional history. Beyond that we have a pall of darkness; with ‘Man upon the Earth, but no record.'
“ 'How far back have you been able to trace Man?'
“ 'About two hundred and fifty thousand years.’
“ 'And he—'
“ 'Was a savage.'
“ 'Oh, Alvas,’ spoke up the girl, ‘it has only been a few days! It cannot be! There is some mistake.’
“ 'There is no mistake, Sora,’ he answered. ‘I can explain it all in the end. Nevertheless, there has been a cataclysm of some sort.’ He turned to me. ‘Have you ever thought of speaking to the moon?'
“ 'Speaking to the moon! There is no life upon the moon. How could we speak?'
“ 'How do you know there is no life upon the moon?’
“ 'Because there is no atmosphere upon the moon. Any astronomer, even a boy, knows there is no oxygen. Life could not be—for an instant.’
“He thought for a moment; then he spoke:
“ 'You say there is no life there; you say that it is not possible; are you sure there is no oxygen?'
“ 'Quite sure.’
“ 'Then,’ he answered, ‘we are very old, indeed. And you say that Man, your Man, goes back only two hundred and fifty thousand years. How does it come that you and I speak the same language?'
“ 'I do not know,’ I replied, ‘but it seems that we are related, somehow. I cannot understand your statement that you are millions of years of age.’
“ 'It can be explained very easily,’ he said. ‘Have you any knowledge of atomic force?'
“ ‘Very little,’ I replied. ‘Our physicists are just beginning to study into the atom. We know some of the facts, and have learned some of the laws of vibration, light, and so forth.’
“ 'You understand steam?'
" 'Yes.'
“ 'Electricity ?'
" 'Yes.'
“ 'The laws of gravitation?'
“ 'Yes. We understand the laws; but we do not know what gravitation is, beyond a knowledge that it is everywhere, and penetrates through everything. Why do you ask these questions?'
“ 'Because I wish to know whether you are far enough along to understand my story. For if, as you say, there is no atmosphere upon the moon, I have been gone a very long time—according to the earthly cycle, millions of years. And yet, for all that, we have been away but a short while.’
“ 'Where have you been? Have you not been upon the Earth?’
“ 'It is a strange story that I have to tell. After I am through you will understand; and we can compare notes, and figure out what became of the civilization that I left behind—and perhaps establish some legitimate fact concerning the origin of your Man. For I have no doubt that the Sansars were your progenitors. There must have been some calamity to overthrow the civilization of the Northern Pole—some terrible cataclysm that destroyed all but a few survivors; it seems incredible that what we worked out through millions of years should go for naught. They must have wandered southward and lapsed into savagery. Have you ever found any traces of civilization, cities and such, about the Northern Pole?'
“ 'My dear sir,’ I answered, ‘we know practically nothing about the North. Beyond the Arctic Circle we may penetrate only with great hardship. If there is a vestige of the past it is buried under tons of ice: and we don’t know where to find it.’
“ 'But you have explained the stars?'
“ ‘He seemed to leap from one question to another with bewildering facility.
“ 'Explained them ?'
“ 'You know what they are, of course—their reason?'
" ‘I am afraid that we do not—that is, if you mean their reason in space, their relation to Infinity.’
“We were standing close together; the man was almost by my side; he still held the microscope in his hand. When I gave him my last answer, he reached over suddenly and caught hold of my thumb. He held it up. I did not resist.
“ ‘Suppose I were to tell you that you had the secret of things and held the reason of your visual Universe in your thumb. What would you say?'
“ 'I would say that you are very unscientific. Surely you would not expect me to descend to nonsense.'
“He smiled. ‘Undoubtedly. But I venture to say that you will agree with me that most of the things, which you consider inexplicable, are found, when analyzed and got at from the bottom, to be very simple. It is so with your visual Universe; and, paradoxically, when I am through you shall know that, though it is a very small thing, it is, for all that, infinitely beyond anything that you may imagine. If you understand anything about atomic law you can follow and understand my story,’
CHAPTER FOUR
HE SAT down on a chair that I had brought forward. The girl took her seat beside him. And then he began his tale.
“ 'I am Alvas the Sansar,’ he began, ‘Alvas the Astronomer, the King of the Sansars, the fourteenth in direct line from the Great Alvas, he who was the first lord of the atom. My people were a great people inhabiting the region of the Northern Pole.
“ 'If I lapse into the present, remember that it is because it is hard for me to realize that all I have to tell is millions of years in the past. Nevertheless it is so; and I shall be able to explain it.’
