THE PEOPLE OF THE COMET
CHAPTER THREE
"I LISTENED to their talk with an interest that can be imagined. Although I could understand their words, I could not, for all that, get at their meaning; and when the man spoke of Infinity I felt the return of my old askance. No man can solve Infinity, nor get at the beginning of things.
“Yet, for all that, here was a miracle, or something very near to it—there was something, some strange force that had brought the man and the maiden. Could it be that their age was to be measured by millions of years? I am an old man and a scientist ; and I am given to facts; my whole life has been spent in tearing down dreams and theories and forcing all things down to the level of solid mathematics. And now I was come to this!
“I looked out of the open window at the sleeping village. It was my own mountain, with the deep shadows to the south, the round old moon floating overhead, and a slight breeze rustling from the north. A dog, one of the children’s pets, was barking; from the depths of the canyon I caught the hoot of a night owl. Everything was as it should be—except these people.
“They must pay the penalty for what? For a staid astronomer I was surely having an experience!
“But now the man Alvas looked up again; he glanced curiously about the room, at the fixtures, at everything. I had the feeling, at the moment, that, should I at some far future age suddenly open my eyes upon a new civilization, I would be more curious. I noted that there was a total lack of fear in his action; he seemed to take things for granted and to assume that I was a scholar, even as he.
“ 'You are an astronomer?’ he asked.
“ 'I am. This is Hazleton Observatory.'
“The girl watched the both of us; her innocent, beautiful eyes were full of question. Somehow I could not get over the notion that she was not of our world; she was too ethereal. The man studied over my words.
“ 'It is fortunate,’ he said at length. 'Although I have made a grievous mistake it might have been worse. Fate has at least granted me a bit of good fortune. You might have been a blacksmith, a meehanie, or a tradesman; your being an astronomer assures me of at least a hearing. You will understand.’
“ 'I am sure I do not understand you now. You have not answered my question. Who are you?’
“ 'I am Alvas,” he answered. ‘Alvas, King of the Northern Pole; I am Alvas the Astronomer—son of Alvas the Wise, the fourteenth king in direct line from Alvas the Great, he who was the lord of the atom, the first king of the Sansars to conquer and harness the laws of atomic force. I am Alvas the Sansar, the first of the Scientific Kings to penetrate through matter and solve the substance. I am the first man to cut through Infinity.’
“All this was like talk from Fairyland; so I answered:
“ 'Your titles are high-sounding and interesting; but utterly strange. I know of no land of the Sansars, nor Royal line of Alvas. All I know is that you speak Sanscrit, which is a sort of mother tongue to all Caucasian tongues—therefore you must be connected with something very ancient. I cannot understand your allusion to millions of years. No tan may live so long.’
“ 'Yet you are an astronomer?'
“ 'I am.'
“ 'And you know of the moon—of Lunar civilization?’
“ ‘Civilization upon the moon!'
“ 'Ah! Then you do not know. It is strange. What is your specialty?'
“ 'I make a special study of comets.’
“ 'Ah!’ He seemed to light up with a sort of enthusiasm. He walked to the window and looked out. Then he returned; when he was directly under the light he held up his thumb. There was something strange in the action, a peculiar inquisitiveness and inspection; under the guidance of impulse, I passed him a small microscope, which, after a bit of examination, he held over his hand. Tt was a queer bit of acting. I could not but wonder—what could be the relation between his thumb and a comet? Suddenly he looked up.
“ 'You say that you specialize on comets. Can you tell me,’ he asked, ‘what a comet is? For instance, what is its reason in your Universe? I am asking you because I, too, specialize on comets.’
“ 'I don’t know, exactly,’ I answered. ‘It’s a question that is a bit difficult to answer. No man knows the reason for any part of the Universe—let alone a comet. We know that comets do not fall in with the usual laws of the solar system— their orbits are different, for instauce, and their actions are somewhat irregular. I am afraid that I cannot give you a definite answer.’
“He did not reply. Instead, he fell under the influence of the microscope; the clock ticked on, while my strange visitor with the beautiful maiden by his side peered through the lens at his thumb. At last I asked irreverently, and, I am afraid, a bit perversely:
“ 'Has a comet anything to do with that thumb?’
“It was a boyish question for an astronomer; I felt, somehow, that I was being hoaxed; for in no other way could I explain the attention that the man gave to his thumb.
“The maiden placed her finger at the point just where the nail ran into the flesh.
“ 'Alvas.' she said. ‘It was right here—the laws you have drawn out and evolved. It was so. Yet you say that you have made a mistake. It was so strange, and so unthought of. After so much speculation and so much thought, it turned out to be so simple. Yet how does it come that we are so old? It seems like only a few hours.'
“ 'I said,' he answered, ‘that it was mistake; and it was. But it is as it ould be. It could not be else. The mistake was only in my calculation. Nature does not fail. And now that I have had time to think, I know that we really should be millions of years of age —were we not, the fabric of things would fall asunder.’
“ 'Then you were right.’
“ 'God is right. There is but one mighty unity down to the tiniest thing.’
“Surely this strange pair had a message to tell. I waited expectantly. As a man of sense I thought it best to listen to their story before passing judgment. Who was this king of the Northern Pole—Alvas the Sansar—the astronomer? Was it possible that I was to look into a sealed book of our planet’s history? Whence came their knowledge of Sanscrit?
“My mind went back to the shadows of the beginning, and to the Darwinian theory, and to the one point wherein it seems to fail—on the specific origin of Man.
“It is a curious fact, that, in spite of all we know of evolution, we can never prove anything specific concerning the first actual appearance of Man. When we find him he is full-fledged. No science has ever been able to tum up a fact of transition. Evolution teaches; physiology, palaeontology, embryology, everything tends one way; except to the one and the main thing—we have never been able to dig up the manlike ape who is said to have been man’s progenitor.
“And who were the original Aryans? They are supposed to have come down from the highlands of Asia into Europe, India, and Persia, where they became Caucasians. Who were they? Whence did they come? And who were their antecedents? The nearest approach that
