Limanora the island of progress
sublimated Limanorans of the future seemed to have complete command of
the new ships and of the new power over light and gravitation.
Suddenly came tremors in the framework of the great mountain. It
rocked like a buoy in the uneasy surge of a reef. Its snows fell in
huge avalanches. Then the conical top was ejected into the sky like a
shot from a cannon. The air was thick with dust and stones. But when
it cleared and great flames shot forth and licked the face of heaven,
we could see far above their reach the rainbow-coloured fleet speeding
aloft, filled with their tiny diaphanous sailors.
The scene changed, and we saw universes set in the vault of heaven,
and across the space between them we could discern minute specks of
light flashing mercurial as thought. Behind them in dim eclipse sped
the noctambulant earth, still eddying round the central spot of light;
now it broke forth in ragged coruscation, only to sink back into pitchy
gloom. Yet a thread of light stretched forth to the luminous atoms that
flitted on through the night. Nearer they came and, one by one, grew
more distinct and larger. At last we could see that it was the fleet
on its way from the top of Lilaroma. Within each ether-ship we could
make out the movements of the sailors as they bent its way this side
and that. The light from a brilliant star in the new universe made
play upon the surface of their faleenas. They had caught in its rays,
and were speeding as swift as light towards the now-definite goal.
The luminiferous current bore them steadily on, their little engines
palpitating with the impulse of the new light and the new gravitation.
Again the scene changed, and we looked upon the surface of a new orb,
more advanced in vital development, more highly organised than the
earth with which we were familiar. We saw the inhabitants in crowds,
face upwards into the night, all eyes upon some distant star. The
excitement was rising like a tempest. It seemed as if the object on
which they gazed were swiftly approaching them. And in a flash there
swept within our sight the fleet of prismatic ether-ships, like
rainbows in the light of another sun. They stopped and hovered above
the atmosphere. We saw their crews breathe in the elements in which
they floated. Lower and lower they came, still sounding the atmosphere
and testing its effects upon their organs. The absence of commotion
and the steady descent showed that nothing alien to their systems had
yet been encountered. Out of their faleenas they gazed as wonderingly
down upon the new star as its sea of up-turned faces watched their slow
descent.
The scene was brought still nearer to our eyes. Instead of microscopic
foam-bells floating in the sky, and microscopic crowds resting on the
surface of the other world, we felt present at the meeting of these
creatures of different universes. They seemed to feel conscious of this
great event in the history of the cosmos. The dwellers of the new world
were almost paralysed at first with wonder at these beings so like and
yet so unlike themselves; they could recognise, we could see in their
friendly faces, the divine community of spirit; their eyes, as soon as
they recovered from their waking dream, flashed welcome in magnetic
fire; there was no need of community of words for open intercourse; the
dwellers of the new star had the same development of electric sense as
the Limanorans had; their souls could speak without a sound from the
lips.
Step by step their mutual sympathy grew more definite, more cordial,
and approximated to the communication of thought and fact. Within
a brief period they knew enough of each other’s language to tell
out their whence and whither. But in the people of the new star the
language was that of feature and not of tongue. Over their faces
flashed the signals of thought as well as of emotion, astonishing the
newcomers at the rapidity with which expression flitted over their
features. Equally astonished were their hosts to hear the countless
variety of tone and accent come from the throats of the strangers.
They covered their ears as if shielding them from the assault of some
thunderous report. Even the voyagers shrank from the voice of their own
spokesman. And, tone it down as he would, still was it too loud for any
delicate ear to endure. They were in a new atmosphere that bore sound
so quickly and clearly as to make a whisper reverberate like thunder.
So did it make the eyes of the dwellers in it as keen and far in sight
as if armed with the most powerful microscopes and telescopes. The
slightest adjustment of them and their lids changed them back and forth
from distant observation to near. And the same translucency marked
their tissues as made the inner movements of the newcomers’ heart and
brain apparent. There was needed no sound to interpret the magnetic
messages of the brain along its nerves. Hosts and guests were seen at
one, familiar as lifelong friends and thrilling each other with the
strange new experiences of their history. The voyagers from earth soon
knew why the use of the tongue and throat had been abandoned by their
hosts as means of communication; the uncontrollable volume of sound
offended their hearing, and drove them to develop the language of eye
and feature; the sight grew more powerful and adaptable as voice and
ear gave up their share of the energy and sustenance of the system;
their tissues, too, had ever been to a large extent transparent because
of the rarity and clearness of their atmosphere, and by selection and
training they had been able to make them pellucid as they now were.
The gleam of question and answer showed as clearly on the stage of
Loomiefa as the movement of the figures themselves. And, when the
colloquy had ended, and the strangers had gained all the information
they needed for their farther journey through space, we saw them enter
their faleenas and rise above the eager, penetrating gaze of their
new friends. Across the face of the heaven we followed the ethereal
fleet as it faded again into insignificance. Another scene showed us
their landing upon another planet of the universe they had entered.
The drama thus bore us with delight from system to system throughout
the cosmos, and revealed the ease with which stellar voyaging could be
accomplished, once the initial difficulties had been overcome.
A mediate book, dramatically published in Loomiefa just before,
prepared the way for this. It was the book of Sidereal Intercourse.
They had always held that the other universes in the cosmos were as
much inhabited by life as theirs was. It had ever seemed to them the
absurdest of arrogance for the dwellers on the earth to assume that
theirs was the only orb out of the countless myriads on the face of
night that had life upon it; that it monopolised the vital energy of
infinity, and the attention of its divine intelligence. The wider
they had ranged with their sidereal sciences, the more they smiled at
the primitive thought of their remote ancestors that they were the
cynosure of the cosmos. It had come to be used as the readiest and most
striking example of infatuation and conceit. That the poor earthlings
were as microscopic in their importance compared with the vastitude of
existence, as the bacterial swarms of a wayside pool compared to the
denizens of the great ocean, was assumed in every movement and act of
their minds.
And, wherever life was, there was the chance that highly developed
intelligence existed. They were not so sure that this was yet the case
on the farthest of our planets. It might be that the inner and smaller
bodies of our universe had passed the stage in which they could support
the higher life. The others, they thought, were rapidly evolving a
life of their own, most of it still in a low grade; when the earth had
passed its climax and begun to decay, they would probably, one after
the other, be attaining to a loftier type of life and intelligence.
Whilst they were running their course of progress the earth and her
inner sister planets would be waiting in their frozen silence the time
when the whole of their universe would be exhausted. Nearer and nearer
would the whole solar system be approaching some other system that
had run its course; and the encounter of the two would evolve a young
universe, full of heat and energy enough from the collision to make a
new cosmic career.
They had little hope then of stirring reply, if ever they were able to
send an embassy of thought to any star of our own system. All their
hopes of astral intercommunication were pointed to other stars and
other universes; and, as they looked up into the eyes of night, they
seemed to feel magnetic answer to the impulses of their souls, not from
Mars or Venus, from Saturn or Jupiter, but from the stars that throbbed
in far more distant depths. They had ever believed, of course, and
they had now scientifically shown, that the centres of light flashing
in the nightly sky were not the true sisters of earth but only suns,
round which the unseen universes circled. They tried to find the dim
worlds which drew their heat and light from these poignant watch-fires
of heaven; and their more recent instruments had revealed the dark
outlines of many of these twilight wanderers which hung on the radiance
of the visible stars. The magnetism that came with the rays from some
of those far distant luminous points had shown striking aberration
early in its course; and nothing could explain this but the existence
of rayless planets revolving round these lambent sources of light. Step
by step had they homed these aberrations, till they knew the courses of
the dusky satellites of many stars, and they could tell the moment when
a circular shadow would cross the face of any one of these suns.
The eyes of the astronomical families had become so accustomed to the
times and places of such obscurations that their firlas acted with them
and searched for magnetic impulses from the dark sisters of the star
they were watching; till at last they could tell by their electric
sense the place of many dim planets in the nearer universes.
It was on this that the book of Sidereal Intercourse based its forecast
of the immediate future. Since the definite discovery of varied types
of life in the spaces beyond the earth’s atmosphere, the last suspicion
of mere fancy had vanished from the belief in the existence of high
intelligence on the universes of infinity. And now their faces were set
towards communication with some of this intelligence on distant worlds.
The new book assumed that the electric sense, or something equivalent
for the perception of the great cosmic force, had been developed in the
inhabitants of some invisible worlds; and it laid down as an axiom that
there were vast stores of magnetic material in these orbs, just as
there were in the earth and in the sun.
What they must first do was to sweep the range of a universe with
an electric impulse on which the whole force of Rimla should be
concentrated, and to keep their delicate indicators all set in the
same direction. At the publication of the book in Loomiefa we saw
gigantic engines slowly moving their long arms this way and that
athwart one of the most brilliant stars of night, and scientists
eagerly scanning the numerous magnetometers that surrounded the huge
electric machine. We could see the air thrill and undulate with the
mighty impulse, and the very light of the star seemed to flicker and
wink before the penetration of the intrusive force. At last a flash
of hope came over the faces of the watchers; the pendent beam of one
sarmolan began to quiver. It was a message from the world they sought.
Again they turned the whole available power of the island--millions of