The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars Part 3

"I have been thinking a good deal on this subject and my reflections have resulted in this conclusion."

His voice had now resumed its usual melody and power, and we sat down while he turned the pages of Prof. Bain's little work ent.i.tled "Mind and Body." He read (I marked at the time the pa.s.sage): "The memory rises and falls with the bodily condition; being vigorous in our fresh moments and feeble when we are fatigued or exhausted. It is related by Sir Henry Holland that on one occasion he descended, on the same day, two mines in the Hartz Mountains, remaining some hours in each. In the second mine he was so exhausted with inanition and fatigue, that his memory utterly failed him; he could not recollect a single word of German. The power came back after taking food and wine. Old age notoriously impairs the memory in ninety-nine men out of a hundred."

My father then continued: "It seems to me quite clear that our memory, at any rate, however little of our other mental attributes is engaged in matter, is quite constructed in a series of molecular arrangements of our nervous tissues. No doubt there is memory also in that subtle fluid that survives death, but, inasmuch as memory is so closely expressed in physical or material units or elements, does it not seem plain that as spirits we shall probably lose memory?

"The material structure in which it existed, which in a sense was memory itself, is dissipated by death. Memory disappears with it. But perhaps not wholly. Some shadow of itself remains. What will most likely be treasured then? The strongest, deepest memories only. Those which are so subjectively strong as to leave even in the spirit _flesh_ an impression. In this same little book of Bain's this sentence occurs: 'Retention, Acquisition, or Memory, then, being the power of continuing in the mind, impressions that are no longer stimulated by the original agent, and of recalling them at after-times by purely mental forces, I shall remark first on the cerebral seat of those renewed impressions. It must be considered as almost beyond a doubt that the _renewed feeling occupies the very same parts, and in the same manner as the original feeling_, and no other parts, nor in any other manner that can be a.s.signed.'

"It seems to me, my son, in view of all this, that, as the fondest hope of my life is to send back to you from wherever I may be, a message, and as we both believe the means must be something like this wireless telegraphy, I must imbed in my mind the whole system we have developed, and especially make myself almost intuitively familiar with the Morse alphabet. Beating, beating, beating upon my brain substance this ceaselessly reiterated mechanical language, it will become so incorporated, that even in the surviving mind I shall find its traces and be able to use it.

"So I have concluded to put aside almost everything else and think and live in the thought only of this coming experience. You understand me?

You sympathize in this? Yes, yes, I shall get ready for this supreme experiment which may at last, to a long waiting world, bring some reasonable a.s.surance that death does not end all. As I think of it, as I look forward to meeting your mother, the whole prospect of death grows wonderfully interesting and sublimely welcome. And yet, my son, you, you who have been so patient, so kind, giving up your life for my convenience and pleasure, I dread to leave you. But I will speak to you!

Watch! wait! and at that instrument upstairs, which I know responded to some waves of magnetism crossing the oceans of s.p.a.ce, I shall be heard by you in English words, opening up the mysteries of other worlds!"

He stopped in sheer exhaustion with his whole face charged with almost frantic ecstacy. It seemed to me so natural, nurtured in the same impossible dreams, that I saw nothing ludicrous in his hopes.

From that day on we gave ourselves up to telegraphing from our two stations, while my father again and again consulted models of our transmitters and receivers. This excitement lasted a long time and it did seem psychologically certain that in any disembodied condition my father would be likely to recall some important parts or all of this well learned lesson.

For years my father, as I mentioned before, in his astronomical studies, had limited himself to the study, photography and drawing of the surfaces of our planetary neighbors. Mars particularly fascinated him, for he had, by some illusion or accident of thought fixed his belief firmly that Mars represented his future post mortem home.

The progress of study of the physical features of Mars had been considerable. With these results my father and I were very familiar, had been in correspondence with certain astronomical centers with regard to them, and had even contributed something toward the elucidation of the problems thus presented.

In 1884, before the Royal Society, some notes on the aspect of Mars, by Otto Baedd.i.c.ker, were read by the Earl of Rosse. They were accompanied by thirteen drawings of the planet and showed many features represented on the Schiaparelli charts. W.F. Denning in 1885, remarked upon "the seeming permanency of the chief lineaments on Mars, and their distinctiveness of outline." Schiaparelli confirmed his previous observations upon the duplications of the ca.n.a.ls and Mr. k.n.o.bel published some sketches.

In 1886, M. Terby presented to the Royal Academy of Belgium notes on drawings made by Hersch.e.l.l and Schroeter, indicating the so-called Kaiser Sea. M. Perrotin at the Nice Observatory was able to redetect Schiaparelli's ca.n.a.ls, which elicited the remark that "the reality of the existence of the delicate markings discovered by the keen-sighted astronomer of Brera seems thus fully demonstrated, and it appears highly probable that they vary in shape and distinctness with the changes of the Martial seasons."

These observations of M. Perrotin were detailed at length in the _Bulletin Astronomique_, and the distinguished observer called attention to the fact that these markings varied but slightly from Schiaparelli's chart, and indicated a state of things of considerable stability in the equatorial region of Mars. M. Perrotin recorded changes in the Kaiser Sea (Schiaparelli's _Syrtis Major_). This spot, usually dark, was seen on May 21, 1886, "to be covered with a luminous cloud forming regular and parallel bands, stretching from northwest to southeast on the surface, in color somewhat similar to that of the continents but not quite so bright." These cloud-like coverings were later more distributed and on the three following days diminished greatly in intensity. They were referred by Perrotin to clouds.

In March and April of the year 1886 a study was made of the surface of Mars by W.F. Denning in England. Mr. Denning's drawings corroborated the charts of Green, Schiaparelli, k.n.o.bel, Terby and Baedd.i.c.ker. He found the surface of Mars one of extreme complexity, a mult.i.tude of bright spots in places, but with a general fixity of character which led him to believe that the appearances were not atmospheric. He indeed attributed to Mars an attenuated atmosphere and thought that some of the vagaries in its surface characters were due to variations in our own atmosphere He did not find the Schiaparelli ca.n.a.ls as distinct in outline as given by that ingenious observer. He noted many brilliant spots on Mars and indicated the disturbing influences of vibrations produced by winds on the surface of our earth in connection with changes in the earth's atmospheric envelope.

In 1888 M. Perrotin continued his observations on the channels of Mars and noted changes. The triangular continent (Lydia of Schiaparelli) had disappeared, its reddish white tint indicating, or supposed to indicate, land, was then replaced by the black or blue color of the seas of Mars.

New channels were observed, some of them in "direct continuation" with channels previously observed, amongst these an apparent channel through the polar ice cap. Some of these seemed double, running from near the equator to the neighborhood of the North Pole. The place called Lydia disappeared and reappeared. A strange puzzling statement was made that the ca.n.a.ls could be traced straight across seas and continents in the line of the meridian. M. Terby confirmed many of these observations.

Later the so-called "inundation of Lydia," observed by M. Perrotin, was doubted. Schiaparelli himself, Terby, Niesten at Brussels, and Holden at the Lick Observatory, failed to remark this change. These observers did not double the ca.n.a.ls satisfactorily, but all agreed upon the striking whiteness and brightness of the planet.

M. Fizeau (1888) argued that the Schiaparelli ca.n.a.ls were really glacial phenomena, being ridges, creva.s.ses, rectilinear fissures, etc., of continental ma.s.ses of ice. Again (Bulletin de l'Academie Royale de Belgique, June) M. Nesten averred that the changes on the surface of Mars were periodic.

In 1889, Prof. Schiaparelli reviewed what had been observed upon the surface of the planet in a continued article in _Himmel und Erde_, a popular astronomical journal published by the Gesellschaft Urania and edited by Dr. Meyer.

Some remarkable photographs taken by Mr. Wilson in 1890 were commented on by Prof. W.H. Pickering in the "Sidereal Messenger." They showed the seasonal variations in the polar white blotches.

In 1889 there reached us from Chatto and Windus of London a most entertaining book by Hugh MacColl, ent.i.tled "Mr. Stranger's Sealed Packet." It was a work of fancy, ingeniously constructed upon scientific principles. It described a hypothetical machine, a flying machine, which was made up of a substance more than half of whose ma.s.s had been converted into repelling particles. Such a fabric would leave the earth, pa.s.s the limits of its attraction with an accelerating velocity and move through s.p.a.ce. In such a way Mr. Stranger reached Mars. He found it inhabited by a people--the Marticoli--happy in a state of socialism, and with abundance of food manufactured from the elements, oxygen, hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen, with electric lights, phonetic speech, but without gunpowder or telescopes.

Its inhabitants had been derived from the earth by a most delightful scientific fabrication. A sun and its satellites in its course around some other center draws the earth and Mars so together that on some parts of the earth's surface the attraction of Mars would overcome that of the earth and gently suck up to itself inhabitants from the earth, who would not suffer death from loss of air, as the atmosphere of both bodies would be mingled.

These observations and this last scientific myth have some interest in view of the actual knowledge now vouchsafed to the world through my father's messages. I have very briefly reviewed them.

My father's premonitions were fully realized. He grew sensibly weaker as the months of 1891 pa.s.sed. His mind became eager with the cherished expectation which grew day by day into a sort of a mild possession. It seemed to me that there was a moderate aberration involved in his deeply seated convictions, and when sometimes I saw him walking past the windows on the plateau with his head thrown back, his arms outstretched as if he were inviting the stars to take him and his murmuring voice, repeating some s.n.a.t.c.hes of song, I felt awed and frightened.

My father was stricken with paralysis on September 21, 1892, became speechless the following day, but for a day thereafter wrote on a pad his last directions. Some of these were quite personal, and need not be detailed here. It was indeed pathetic to see his strenuous and repeated efforts to a.s.sure me that he remembered all the parts of the telegraphic apparatus, and his smile of saddened self-depreciation when he hesitated over some detail. At last he sank into a torpor with the usual stertorous breathing, flushed face and gradually chilled extremities.

His last words were scrawled almost illegibly by his failing hand--"Remember, watch, wait, I will send the messages."

Miss Dodan came to the plateau and was helpful; to me especially. She kept up my breaking spirits, and her womanly tenderness, her brave grace, and the joy my loving heart felt in seeing her, enabled me to go through the trial of death and separation.

All was finished. My father was buried in Christ Church cemetery by his own request, although thus separated by a hemisphere from his wife.

A year had pa.s.sed. I had received nothing. Mr. and Miss Dodan came to the observatory. They both were acquainted with the singular prepossessions which controlled both myself and my father, and I think Mr. Dodan was himself, though he admitted nothing, most curious and interested in the whole matter. Miss Dodan frankly said she was. But I know, to Miss Dodan's fresh, healthy, human life there was something weirdly repellent in this thought of communication with the dead. She thought of it with a nervous dread and excitement. It just kept me in her thoughts a little shrouded in mystery and superiority and closed a little the avenues of absolute confidence and peaceful self-surrender.

I had forgotten nothing, although at first an overwhelming sense of the uselessness of the attempt, the almost grotesque absurdity of expecting to hear from beyond the limits of the earth's atmosphere any word transmitted through a mechanical invention, upon the earth's crust, made me feel somewhat ashamed of my preparations, yet I arranged every portion of the receiver and exercised my best skill to give it the most delicate adjustment.

Whenever I had occasion to rest I either sent an a.s.sistant to the post, or kept on my pillow, adjusted to my ear, a telephone attachment to the Morse register, so that its signals might instantly receive attention.

At length as time wore on I arranged a bell signal that might summon us to the register.

On the occasion of this visit by the Dodans I was in the loft at the receiver which was in a room to one side of that we called "the equatorial," where the telescope was suspended. I was as usual waiting for a message that never came, and my failing hopes, made more and more transitory by the brightness of the southern spring and all the instant present industry of the fields below me on the low-lands, seemed to dissolve into a mocking phantom of derisive dreams.

I stood up hackneyed and forlorn. Had I not done everything I could? Had I not kept my promise? I heard the voices below me; one, that musical tone, that made the color come and go upon my cheeks, and as I turned hastily to descend to them while the breathing earth seemed to send upward its powerful sensitizing odors that turn energy into languorous desire, and touch the senses with indolence; at that moment the Morse register spoke!

Could my ears have deceived me? No! It was running, running, running, intelligible, strong, definite; it seemed to me of almost piercing loudness, although just audible. I bent over, seized my pad and wrote.

The Abyss of Death was bridged! From behind the veil of that inexorable silence which lies beyond the grave came a voice--and what a voice! The clicking of a telegraphic register in signals, that the whole world knew and used. I was quiet, preternaturally so, I think, as I took down the message. I became almost aged in the intense rigidity of my absorption.

I was told the Dodans came up and saw me, heard the telltale clicks of the register, and unnoticed left me. Still I wrote on, unheeding the time. My a.s.sistants, pale with wonder, stood around me. The measured tappings were the ghostly voices of another world. This message began at 10 a.m., Sept. 25, 1893. It ended at 10 p.m. on the same day. It came quite evenly, though slowly, and was unmistakably intended to be inerrantly recorded, as indeed it was.

CHAPTER III.

"My son," it began, "I am indeed in the red orb of light we have so often looked up to when we were together on the earth, and about which our wondering minds hazarded so many fruitless guesses. I have been here a short time, and now am able to return to you, by that cipher we so fortunately printed upon the tablet of memory, word of my existence.

"I can hardly describe to you my occurrence on this planet. I found myself here without any recollection of whence I had come, without a traceable thought of anything I had ever heard before.

"I was suddenly sitting in a high room, brilliantly lighted by a soft, tranquillizing radiance, listening to a chorus of most delicately attuned voices, indescribably sweet, penetrating and moving. Around me upon white ivory chairs arranged in an amphitheatre sat beings like myself, all looking outward upon a sloping lawn where were gathered beneath blossoming fruit trees an army, it seemed, of half shining creatures, unlike myself, singing these wonderful choruses.

"I have since learned that I did not reach Mars in that identical moment when I found myself sitting in the hall. I had come to it, as all disembodied spirits from the earth come to it at one receiving point, a high hill not far from the tropic of Mars. This hill, crowned and covered with gla.s.s buildings, is known as the hill of the Phosphori.

Here, for nearly one of our months, the incoming souls, which are little more than a sort of ethereal fluid, presenting a form only observable by refracted light, or I should say polarized light, are bathed in a marvellously phosph.o.r.escent beam procured by absorption from the sun.

These souls are intermingled in a chaotic stream that I may liken to the streaming currents of heated air in convection from a source of heat upon our earth, and this continuous tide is caught in a great spherical chamber or a series of chambers extending over five miles around the bald summit of this eminence.

"In these colossal chambers the phosph.o.r.escent light from enormous radiators beats incessantly through and through the slowly, oscillating, vibrating, revolving soul matter. And here the process of individualization is achieved. A soul, or many souls, are separated from the great tide, by flashing, under the bombardment of the phosph.o.r.escent blaze into shining forms. They a.s.sume a shape outlined by light, and just slightly subject to gravity from the atomic compression necessary to maintain their illumination, they fall lightly out from the domes of the spheres, touch the floors beneath, and are led away.

"In this way I found later I had arrived at Mars. When the spirits, thus shaped in light and otherwise almost immaterial and unclothed, emerge from the Hill of the Phosphori, they are taken along wide, white roads to some of the many chorus halls which fill the City of Light, where I am now, and from which I am sending this magnetic message. They remain for hours, even days and weeks in these halls listening in a sort of stupor or trance to beautiful music; for music is the one great recreation of the Martians, and is spontaneous, appearing as a vocal gift in beings who have never enjoyed its exercise on earth.

"Gradually under the influence of this musical immersion, as under the bombardment of the phosph.o.r.escent rays, a mentality seems developed; voice and language come, and the soul moves out of the concourse of listening souls, moved by a desire to do something, into the streets of the city. This is called, as we might say, the Act Impulse. From that time on the soul rushes, as it were, to its natural occupation. Its mentality, aroused by music, becomes full of some sort of apt.i.tude, and it enters the avenues of its congruous activity as easily, as quickly, as justly as the growing flower turns toward the Sun wherever it may be.

"Let me present to you the curious scene my eyes encountered as I sat in the great Chorus Hall. I say my eyes. It is hard perhaps for you to realize what an organ can be in a creature, so apparently, as we are, little more than gaseous condensations. The physiology and morphology of a spirit is not an easy thing to grasp or define. I am yet ignorant upon many points. But dimly, at least, I may make your natural senses cognizant of it.

"You have seen faces and forms in clouds. How often you and I from Mount Cook on the earth have watched their changing and confluent lineaments in the clouds above the New Zealand Alps. It is the same way with Martian spirits. They are tenuous fluids, but the individual pervades them and a material response is evoked, and the light from their surfaces is so halated, intensified, or reduced as to form a figure with a head and arms and legs.

"In some way I imagine the organs are optical effects, ruled by mind, which is located in this luminous matter. Later I will describe the process of _solidification, the resumption of matter_, for these spirit forms slowly concrete into beings like terrestrial men and women. There is, therefore, a dual population here, the extreme newly transplanted souls, and the flesh and blood people, and between them the transitions from spirit to corpuscular bodies. But all this takes place in the City of Light. Elsewhere over the whole planet the spirits are seldom seen, but only the vigorous and beautiful race of material beings into which, they--the spirits--have _consolidated_.