α (Part 1)

by EvelynHail

​​An otherworldly roar split the city sky in two.

Professor Barnaby was sitting in his leather armchair, he had spent the whole night waiting for that thunderous sound. He took a deep breath, got up, and went to the window.

The objects and gadgets in the room were still reverberating from the tremendous shock. The big day had arrived. He slid up the window sash. Outside, everything had fallen silent, the birds hid mute among the branches, and the few early risers who strolled at that hour remained immobile, standing on the sidewalks, looking at the sky. The sun was barely hitting the roofs of the houses of the city of London with a pale and faded light.

And yet, this was undoubtedly going to be a stellar day. A day that generations to come would call sidereal. The day that would change the course of history and the lives of all men.

The professor walked to the dressing room and carefully chose his attire. The most diverse thoughts were going through his head. He adjusted a double-breasted vest in the color of champagne, fastened the double row of buttons, knotted a green silk tie, and holstered his burgundy frock coat. He assumed a martial stance before the mirror and gazed at himself with a circumspect expression. The hand-burnished surface showed him the image of a man who was to play a decisive role in the new destiny of mankind.

A man of science. Doctor in three different specialties from the most prestigious British universities, President of the Royal Society of Biological Sciences. A lifetime of dedication and perseverance in the pursuit of knowledge, which was to be rewarded that day.As he descended the stairs he checked the time once again on the pocket watch he had just put in his vest. He still had plenty of time to spare, slipped on his gaiters over his leather boots, draped his cloak over his shoulders, grabbed his gloves, put on his hat, and stepped out onto the landing.

Outside, the birds were twittering again, the world was stirring again, and February was rejoicing. From the porch, Professor Barnaby looked out over his garden before descending the steps that separated him from the street. It was a narrow, elongated garden, like the façade of his house. It was enclosed by a dark iron fence ending in spearheads, and almost all the time it was kept in a shady, damp atmosphere. To his left, there was a garden of identical proportions.

It was a two-story garden, like his own; only on its flanks grew well-pruned hedge beds, with flower beds dotted with marigold centers, lush rose bushes, and panels of hollyhocks. It was the garden of their neighbor, Professor Schmidt.

Another man of science.

For years they had shared the same proximity, the same public road and the same party wall. And to Professor Barnaby it seemed an enormous coincidence that two scientists with such similar trajectories, who almost always seemed to advance in a parallel way, as if they had a strange and secret connection between them, had coincided in a neighboring space in the middle of that immense city. He watched the windows of the adjoining house slyly, and everything seemed to indicate that his neighbor had not yet risen.

This time it was going to be different. This time he had an unbeatable combination of aces in his sleeve, the definitive move. He filled his lungs with air and let it out slowly. He felt a pang in his stomach. At the end of the street, rattling over the cobblestone pavement, amidst the fumes of steam and eucalyptus, appeared the buggy that had come to pick him up. He had indicated to the automatic driver the direction of his destination, and now his means of transport was speeding down the avenue at the rate of twenty-five miles an hour, amidst the popping of cylinders and pistons and the monochord whistle of the boiler.

As he left Notting Hill, the traffic began to get more complicated. Carriages of all kinds joined a long column of vehicles that gave off a thick, white puff, like a single scented breath. No one wanted to miss the event. By Bayswater, the fringes of the main thoroughfare began to fill with people joining the march from the tributary streets and alleys, all citizens coming up from Kensington and those descending from Westbourne. The tumult was growing more and more excited, and little boys in short pants were running along the edges of the road, shouting at each other. The young couples, linked by the arm, quickened their pace without even thinking of exchanging a word, and the more venerable married couples compressed their faces and began a timid trot so as not to be left behind. The damsels closed their umbrellas because they did not want to be hindered, and the press boys shouted changing messages and announced great world news. The excitement only grew louder at Lancaster Gate, when there was only one last stretch to go. The professor ordered the carriage to sedate, and purchased copies of The Times, The Morning Post and The Daily Telegraph. All the front page and front page headlines focused on the same inescapable event. From those that hailed: "Our space explorers return triumphant, or "The expedition to the red planet has been a success."

Professor Barnaby nervously flipped through the broadsheet pages of the Matinales, looking for any information that might be related to his expedition.

Many of the articles were devoted to background information on the crew members who had made up the expedition, detailing their names, the origin of their surnames, their distinguished education and training, and their lives on Earth before they set out on the voyage. Others expanded on the instruments and mechanical devices that had equipped the ship's equipment. Or perhaps a whole page was spent describing the tremendous black circle that the rocket once left on the green blanket of Hyde Park, and added a pen-and-ink illustration of the charred surface and the launch pad. There were also more extensive and documented chronicles, such as those that recounted the exploits of the Mars Explorer once it reached the red planet and entered the Golden Plains, braving the dust storms and negotiating the intricate Martian canals. The professor looked out of the window. In the background he could finally make out the silhouette of Marble Arch, and over the arch a formidable airship from which hung a gigantic welcome banner. The crowd was cheering and waving banners. For a moment, he realized how fortunate he was. Not only had he been chosen from among a hundred of the most prominent scientists in the whole country, but out of all that crowd, which included almost the entire population of London, he was to be one of the privileged few who in a matter of minutes would be in the front line of events. Towering above the arch and all the buildings, occupying a considerable portion of Speakers' Corner, among the VIPs, speakers and prophets, was the imposing figure of the rocket, and as soon as he managed to identify himself to those responsible for guarding the perimeter of the venue, he was invited to move to the other side of the protective boundaries.

And only after a while they made him climb up a thin ladder, along with six other men who were part of the technical reception committee. He was now in a middle chamber of the rocket, below the strip of hot-air balloons needed for the flight, and just above the coal tank capable of storing several tons of fuel, which had been so much talked about in the press a few months ago, and which at that moment was almost empty. The visitors waited there for several minutes. There was a pungent smell of smoldering embers and lubricating grease in the air, the temperature of the metal walls could be felt on their faces and rose through the soles of their shoes. Everything in the place had a palpable feeling of an exhausted machine. It was then that the gears of a thick steel block made a shrill screeching sound, the door creaked open.

The space pirate captain, with his face smeared with coal residue, began to shake hands effusively with the members of the retinue. The captain greeted them one by one, giving them a few brief moments. The small reception committee had an eminently practical function. Among them were several politicians, two doctors and two scientists. The real reception, the solemn and official ceremony, would take place in a few hours at the Palace of Westminster, before the Queen of England herself and the full British Parliament.

The pirate exchanged a few sentences with the other scientist in the group, a cosmographer from the overseas colonies. Professor Barnaby heard him summon him for the next morning. The two men said goodbye. Then the star traveler approached the professor.

"Doctor Barnaby?"

"I'm sorry to tell you that we don't have much time."

"I understand."

"The doctors who came aboard the ship with you are going to examine us before we set foot on land."

"That's very reasonable. Don't worry about me... But first I want to give you the samples that we have collected for you on the planet Mars. The space pirate captain stepped aside, and through the steel hatch a mechanical man burst into the chamber.

The automaton entered the chamber noisily, with a huge incandescent Edison lamp on his head like a skull, and on his arms he held a solid, blunt-looking load. The welds of his artificial knees clicked in the professor's direction. The expedition commander spoke again.

"We picked up these four bodies in the region of Tharsis, east of Mount Olympus. We hope they will be of great help to you in your research."

The professor looked at the four stone slabs. He smiled again, now with less conviction.

"I will do everything in my power to make your exploration worthwhile," he said at last.

"Btw, you can keep the robot," the captain added, and spat on the ground. "You will need it to transport the material to your laboratory. Shall we continue our interview tomorrow afternoon?"

That night, after recapitulating over and over again all that had happened, Professor Barnaby had to admit to himself that when he left the vicinity of the star rocket he did so with the shadow of disappointment hanging over his mind. He had hoped that this would be the great day of his life, and he was returning home carrying a robot and four ordinary stones. They were just four simple stones, and to top it all off, they were identical to each other. Nevertheless, as the hours passed in his laboratory, admiring the majestic twinkling of thousands of stars through the window, the professor recovered his usual dreamy and energetic disposition, and tried to convince himself of the contrary: those stones could be anything but vulgar.

Those bodies were unique objects in the entire globe, and it was not unreasonable to think that perhaps they could hide the greatest secrets of the cosmos ever revealed to mankind. With that conviction, and no other, he wrote down that early morning the first observation in his Field Diary.

12:33 ante meridiem - The four bodies obey a quadriform structure, with an approximate height of 4 inches, and an upper area of 8 square inches. Their surface is dark, irregular and porous. They undoubtedly belong to the mineral order. It is possible that they are formed of a basaltic compound high in feldspar, which I shall analyze tomorrow.

Professor Barnaby's laboratory occupied a large part of his house. The basement was filled with fuel tanks, hydraulic pumps, stoves and chrome alloy boilers. The kitchen was taken over by complex stills, condensers, thermometers, redomas and test tubes, and in the air floated a cloudy ether, the unwanted product of the many volatile substances that escaped in the various distillation processes. Nevertheless, the upper floor remained the main center of laboratory operations; except for his room, the dressing room, and a small bathroom, the rest of the entire space was devoted entirely to his research. And he had been devoted to them that morning since the dawn broke over the horizon and smashed against the sloping roofs of the city.

That was the way Professor Barnaby liked to approach his projects: as a challenge, as a defiance from which no other man - except himself, and then only if he used all his will and energy - could return with anything of profit. For hours he had been walking from place to place as if possessed by a feverish urgency, and, after subjecting the four samples to the most diverse checks, he returned to add new entries in his notebook.

8:46 ante meridiem - I will call the four bodies α, β, γ and δ, respectively. On our planet these bodies enjoy considerable weight, however, subjected to Martian gravity they must be relatively light.

Weight ratio: Weight in pounds - Equivalence on Mars

α : 46.2 - 17.55

β : 42.9 - 16.30

γ : 44.66 - 16.96

δ : 41.78 - 16.63

As the data in his Field Diary showed, the weight of those rocky plates on Earth would have made it impossible for him to transport them to the laboratory without the assistance of the automaton donated to him by the expedition.

Even then, although separately the professor could move the samples by himself, the robot continued to be of great use to him in maneuvering the bodies in the air, orienting them in the most varied positions, or carrying them from one place to another.

And while his mechanical assistant manipulated the Martian rocks according to his orders, Professor Barnaby went to and fro with his calculations and instruments, adjusted the huge magnifying glasses on them, scraped particles from their outer face, and the blades went on and on.

11:48 ante meridiem - After a careful analysis of the surface of the bodies, in fact, as I had already said, their composition proved to be basaltic.

Feldspar 96.45%

Augite2%

Unknown mineral (A)1.3%

Unknown mineral (B)0.17%

Unknown mineral (C)0.08%

Likewise, the analysis of the aluminosilicate salts that make up the feldspars is as follows:

Potassium 53.21%

Sodium 12.41%

Calcium 3.08%

Unknown mineral (D 2 ) 23.11%

The morning's work was proving exhausting, and the professor hardly gave himself any time to take a break. In one of those few breaks, while serving himself an unsweetened tea after noon, the professor looked out of the window, and in the adjoining garden he saw his neighbor, Professor Schmidt. He was pruning the trees.

It had been years since the two men had had a silent career. Professor Barnaby had spent decades counting his progress and discoveries and comparing them with those of his rival. And he wanted to think that his neighbor was doing the same, and that he too had taken the unspoken competition between the two for granted.

Professor Barnaby had developed the first non fusible incandescent lamp, which enjoyed eternal life thanks to its tungsten-thorium filament. But Professor Schmidt soon invented a welding gun with a tungsten and zirconium electrode, resistant to the highest temperatures, which was used to assemble the steel and titanium parts of the star rocket itself.

Professor Barnaby had discovered aurelin, an antibiotic that could combat infection by Staphylococcus aureus, the bacterium that proved to be completely immune to penicillin.

However, Professor Schmidt had in his possession the discovery of a sulfonamide suitable for pregnant women, which avoided all its adverse effects.

When Professor Barnaby devised the voice recognition system for carriage autopilots, which would later be applied to all branches of robotics, Professor Schmidt developed a triangulation positioning system for large and small ships.

When Barnaby revolutionized the British postal service with his mechanical messenger pigeons, Schmidt did the same in homes by installing a small screen and a smoker just above the dialing disc of home telephones.

And although Professor Schmidt also designed a model of a portable telephone device, the UK Patent Office invalidated his discovery on the grounds that it was in breach of the Paris Convention, and in violation of regulations that ensure desirable progress and the welfare of future societies, removing all trace of the invention from any registration list.

Now, under the light of a sun that barely pierced the dense bulkhead of clouds, his neighbor was watering the flower beds, apparently oblivious to all that was going on around him.

Professor Barnaby took another sip from his cup of tea. There was something unsettling about the man's calmness. He was exasperated by his self-assurance. The way he looked at the race as if he were already at the finish line.

The captain had rung his doorbell at five o'clock in the afternoon. The robot had opened the door and invited him in, gesturing with his arms, and then the professor had shown him into the living room, inviting him to take a seat after moving various gadgets and gizmos away from the Tudor-style wall couch.

The man slumped down on the cushions.

Thus, dressed in street clothes with a simple gray frock coat, his face washed and shaved, he looked like a different person.

The professor went to the kitchen to fetch the tea set and, raising his voice, brought him up to date on his recent progress. Then, when his host returned to the living room, he sought his eyes and said, "There is something I want to tell you. Something about the circumstances under which we found the Martian samples."

To be continued in Tevun-Krus #108, February 2023