60 Space Sci-Fi Books. Филип Дик
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move. His rifle is not in his hand. What can he be doing?”
“But do you recognise him?” asked Michel Ardan.
“Yes, yes! he is turning round,” answered Maston.
“Who is it?”
“Captain Nicholl!”
“Nicholl!” cried Michel Ardan, whose heart almost stopped beating.
“Nicholl disarmed! Then he had nothing more to fear from his adversary?”
“Let us go to him,” said Michel Ardan; “we shall know how it is.”
But his companion and he had not gone fifty steps when they stopped to examine the captain more attentively. They imagined they should find a bloodthirsty and revengeful man. Upon seeing him they remained stupefied.
A net with fine meshes was hung between two gigantic tulip-trees, and in it a small bird, with its wings entangled, was struggling with plaintive cries. The bird-catcher who had hung the net was not a human being but a venomous spider, peculiar to the country, as large as a pigeon’s egg, and furnished with enormous legs. The hideous insect, as he was rushing on his prey, was forced to turn back and take refuge in the high branches of a tulip-tree, for a formidable enemy threatened him in his turn.
In fact, Captain Nicholl, with his gun on the ground, forgetting the dangers of his situation, was occupied in delivering as delicately as possible the victim taken in the meshes of the monstrous spider. When he had finished he let the little bird fly away; it fluttered its wings joyfully and disappeared.
Nicholl, touched, was watching it fly through the copse when he heard these words uttered in a voice full of emotion:—
“You are a brave man, you are!”
He turned. Michel Ardan was in front of him, repeating in every tone—
“And a kind one!”
“Michel Ardan!” exclaimed the captain, “what have you come here for, sir?”
“To shake hands with you, Nicholl, and prevent you killing Barbicane or being killed by him.”
“Barbicane!” cried the captain, “I have been looking for him these two hours without finding him! Where is he hiding himself?”
“Nicholl!” said Michel Ardan, “this is not polite! You must always respect your adversary; don’t be uneasy; if Barbicane is alive we shall find him, and so much the more easily that if he has not amused himself with protecting birds he must be looking for you too. But when you have found him—and Michel Ardan tells you this—there will be no duel between you.”
“Between President Barbicane and me,” answered Nicholl gravely, “there is such rivalry that the death of one of us—”
“Come, come!” resumed Michel Ardan, “brave men like you may detest one another, but they respect one another too. You will not fight.”
“I shall fight, sir.”
“No you won’t.”
“Captain,” then said J.T. Maston heartily, “I am the president’s friend, his alter ego; if you must absolutely kill some one kill me; that will be exactly the same thing.”
“Sir,” said Nicholl, convulsively seizing his rifle, “this joking—”
“Friend Maston is not joking,” answered Michel Ardan, “and I understand his wanting to be killed for the man he loves; but neither he nor Barbicane will fall under Captain Nicholl’s bullets, for I have so tempting a proposition to make to the two rivals that they will hasten to accept it.”
“But what is it, pray?” asked Nicholl, with visible incredulity.
“Patience,” answered Ardan; “I can only communicate it in Barbicane’s presence.”
“Let us look for him, then,” cried the captain.
The three men immediately set out; the captain, having discharged his rifle, threw it on his shoulder and walked on in silence.
During another half-hour the search was in vain. Maston was seized with a sinister presentiment. He observed Captain Nicholl closely, asking himself if, once the captain’s vengeance satisfied, the unfortunate Barbicane had not been left lying in some bloody thicket. Michel Ardan seemed to have the same thought, and they were both looking questioningly at Captain Nicholl when Maston suddenly stopped.
The motionless bust of a man leaning against a gigantic catalpa appeared twenty feet off half hidden in the grass.
“It is he!” said Maston.
Barbicane did not move. Ardan stared at the captain, but he did not wince. Ardan rushed forward, crying—
“Barbicane! Barbicane!”
No answer. Ardan was about to seize his arm; he stopped short, uttering a cry of surprise.
Barbicane, with a pencil in his hand, was tracing geometrical figures upon a memorandum-book, whilst his unloaded gun lay on the ground.
Absorbed in his work, the savant, forgetting in his turn his duel and his vengeance, had neither seen nor heard anything.
But when Michel Ardan placed his hand on that of the president, he got up and looked at him with astonishment.
“Ah!” cried he at last; “you here! I have found it, my friend, I have found it!”
“What?”
“The way to do it.”
“The way to do what?”
“To counteract the effect of the shock at the departure of the projectile.”
“Really?” said Michel, looking at the captain out of the corner of his eye.
“Yes, water! simply water, which will act as a spring. Ah, Maston!” cried Barbicane, “you too!”
“Himself,” answered Michel Ardan; “and allow me to introduce at the same time the worthy Captain Nicholl.”
“Nicholl!” cried Barbicane, up in a moment. “Excuse me, captain,” said he; “I had forgotten. I am ready.”
Michel Ardan interfered before the two enemies had time to recriminate.
“Faith,” said he, “it is fortunate that brave fellows like you did not meet sooner. We should now have to mourn for one or other of you; but, thanks to God, who has prevented it, there is nothing more to fear. When one forgets his hatred to plunge into mechanical problems and the other to play tricks on spiders, their hatred cannot be dangerous to anybody.”
And Michel Ardan related the captain’s story to the president.
“I ask you now,” said he as he concluded, “if two good beings like you were made to break each other’s heads with gunshots?”
There was in this rather ridiculous situation something so unexpected, that Barbicane and Nicholl did not know how to look at one another. Michel Ardan felt this, and resolved to try for a reconciliation.
“My brave friends,” said he, smiling in his most fascinating manner, “it has all been a mistake between you, nothing more. Well, to prove that all is ended between you, and as you are men who risk your lives, frankly accept the proposition that I am going to make to you.”
“Speak,” said Nicholl.
“Friend Barbicane believes that his projectile will go straight to the moon.”
“Yes, certainly,” replied the president.
“And friend Nicholl is persuaded that it will fall back on the earth.”
“I am certain of it,” cried the captain.
“Good,” resumed Michel Ardan. “I do not pretend to make you agree; all I say to you is, ‘Come with