CHAPTER I
I do not know where I was born. I am ignorant of the country—I do not even know on which world it was.
I shall tell you my history exactly as I remember it.
The first recollection that I have was when I was a young man at the full height of my physical strength. Let us say, I was twenty, with dark hair and eyes, a slender body, but muscular and powerful. The day I have in mind is clear to my memory now—but everything that happened to me before it is a blank. I found myself lying on the ground. It was dark and there was a sky full of stars and strange flashing lights.
I sat up, stiff and sore, and bruised all over. I was encased in some sort of a rubber suit, with a pack on my back; my head was enclosed in a helmet of transparent, rigid material.
I felt as though I were smothering; and I tore off the helmet and flung it from me. I drank in a deep breath of the night air. It was pure and sweet, but heady. It made my senses reel like some potent wine.
I say that I sat up. That is not strictly true. I pushed my elbow against the ground, and my whole body went into the air. I floated back to a sitting posture. I was light as a feather!
The night was calm without a breath of air stirring—— Lucky for me for I would have blown away had there been any wind! I sat there puzzling over my very existence. I knew nothing, not even my own name. I have since named myself Nemo.
This place where I found myself that starry night showed a barren landscape with only a few queerly-shaped, stunted trees. The horizon was very close to me—almost at hand, in fact—for the ground was curved with an enormous convexity.
It was, indeed, as though I were clinging to the top of a ball, whirling through Space. The stars were swinging across the sky with visible movement.
I had been conscious no more than a minute when a moon swung into view. Then another. And then, without warning, a million tiny worlds flashing silver with reflected sunlight, burst up from below the horizon and swarmed the heavens. Behind them I saw a tremendous, glowing silver sphere, with dark bands upon it—a sphere so large that as it rose it almost filled the sky.
I was on a tiny meteor—one of the myriad that swarm in circular orbits about the planet Saturn and form its rings.
Saturn, in position outward from the Sun, is the sixth major planet of the Solar System. Its mean distance from the Sun is 887,098,000 miles. It is a globe almost as large as Jupiter—74,163 miles in diameter, to be exact. It has, however, a trifle less than half Jupiter’s density and only one-ninth the density of the Earth.
With Saturn’s rings you are perhaps familiar in a general way. They are concentric, and encircle the planet like a flat hat-brim—a brim more than 37,000 miles broad. These rings are composed of billions upon billions of tiny meteors revolving about Saturn all in almost the same plane and each maintaining its separate orbit—each a tiny satellite, each glowing silver from its reflected sunlight.
And it was upon one of these tiny meteors that I found myself. Do not imagine that I knew all these facts at the moment. Far from it. I had no knowledge of any kind. My body was developed to manhood but I was ignorant of everything with only instinct and a dawning reason to guide me.
I had tossed away my transparent helmet. It left my hand and went through the air like a stone from a catapult. The last I saw of it it was sailing out over a line of trees. My brain was still confused but I knew that my body was over-warm. I took off the rubber garment and pack, finding myself in a white knitted affair like a bathing suit—sleeveless shirt and trunks.
I stood up unsteadily, and found that I had just enough weight to maintain my footing. My head was reeling, I suppose, largely because of the quality of the air.
Air, you say! Air on a meteor like that! Do you call yourself an astronomer? If so, you show your ignorance by such questioning. Air, or at least something that served my purposes of breathing, was there and that I am here alive to tell it must be your proof.
I could see perhaps a quarter of a mile. The land curved away, dropping down in every direction so that the sky at the horizon showed seemingly below the level of my feet. I was visibly on the top of the world.
Overhead those billions of tiny worlds were swarming. Sometimes fragments of star-dust would enter my atmosphere—flaming red shooting stars, burning themselves out in an instant. And behind everything hung that gigantic silver ball that was Saturn.
The whole firmament was swinging sidewise. In a few moments half of Saturn was below my horizon. The Sun rose behind me—a smaller Sun than appears to you here on Earth, but still the same yellow-red color.
It was daylight, with the Sun mounting toward the zenith so quickly in less than an hour it would be there, and my day would be half over.
I saw myself now to be standing on a slight rise of black, sandy ground. There were metallic rocks lying about, a low, scanty vegetation in patches on the ground—vegetation of a bluish color; and flimsy, stunted trees. These had broad, angular blue-white trunks with spreading tops ten feet up, and foliage that was bluish-white. Behind me was a jagged, metallic peak perhaps a hundred feet in height.
There was no water in sight, no sign of life of any kind. Quite suddenly I discovered that I was both hungry and thirsty.
What was I to do? This world was so small I could have started walking in any direction and come back to my starting point in a very short time. Walking! It was impossible to walk! I weighed almost nothing. I stood teetering on tip-toe, straining every muscle to maintain my balance, feeling like a balloon poised ready to sail away.
I took a step forward. Under the impulse of my gentle leg-thrust, my body rose into the air in a broad arc. I suppose I went up a hundred feet, sailing forward toward the line of trees at the horizon. I lost my balance; my arms and legs were flying. I floated gently down and landed on my face near the base of a tree!
You smile! I assure you it was not humorous to me. I stood up again, trembling with surprise and alarm. A new vista of land beyond the former horizon had opened. I saw other little jagged peaks a few hundred feet away and behind them, over that dizzying curve downward of the world, was the azure of cloudless Space.
I was frightened, and now I know it was with good reason. Had I leaped recklessly into the air I might have left my tiny world entirely—escaped from its slight gravitation sufficiently to become its satellite, or perhaps even completely to depart its vicinity and become a satellite of Saturn!
This tiny world upon which I found myself was inhospitable to the extreme; and yet if I had been conscious of the choice, I would not have wanted to abandon it for empty Space. Out there, worse than suffering hunger and thirst, I would not be able to breathe.
Whatever my life before this day may have been, walking evidently was part of it. I know that because my instinct was to walk. I decided to weigh myself down with rocks and thus be able to maintain a footing. Futile conception! I seized a huge rock of black metallic quartz in each hand—only to find that the rocks themselves were mere feathers in my grasp! Angered, I flung them into the air. They sailed away, out over the horizon. Undoubtedly they left my world never to return.
The Sun was now past the zenith. It was mid-afternoon. Shortly it would be night again.
I was clinging to the tree-trunk for support, when quite near me I saw what seemed to be the mouth of a cave. I was staring at it when a figure appeared from below. I did not move, and this thing evidently did not see me.
It was a girl, fashioned in human form like myself. She stood there cloaked in the long waving masses of her hair. I must have made some slight sound for after a moment she looked my way. I caught a glimpse of a beautiful oval face framed in the golden tresses, lips full and red, eyes blue, wide now with fear.
Without warning, she left the ground. She went swiftly past me, lying in the air gracefully on one side, her arms moving rhythmically. She was swimming in the air with all the grace and skill of a mermaid!
I stood spellbound. In a moment she had passed over the curve of the world and disappeared.