The minute animals inhabiting these towns, Men, are apterous biped animals, with an indifferent electrical system, and generally provided with an artificial epidermis. It was long believed that they secreted this supplementary skin themselves. But my researches enable me to declare that this is not so; they are impelled by a powerful instinct to collect certain animal or vegetable fibers and assemble them in such a way as to form a protection against cold.
I use the word “instinct,” and from the outset of this work I must lay stress on a clear indication of my feelings regarding a question which ought never to have been raised and has, especially during recent years, been treated with incredible levity. A curious mode of thought has become habitual among our younger naturalists, in attributing to these terrestrial vegetations an intelligence of the same nature as that of the Uranian. Let us leave to others the task of pointing out the distressing nature of such doctrine from the religious point of view. In this book I shall show its absurdity from only the scientific point of view. No doubt the beauty of the spectacle rouses a quite excusable enthusiasm when one views for the first time under the microscope one of these particles of jelly, and suddenly sees the unfolding of countless lively and interesting scenes —the long streets along which Men pass to and fro, sometimes stopping and apparently exchanging speech; or the small individual nest in which a couple keep watch over a brood of young; or armies on the march; or builders at their work.... But for a profitable study of the psychic faculties of these animals, it is not enough to profit by the circumstances that chance affords the observer. It is essential to know how to procure the most favorable conditions of observation, and to vary these as much as possible. It is necessary, in a word, to experiment, and thus to build up science on the solid base of fact.
This is what we have sought to do in the course of the long series of experiments reported here. Before embarking on their description I must ask the reader to imagine and to gauge the immense difficulties which such a project was bound to present. Long-distance experiment, no doubt, has become relatively easy since we had at our disposal the W rays, which enable us to grasp, handle, and even transport bodies through interstellar space. But in dealing with creatures so small and fragile as Men, the W rays are very clumsy and brutal instruments. In our first tests it turned out only too often that we killed the animals we desired to observe. Transmitting appliances of extraordinary sensitiveness were required to enable us to reach exactly the point aimed at, and to treat the sensitive matter with the necessary delicacy. In particular, when first carrying out the transference of Men from one point to another on terrestrial territory, we omitted to take full account of these animals’ respiratory difficulties. We made them move too rapidly across a thin layer of air which envelops the Earth, and they died of asphyxiation. We had to construct a real box of rays, inside which the swiftness of transportation produced no effect. Similarly, when we first attempted the bisection and transference of nests, we did not make sufficient allowance for the constructional processes used by the Earth Dwellers. Experience taught us to prop up the nests after their division, by the passage of certain massive currents of rays.
The reader will find here a sketch map of that portion of the terrestrial surface on which our main experiments were carried out. We would ask him particularly to note the two great manheaps on which we made our first tests, and to which we gave the names, later adopted by the astrosociologists, of “Mad Manheap” and “Rigid Manheap.”
These names we chose on account of the singularly differing plans of these manheaps, one of which at once impresses the observer by its almost geometrical star patterns of roadways, while the other is a complex maze of rather tortuous streets. Between “Mad Manheap” and “Rigid Manheap” stretches a gleaming line which is believed to be sea. The greatest manheap on the Earth is “Geometrical Manheap,” which is even more regular than “Rigid Man-heap”; but is far distant from the other two, and separated from them by a wider gleaming surface.
FIRST ATTEMPTS
At what point of the Earth was it best to direct our first efforts? How must we interfere with the lives of these animals in such a way as to obtain instructive reactions from them? I must confess to real emotion when I prepared for the first time to operate on the Earth, armed with an apparatus of adequate range.
I had around me four of my young pupils, who were also deeply moved, and in turn we gazed at the charming miniature landscapes in the ultratelemicroscope. Aiming the apparatus at the “Mad Manheap,” we sought a fairly open locality so as to see the consequences of our action more clearly. Tiny trees gleamed in the spring sunshine, and multitudes of small motionless insects could be seen forming irregular circles; in the middle of each of these stood an isolated insect. For a moment we speculated on the meaning of this game, but failing to find one, we decided to try an application of the rays. The effect was staggering. A hole was scooped in the ground; some of the insects were buried under the debris; and instantly an astounding activity was loosed. It really looked as if these creatures were Intelligently organized. Some went to the rescue of their overwhelmed companions, others went off to get help. We then tried applying the rays on several points of the Earth, but this time we chose uninhabited areas, so as not to endanger our subjects at the very beginning of our researches. We thus learned how to reduce the power of our rays, and to operate more skillfuly. Being now sure of our means of action, we decided to start the first series of our experiments.
It was my plan to take individuals in a certain manheap, mark them with a touch of a brush, transport them to different points, and then observe whether the transported individuals would find their way back to the original man-heap. At first, as I have said, we encountered great difficulties, first because the animals died during transference, and then because we had neglected to take into account the artificial epidermis with which these creatures provide themselves. They doff these coverings with the utmost ease, and so once we had set them down again in the midst of a manheap, we lost sight of them. For the subsequent transportations we tried to mark them directly on the body, tearing off the supplementary skin; but in these cases the animal made itself a new skin as soon as it arrived in the manheap.
With a little practice my assistants were at last able to follow one particular animal with the ultratelemicroscope and keep it constantly in sight. They found that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the man returns to his starting point. I attempted the transference of two males from the same manheap—the “Mad Manheap”—with the extremely remote one which we termed the “Geometrical Manheap.” After ten (terrestrial) days my esteemed pupil E.X. 33, who had followed them night and day with incomparable devotion, showed me them returning to the “Rigid Manheap.” They had come back, notwithstanding the fact of their unfamiliarity with the places to which I had transported them; they were individuals of stay-at-home habit (we had kept them under long observation), who were obviously seeing for the first time the country where we had deposited them. How did they find the way back? Their transference had been so rapid that observation was out of the question. What was their guide? Certainly not memory, but a special faculty which we must confine ourselves to noting without claiming to explain it, so remote is it from anything in our own psychology.