The Struggle for Empire/Chapter 1
Chapter I
Introduction
It was early in the morning of the 10th of June, in the year 2236. The sun rose in unrivalled splendour over the immense city of London, the superb capital, not only of England, but of the world, the Solar System, and the stars. It tipped the vast palaces with its golden rays; it flashed its light upon towers, domes, and cupolas; it drove away the sparkling dew and curling vapour from the masses of superb foliage and gorgeous flowering plants that rolled like oceans of precious stones around the towering buildings of the great city. Millions of human beings awoke to a new day of pleasure or labour, of joy or sorrow, but the brilliant King of Day ascended his appointed path through the sky unheeding and careless of the petty affairs of men.
What would the men of the nineteenth or twentieth centuries think if they could rise from the dead and see us now? They boasted of their civilization, but what would they think of ours? Their brick-and-mortar London, with its fog and dirt and crowds of narrow, unwholesome streets, has been changed into a splendid city built of the most beautiful granite and marble. It extends for miles far out into the provinces, covering hills and valleys with its imposing squares and winding streets diversified by colossal public buildings and places of amusement. The whole is traversed by a network of rivers, lakes, and streams, and varied by numerous parks and gardens. Mists, fogs, cold rains, and other nuisances of the older civilization, have been abolished, for the pole of the earth has been tilted round so that an almost tropical climate prevails through the whole of England. The air is purified from all deleterious matter by an ingenious scientific process. Salubrious showers of rain are brought whenever they are required by a force that was unknown two hundred years ago. Clouds are collected together or dispersed according as sunshine or shade is wanted.
The gardens and parks are filled with the most luxurious tropical plants, while birds of brilliant plumage flit about in the air or rest on the undulating masses of foliage. Gigantic trees of a species before unknown are seen on every side, here grouped into shady avenues, there dotted about in the parks and gardens, and surrounded by smaller but not less beautiful masses of vegetation. In some places the ground is coloured like a rainbow by the infinite variety of tropical plants, while the boughs of the trees are loaded down to the ground by the most luscious fruits. Everywhere fountains throw their refreshing showers into the air, while sheets and sprays of water burst forth from clefts in the rock and piles of mimic mountain scenery. Everything in and around the city is contrived on the most colossal and elegant style.
London is now the capital of the world, not, as formerly, from a commercial point of view, but in very fact; for the Anglo-Saxon race long ago absorbed the whole of the globe. The great European war, for which preparations were being made during the latter part of the nineteenth century, broke out with tremendous fury early in the twentieth. England, Germany, and the United States stood arrayed against France, Russia, Austria, Turkey, Italy, and a number of minor States. The earth was shaken by the convulsion. Torrents of blood were shed; armaments, the greatest that the world has ever seen, were totally annihilated in the terrible whirlwind of shot and pestilence. For a long time it seemed as if Great Britain must sink, overpowered by the vast hosts that beleaguered her, but she eventually came out of the struggle triumphant. Gigantic naval battles were fought at Dover, Gibraltar, Cairo, Constantinople, in the midst of the Atlantic, and in the Indian Ocean, and at last her enemies had not a ship or a colony left.
Then the drama was concluded on land. Germany crushed France and Austria in her iron grasp, and England subdued the rest, but not until some millions of her brave sons had perished on the field of battle.
The result of the war was that England obtained the whole of Turkey, a vast piece of the Russian Empire in Asia, and important ports and strongholds in France, Italy, and Spain; while Germany obtained as her share a good slice from France, Italy, and Russia. Shortly afterwards the United States were reunited to England, and the latter entered into a federal union with all the Teutonic States of Europe. The French race gradually died out, and their country was absorbed by the Federal Union, as were also Italy and Spain. The Russian Empire, pressed by England in Asia and by Germany in Europe, became so much reduced in size that at last it was quite insignificant. The Turkish nation likewise gradually died out or was absorbed into the ruling population, until finally the Anglo-Saxon race was dominant over all the globe.
Meanwhile, tremendous revolutions had taken place in the thoughts and aims of men. Our forefathers considered that science had made enormous progress in the nineteenth century, but during the closing decades of the twentieth it advanced with leaps and bounds, for all the energy and intellect of mankind was concentrated upon it. This was due to the new advance which had taken place in education. For a long time men's minds had been growing more and more practical, seeking for some tangible and useful result from their labours. The result was that the study of ancient and modern Languages and Literature, of Theology, History, Metaphysics, Antiquities, and the fruitless speculations of Philosophy, received less attention every year, until at last they were altogether abandoned.
The vast amount of intellect that had been hitherto wasted on these branches of learning was then wholly concentrated on the study of Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Mathematics, and Engineering, as being the only subjects that gave an adequate return for the labour spent upon them. The result was beyond the dreams of the most sanguine of the pioneers of science. Every day the world was astonished by the news of some marvellous scientific discovery. A telephotoscope, or apparatus for seeing at a distance by means of an electric current, which had long been eagerly sought for by the older scientists, was soon invented and brought to practical use. Then the other problems which physicists had so long been trying to crack were solved. The nature of the attraction of gravitation, and of the ether which was supposed to pervade all space, was found out, as well as the constitution of matter, and the nature of cohesion and of the force which was known to the scientists of the nineteenth century as electricity.
The nature of these forces being known, numerous properties belonging to them that had been previously unknown were deduced, and found to be of considerable practical importance. The most wonderful of all was the discovery that the attraction of gravitation could be prevented from acting on a body by surrounding it with wires, through which peculiarly constituted currents of electricity were flowing, or, in other words, it was possible to take away a body's weight altogether. The result was that flying machines were made practicable, and these soon became almost the sole means of locomotion. Ordinary vehicles could also have their weights reduced to nothing, and consequently required less force to propel them. About the same time a new light was discovered, which was so powerful and so easy to produce that it immediately superseded the old electric light.
Great as these discoveries were, still more astonishing ones were in store. The ether-motions were still further investigated, and the result was that three new and extremely powerful forces were discovered. These were Dynogen, Pralion, and Ednogen, and practically illimitable supplies of them could be obtained from the regions of space. They could be used either separately or in combination, according to the nature of the effect desired. When all three were set in action together, an amount of energy equal to many thousands of horse-power could be obtained from an engine of very small compass. It was then that the crowning application of all these discoveries was made, and this was the navigation of space. Gravity could be annihilated at will, and there was an enormous force at the disposal of the engineers, so cigar-shaped vessels were made perfectly air-tight, and fitted with engines for acting on the ether of space, and with the anti-gravitation apparatus. After several failures, successful trips were performed to the moon and the nearer planets. The interstellar ships were gradually improved, and an ingenious steering apparatus was added, together with instruments that registered the speed of the vessel, its distance from its destination, and the existence and exact position of any obstacles that might be in the way.
The voyages were extended to the further planets, but many fatal accidents took place before the rules upon which the navigation of space must be based were fully understood. But the dangers of the voyage were soon put into the background by the marvellous tales which the explorers brought back with them. They had found Mars, Mercury and Venus uninhabited, and only waiting to be taken possession of. The others were inhabited, but the natives were quite harmless. A virgin soil that hardly required any cultivation, a salubrious climate, trees laden with the most luscious fruits, myriads of animals, and vast mineral wealth spread quite a fever for emigration. Hundreds of thousands of pioneers, adventurers, and scientists rushed into the deep unknown, and reached their destination in safety. More followed, and soon the whole of the planetary system became fully colonized, and most of the planets are, at the time when we write this history, almost as populous as the earth is.
But the moral progress of the race did not go hand-in-hand with its intellectual advances. The human race had gradually become divided into two parts—those who had great brain power and those who had very little. The former did all the commanding and organizing, the latter did the menial work. As far back as the nineteenth century the thoughts of everyone had been bent on acquiring money and possessions, but in the twenty-second century it had become an all-consuming fever that occupied everyone's thoughts day and night. There was a frightful struggle for riches; those who had superior abilities soon got hold of everything, while those who had none soon had their possessions taken away from them, and they could get no more, so they were reduced to a position little better than that of slaves. The human race, in its greediness, ate up the earth, appropriating every acre of ground, and then it inundated the planetary system. The same was the case with the intellectual giants of the age; their curiosity was insatiable, their ambition boundless, and their greed all-devouring. The planetary world which had been opened to their researches did not content them for long. Larger and improved interstellar ships were constructed and fitted with enormous motive power, and the reckless scientists, accompanied by numerous adventurers, plunged once more into the unknown abysses of space. But they soon met with a power which was equal to, if not greater than, their own. They came to the fixed star Sirius, and found that his planetary system was inhabited by a race of men who had attained to the same degree of civilization as themselves—a people who were hardy and bold, and whom they had to treat as equals.
These people, who were all subject to the Sirian planet Kairet, were extremely numerous and powerful, and were bound together by a close union, so the Anglo-Saxons had to abandon all hopes of acquiring any territory in their system. As a result of these two great Powers becoming simultaneously aware of one another's existence, there was much mutual jealousy and dislike. The eager Anglo-Saxons turned their attention to other fields of acquisition, and plunged further and further into the depths of space, some even trying, in the pride of their power and their thirst for science, to seek God on His throne in those unknown regions. Dim accounts had been handed down from generation to generation of a certain great man named Napoleon Bonaparte who once nearly conquered the world. Now there were thousands of Bonapartes endowed with colossal intellect, vast energy, and boundless ambition, each burning to wrest for himself a world from the great Unknown. Provinces and countries were not even thought of; they desired to rule over a planet, a system, a universe. There was present everywhere an intense fever for acquisition; men burned with a desire to plunder in these new regions. Vast expeditions were fitted out and started off for the regions of space. Many of these were never heard of again, but some came back with wonderful tales of what they had seen and found.
It was while this was going on that the Anglo-Saxon race first came into rivalry with the people of Kairet, and a series of events followed which led to oceans of blood being shed, and entailed untold suffering on the human race. Many of us who have lived through the terrible events of the year 2236 and the five succeeding years often wished that we had been contented with our own planet, and limited our ambition to a more humble sphere. We still exist, but it will be many years before we recover from the effects of that awful struggle.
The achievements that were wrought in the other branches of science were not less wonderful. Chemists developed their science until it seemed incapable of any further advancement, and then applied the new forces to what had hitherto been considered as elements. These they succeeded in resolving into other metallic substances, which were stronger, tougher, and more durable than those previously known. The methods of analysis and synthesis were also vastly extended by the application of the force Dynogen, and the result was that thousands of new chemical bodies possessing very remarkable and useful properties were prepared.
As soon as these remarkable discoveries were made, Chemistry joined itself to its sister Science, Physics, and the two henceforth advanced hand-in-hand. Astounding discoveries had likewise been made in Biology and Medicine, with the result that diseases had been almost rooted out, and the average length of human life extended to over a hundred years, for no one hardly ever died except from an accident or the effects of old age. The human race was being gradually improved, both physically and mentally, and this, again, reacted on and quickened the progress of scientific discovery, and stimulated the race to still greater exertions.
The progress of science also introduced an enormous improvement into the provinces of Engineering and Technology. It had been found that the attraction of cohesion could be diminished or altogether removed by focussing on to the mass to be acted upon the energy radiated by the two forces Pralion and Dynogen. Hence it was easy enough, by properly regulating and applying these forces, to cut, plane, and saw masses of wood, metal, or stone, and to make them assume the form of any mould without the application of heat. In this manner, and by using the powerful motive force that could so easily be obtained, all building and constructive operations were very quickly performed. Telegraphy had also been much improved, and it was possible to send messages through space without any intervening wire over a distance of more than three hundred million miles. These messages could be received by, or sent from, an interstellar ship while in motion.
After the discovery of the great power that dwelt within the Sirian system, the science of war was steadily improved by the Anglo-Saxons. Hundreds of interstellar war-vessels were constructed and fitted with the most terrible destroying weapons, after the manner of the ironclads of olden time. These were always kept patrolling the regions of space, and were frequently exercised together in fleets, so that the men might be kept in good practice in case they should be needed for actual service. Besides these formidable fleets, numerous forts were excavated in the sides of mountains all over the world, and some half-million soldiers were kept under arms, so that there might be some means of defence should the earth, by an accident to the fleets, happen to be invaded by a hostile power. The people of Kairet made preparations of a similar nature, and the two powers copied improvements from one another until at last the means of destruction and self-defence had reached the highest perfection.
And so the Anglo-Saxon race went on wresting fresh secrets from Nature every day, while its individual members were continually acquiring more possessions and building more imposing palaces. To know at that time meant to possess.
Exulting in their might, the gray-haired scientists steered their vessels through the dark depths of space, while they ransacked worlds for treasures and luxuries; some even towed great masses of valuable rock or precious metal behind their ships. Rare and beautiful plants were uprooted, and strange animals were captured and stowed away in the interior of the ships, and finally deposited in London or the other great cities of the world. Whole families would band together and buy an interstellar ship, and rush out into space to seek for themselves a new country and more splendid fortunes.
There were many deeds of darkness done in those distant regions which no one ever heard of. Rival expeditions did not hesitate to attack one another when there was a conflict of interests, and murders were of frequent occurrence. But justice rarely overtook the offenders, for the mangled bodies and broken ships were flung into space, and there they floated on and on for ever and told no tales. The fate of the dead men was never known to those whom they had left behind.
But it was fated that the great race that ruled the earth should cross the path of another as great, as ambitious, and as unyielding as itself. They were gradually approaching one another, and soon there would be a crash that would resound far and wide through the universe.