Rondah; or, thirty-three years in a star — John Shaqi
Rondah; or, thirty-three years in a starDieudonné, Florence Carpenter
Science
Rondah; or, thirty-three years in a star
Dieudonné, Florence Carpenter
Life on other planets -- Fiction; Outer space -- Exploration -- Fiction; Science fiction
Even he was appalled! Alone! Both dead!—Isabella and the man who would
not marry her, who would not love her, his beautiful sister Isabella!
For Regan did not know that they were saved. He had no time to see what
had happened.
“But still I live,” he cried, “and we shall reach the planet sun of
Jupiter after a time! I will take courage! It is only a custom of man to
expect companionship! One can exist just as well without it! No human
voice! No human love! No kiss! No help! No words! I will go on alone! I
can go on alone!”
Then for awhile he was silent, looking about him. After a time he said:
“It will not do; there is no one to cheat save myself and my own soul!
Shall I try to lie to it? Oh! tortured soul! If I only could believe!”
Regan cast himself beside the molten flood, waiting his doom.
“Rondah! Rondah! I shall never see you!” he moaned. “Did you die in the
snow? Where are you? From what place do you see me? Oh! my love, my
love!”
The air grew sulphurous with smoke. The rocks fell between him and the
sea, and others fell between him and the lava.
He was too lethargic to look. The habit of the globe had seized upon
him! He fell asleep for years! For people are a part of that globe which
they inhabit. They do not realize it, but they breathe, move, think,
exist, according to its spirit, as a portion of it!
If world still call to world, as they did when the morning stars sang
together, the voices are of different attunement, but they blend in one
grand chord of harmony.
Jupiter marched on, attended by his satellites.
A little light fell upon the white ball; far off, the sun, as a
day-star, gave a grayness to the darkness.
The winds were dead. They did not move the smoke above the craters.
Asleep with the stars, asleep was Regan!
On, on came that burning planet, which has yet to cool from lava seas to
the crust of continents, yet to jar and burst, and flame with deluges of
the first ocean’s fall, yet to pass through all the cataclysms of
universal epoch, before there shall be upon its surface one pulpy,
spongy thing that has the lowest form of life!
As one leaf among ten million has Nature’s time to fall, so in Nature
shall come the time for a globe to bloom, among myriads, as unnoticeable
in the multitude sweeping before the vision of the Lord as is the one
leaf on the tree!
Time shall come when it shall add a world’s souls to the kingdom of the
Redeemer!
When the small sun and red Jupiter shone at once upon the star it made
strange daylight. The great planet sent red, burning beams ahead.
Brilliant scarlet was his day.
What spirit would fall across space from such a fiery mass of convulsion
as Jupiter? Nothing quieting, nothing holy, nothing merciful! A red
light—only a red light!
Upon one spot in the star the cold touched not, the snow did not fall.
The Sun Island, as the bird men named it, was as calm as Paradise
through all these years!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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