The Germans on Venus by Brian Stableford

Author:Brian Stableford [Stableford, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Coat Press
Published: 2011-11-12T00:00:00+00:00

VII

Master Aloysius and Master Truphemus are in their laboratory—which is to say, the cellar—but the stoves are extinct, the retorts seem melancholy, and the alembics have a contrite air.

Even more contrite and melancholy than these inert objects, however, are the two animate beings who greet one another mutually with the name of doctor.

They are sitting down, facing one another. Aloysius’ thinness in more cadaverous than ever; Truphemus is just as round. Their arms are hanging limply down, in an attitude of discouragement. They look at one another, seemingly hesitant to speak.

“Bother!” says Truphemus, finally.

“Drat!” Aloysius replies.

“That must be…”

“Evidently.”

“Human resources have their limits…”

“They have their limits.”

“That’s indisputable.”

“Indisputable…”

“Certain…”

“Sure…”

Then silence falls again. Aloysius is downcast; Truphemus is despondent.

“And yet…”

“However…” Aloysius adds.

“The theory is sound…”

“Indisputable…”

“Indisputable…”

“Certain…”

“Sure...”

A further silence.

Truphemus recovers his presence of mind first; he puts both hands on his abdomen, which he taps.

“There, there!” he says. “We mustn’t allow ourselves to be beaten…and above all, we must never lose sight of the scientific method. If you’re agreeable, my savant companion, we’ll study all the facets of the problem logically.”

“Go on,” said Aloysius, whose indifference seems to acquiesce in advance with his associate’s reasoning.

The latter is not easily troubled; he is the orator of the duo.

“So, let’s retrace the chain of our deductions one by one, and see if we might have erred in some essential particular. First, this happened: your daughter Netty seemed to be wasting away, even though we had given her a double dose of nitrogen and albumin. Is that right?”

“True!” replied Aloysius, unable to refuse this first concession.

“The child was puny, her limbs were not developing sufficiently, and I sometimes recollect the anger that Dame Tibby…”

“May God have mercy on her soul!” murmured Aloysius—which informs us incidentally, that Netty’s mother is dead. The unfortunate woman had succumbed to a fatal anemia.

“May God have mercy on her soul!” repeated Truphemus. “So I said….” He searched his memory momentarily. The inopportune invocation of the Deity had raised an obstacle to the certainty of his argument. “Ah! I said that the new problem was this: to make the development of the body march in step with its nutrition. That’s what I had the honor of revealing to one evening, if you recall, when we were shut up in our laboratory after a succulent meal. Now, here I lay claim, if I may, to a certain originality of invention. I drew your attention to a phenomenon that experience had demonstrated to us…it is the rule, in science, that one can only proceed from the known to the unknown. What was the known? That a plant, a vegetable entity, subject to the action of violet light, grows with an infinitely greater rapidity than a vegetable subject to the action of white light. The fact is known, yes or no?”

To this rather peremptory proposition, Aloysius replied with a nod of his head, the nutus of the ancients—which sufficed for the positive Truphemus, who resumed with a new ardor.

“Good! What, then, was the unknown, the X to be discovered or verified? An analogy then suggested itself.

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