Terra Nova

“ The Loard-vogh swept into Terra.
Terra, the home of man. Terra, the mighty. Terra, defended as few planets were defended against the legions of Vorgan, Lord of All.
Despite the humans on Venus and Mars, they were still colonies compared to the home planet. Knowing that massed energy might hold out, all Solar defenses had been moved to Terra. Let Terra hold out and eventually mankind would recover, expand, and then drive the enemy back. ”

“ Well, when this hive spotted us coming in, they knew enough about New Terra to realize at once that we were strangers, coming from outside the area. It appealed to their sense of humor to have the gall to strut right out in front of us and try to put over a swindle. What a laugh for the oyster kingdom if they could sell Terrans on the idea that they were the master race. It never occurred to them that we might be anything but Terrans; Terrans who didn’t know the Mancji. And they were canny enough to use an old form of Interlingua; somewhere they’d met men before. ”

“ As old as Terra's history. Ship for ship and man for man the Terran Forces were better than the Martian. Terrans shot faster and straighter. Terran ships flew farther and faster. And Terra, for all its failings, was a free world fighting for a free space. ”

“ Interstellar travel begins, Solar System terraforming ceases. 2128 -- President Chang, with cooperation of Solar Federation Congress, proclaims Terran Empire and assumes Throne (22 Jan, Empire Day) , forms Rangers, directs regularization of English. 2130 -- Imperial Palace built in Antarctica. Shapers leave Terra, begin creating Sandeman race. ”

“ For more than a century now, planet time, they had been fighting their queer, twisted war among the stars. Terrans hunted worlds for colonization, the old hunger for land of their own driving men from the over-populated worlds, out of Sol's system to the far stars. And those worlds barren of intelligent native life, open to settlers, were none too many and widely scattered. Perhaps half a dozen were found in a quarter century, and of that six maybe only one was suitable for human life without any costly and lengthy adaption of man or world. ”

“ Only study permits any of us to work with power, Andy. When the Terrans are capable of handling the source of interstellar power, it shall come to them—be discovered by them, if you will. Meanwhile I can but watch and wait, and when I am approached I can and will try to guide Terra. ”

“ But Terran life is intelligent. Martian life can not be—"
"See?" chortled Cliff Lane.
Hotang Lu swung upon the Venusite. "Stellor Downing is Terran," he said stoutly. "Venus can not support intelligent life either," he added in a mollifying tone.
"They do," objected Kennebec.
"By support I mean spawn," said Hotang Lu. "To support does not mean to 'be converted to'."
"Oh."
"Terra controls. Terra takes over. Terra is the Planet of Terror. Her minions rule the Galaxy, her mutants are the fear and the death of all. Linzete of Sscantoo capitulated because of two things. ”

“ For they were the first to set foot on a vast new planet! An entire new world, containing heaven alone knew what forms of life, what monstrous or infinitesimal creatures, lay before them. Even the profound awe they had experienced when landing on the moon was dwarfed by the solemnity of this occasion; just as it is less soul stirring to discover an arctic continent which is perpetually cased in barren ice, than to discover a continent which is warmly fruitful and, probably, teeming with life. ”

“ The prism brought the outside view right into the ship. Venus dominated the scene, like a giant snowball glittering with a light of its own. Rock could see the impenetrable clouds, chiefly of carbon dioxide, swirling and crawling over the surface of the planet like a tide. The invisible lands below were a hothouse of wind-swept desert and barren stretches. There were only a few isolated research settlements down there where brave scientists probed the hot soil for strange new things. ”

“ I cannot tell whether the climate of the poles will ever be so far assimilated to that of the torrid zone, as to make pine apples as plentiful at Nova Zembla, as now in the West Indies. Astronomers may decide that the earth is in its progress to a better state ”

“ Here on the Madeira I had a vision instead of the earth as a great and shining sphere. There were no fences and private bounds. I saw for the first time an horizon as an arc suggesting how wide is our ambit. That bare shoulder of the world effaced regions and constellations in the sky. Our earth had celestial magnitude. It was warm, a living body. The abundant rain was vital, and the forest I saw, nobler in stature and with an aspect of intensity beyond what the Amazon forests showed, rose like a sign of life triumphant. ”

“ Five or six apiece, they say; all hotter and dryer than the brazen hinges of hell. This sun here has seven, but Number Two—'Cavenda', they call it—is the only Tellurian planet in the system. The first thing we look for is a big, diamond-shaped continent ... there's only one of that shape ... there it is, over there. Notice that one end is bigger than the other—that end is north. Strike a line to split the continent in two and measure from the north end one-third of the length of the line. That's the point we're diving at now ... ”

“ The planet Terra has reached that stage of consistency and temperature at which life is possible, and in the ceaseless play of force life expands and is perfected, and reaches the higher levels of human art and science and sociology. The conditions of life, water, atmosphere, etc., will gradually vanish, and the episode of human life be ended. The moon has undergone such an evolution. ”

“ All that we anticipated of the sunset, or the after-sunset, is now present. The ocean with its waves of Tyrian dye laced with silver, the tinted bergs, the dark-blue inland hills and brown headlands underlie a sky of unutterable beauty. The west is all one paradise of colors. Surely, nature, if she follows as a mourner on the footsteps of the fall, also returns jubilant and glorious to the scenes of Eden. Here, between the white light of day and the dark of the true evening, shade and brightness, like Jacob and the angel, now meet and wrestle for the mastery. ”

“ The combers rolled in, booming and spouting against the land. The Terrans called them the horses of God. A thin cloud in the west was turning rose and gold.
"Are there oceans on our new planet?" asked Julith.
"Yes," he said. "It's the most Earth-like world we could find that wasn't already inhabited. You'll be happy there."
But the trees and grasses, the soil and the fruits thereof, the beasts of the field and the birds of the air and the fish of the waters beneath, form and color, smell and sound, taste and texture, everything is different. Is alien. ”

“ The vision seemed to range not only over an almost limitless world of forests, lakes, and rivers—away to where the haze of the horizon seemed to melt with them into space—but beyond that to where the great backbone of the New World rose sharp, clear, and gigantic above the mists of earth, until they reached and mingled with the fleecy clouds of heaven. ”

“ Pointing out to Eveena the striking difference of colour between the cultivated fields and gardens and the woods or natural meadows on the mountain sides, I learned from her that this distinction is everywhere perceptible in Mars. Natural objects, plants or animals, rocks and soil, are for the most part of dimmer, fainter, or darker tints than on Earth; probably owing to the much less intense light of the Sun; partly, perhaps, to that absorption of the blue rays by the atmosphere, which diminishes, I suppose, even that light which actually reaches the planet. ”

“ His wife leaned forward, eyes shining with pride, and an arm across the shoulders of each of the boys. "They named the planets after one of us, each, and the fifth one after the ship, and we've given names to the moons, too."
"This world will be swell for people who like it warm, and Three will be just as good for those who prefer colder weather. Both are a lot like Terra at different seasons and sections, and both are rich in soil, water, forests, metals and...." ”

“ May we attribute to the color of the herbage and plants, which no doubt clothe the plains of Mars, the characteristic hue of that planet, which is noticeable by the naked eye, and which led the ancients to personify it as a warrior? Are the meadows, the forests, and the fields, on Mars, all red? An observer, looking out from the moon, or from Venus, upon our own planet, would see our continents deeply tinged with green. But, in the fall, he would find this tint disappearing at the latitudes where the trees lose their leaves. ”

“ The towering Alps, the vast mystery laden Himalayas, the tremendous Sierras, to mortal mind appear as indestructible as the globe itself, yet during every passing moment their disintegrated particles, through the agencies of melting snows, of rains, or of tempestuous winds are being borne to all parts of the ever changing surface of Earth. The existence of a Planet being of such inconceivable duration, the passing of a thousand years is as the passage of a fleecy cloud across the sky, leaving no traces of its vanished loveliness. ”

“ But if, at another epoch, we suppose 121 a continuance of the same agency to transfer an equal volume of land from the torrid zone to the temperate and arctic regions of the northern and southern hemispheres, or into one of them, there might be so great a refrigeration of the mean temperature in all latitudes, that scarcely any of the pre-existing races of animals would survive; and, unless it pleased the Author of Nature that the planet should be uninhabited, new species, and probably of widely different forms, would then be substituted in the room of the extinct. ”

“ Can the actual state of the earth be considered as definitive? The revolutions which have fashioned its surface, and produced the Alps in Europe, Mount Ararat in Asia, the Cordilleras in the New World—are they to be the last? In a word, will the terrestrial sphere for ever preserve the form under which we know it—as it has been, so to speak, impressed on our memories by the maps of the geographers? ”

“ Thanks to the struggles of indomitable seamen, the pride of our race, the area of the mysterious regions around the north pole has been reduced to something like the hundredth part of the earth’s surface, but in the south there still remains an unknown region of such vast extent, that the moon, were she to drop upon our planet, might disappear within it without coming into contact with any part of the earth’s surface already known to us. ”

“ Among the scenes which are deeply impressed on my mind, none exceed in sublimity the primeval forests undefaced by the hand of man; whether those of Brazil, where the powers of Life are predominant, or those of Tierra del Fuego, where Death and decay prevail. Both are temples filled with the varied productions of the God of Nature:—no one can stand in these solitudes unmoved, and not feel that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body. In calling up images of the past, I find that the plains of Patagonia frequently cross before my eyes ”

“ I see great waters, and my gaze beholds a sandy wilderness above which a red moon rises. Against a rocky shore a wave mournfully breaks and a mighty girdle of clouds drifts above the new continent. In the clouds a white bird soars and utters a piercing cry. The south wind and the east have clashed, and the first rain has gathered above the new continent. You must think of yourself. Sit down yonder on that promontory. From the new continent gaze out at the five old continents; they are five stars and in their midst the sixth one, the most beautiful of them, with its dark lustre. ”

“ In this intermediate zone of the Tierra Templada lies a land which has been not unjustly termed a region of perpetual spring, a truly desirable land, where the fortunate inhabitant lives close to the kindly earth as if in some mortal paradise—as far as Nature is concerned. ”

“ The inhabitants of the Terra del Fuego are as fair as any Europeans, as was concluded by seeing a young child; but the grown-up people disguise themselves strangely, painting themselves with a red earth after many fanciful devices, some having their heads, others their arms, their legs and thighs red, and other parts of their bodies white. ”

“ According to some cosmical law, power worked most vigorously where beauty could afterward decorate most lovingly. Here narrow upright belts of climate are substituted for the breadths of zone after zone from torrid to frozen regions. All the garden wealth of the tropics, all the domestic charm of Northern plain and field and grove, dashed with a richer splendor than their own, are here combined and grouped at the base and along the flanks of bulky ranges topped with snow and fire. ”

“ I answered; "but you must remember that we are in a new world, nearly as large as our own, and we must expect to find every variety of climate, and many different conditions, as with us."
"True," said Torrence; "I by no means believe that the Garden of Eden was an entire world. There are doubtless many strange things awaiting us." ”

“ We obtained a wide view over the surrounding country: to the north a swampy moorland extended, but to the south we had a scene of savage magnificence, well becoming Tierra del Fuego. There was a degree of mysterious grandeur in mountain behind mountain, with the deep intervening valleys, all covered by one thick, dusky mass of forest. The atmosphere, likewise, in this climate, where gale succeeds gale, with rain, hail, and sleet, seems blacker than anywhere else. ”

“ Below us, glowing with the glory of mid-day, lay the Venus Central State. Rolling hills with distant mountain peaks, the highest of them far-away, glittering white with the sunlight on their snow-caps.
A land of warmth and beauty. Dazzling green, with a luxuriant vegetation, tropical yet strange.
As we dropped lower, I sat alone, gazing downward. We were passing over the land now, at an altitude of no more than twenty thousand feet. A vivid land. Vivid sunlight; inky shadows; a green to everything—a solid, brilliant green. ”