The Earth is seen receding in the distance until it appears no larger than any other heavenly body in the sky. The scene opens in semi-darkness which is gradually reduced to total darkness. Adam, now an old man, is discovered travelling through space, accompanied by Lucifer, whose relaxed, sarcastic tone is in sharp contrast to Adam’s profound concern.
ADAM
This reckless flight, where is this bound to take us?
LUCIFER
Well, you desired to leave the lowly dust
for a sublime existence here on high
wherein you deemed to hear (what was the word?)
a kindred spirit calling.
ADAM
So I did,
but never such a journey, grim and cold,
through empty space, this silent, alien world;
it passed for sacrilege to enter it.
I’m undecided, I feel torn apart:
I want to escape, to shed my earthly fetters,
the impediment to my aspiring soul,
and yet I’m homesick and lament the parting.
Ah, Lucifer, remember planet Earth!
At first the blossom, then the trees, the forest -
receding, everything a wash, a blur,
the countless, well-loved features of the landscape
became a vast and flat, indifferent plain.
With all that eyes could relish lost to sight,
the very mountains shrank to clods of clay.
The thunder-bearing clouds the villager
would view aloft with superstitious awe
appeared a puff of vapour round the globe
on which the seeming endless, restless ocean
itself was lost and merged in radiant blue.
There it revolves, part of the firmament,
one out of myriads. To us - the world.
But, Lucifer, to think she’s there, out there!
It shatters me to think she’s left behind.
LUCIFER
Our lofty viewpoint here requires adjustments,
discarding beauty first, then power and greatness,
until we’re left with only one approach
to things - the purely mathematical.
ADAM
We’ve left the planets and our star behind us,
and still I see no goal, feel no resistance.
Without love and without challenge to meet
what is existence. Look, I’m shivering!
LUCIFER
If your heroics cannot take you further
there’s still the dust on Earth to play about.
ADAM
Who’s talking of returning? Carry on!
We don’t expect our earthly ties to hurt
after we find them broken altogether…
What’s this? What’s happening? I cannot breathe!
My brain’s confused; my strength is drained away.
The meaning of that myth of Antaeus!
He couldn’t survive apart from mother Earth.
Is there truth in the story?
THE VOICE OF THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH
Truth, indeed!
I am the Spirit of that Earth, remember:
in me you live, through me you have your being.
There is the verge: my jurisdiction ends there.
Return and live. Go on and you’re destroyed,
a puny, wriggling, tadpole out of water’s
its element. - Your element is Earth.
ADAM
You can’t intimidate me. I defy you!
My body may be yours: my soul is mine,
and like primeval thought and truth - eternal,
it pre-existed your domain of matter.
THE VOICE OF THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH
Conceited man, defy me and you’re dead.
Was fragrance pre-existent to the rose?
Or shape to substance? Or sunshine to sun?
Think of your lonely, disembodied soul
drifting in space in search of self expression,
and in a futile bid to find a meaning
in alien worlds it cannot comprehend,
deprived of senses and devoid of feeling.
Think and beware! Your power of understanding
and passions swelling up within your frame
are emanations of that swirl of matter
which you call Earth. If this were otherwise
there wouldn’t be life on it, or in you either.
For good and evil, beauty, ugliness
are concepts from my universal mind
which permeate your private microcosm.
Out there your truth may seem nonsensical,
and what appears impossible to you
may be the thing that aliens take for granted.
Perhaps they have no weight, or need for movement,
their thought their atmosphere, their sound the light;
and all that grows and lives around a sun
in worlds beyond may well be bound in crystals.
ADAM
You can’t deter me; my soul surges upwards.
THE VOICE OF THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH
Adam! Adam! Beware that final moment.
Return! You may yet live and thrive on Earth.
Your brash attempt and your unshackled ego
could break the cosmic chain. God will not have it.
You must not reach beyond… You’ll be destroyed!
ADAM
Isn’t man in any case a prey to death?
THE VOICE OF THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH
Hush! It’s the ancient lie. It’s odious
to nature: never in the realms of spirits
to be pronounced. The Lord’s prerogative:
anathema, over which the Tree of Knowledge
could not prevail.
ADAM
Then I will break the custom.
About to continue their flight, Adam utters a sharp cry and his body turns rigid.
Ah!
With contemptuous laughter Lucifer thrusts his body away. He scornfully imitates Adam’s desperate cry, which blends into the opening word of his next line.
LUCIFER
Ah-fter all the ancient lie prevails!
Come on, you puppet-deity, there’s your orbit!
A new planet, a man-made-satellite,
I might evolve some form of life upon you.
THE VOICE OF THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH
You’ve had your laughs too early, Lucifer:
he’s only touched that hostile, alien world.
No ready exit through my boundaries!
Wake, Adam, Son of Earth! Come back to me!
ADAM
I’m suffering, therefore I am - alive,
but all this pain endured is ecstasy
against the horror of annihilation.
Come, Lucifer, let’s home to kindly Earth.
For all the struggles I’ve sustained - in vain,
I’ll be content to live and struggle on.
LUCIFER
You’ve tried that many times. What gives you hope
of winning through this time - to no avail?
Is there a goal in sight? It takes a human
to be so childish and importunate.
ADAM
You’re wrong, Lucifer. I am past delusions:
I’ve failed to reach the goal a hundred times.
But does it matter? Tell me, what’s a goal?
Say, “goal” denotes the close of glorious battles,
then “goal” means death. But life, then, is the fight.
Man’s purpose in life, therefore, - is the struggle.
LUCIFER
A comforting thought, if you have the cause
that’s good enough to justify the struggle.
But are your causes more than childish pranks?
You fight for them or scoff at them at will.
First at Chaeronea you bleed to death
fighting a monarch in the name of freedom,
then joining Constantine, of all the monarchs,
you help establish universal reign.
And didn’t you suffer at the stake, a martyr,
so that the next time round, a man of learning,
you could denounce excesses of the Church?
ADAM
It’s true, it’s true, and yet you miss the point.
Inferior though the cause, it could inspire me
and grow to be worthwhile because of that.
Whatever: faith or science, others’ freedom
or my ambition - once it made me fight,
it could advance the whole of human kind.
Now, back to Earth! Let’s fight and struggle on.
LUCIFER
Have you forgotten that prognostication?
Science forecasts’ that in a given time
your globe will freeze - and then the battle’s over.
ADAM
If science cannot find the remedy.
I’m sure it can. I’m certain and convinced.
LUCIFER
And then? What room for struggle, drive, achievement
in that contrived and artificial system
concocted from abstractions of the brain?
You’ve seen it for yourself. Now, think of it!
ADAM
Let science save the world; we shall discard it
when it has served its purpose. In the end
humanity shall take the lead again,
breathing, fermenting new life, new ideas.
Now, back to Earth! Catastrophe averted,
what new challenges are in store for us?
I’m burning with excitement.
LUCIFER
Back we go!