Last time we visited Syldavia was in 'King Ottakar's Scepter', a crystal-clear warning by Belgian cartoonist Hergé of the aggression being shown by Nazi Germany to the continent of Europe. It doesn't actually say that Borduria is Nazi Germany, but it's completely obvious to us and would have been even more so to readers in 1939. I've already talked about Hergé's time struggling to express himself during the Nazi occupation of Belgium and the year he struggled to write at all under accusation of collaborating with them. In 1950, the war is all but forgotten as he returns us to Syldavia for a happier story, albeit one with its share of intrigue.

We leave for Syldavia on the second page, along with Tintin and Captain Haddock, who get home to Marlinspike Hall just in time to leave again. They're seeking Professor Calculus, of course, but it's his telegram that summons them to Syldavia without any explanation at all. The plane takes them to Klow and they're met by men who drive them to Sprodj, which is way out in the sticks on the other side of a lot of security gates, even a helicopter-enforced checkpoint, because, as we'll already have guessed from the title and cover art, it's the location of a space programme called the Mammoth project.

There are shenanigans going on, of course, because this is a 'Tintin' story, but these drivers are the real drivers and they take them to the real base where they catch up with Prof. Calculus, in the midst of testing a multiplex space helmet. It's in the background that trouble is afoot, with a car following them from the airport and spies back in Klow looking at documents sent to them by K27, a mole they have inside the ministry. The question, of course, is whether they also have a mole inside the Sprodj Atomic Research Centre, built on the site where they located uranium deposits four years earlier and now the location for a moon shot.

The optimism here is palpable and it dominates the book for me. Part of it is because Calculus has designed an atomic rocket ship to take human beings to the the moon, with those humans inevitably being himself, Tintin and Capt. Haddock. Part of it is because it's only 1950, nineteen years before Apollo 11 took Neil Armstrong there in our reality but, perhaps more importantly, eleven before Yuri Gagarin became the first human being in outer space, completing an orbit of the Earth in Vostok 1. Mostly it's because this atomic research centre is completely dedicated to humanitarian purposes, even three years into the Cold War.

Now, I say 1950, but that's when Hergé began publication of this story. It continued in the usual serial form in 'Tintin' magazine until 1952, before being published in French in 1953 as 'Objectif Lune' and in English translation in 1959 as 'Destination Moon'. There was another 'Destination Moon', of course, a Hollywood feature film that was released in 1950, and the two are unrelated except in theme and perhaps in optimism, especially as the latter suggested that we would only get to space with the assistance of private industry. Both, however, made a real effort to sound consistent with known science.

In fact, the attention Hergé gave to science here were at the expense of some of the slapstick elements we're used to. There's still some of that. Thomson and Thompson parachute into the base in Greek traditional dress, because the supplier got the order wrong. Calculus lets security know that the plans have been stolen, replaced by old newspapers, until he remembers that he did that himself during a phase of absent-mindedness. Later, he gets angry with Haddock, who's accused him of acting the goat, eventually falling down a hatch and losing his memory; Haddock has fun trying to cure him with fancy dress and shocks. There are lab rats in Haddock's suit when he tests it too, resulting in some agreeably exaggerated movements.

So there's definitely comedy here but it's kept to a minimum because the tone simply hasn't got any business going there often. The X-FLR 6 rocketship is a serious effort that deserves a serious treatment and that's what Hergé at the newly formed Studios Hergé in Brussels gave it. There's some real suspense when they launch a test rocket, intended to go around the moon and take a series of photos of its dark side, then return to Earth. It works well until someone seizes control and they have to blow it up to save it from falling into enemy hands. That security feature was one of Tintin's suggestions.

Now the blueprints to the ship, which get an entire page, are hardly detailed, but the testing of spacesuits are wonderful, the explanations of how the rocket works aren't utterly ludicrous and the G-forces in play as the rocket accelerates towards space seem entirely realistic. The biggest problem that the book has isn't the science. In fact, 'New Scientist' would later compliment the story on how accurately he designed his spacesuits, although his rocket "was a long way off the mark". The biggest problem is the fact that it's the setup for a two-part story, the last time of the four that this would happen in the series.

I like this one very much, but, even more than 'The Secret of the Unicorn' and 'The Seven Crystal Balls', it's painfully obviously a first half, beginning with Tintin and Captain Haddock's flight to Syldavia and ending with them on board the X-FLR 6 as it takes off for the moon. Like those two stories, that means a serious change in location for the second half; but unlike them, it doesn't have much of a story to sustain us until then. It's therefore unfair to judge it entirely on its own merits without considering the second half, which is 'Explorers on the Moon', into which Hergé dived as soon as he finished this. He always saw it as one story.

And for that you'll have to wait until next month, when I join our intrepid trio—as well as Snowy, of course—on the moon. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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