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diff --git a/old/1013-h/1013-h.htm b/old/1013-h/1013-h.htm deleted file mode 100644 index 6fcfa98..0000000 --- a/old/1013-h/1013-h.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,10391 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" -"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> -<head> -<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> -<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> -<title>The First Men In The Moon | Project Gutenberg</title> -<link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> -<style type="text/css"> - -body { margin-left: 10%; - margin-right: 10%; - text-align: justify; } - -h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: -normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;} - -h1 {font-size: 300%; - margin-top: 0.6em; - margin-bottom: 0.6em; - letter-spacing: 0.12em; - word-spacing: 0.2em; - text-indent: 0em;} -h2 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} -h3 {font-size: 130%; margin-top: 1em;} -h4 {font-size: 120%;} -h5 {font-size: 110%;} - -.no-break {page-break-before: avoid;} /* for epubs */ - -div.chapter {page-break-before: always; margin-top: 4em;} - -hr {width: 80%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} - -p {text-indent: 1em; - margin-top: 0.25em; - margin-bottom: 0.25em; } - -.p2 {margin-top: 2em;} - -p.footnote {font-size: 90%; - text-indent: 0%; - margin-left: 10%; - margin-right: 10%; - margin-top: 1em; - margin-bottom: 1em; } - -sup { vertical-align: top; font-size: 0.6em; } - -div.fig { display:block; - margin:0 auto; - text-align:center; - margin-top: 1em; - margin-bottom: 1em;} - -a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} -a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} -a:hover {color:red} - -</style> - -</head> - -<body> -<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1013 ***</div> - -<div class="fig" style="width:75%;"> -<img src="images/cover.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="[Illustration]" /> -</div> -<h1>The First Men In The Moon</h1> - -<h2 class="no-break">by H. G. Wells</h2> - -<hr /> - -<h2>Contents</h2> - -<table summary="" style=""> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap01">I. Mr. Bedford Meets Mr. Cavor at Lympne</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap02">II. The First Making of Cavorite</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap03">III. The Building of the sphere</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap04">IV. Inside the Sphere</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap05">V. The Journey to the Moon</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap06">VI. The Landing on the Moon</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap07">VII. Sunrise on the Moon</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap08">VIII. A Lunar Morning</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap09">IX. Prospecting Begins</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap10">X. Lost Men in the Moon</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap11">XI. The Mooncalf Pastures</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap12">XII. The Selenite’s Face</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap13">XIII. Mr. Cavor Makes Some Suggestions</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap14">XIV. Experiments in intercourse</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap15">XV. The Giddy Bridge</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap16">XVI. Points of View</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap17">XVII. The Fight in the Cave of the Moon Butchers</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap18">XVIII. In the Sunlight</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap19">XIX. Mr. Bedford Alone</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap20">XX. Mr. Bedford in Infinite Space</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap21">XXI. Mr. Bedford at Littlestone</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap22">XXII. The Astonishing Communication of Mr. Julius Wendigee</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap23">XXIII. An Abstract of the Six Messages First Received from Mr. Cavor</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap24">XXIV. The Natural History of the Selenites</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap25">XXV. The Grand Lunar</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap26">XXVI. The Last Message Cavor sent to the Earth</a></td> -</tr> - -</table> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap01"></a>I.<br /> -Mr. Bedford Meets Mr. Cavor at Lympne</h2> - -<p> -As I sit down to write here amidst the shadows of vine-leaves under the blue -sky of southern Italy, it comes to me with a certain quality of astonishment -that my participation in these amazing adventures of Mr. Cavor was, after all, -the outcome of the purest accident. It might have been any one. I fell into -these things at a time when I thought myself removed from the slightest -possibility of disturbing experiences. I had gone to Lympne because I had -imagined it the most uneventful place in the world. “Here, at any -rate,” said I, “I shall find peace and a chance to work!” -</p> - -<p> -And this book is the sequel. So utterly at variance is destiny with all the -little plans of men. I may perhaps mention here that very recently I had come -an ugly cropper in certain business enterprises. Sitting now surrounded by all -the circumstances of wealth, there is a luxury in admitting my extremity. I can -admit, even, that to a certain extent my disasters were conceivably of my own -making. It may be there are directions in which I have some capacity, but the -conduct of business operations is not among these. But in those days I was -young, and my youth among other objectionable forms took that of a pride in my -capacity for affairs. I am young still in years, but the things that have -happened to me have rubbed something of the youth from my mind. Whether they -have brought any wisdom to light below it is a more doubtful matter. -</p> - -<p> -It is scarcely necessary to go into the details of the speculations that landed -me at Lympne, in Kent. Nowadays even about business transactions there is a -strong spice of adventure. I took risks. In these things there is invariably a -certain amount of give and take, and it fell to me finally to do the giving -reluctantly enough. Even when I had got out of everything, one cantankerous -creditor saw fit to be malignant. Perhaps you have met that flaming sense of -outraged virtue, or perhaps you have only felt it. He ran me hard. It seemed to -me, at last, that there was nothing for it but to write a play, unless I wanted -to drudge for my living as a clerk. I have a certain imagination, and luxurious -tastes, and I meant to make a vigorous fight for it before that fate overtook -me. In addition to my belief in my powers as a business man, I had always in -those days had an idea that I was equal to writing a very good play. It is not, -I believe, a very uncommon persuasion. I knew there is nothing a man can do -outside legitimate business transactions that has such opulent possibilities, -and very probably that biased my opinion. I had, indeed, got into the habit of -regarding this unwritten drama as a convenient little reserve put by for a -rainy day. That rainy day had come, and I set to work. -</p> - -<p> -I soon discovered that writing a play was a longer business than I had -supposed; at first I had reckoned ten days for it, and it was to have a -<i>pied-à-terre</i> while it was in hand that I came to Lympne. I reckoned -myself lucky in getting that little bungalow. I got it on a three years’ -agreement. I put in a few sticks of furniture, and while the play was in hand I -did my own cooking. My cooking would have shocked Mrs. Bond. And yet, you know, -it had flavour. I had a coffee-pot, a sauce-pan for eggs, and one for potatoes, -and a frying-pan for sausages and bacon—such was the simple apparatus of -my comfort. One cannot always be magnificent, but simplicity is always a -possible alternative. For the rest I laid in an eighteen-gallon cask of beer on -credit, and a trustful baker came each day. It was not, perhaps, in the style -of Sybaris, but I have had worse times. I was a little sorry for the baker, who -was a very decent man indeed, but even for him I hoped. -</p> - -<p> -Certainly if any one wants solitude, the place is Lympne. It is in the clay -part of Kent, and my bungalow stood on the edge of an old sea cliff and stared -across the flats of Romney Marsh at the sea. In very wet weather the place is -almost inaccessible, and I have heard that at times the postman used to -traverse the more succulent portions of his route with boards upon his feet. I -never saw him doing so, but I can quite imagine it. Outside the doors of the -few cottages and houses that make up the present village big birch besoms are -stuck, to wipe off the worst of the clay, which will give some idea of the -texture of the district. I doubt if the place would be there at all, if it were -not a fading memory of things gone for ever. It was the big port of England in -Roman times, Portus Lemanis, and now the sea is four miles away. All down the -steep hill are boulders and masses of Roman brickwork, and from it old Watling -Street, still paved in places, starts like an arrow to the north. I used to -stand on the hill and think of it all, the galleys and legions, the captives -and officials, the women and traders, the speculators like myself, all the -swarm and tumult that came clanking in and out of the harbour. And now just a -few lumps of rubble on a grassy slope, and a sheep or two—and I. And -where the port had been were the levels of the marsh, sweeping round in a broad -curve to distant Dungeness, and dotted here and there with tree clumps and the -church towers of old mediæval towns that are following Lemanis now towards -extinction. -</p> - -<p> -That outlook on the marsh was, indeed, one of the finest views I have ever -seen. I suppose Dungeness was fifteen miles away; it lay like a raft on the -sea, and farther westward were the hills by Hastings under the setting sun. -Sometimes they hung close and clear, sometimes they were faded and low, and -often the drift of the weather took them clean out of sight. And all the nearer -parts of the marsh were laced and lit by ditches and canals. -</p> - -<p> -The window at which I worked looked over the skyline of this crest, and it was -from this window that I first set eyes on Cavor. It was just as I was -struggling with my scenario, holding down my mind to the sheer hard work of it, -and naturally enough he arrested my attention. -</p> - -<p> -The sun had set, the sky was a vivid tranquillity of green and yellow, and -against that he came out black—the oddest little figure. -</p> - -<p> -He was a short, round-bodied, thin-legged little man, with a jerky quality in -his motions; he had seen fit to clothe his extraordinary mind in a cricket cap, -an overcoat, and cycling knickerbockers and stockings. Why he did so I do not -know, for he never cycled and he never played cricket. It was a fortuitous -concurrence of garments, arising I know not how. He gesticulated with his hands -and arms, and jerked his head about and buzzed. He buzzed like something -electric. You never heard such buzzing. And ever and again he cleared his -throat with a most extraordinary noise. -</p> - -<p> -There had been rain, and that spasmodic walk of his was enhanced by the extreme -slipperiness of the footpath. Exactly as he came against the sun he stopped, -pulled out a watch, hesitated. Then with a sort of convulsive gesture he turned -and retreated with every manifestation of haste, no longer gesticulating, but -going with ample strides that showed the relatively large size of his -feet—they were, I remember, grotesquely exaggerated in size by adhesive -clay—to the best possible advantage. -</p> - -<p> -This occurred on the first day of my sojourn, when my play-writing energy was -at its height and I regarded the incident simply as an annoying -distraction—the waste of five minutes. I returned to my scenario. But -when next evening the apparition was repeated with remarkable precision, and -again the next evening, and indeed every evening when rain was not falling, -concentration upon the scenario became a considerable effort. “Confound -the man,” I said, “one would think he was learning to be a -marionette!” and for several evenings I cursed him pretty heartily. Then -my annoyance gave way to amazement and curiosity. Why on earth should a man do -this thing? On the fourteenth evening I could stand it no longer, and so soon -as he appeared I opened the french window, crossed the verandah, and directed -myself to the point where he invariably stopped. -</p> - -<p> -He had his watch out as I came up to him. He had a chubby, rubicund face with -reddish brown eyes—previously I had seen him only against the light. -“One moment, sir,” said I as he turned. He stared. “One -moment,” he said, “certainly. Or if you wish to speak to me for -longer, and it is not asking too much—your moment is up—would it -trouble you to accompany me?” -</p> - -<p> -“Not in the least,” said I, placing myself beside him. -</p> - -<p> -“My habits are regular. My time for intercourse—limited.” -</p> - -<p> -“This, I presume, is your time for exercise?” -</p> - -<p> -“It is. I come here to enjoy the sunset.” -</p> - -<p> -“You don’t.” -</p> - -<p> -“Sir?” -</p> - -<p> -“You never look at it.” -</p> - -<p> -“Never look at it?” -</p> - -<p> -“No. I’ve watched you thirteen nights, and not once have you looked -at the sunset—not once.” -</p> - -<p> -He knitted his brows like one who encounters a problem. -</p> - -<p> -“Well, I enjoy the sunlight—the atmosphere—I go along this -path, through that gate”—he jerked his head over his -shoulder—“and round—” -</p> - -<p> -“You don’t. You never have been. It’s all nonsense. There -isn’t a way. To-night for instance—” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh! to-night! Let me see. Ah! I just glanced at my watch, saw that I had -already been out just three minutes over the precise half-hour, decided there -was not time to go round, turned—” -</p> - -<p> -“You always do.” -</p> - -<p> -He looked at me—reflected. “Perhaps I do, now I come to think of -it. But what was it you wanted to speak to me about?” -</p> - -<p> -“Why, this!” -</p> - -<p> -“This?” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes. Why do you do it? Every night you come making a noise—” -</p> - -<p> -“Making a noise?” -</p> - -<p> -“Like this.” I imitated his buzzing noise. He looked at me, and it -was evident the buzzing awakened distaste. “Do I do <i>that?</i>” -he asked. -</p> - -<p> -“Every blessed evening.” -</p> - -<p> -“I had no idea.” -</p> - -<p> -He stopped dead. He regarded me gravely. “Can it be,” he said, -“that I have formed a Habit?” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, it looks like it. Doesn’t it?” -</p> - -<p> -He pulled down his lower lip between finger and thumb. He regarded a puddle at -his feet. -</p> - -<p> -“My mind is much occupied,” he said. “And you want to know -<i>why!</i> Well, sir, I can assure you that not only do I not know why I do -these things, but I did not even know I did them. Come to think, it is just as -you say; I never <i>have</i> been beyond that field.... And these things annoy -you?” -</p> - -<p> -For some reason I was beginning to relent towards him. “Not -<i>annoy</i>,” I said. “But—imagine yourself writing a -play!” -</p> - -<p> -“I couldn’t.” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, anything that needs concentration.” -</p> - -<p> -“Ah!” he said, “of course,” and meditated. His -expression became so eloquent of distress, that I relented still more. After -all, there is a touch of aggression in demanding of a man you don’t know -why he hums on a public footpath. -</p> - -<p> -“You see,” he said weakly, “it’s a habit.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, I recognise that.” -</p> - -<p> -“I must stop it.” -</p> - -<p> -“But not if it puts you out. After all, I had no -business—it’s something of a liberty.” -</p> - -<p> -“Not at all, sir,” he said, “not at all. I am greatly -indebted to you. I should guard myself against these things. In future I will. -Could I trouble you—once again? That noise?” -</p> - -<p> -“Something like this,” I said. “Zuzzoo, zuzzoo. But really, -you know—” -</p> - -<p> -“I am greatly obliged to you. In fact, I know I am getting absurdly -absent-minded. You are quite justified, sir—perfectly justified. Indeed, -I am indebted to you. The thing shall end. And now, sir, I have already brought -you farther than I should have done.” -</p> - -<p> -“I do hope my impertinence—” -</p> - -<p> -“Not at all, sir, not at all.” -</p> - -<p> -We regarded each other for a moment. I raised my hat and wished him a good -evening. He responded convulsively, and so we went our ways. -</p> - -<p> -At the stile I looked back at his receding figure. His bearing had changed -remarkably, he seemed limp, shrunken. The contrast with his former -gesticulating, zuzzoing self took me in some absurd way as pathetic. I watched -him out of sight. Then wishing very heartily I had kept to my own business, I -returned to my bungalow and my play. -</p> - -<p> -The next evening I saw nothing of him, nor the next. But he was very much in my -mind, and it had occurred to me that as a sentimental comic character he might -serve a useful purpose in the development of my plot. The third day he called -upon me. -</p> - -<p> -For a time I was puzzled to think what had brought him. He made indifferent -conversation in the most formal way, then abruptly he came to business. He -wanted to buy me out of my bungalow. -</p> - -<p> -“You see,” he said, “I don’t blame you in the least, -but you’ve destroyed a habit, and it disorganises my day. I’ve -walked past here for years—years. No doubt I’ve hummed.... -You’ve made all that impossible!” -</p> - -<p> -I suggested he might try some other direction. -</p> - -<p> -“No. There is no other direction. This is the only one. I’ve -inquired. And now—every afternoon at four—I come to a dead -wall.” -</p> - -<p> -“But, my dear sir, if the thing is so important to you—” -</p> - -<p> -“It’s vital. You see, I’m—I’m an -investigator—I am engaged in a scientific research. I live—” -he paused and seemed to think. “Just over there,” he said, and -pointed suddenly dangerously near my eye. “The house with white chimneys -you see just over the trees. And my circumstances are abnormal—abnormal. -I am on the point of completing one of the most -important—demonstrations—I can assure you one of <i>the most -important</i> demonstrations that have ever been made. It requires constant -thought, constant mental ease and activity. And the afternoon was my brightest -time!—effervescing with new ideas—new points of view.” -</p> - -<p> -“But why not come by still?” -</p> - -<p> -“It would be all different. I should be self-conscious. I should think of -you at your play—watching me irritated—instead of thinking of my -work. No! I must have the bungalow.” -</p> - -<p> -I meditated. Naturally, I wanted to think the matter over thoroughly before -anything decisive was said. I was generally ready enough for business in those -days, and selling always attracted me; but in the first place it was not my -bungalow, and even if I sold it to him at a good price I might get -inconvenienced in the delivery of goods if the current owner got wind of the -transaction, and in the second I was, well—undischarged. It was clearly a -business that required delicate handling. Moreover, the possibility of his -being in pursuit of some valuable invention also interested me. It occurred to -me that I would like to know more of this research, not with any dishonest -intention, but simply with an idea that to know what it was would be a relief -from play-writing. I threw out feelers. -</p> - -<p> -He was quite willing to supply information. Indeed, once he was fairly under -way the conversation became a monologue. He talked like a man long pent up, who -has had it over with himself again and again. He talked for nearly an hour, and -I must confess I found it a pretty stiff bit of listening. But through it all -there was the undertone of satisfaction one feels when one is neglecting work -one has set oneself. During that first interview I gathered very little of the -drift of his work. Half his words were technicalities entirely strange to me, -and he illustrated one or two points with what he was pleased to call -elementary mathematics, computing on an envelope with a copying-ink pencil, in -a manner that made it hard even to seem to understand. “Yes,” I -said, “yes. Go on!” Nevertheless I made out enough to convince me -that he was no mere crank playing at discoveries. In spite of his crank-like -appearance there was a force about him that made that impossible. Whatever it -was, it was a thing with mechanical possibilities. He told me of a work-shed he -had, and of three assistants—originally jobbing carpenters—whom he -had trained. Now, from the work-shed to the patent office is clearly only one -step. He invited me to see those things. I accepted readily, and took care, by -a remark or so, to underline that. The proposed transfer of the bungalow -remained very conveniently in suspense. -</p> - -<p> -At last he rose to depart, with an apology for the length of his call. Talking -over his work was, he said, a pleasure enjoyed only too rarely. It was not -often he found such an intelligent listener as myself, he mingled very little -with professional scientific men. -</p> - -<p> -“So much pettiness,” he explained; “so much intrigue! And -really, when one has an idea—a novel, fertilising idea—I -don’t want to be uncharitable, but—” -</p> - -<p> -I am a man who believes in impulses. I made what was perhaps a rash -proposition. But you must remember, that I had been alone, play-writing in -Lympne, for fourteen days, and my compunction for his ruined walk still hung -about me. “Why not,” said I, “make this your new habit? In -the place of the one I spoilt? At least, until we can settle about the -bungalow. What you want is to turn over your work in your mind. That you have -always done during your afternoon walk. Unfortunately that’s -over—you can’t get things back as they were. But why not come and -talk about your work to me; use me as a sort of wall against which you may -throw your thoughts and catch them again? It’s certain I don’t know -enough to steal your ideas myself—and I know no scientific -men—” -</p> - -<p> -I stopped. He was considering. Evidently the thing attracted him. “But -I’m afraid I should bore you,” he said. -</p> - -<p> -“You think I’m too dull?” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, no; but technicalities—” -</p> - -<p> -“Anyhow, you’ve interested me immensely this afternoon.” -</p> - -<p> -“Of course it <i>would</i> be a great help to me. Nothing clears up -one’s ideas so much as explaining them. Hitherto—” -</p> - -<p> -“My dear sir, say no more.” -</p> - -<p> -“But really can you spare the time?” -</p> - -<p> -“There is no rest like change of occupation,” I said, with profound -conviction. -</p> - -<p> -The affair was over. On my verandah steps he turned. “I am already -greatly indebted to you,” he said. -</p> - -<p> -I made an interrogative noise. -</p> - -<p> -“You have completely cured me of that ridiculous habit of humming,” -he explained. -</p> - -<p> -I think I said I was glad to be of any service to him, and he turned away. -</p> - -<p> -Immediately the train of thought that our conversation had suggested must have -resumed its sway. His arms began to wave in their former fashion. The faint -echo of “zuzzoo” came back to me on the breeze.... -</p> - -<p> -Well, after all, that was not my affair.... -</p> - -<p> -He came the next day, and again the next day after that, and delivered two -lectures on physics to our mutual satisfaction. He talked with an air of being -extremely lucid about the “ether” and “tubes of force,” -and “gravitational potential,” and things like that, and I sat in -my other folding-chair and said, “Yes,” “Go on,” -“I follow you,” to keep him going. It was tremendously difficult -stuff, but I do not think he ever suspected how much I did not understand him. -There were moments when I doubted whether I was well employed, but at any rate -I was resting from that confounded play. Now and then things gleamed on me -clearly for a space, only to vanish just when I thought I had hold of them. -Sometimes my attention failed altogether, and I would give it up and sit and -stare at him, wondering whether, after all, it would not be better to use him -as a central figure in a good farce and let all this other stuff slide. And -then, perhaps, I would catch on again for a bit. -</p> - -<p> -At the earliest opportunity I went to see his house. It was large and -carelessly furnished; there were no servants other than his three assistants, -and his dietary and private life were characterised by a philosophical -simplicity. He was a water-drinker, a vegetarian, and all those logical -disciplinary things. But the sight of his equipment settled many doubts. It -looked like business from cellar to attic—an amazing little place to find -in an out-of-the-way village. The ground-floor rooms contained benches and -apparatus, the bakehouse and scullery boiler had developed into respectable -furnaces, dynamos occupied the cellar, and there was a gasometer in the garden. -He showed it to me with all the confiding zest of a man who has been living too -much alone. His seclusion was overflowing now in an excess of confidence, and I -had the good luck to be the recipient. -</p> - -<p> -The three assistants were creditable specimens of the class of -“handy-men” from which they came. Conscientious if unintelligent, -strong, civil, and willing. One, Spargus, who did the cooking and all the metal -work, had been a sailor; a second, Gibbs, was a joiner; and the third was an -ex-jobbing gardener, and now general assistant. They were the merest labourers. -All the intelligent work was done by Cavor. Theirs was the darkest ignorance -compared even with my muddled impression. -</p> - -<p> -And now, as to the nature of these inquiries. Here, unhappily, comes a grave -difficulty. I am no scientific expert, and if I were to attempt to set forth in -the highly scientific language of Mr. Cavor the aim to which his experiments -tended, I am afraid I should confuse not only the reader but myself, and almost -certainly I should make some blunder that would bring upon me the mockery of -every up-to-date student of mathematical physics in the country. The best thing -I can do therefore is, I think to give my impressions in my own inexact -language, without any attempt to wear a garment of knowledge to which I have no -claim. -</p> - -<p> -The object of Mr. Cavor’s search was a substance that should be -“opaque”—he used some other word I have forgotten, but -“opaque” conveys the idea—to “all forms of radiant -energy.” “Radiant energy,” he made me understand, was -anything like light or heat, or those Röntgen Rays there was so much talk about -a year or so ago, or the electric waves of Marconi, or gravitation. All these -things, he said, <i>radiate</i> out from centres, and act on bodies at a -distance, whence comes the term “radiant energy.” Now almost all -substances are opaque to some form or other of radiant energy. Glass, for -example, is transparent to light, but much less so to heat, so that it is -useful as a fire-screen; and alum is transparent to light, but blocks heat -completely. A solution of iodine in carbon bisulphide, on the other hand, -completely blocks light, but is quite transparent to heat. It will hide a fire -from you, but permit all its warmth to reach you. Metals are not only opaque to -light and heat, but also to electrical energy, which passes through both iodine -solution and glass almost as though they were not interposed. And so on. -</p> - -<p> -Now all known substances are “transparent” to gravitation. You can -use screens of various sorts to cut off the light or heat, or electrical -influence of the sun, or the warmth of the earth from anything; you can screen -things by sheets of metal from Marconi’s rays, but nothing will cut off -the gravitational attraction of the sun or the gravitational attraction of the -earth. Yet why there should be nothing is hard to say. Cavor did not see why -such a substance should not exist, and certainly I could not tell him. I had -never thought of such a possibility before. He showed me by calculations on -paper, which Lord Kelvin, no doubt, or Professor Lodge, or Professor Karl -Pearson, or any of those great scientific people might have understood, but -which simply reduced me to a hopeless muddle, that not only was such a -substance possible, but that it must satisfy certain conditions. It was an -amazing piece of reasoning. Much as it amazed and exercised me at the time, it -would be impossible to reproduce it here. “Yes,” I said to it all, -“yes; go on!” Suffice it for this story that he believed he might -be able to manufacture this possible substance opaque to gravitation out of a -complicated alloy of metals and something new—a new element, I -fancy—called, I believe, <i>helium</i>, which was sent to him from London -in sealed stone jars. Doubt has been thrown upon this detail, but I am almost -certain it was <i>helium</i> he had sent him in sealed stone jars. It was -certainly something very gaseous and thin. If only I had taken notes... -</p> - -<p> -But then, how was I to foresee the necessity of taking notes? -</p> - -<p> -Any one with the merest germ of an imagination will understand the -extraordinary possibilities of such a substance, and will sympathise a little -with the emotion I felt as this understanding emerged from the haze of abstruse -phrases in which Cavor expressed himself. Comic relief in a play indeed! It was -some time before I would believe that I had interpreted him aright, and I was -very careful not to ask questions that would have enabled him to gauge the -profundity of misunderstanding into which he dropped his daily exposition. But -no one reading the story of it here will sympathise fully, because from my -barren narrative it will be impossible to gather the strength of my conviction -that this astonishing substance was positively going to be made. -</p> - -<p> -I do not recall that I gave my play an hour’s consecutive work at any -time after my visit to his house. My imagination had other things to do. There -seemed no limit to the possibilities of the stuff; whichever way I tried I came -on miracles and revolutions. For example, if one wanted to lift a weight, -however enormous, one had only to get a sheet of this substance beneath it, and -one might lift it with a straw. My first natural impulse was to apply this -principle to guns and ironclads, and all the material and methods of war, and -from that to shipping, locomotion, building, every conceivable form of human -industry. The chance that had brought me into the very birth-chamber of this -new time—it was an epoch, no less—was one of those chances that -come once in a thousand years. The thing unrolled, it expanded and expanded. -Among other things I saw in it my redemption as a business man. I saw a parent -company, and daughter companies, applications to right of us, applications to -left, rings and trusts, privileges, and concessions spreading and spreading, -until one vast, stupendous Cavorite company ran and ruled the world. -</p> - -<p> -And I was in it! -</p> - -<p> -I took my line straight away. I knew I was staking everything, but I jumped -there and then. -</p> - -<p> -“We’re on absolutely the biggest thing that has ever been -invented,” I said, and put the accent on “we.” “If you -want to keep me out of this, you’ll have to do it with a gun. I’m -coming down to be your fourth labourer to-morrow.” -</p> - -<p> -He seemed surprised at my enthusiasm, but not a bit suspicious or hostile. -Rather, he was self-depreciatory. He looked at me doubtfully. “But do you -really think—?” he said. “And your play! How about that -play?” -</p> - -<p> -“It’s vanished!” I cried. “My dear sir, don’t you -see what you’ve got? Don’t you see what you’re going to -do?” -</p> - -<p> -That was merely a rhetorical turn, but positively, he didn’t. At first I -could not believe it. He had not had the beginning of the inkling of an idea. -This astonishing little man had been working on purely theoretical grounds the -whole time! When he said it was “the most important” research the -world had ever seen, he simply meant it squared up so many theories, settled so -much that was in doubt; he had troubled no more about the application of the -stuff he was going to turn out than if he had been a machine that makes guns. -This was a possible substance, and he was going to make it! <i>V’la -tout</i>, as the Frenchman says. -</p> - -<p> -Beyond that, he was childish! If he made it, it would go down to posterity as -Cavorite or Cavorine, and he would be made an F.R.S., and his portrait given -away as a scientific worthy with <i>Nature</i>, and things like that. And that -was all he saw! He would have dropped this bombshell into the world as though -he had discovered a new species of gnat, if it had not happened that I had come -along. And there it would have lain and fizzled, like one or two other little -things these scientific people have lit and dropped about us. -</p> - -<p> -When I realised this, it was I did the talking, and Cavor who said, “Go -on!” I jumped up. I paced the room, gesticulating like a boy of twenty. I -tried to make him understand his duties and responsibilities in the -matter—<i>our</i> duties and responsibilities in the matter. I assured -him we might make wealth enough to work any sort of social revolution we -fancied, we might own and order the whole world. I told him of companies and -patents, and the case for secret processes. All these things seemed to take him -much as his mathematics had taken me. A look of perplexity came into his ruddy -little face. He stammered something about indifference to wealth, but I brushed -all that aside. He had got to be rich, and it was no good his stammering. I -gave him to understand the sort of man I was, and that I had had very -considerable business experience. I did not tell him I was an undischarged -bankrupt at the time, because that was temporary, but I think I reconciled my -evident poverty with my financial claims. And quite insensibly, in the way such -projects grow, the understanding of a Cavorite monopoly grew up between us. He -was to make the stuff, and I was to make the boom. -</p> - -<p> -I stuck like a leech to the “we”—“you” and -“I” didn’t exist for me. -</p> - -<p> -His idea was that the profits I spoke of might go to endow research, but that, -of course, was a matter we had to settle later. “That’s all -right,” I shouted, “that’s all right.” The great point, -as I insisted, was to get the thing done. -</p> - -<p> -“Here is a substance,” I cried, “no home, no factory, no -fortress, no ship can dare to be without—more universally applicable even -than a patent medicine. There isn’t a solitary aspect of it, not one of -its ten thousand possible uses that will not make us rich, Cavor, beyond the -dreams of avarice!” -</p> - -<p> -“No!” he said. “I begin to see. It’s extraordinary how -one gets new points of view by talking over things!” -</p> - -<p> -“And as it happens you have just talked to the right man!” -</p> - -<p> -“I suppose no one,” he said, “is absolutely <i>averse</i> to -enormous wealth. Of course there is one thing—” -</p> - -<p> -He paused. I stood still. -</p> - -<p> -“It is just possible, you know, that we may not be able to make it after -all! It may be one of those things that are a theoretical possibility, but a -practical absurdity. Or when we make it, there may be some little hitch!” -</p> - -<p> -“We’ll tackle the hitch when it comes,” said I. -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap02"></a>II.<br /> -The First Making of Cavorite</h2> - -<p> -But Cavor’s fears were groundless, so far as the actual making was -concerned. On the 14th of October, 1899, this incredible substance was made! -</p> - -<p> -Oddly enough, it was made at last by accident, when Mr. Cavor least expected -it. He had fused together a number of metals and certain other things—I -wish I knew the particulars now!—and he intended to leave the mixture a -week and then allow it to cool slowly. Unless he had miscalculated, the last -stage in the combination would occur when the stuff sank to a temperature of 60 -degrees Fahrenheit. But it chanced that, unknown to Cavor, dissension had -arisen about the furnace tending. Gibbs, who had previously seen to this, had -suddenly attempted to shift it to the man who had been a gardener, on the score -that coal was soil, being dug, and therefore could not possibly fall within the -province of a joiner; the man who had been a jobbing gardener alleged, however, -that coal was a metallic or ore-like substance, let alone that he was cook. But -Spargus insisted on Gibbs doing the coaling, seeing that he was a joiner and -that coal is notoriously fossil wood. Consequently Gibbs ceased to replenish -the furnace, and no one else did so, and Cavor was too much immersed in certain -interesting problems concerning a Cavorite flying machine (neglecting the -resistance of the air and one or two other points) to perceive that anything -was wrong. And the premature birth of his invention took place just as he was -coming across the field to my bungalow for our afternoon talk and tea. -</p> - -<p> -I remember the occasion with extreme vividness. The water was boiling, and -everything was prepared, and the sound of his “zuzzoo” had brought -me out upon the verandah. His active little figure was black against the -autumnal sunset, and to the right the chimneys of his house just rose above a -gloriously tinted group of trees. Remoter rose the Wealden Hills, faint and -blue, while to the left the hazy marsh spread out spacious and serene. And -then— -</p> - -<p> -The chimneys jerked heavenward, smashing into a string of bricks as they rose, -and the roof and a miscellany of furniture followed. Then overtaking them came -a huge white flame. The trees about the building swayed and whirled and tore -themselves to pieces, that sprang towards the flare. My ears were smitten with -a clap of thunder that left me deaf on one side for life, and all about me -windows smashed, unheeded. -</p> - -<p> -I took three steps from the verandah towards Cavor’s house, and even as I -did so came the wind. -</p> - -<p> -Instantly my coat tails were over my head, and I was progressing in great leaps -and bounds, and quite against my will, towards him. In the same moment the -discoverer was seized, whirled about, and flew through the screaming air. I saw -one of my chimney pots hit the ground within six yards of me, leap a score of -feet, and so hurry in great strides towards the focus of the disturbance. -Cavor, kicking and flapping, came down again, rolled over and over on the -ground for a space, struggled up and was lifted and borne forward at an -enormous velocity, vanishing at last among the labouring, lashing trees that -writhed about his house. -</p> - -<p> -A mass of smoke and ashes, and a square of bluish shining substance rushed up -towards the zenith. A large fragment of fencing came sailing past me, dropped -edgeways, hit the ground and fell flat, and then the worst was over. The aerial -commotion fell swiftly until it was a mere strong gale, and I became once more -aware that I had breath and feet. By leaning back against the wind I managed to -stop, and could collect such wits as still remained to me. -</p> - -<p> -In that instant the whole face of the world had changed. The tranquil sunset -had vanished, the sky was dark with scurrying clouds, everything was flattened -and swaying with the gale. I glanced back to see if my bungalow was still in a -general way standing, then staggered forwards towards the trees amongst which -Cavor had vanished, and through whose tall and leaf-denuded branches shone the -flames of his burning house. -</p> - -<p> -I entered the copse, dashing from one tree to another and clinging to them, and -for a space I sought him in vain. Then amidst a heap of smashed branches and -fencing that had banked itself against a portion of his garden wall I perceived -something stir. I made a run for this, but before I reached it a brown object -separated itself, rose on two muddy legs, and protruded two drooping, bleeding -hands. Some tattered ends of garment fluttered out from its middle portion and -streamed before the wind. -</p> - -<p> -For a moment I did not recognise this earthy lump, and then I saw that it was -Cavor, caked in the mud in which he had rolled. He leant forward against the -wind, rubbing the dirt from his eyes and mouth. -</p> - -<p> -He extended a muddy lump of hand, and staggered a pace towards me. His face -worked with emotion, little lumps of mud kept falling from it. He looked as -damaged and pitiful as any living creature I have ever seen, and his remark -therefore amazed me exceedingly. -</p> - -<p> -“Gratulate me,” he gasped; “gratulate me!” -</p> - -<p> -“Congratulate you!” said I. “Good heavens! What for?” -</p> - -<p> -“I’ve done it.” -</p> - -<p> -“You <i>have</i>. What on earth caused that explosion?” -</p> - -<p> -A gust of wind blew his words away. I understood him to say that it -wasn’t an explosion at all. The wind hurled me into collision with him, -and we stood clinging to one another. -</p> - -<p> -“Try and get back—to my bungalow,” I bawled in his ear. He -did not hear me, and shouted something about “three -martyrs—science,” and also something about “not much -good.” At the time he laboured under the impression that his three -attendants had perished in the whirlwind. Happily this was incorrect. Directly -he had left for my bungalow they had gone off to the public-house in Lympne to -discuss the question of the furnaces over some trivial refreshment. -</p> - -<p> -I repeated my suggestion of getting back to my bungalow, and this time he -understood. We clung arm-in-arm and started, and managed at last to reach the -shelter of as much roof as was left to me. For a space we sat in arm-chairs and -panted. All the windows were broken, and the lighter articles of furniture were -in great disorder, but no irrevocable damage was done. Happily the kitchen door -had stood the pressure upon it, so that all my crockery and cooking materials -had survived. The oil stove was still burning, and I put on the water to boil -again for tea. And that prepared, I could turn on Cavor for his explanation. -</p> - -<p> -“Quite correct,” he insisted; “quite correct. I’ve done -it, and it’s all right.” -</p> - -<p> -“But,” I protested. “All right! Why, there can’t be a -rick standing, or a fence or a thatched roof undamaged for twenty miles -round....” -</p> - -<p> -“It’s all right—<i>really</i>. I didn’t, of course, -foresee this little upset. My mind was preoccupied with another problem, and -I’m apt to disregard these practical side issues. But it’s all -right—” -</p> - -<p> -“My dear sir,” I cried, “don’t you see you’ve -done thousands of pounds’ worth of damage?” -</p> - -<p> -“There, I throw myself on your discretion. I’m not a practical man, -of course, but don’t you think they will regard it as a cyclone?” -</p> - -<p> -“But the explosion—” -</p> - -<p> -“It was <i>not</i> an explosion. It’s perfectly simple. Only, as I -say, I’m apt to overlook these little things. It’s that zuzzoo -business on a larger scale. Inadvertently I made this substance of mine, this -Cavorite, in a thin, wide sheet....” -</p> - -<p> -He paused. “You are quite clear that the stuff is opaque to gravitation, -that it cuts off things from gravitating towards each other?” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes,” said I. “Yes.” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, so soon as it reached a temperature of 60 degrees Fahrenheit, and -the process of its manufacture was complete, the air above it, the portions of -roof and ceiling and floor above it ceased to have weight. I suppose you -know—everybody knows nowadays—that, as a usual thing, the air -<i>has</i> weight, that it presses on everything at the surface of the earth, -presses in all directions, with a pressure of fourteen and a half pounds to the -square inch?” -</p> - -<p> -“I know that,” said I. “Go on.” -</p> - -<p> -“I know that too,” he remarked. “Only this shows you how -useless knowledge is unless you apply it. You see, over our Cavorite this -ceased to be the case, the air there ceased to exert any pressure, and the air -round it and not over the Cavorite was exerting a pressure of fourteen pounds -and a half to the square inch upon this suddenly weightless air. Ah! you begin -to see! The air all about the Cavorite crushed in upon the air above it with -irresistible force. The air above the Cavorite was forced upward violently, the -air that rushed in to replace it immediately lost weight, ceased to exert any -pressure, followed suit, blew the ceiling through and the roof off.... -</p> - -<p> -“You perceive,” he said, “it formed a sort of atmospheric -fountain, a kind of chimney in the atmosphere. And if the Cavorite itself -hadn’t been loose and so got sucked up the chimney, does it occur to you -what would have happened?” -</p> - -<p> -I thought. “I suppose,” I said, “the air would be rushing up -and up over that infernal piece of stuff now.” -</p> - -<p> -“Precisely,” he said. “A huge fountain—” -</p> - -<p> -“Spouting into space! Good heavens! Why, it would have squirted all the -atmosphere of the earth away! It would have robbed the world of air! It would -have been the death of all mankind! That little lump of stuff!” -</p> - -<p> -“Not exactly into space,” said Cavor, “but as -bad—practically. It would have whipped the air off the world as one peels -a banana, and flung it thousands of miles. It would have dropped back again, of -course—but on an asphyxiated world! From our point of view very little -better than if it never came back!” -</p> - -<p> -I stared. As yet I was too amazed to realise how all my expectations had been -upset. “What do you mean to do now?” I asked. -</p> - -<p> -“In the first place if I may borrow a garden trowel I will remove some of -this earth with which I am encased, and then if I may avail myself of your -domestic conveniences I will have a bath. This done, we will converse more at -leisure. It will be wise, I think”—he laid a muddy hand on my -arm—“if nothing were said of this affair beyond ourselves. I know I -have caused great damage—probably even dwelling-houses may be ruined here -and there upon the country-side. But on the other hand, I cannot possibly pay -for the damage I have done, and if the real cause of this is published, it will -lead only to heartburning and the obstruction of my work. One cannot foresee -<i>everything</i>, you know, and I cannot consent for one moment to add the -burthen of practical considerations to my theorising. Later on, when you have -come in with your practical mind, and Cavorite is floated—floated -<i>is</i> the word, isn’t it?—and it has realised all you -anticipate for it, we may set matters right with these persons. But not -now—not now. If no other explanation is offered, people, in the present -unsatisfactory state of meteorological science, will ascribe all this to a -cyclone; there might be a public subscription, and as my house has collapsed -and been burnt, I should in that case receive a considerable share in the -compensation, which would be extremely helpful to the prosecution of our -researches. But if it is known that <i>I</i> caused this, there will be no -public subscription, and everybody will be put out. Practically I should never -get a chance of working in peace again. My three assistants may or may not have -perished. That is a detail. If they have, it is no great loss; they were more -zealous than able, and this premature event must be largely due to their joint -neglect of the furnace. If they have not perished, I doubt if they have the -intelligence to explain the affair. They will accept the cyclone story. And if -during the temporary unfitness of my house for occupation, I may lodge in one -of the untenanted rooms of this bungalow of yours—” -</p> - -<p> -He paused and regarded me. -</p> - -<p> -A man of such possibilities, I reflected, is no ordinary guest to entertain. -</p> - -<p> -“Perhaps,” said I, rising to my feet, “we had better begin by -looking for a trowel,” and I led the way to the scattered vestiges of the -greenhouse. -</p> - -<p> -And while he was having his bath I considered the entire question alone. It was -clear there were drawbacks to Mr. Cavor’s society I had not foreseen. The -absentmindedness that had just escaped depopulating the terrestrial globe, -might at any moment result in some other grave inconvenience. On the other hand -I was young, my affairs were in a mess, and I was in just the mood for reckless -adventure—with a chance of something good at the end of it. I had quite -settled in my mind that I was to have half at least in that aspect of the -affair. Fortunately I held my bungalow, as I have already explained, on a -three-year agreement, without being responsible for repairs; and my furniture, -such as there was of it, had been hastily purchased, was unpaid for, insured, -and altogether devoid of associations. In the end I decided to keep on with -him, and see the business through. -</p> - -<p> -Certainly the aspect of things had changed very greatly. I no longer doubted at -all the enormous possibilities of the substance, but I began to have doubts -about the gun-carriage and the patent boots. We set to work at once to -reconstruct his laboratory and proceed with our experiments. Cavor talked more -on my level than he had ever done before, when it came to the question of how -we should make the stuff next. -</p> - -<p> -“Of course we must make it again,” he said, with a sort of glee I -had not expected in him, “of course we must make it again. We have caught -a Tartar, perhaps, but we have left the theoretical behind us for good and all. -If we can possibly avoid wrecking this little planet of ours, we will. -But—there <i>must</i> be risks! There must be. In experimental work there -always are. And here, as a practical man, <i>you</i> must come in. For my own -part it seems to me we might make it edgeways, perhaps, and very thin. Yet I -don’t know. I have a certain dim perception of another method. I can -hardly explain it yet. But curiously enough it came into my mind, while I was -rolling over and over in the mud before the wind, and very doubtful how the -whole adventure was to end, as being absolutely the thing I ought to have -done.” -</p> - -<p> -Even with my aid we found some little difficulty, and meanwhile we kept at work -restoring the laboratory. There was plenty to do before it became absolutely -necessary to decide upon the precise form and method of our second attempt. Our -only hitch was the strike of the three labourers, who objected to my activity -as a foreman. But that matter we compromised after two days’ delay. -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap03"></a>III.<br /> -The Building of the sphere</h2> - -<p> -I remember the occasion very distinctly when Cavor told me of his idea of the -sphere. He had had intimations of it before, but at the time it seemed to come -to him in a rush. We were returning to the bungalow for tea, and on the way he -fell humming. Suddenly he shouted, “That’s it! That finishes it! A -sort of roller blind!” -</p> - -<p> -“Finishes what?” I asked. -</p> - -<p> -“Space—anywhere! The moon.” -</p> - -<p> -“What do you mean?” -</p> - -<p> -“Mean? Why—it must be a sphere! That’s what I mean!” -</p> - -<p> -I saw I was out of it, and for a time I let him talk in his own fashion. I -hadn’t the ghost of an idea then of his drift. But after he had taken tea -he made it clear to me. -</p> - -<p> -“It’s like this,” he said. “Last time I ran this stuff -that cuts things off from gravitation into a flat tank with an overlap that -held it down. And directly it had cooled and the manufacture was completed all -that uproar happened, nothing above it weighed anything, the air went squirting -up, the house squirted up, and if the stuff itself hadn’t squirted up -too, I don’t know what would have happened! But suppose the substance is -loose, and quite free to go up?” -</p> - -<p> -“It will go up at once!” -</p> - -<p> -“Exactly. With no more disturbance than firing a big gun.” -</p> - -<p> -“But what good will that do?” -</p> - -<p> -“I’m going up with it!” -</p> - -<p> -I put down my teacup and stared at him. -</p> - -<p> -“Imagine a sphere,” he explained, “large enough to hold two -people and their luggage. It will be made of steel lined with thick glass; it -will contain a proper store of solidified air, concentrated food, water -distilling apparatus, and so forth. And enamelled, as it were, on the outer -steel—” -</p> - -<p> -“Cavorite?” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes.” -</p> - -<p> -“But how will you get inside?” -</p> - -<p> -“There was a similar problem about a dumpling.” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes, I know. But how?” -</p> - -<p> -“That’s perfectly easy. An air-tight manhole is all that is needed. -That, of course, will have to be a little complicated; there will have to be a -valve, so that things may be thrown out, if necessary, without much loss of -air.” -</p> - -<p> -“Like Jules Verne’s thing in <i>A Trip to the Moon</i>.” -</p> - -<p> -But Cavor was not a reader of fiction. -</p> - -<p> -“I begin to see,” I said slowly. “And you could get in and -screw yourself up while the Cavorite was warm, and as soon as it cooled it -would become impervious to gravitation, and off you would fly—” -</p> - -<p> -“At a tangent.” -</p> - -<p> -“You would go off in a straight line—” I stopped abruptly. -“What is to prevent the thing travelling in a straight line into space -for ever?” I asked. “You’re not safe to get anywhere, and if -you do—how will you get back?” -</p> - -<p> -“I’ve just thought of that,” said Cavor. “That’s -what I meant when I said the thing is finished. The inner glass sphere can be -air-tight, and, except for the manhole, continuous, and the steel sphere can be -made in sections, each section capable of rolling up after the fashion of a -roller blind. These can easily be worked by springs, and released and checked -by electricity conveyed by platinum wires fused through the glass. All that is -merely a question of detail. So you see, that except for the thickness of the -blind rollers, the Cavorite exterior of the sphere will consist of windows or -blinds, whichever you like to call them. Well, when all these windows or blinds -are shut, no light, no heat, no gravitation, no radiant energy of any sort will -get at the inside of the sphere, it will fly on through space in a straight -line, as you say. But open a window, imagine one of the windows open. Then at -once any heavy body that chances to be in that direction will attract -us—” -</p> - -<p> -I sat taking it in. -</p> - -<p> -“You see?” he said. -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, I <i>see</i>.” -</p> - -<p> -“Practically we shall be able to tack about in space just as we wish. Get -attracted by this and that.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, yes. <i>That’s</i> clear enough. Only—” -</p> - -<p> -“Well?” -</p> - -<p> -“I don’t quite see what we shall do it for! It’s really only -jumping off the world and back again.” -</p> - -<p> -“Surely! For example, one might go to the moon.” -</p> - -<p> -“And when one got there? What would you find?” -</p> - -<p> -“We should see—Oh! consider the new knowledge.” -</p> - -<p> -“Is there air there?” -</p> - -<p> -“There may be.” -</p> - -<p> -“It’s a fine idea,” I said, “but it strikes me as a -large order all the same. The moon! I’d much rather try some smaller -things first.” -</p> - -<p> -“They’re out of the question, because of the air difficulty.” -</p> - -<p> -“Why not apply that idea of spring blinds—Cavorite blinds in strong -steel cases—to lifting weights?” -</p> - -<p> -“It wouldn’t work,” he insisted. “After all, to go into -outer space is not so much worse, if at all, than a polar expedition. Men go on -polar expeditions.” -</p> - -<p> -“Not business men. And besides, they get paid for polar expeditions. And -if anything goes wrong there are relief parties. But this—it’s just -firing ourselves off the world for nothing.” -</p> - -<p> -“Call it prospecting.” -</p> - -<p> -“You’ll have to call it that.... One might make a book of it -perhaps,” I said. -</p> - -<p> -“I have no doubt there will be minerals,” said Cavor. -</p> - -<p> -“For example?” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh! sulphur, ores, gold perhaps, possibly new elements.” -</p> - -<p> -“Cost of carriage,” I said. “You know you’re -<i>not</i> a practical man. The moon’s a quarter of a million miles -away.” -</p> - -<p> -“It seems to me it wouldn’t cost much to cart any weight anywhere -if you packed it in a Cavorite case.” -</p> - -<p> -I had not thought of that. “Delivered free on head of purchaser, -eh?” -</p> - -<p> -“It isn’t as though we were confined to the moon.” -</p> - -<p> -“You mean?” -</p> - -<p> -“There’s Mars—clear atmosphere, novel surroundings, -exhilarating sense of lightness. It might be pleasant to go there.” -</p> - -<p> -“Is there air on Mars?” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, yes!” -</p> - -<p> -“Seems as though you might run it as a sanatorium. By the way, how far is -Mars?” -</p> - -<p> -“Two hundred million miles at present,” said Cavor airily; -“and you go close by the sun.” -</p> - -<p> -My imagination was picking itself up again. “After all,” I said, -“there’s something in these things. There’s -travel—” -</p> - -<p> -An extraordinary possibility came rushing into my mind. Suddenly I saw, as in a -vision, the whole solar system threaded with Cavorite liners and spheres -<i>de luxe</i>. “Rights of pre-emption,” came floating into my -head—planetary rights of pre-emption. I recalled the old Spanish monopoly -in American gold. It wasn’t as though it was just this planet or -that—it was all of them. I stared at Cavor’s rubicund face, and -suddenly my imagination was leaping and dancing. I stood up, I walked up and -down; my tongue was unloosened. -</p> - -<p> -“I’m beginning to take it in,” I said; “I’m -beginning to take it in.” The transition from doubt to enthusiasm seemed -to take scarcely any time at all. “But this is tremendous!” I -cried. “This is Imperial! I haven’t been dreaming of this sort of -thing.” -</p> - -<p> -Once the chill of my opposition was removed, his own pent-up excitement had -play. He too got up and paced. He too gesticulated and shouted. We behaved like -men inspired. We <i>were</i> men inspired. -</p> - -<p> -“We’ll settle all that!” he said in answer to some incidental -difficulty that had pulled me up. “We’ll soon settle that! -We’ll start the drawings for mouldings this very night.” -</p> - -<p> -“We’ll start them now,” I responded, and we hurried off to -the laboratory to begin upon this work forthwith. -</p> - -<p> -I was like a child in Wonderland all that night. The dawn found us both still -at work—we kept our electric light going heedless of the day. I remember -now exactly how these drawings looked. I shaded and tinted while Cavor -drew—smudged and haste-marked they were in every line, but wonderfully -correct. We got out the orders for the steel blinds and frames we needed from -that night’s work, and the glass sphere was designed within a week. We -gave up our afternoon conversations and our old routine altogether. We worked, -and we slept and ate when we could work no longer for hunger and fatigue. Our -enthusiasm infected even our three men, though they had no idea what the sphere -was for. Through those days the man Gibbs gave up walking, and went everywhere, -even across the room, at a sort of fussy run. -</p> - -<p> -And it grew—the sphere. December passed, January—I spent a day with -a broom sweeping a path through the snow from bungalow to -laboratory—February, March. By the end of March the completion was in -sight. In January had come a team of horses, a huge packing-case; we had our -thick glass sphere now ready, and in position under the crane we had rigged to -sling it into the steel shell. All the bars and blinds of the steel -shell—it was not really a spherical shell, but polyhedral, with a roller -blind to each facet—had arrived by February, and the lower half was -bolted together. The Cavorite was half made by March, the metallic paste had -gone through two of the stages in its manufacture, and we had plastered quite -half of it on to the steel bars and blinds. It was astonishing how closely we -kept to the lines of Cavor’s first inspiration in working out the scheme. -When the bolting together of the sphere was finished, he proposed to remove the -rough roof of the temporary laboratory in which the work was done, and build a -furnace about it. So the last stage of Cavorite making, in which the paste is -heated to a dull red glow in a stream of helium, would be accomplished when it -was already on the sphere. -</p> - -<p> -And then we had to discuss and decide what provisions we were to -take—compressed foods, concentrated essences, steel cylinders containing -reserve oxygen, an arrangement for removing carbonic acid and waste from the -air and restoring oxygen by means of sodium peroxide, water condensers, and so -forth. I remember the little heap they made in the corner—tins, and -rolls, and boxes—convincingly matter-of-fact. -</p> - -<p> -It was a strenuous time, with little chance of thinking. But one day, when we -were drawing near the end, an odd mood came over me. I had been bricking up the -furnace all the morning, and I sat down by these possessions dead beat. -Everything seemed dull and incredible. -</p> - -<p> -“But look here, Cavor,” I said. “After all! What’s it -all for?” -</p> - -<p> -He smiled. “The thing now is to go.” -</p> - -<p> -“The moon,” I reflected. “But what do you expect? I thought -the moon was a dead world.” -</p> - -<p> -He shrugged his shoulders. -</p> - -<p> -“We’re going to see.” -</p> - -<p> -“<i>Are</i> we?” I said, and stared before me. -</p> - -<p> -“You are tired,” he remarked. “You’d better take a walk -this afternoon.” -</p> - -<p> -“No,” I said obstinately; “I’m going to finish this -brickwork.” -</p> - -<p> -And I did, and insured myself a night of insomnia. I don’t think I have -ever had such a night. I had some bad times before my business collapse, but -the very worst of those was sweet slumber compared to this infinity of aching -wakefulness. I was suddenly in the most enormous funk at the thing we were -going to do. -</p> - -<p> -I do not remember before that night thinking at all of the risks we were -running. Now they came like that array of spectres that once beleaguered -Prague, and camped around me. The strangeness of what we were about to do, the -unearthliness of it, overwhelmed me. I was like a man awakened out of pleasant -dreams to the most horrible surroundings. I lay, eyes wide open, and the sphere -seemed to get more flimsy and feeble, and Cavor more unreal and fantastic, and -the whole enterprise madder and madder every moment. -</p> - -<p> -I got out of bed and wandered about. I sat at the window and stared at the -immensity of space. Between the stars was the void, the unfathomable darkness! -I tried to recall the fragmentary knowledge of astronomy I had gained in my -irregular reading, but it was all too vague to furnish any idea of the things -we might expect. At last I got back to bed and snatched some moments of -sleep—moments of nightmare rather—in which I fell and fell and fell -for evermore into the abyss of the sky. -</p> - -<p> -I astonished Cavor at breakfast. I told him shortly, “I’m not -coming with you in the sphere.” -</p> - -<p> -I met all his protests with a sullen persistence. “The thing’s too -mad,” I said, “and I won’t come. The thing’s too -mad.” -</p> - -<p> -I would not go with him to the laboratory. I fretted about my bungalow for a -time, and then took hat and stick and set out alone, I knew not whither. It -chanced to be a glorious morning: a warm wind and deep blue sky, the first -green of spring abroad, and multitudes of birds singing. I lunched on beef and -beer in a little public-house near Elham, and startled the landlord by -remarking <i>apropos</i> of the weather, “A man who leaves the world when -days of this sort are about is a fool!” -</p> - -<p> -“That’s what I says when I heerd on it!” said the landlord, -and I found that for one poor soul at least this world had proved excessive, -and there had been a throat-cutting. I went on with a new twist to my thoughts. -</p> - -<p> -In the afternoon I had a pleasant sleep in a sunny place, and went on my way -refreshed. -</p> - -<p> -I came to a comfortable-looking inn near Canterbury. It was bright with -creepers, and the landlady was a clean old woman and took my eye. I found I had -just enough money to pay for my lodging with her. I decided to stop the night -there. She was a talkative body, and among many other particulars I learnt she -had never been to London. “Canterbury’s as far as ever I -been,” she said. “I’m not one of your gad-about sort.” -</p> - -<p> -“How would you like a trip to the moon?” I cried. -</p> - -<p> -“I never did hold with them ballooneys,” she said evidently under -the impression that this was a common excursion enough. “I wouldn’t -go up in one—not for ever so.” -</p> - -<p> -This struck me as being funny. After I had supped I sat on a bench by the door -of the inn and gossiped with two labourers about brickmaking, and motor cars, -and the cricket of last year. And in the sky a faint new crescent, blue and -vague as a distant Alp, sank westward over the sun. -</p> - -<p> -The next day I returned to Cavor. “I am coming,” I said. -“I’ve been a little out of order, that’s all.” -</p> - -<p> -That was the only time I felt any serious doubt our enterprise. Nerves purely! -After that I worked a little more carefully, and took a trudge for an hour -every day. And at last, save for the heating in the furnace, our labours were -at an end. -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap04"></a>IV.<br /> -Inside the Sphere</h2> - -<p> -“Go on,” said Cavor, as I sat across the edge of the manhole, and -looked down into the black interior of the sphere. We two were alone. It was -evening, the sun had set, and the stillness of the twilight was upon -everything. -</p> - -<p> -I drew my other leg inside and slid down the smooth glass to the bottom of the -sphere, then turned to take the cans of food and other impedimenta from Cavor. -The interior was warm, the thermometer stood at eighty, and as we should lose -little or none of this by radiation, we were dressed in shoes and thin -flannels. We had, however, a bundle of thick woollen clothing and several thick -blankets to guard against mischance. -</p> - -<p> -By Cavor’s direction I placed the packages, the cylinders of oxygen, and -so forth, loosely about my feet, and soon we had everything in. He walked about -the roofless shed for a time seeking anything we had overlooked, and then -crawled in after me. I noted something in his hand. -</p> - -<p> -“What have you got there?” I asked. -</p> - -<p> -“Haven’t you brought anything to read?” -</p> - -<p> -“Good Lord! No.” -</p> - -<p> -“I forgot to tell you. There are uncertainties— The voyage may -last— We may be weeks!” -</p> - -<p> -“But—” -</p> - -<p> -“We shall be floating in this sphere with absolutely no -occupation.” -</p> - -<p> -“I wish I’d known—” -</p> - -<p> -He peered out of the manhole. “Look!” he said. “There’s -something there!” -</p> - -<p> -“Is there time?” -</p> - -<p> -“We shall be an hour.” -</p> - -<p> -I looked out. It was an old number of <i>Tit-Bits</i> that one of the men must -have brought. Farther away in the corner I saw a torn <i>Lloyd’s -News</i>. I scrambled back into the sphere with these things. “What have -you got?” I said. -</p> - -<p> -I took the book from his hand and read, “The Works of William -Shakespeare”. -</p> - -<p> -He coloured slightly. “My education has been so purely -scientific—” he said apologetically. -</p> - -<p> -“Never read him?” -</p> - -<p> -“Never.” -</p> - -<p> -“He knew a little, you know—in an irregular sort of way.” -</p> - -<p> -“Precisely what I am told,” said Cavor. -</p> - -<p> -I assisted him to screw in the glass cover of the manhole, and then he pressed -a stud to close the corresponding blind in the outer case. The little oblong of -twilight vanished. We were in darkness. For a time neither of us spoke. -Although our case would not be impervious to sound, everything was very still. -I perceived there was nothing to grip when the shock of our start should come, -and I realised that I should be uncomfortable for want of a chair. -</p> - -<p> -“Why have we no chairs?” I asked. -</p> - -<p> -“I’ve settled all that,” said Cavor. “We won’t -need them.” -</p> - -<p> -“Why not?” -</p> - -<p> -“You will see,” he said, in the tone of a man who refuses to talk. -</p> - -<p> -I became silent. Suddenly it had come to me clear and vivid that I was a fool -to be inside that sphere. Even now, I asked myself, is to too late to withdraw? -The world outside the sphere, I knew, would be cold and inhospitable enough for -me—for weeks I had been living on subsidies from Cavor—but after -all, would it be as cold as the infinite zero, as inhospitable as empty space? -If it had not been for the appearance of cowardice, I believe that even then I -should have made him let me out. But I hesitated on that score, and hesitated, -and grew fretful and angry, and the time passed. -</p> - -<p> -There came a little jerk, a noise like champagne being uncorked in another -room, and a faint whistling sound. For just one instant I had a sense of -enormous tension, a transient conviction that my feet were pressing downward -with a force of countless tons. It lasted for an infinitesimal time. -</p> - -<p> -But it stirred me to action. “Cavor!” I said into the darkness, -“my nerve’s in rags. I don’t think—” -</p> - -<p> -I stopped. He made no answer. -</p> - -<p> -“Confound it!” I cried; “I’m a fool! What business have -I here? I’m not coming, Cavor. The thing’s too risky. I’m -getting out.” -</p> - -<p> -“You can’t,” he said. -</p> - -<p> -“Can’t! We’ll soon see about that!” -</p> - -<p> -He made no answer for ten seconds. “It’s too late for us to quarrel -now, Bedford,” he said. “That little jerk was the start. Already we -are flying as swiftly as a bullet up into the gulf of space.” -</p> - -<p> -“I—” I said, and then it didn’t seem to matter what -happened. For a time I was, as it were, stunned; I had nothing to say. It was -just as if I had never heard of this idea of leaving the world before. Then I -perceived an unaccountable change in my bodily sensations. It was a feeling of -lightness, of unreality. Coupled with that was a queer sensation in the head, -an apoplectic effect almost, and a thumping of blood vessels at the ears. -Neither of these feelings diminished as time went on, but at last I got so used -to them that I experienced no inconvenience. -</p> - -<p> -I heard a click, and a little glow lamp came into being. -</p> - -<p> -I saw Cavor’s face, as white as I felt my own to be. We regarded one -another in silence. The transparent blackness of the glass behind him made him -seem as though he floated in a void. -</p> - -<p> -“Well, we’re committed,” I said at last. -</p> - -<p> -“Yes,” he said, “we’re committed.” -</p> - -<p> -“Don’t move,” he exclaimed, at some suggestion of a gesture. -“Let your muscles keep quite lax—as if you were in bed. We are in a -little universe of our own. Look at those things!” -</p> - -<p> -He pointed to the loose cases and bundles that had been lying on the blankets -in the bottom of the sphere. I was astonished to see that they were floating -now nearly a foot from the spherical wall. Then I saw from his shadow that -Cavor was no longer leaning against the glass. I thrust out my hand behind me, -and found that I too was suspended in space, clear of the glass. -</p> - -<p> -I did not cry out nor gesticulate, but fear came upon me. It was like being -held and lifted by something—you know not what. The mere touch of my hand -against the glass moved me rapidly. I understood what had happened, but that -did not prevent my being afraid. We were cut off from all exterior gravitation, -only the attraction of objects within our sphere had effect. Consequently -everything that was not fixed to the glass was falling—slowly because of -the slightness of our masses—towards the centre of gravity of our little -world, which seemed to be somewhere about the middle of the sphere, but rather -nearer to myself than Cavor, on account of my greater weight. -</p> - -<p> -“We must turn round,” said Cavor, “and float back to back, -with the things between us.” -</p> - -<p> -It was the strangest sensation conceivable, floating thus loosely in space, at -first indeed horribly strange, and when the horror passed, not disagreeable at -all, exceeding restful; indeed, the nearest thing in earthly experience to it -that I know is lying on a very thick, soft feather bed. But the quality of -utter detachment and independence! I had not reckoned on things like this. I -had expected a violent jerk at starting, a giddy sense of speed. Instead I -felt—as if I were disembodied. It was not like the beginning of a -journey; it was like the beginning of a dream. -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap05"></a>V.<br /> -The Journey to the Moon</h2> - -<p> -Presently Cavor extinguished the light. He said we had not overmuch energy -stored, and that what we had we must economise for reading. For a time, whether -it was long or short I do not know, there was nothing but blank darkness. -</p> - -<p> -A question floated up out of the void. “How are we pointing?” I -said. “What is our direction?” -</p> - -<p> -“We are flying away from the earth at a tangent, and as the moon is near -her third quarter we are going somewhere towards her. I will open a -blind—” -</p> - -<p> -Came a click, and then a window in the outer case yawned open. The sky outside -was as black as the darkness within the sphere, but the shape of the open -window was marked by an infinite number of stars. -</p> - -<p> -Those who have only seen the starry sky from the earth cannot imagine its -appearance when the vague, half luminous veil of our air has been withdrawn. -The stars we see on earth are the mere scattered survivors that penetrate our -misty atmosphere. But now at last I could realise the meaning of the hosts of -heaven! -</p> - -<p> -Stranger things we were presently to see, but that airless, star-dusted sky! Of -all things, I think that will be one of the last I shall forget. -</p> - -<p> -The little window vanished with a click, another beside it snapped open and -instantly closed, and then a third, and for a moment I had to close my eyes -because of the blinding splendour of the waning moon. -</p> - -<p> -For a space I had to stare at Cavor and the white-lit things about me to season -my eyes to light again, before I could turn them towards that pallid glare. -</p> - -<p> -Four windows were open in order that the gravitation of the moon might act upon -all the substances in our sphere. I found I was no longer floating freely in -space, but that my feet were resting on the glass in the direction of the moon. -The blankets and cases of provisions were also creeping slowly down the glass, -and presently came to rest so as to block out a portion of the view. It seemed -to me, of course, that I looked “down” when I looked at the moon. -On earth “down” means earthward, the way things fall, and -“up” the reverse direction. Now the pull of gravitation was towards -the moon, and for all I knew to the contrary our earth was overhead. And, of -course, when all the Cavorite blinds were closed, “down” was -towards the centre of our sphere, and “up” towards its outer wall. -</p> - -<p> -It was curiously unlike earthly experience, too, to have the light coming -<i>up</i> to one. On earth light falls from above, or comes slanting down -sideways, but here it came from beneath our feet, and to see our shadows we had -to look up. -</p> - -<p> -At first it gave me a sort of vertigo to stand only on thick glass and look -down upon the moon through hundreds of thousands of miles of vacant space; but -this sickness passed very speedily. And then—the splendour of the sight! -</p> - -<p> -The reader may imagine it best if he will lie on the ground some warm -summer’s night and look between his upraised feet at the moon, but for -some reason, probably because the absence of air made it so much more luminous, -the moon seemed already considerably larger than it does from earth. The -minutest details of its surface were acutely clear. And since we did not see it -through air, its outline was bright and sharp, there was no glow or halo about -it, and the star-dust that covered the sky came right to its very margin, and -marked the outline of its unilluminated part. And as I stood and stared at the -moon between my feet, that perception of the impossible that had been with me -off and on ever since our start, returned again with tenfold conviction. -</p> - -<p> -“Cavor,” I said, “this takes me queerly. Those companies we -were going to run, and all that about minerals?” -</p> - -<p> -“Well?” -</p> - -<p> -“I don’t see ‘em here.” -</p> - -<p> -“No,” said Cavor; “but you’ll get over all that.” -</p> - -<p> -“I suppose I’m made to turn right side up again. Still, -<i>this</i>— For a moment I could half believe there never was a -world.” -</p> - -<p> -“That copy of <i>Lloyd’s News</i> might help you.” -</p> - -<p> -I stared at the paper for a moment, then held it above the level of my face, -and found I could read it quite easily. I struck a column of mean little -advertisements. “A gentleman of private means is willing to lend -money,” I read. I knew that gentleman. Then somebody eccentric wanted to -sell a Cutaway bicycle, “quite new and cost £15,” for five pounds; -and a lady in distress wished to dispose of some fish knives and forks, -“a wedding present,” at a great sacrifice. No doubt some simple -soul was sagely examining these knives and forks, and another triumphantly -riding off on that bicycle, and a third trustfully consulting that benevolent -gentleman of means even as I read. I laughed, and let the paper drift from my -hand. -</p> - -<p> -“Are we visible from the earth?” I asked. -</p> - -<p> -“Why?” -</p> - -<p> -“I knew some one who was rather interested in astronomy. It occurred to -me that it would be rather odd if—my friend—chanced to be looking -through some telescope.” -</p> - -<p> -“It would need the most powerful telescope on earth even now to see us as -the minutest speck.” -</p> - -<p> -For a time I stared in silence at the moon. -</p> - -<p> -“It’s a world,” I said; “one feels that infinitely more -than one ever did on earth. People perhaps—” -</p> - -<p> -“People!” he exclaimed. “<i>No!</i> Banish all that! Think -yourself a sort of ultra-arctic voyager exploring the desolate places of space. -Look at it!” -</p> - -<p> -He waved his hand at the shining whiteness below. “It’s -dead—dead! Vast extinct volcanoes, lava wildernesses, tumbled wastes of -snow, or frozen carbonic acid, or frozen air, and everywhere landslip seams and -cracks and gulfs. Nothing happens. Men have watched this planet systematically -with telescopes for over two hundred years. How much change do you think they -have seen?” -</p> - -<p> -“None.” -</p> - -<p> -“They have traced two indisputable landslips, a doubtful crack, and one -slight periodic change of colour, and that’s all.” -</p> - -<p> -“I didn’t know they’d traced even that.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, yes. But as for people—!” -</p> - -<p> -“By the way,” I asked, “how small a thing will the biggest -telescopes show upon the moon?” -</p> - -<p> -“One could see a fair-sized church. One could certainly see any towns or -buildings, or anything like the handiwork of men. There might perhaps be -insects, something in the way of ants, for example, so that they could hide in -deep burrows from the lunar light, or some new sort of creatures having no -earthly parallel. That is the most probable thing, if we are to find life there -at all. Think of the difference in conditions! Life must fit itself to a day as -long as fourteen earthly days, a cloudless sun-blaze of fourteen days, and then -a night of equal length, growing ever colder and colder under these cold, sharp -stars. In that night there must be cold, the ultimate cold, absolute zero, 273° -C. below the earthly freezing point. Whatever life there is must hibernate -through <i>that</i>, and rise again each day.” -</p> - -<p> -He mused. “One can imagine something worm-like,” he said, -“taking its air solid as an earth-worm swallows earth, or thick-skinned -monsters—” -</p> - -<p> -“By the bye,” I said, “why didn’t we bring a -gun?” -</p> - -<p> -He did not answer that question. “No,” he concluded, “we just -have to go. We shall see when we get there.” -</p> - -<p> -I remembered something. “Of course, there’s my minerals, -anyhow,” I said; “whatever the conditions may be.” -</p> - -<p> -Presently he told me he wished to alter our course a little by letting the -earth tug at us for a moment. He was going to open one earthward blind for -thirty seconds. He warned me that it would make my head swim, and advised me to -extend my hands against the glass to break my fall. I did as he directed, and -thrust my feet against the bales of food cases and air cylinders to prevent -their falling upon me. Then with a click the window flew open. I fell clumsily -upon hands and face, and saw for a moment between my black extended fingers our -mother earth—a planet in a downward sky. -</p> - -<p> -We were still very near—Cavor told me the distance was perhaps eight -hundred miles and the huge terrestrial disc filled all heaven. But already it -was plain to see that the world was a globe. The land below us was in twilight -and vague, but westward the vast grey stretches of the Atlantic shone like -molten silver under the receding day. I think I recognised the cloud-dimmed -coast-lines of France and Spain and the south of England, and then, with a -click, the shutter closed again, and I found myself in a state of extraordinary -confusion sliding slowly over the smooth glass. -</p> - -<p> -When at last things settled themselves in my mind again, it seemed quite beyond -question that the moon was “down” and under my feet, and that the -earth was somewhere away on the level of the horizon—the earth that had -been “down” to me and my kindred since the beginning of things. -</p> - -<p> -So slight were the exertions required of us, so easy did the practical -annihilation of our weight make all we had to do, that the necessity for taking -refreshment did not occur to us for nearly six hours (by Cavor’s -chronometer) after our start. I was amazed at that lapse of time. Even then I -was satisfied with very little. Cavor examined the apparatus for absorbing -carbonic acid and water, and pronounced it to be in satisfactory order, our -consumption of oxygen having been extraordinarily slight. And our talk being -exhausted for the time, and there being nothing further for us to do, we gave -way to a curious drowsiness that had come upon us, and spreading our blankets -on the bottom of the sphere in such a manner as to shut out most of the -moonlight, wished each other good-night, and almost immediately fell asleep. -</p> - -<p> -And so, sleeping, and sometimes talking and reading a little, and at times -eating, although without any keenness of appetite,<a href="#fn-1" name="fnref-1" id="fnref-1"><sup>[1]</sup></a> -but for the most part in a sort of quiescence that was neither waking nor -slumber, we fell through a space of time that had neither night nor day in it, -silently, softly, and swiftly down towards the moon. -</p> - -<p class="footnote"> -<a name="fn-1" id="fn-1"></a> <a href="#fnref-1">[1]</a> -It is a curious thing, that while we were in the sphere we felt not the -slightest desire for food, nor did we feel the want of it when we abstained. At -first we forced our appetites, but afterwards we fasted completely. Altogether -we did not consume one-hundredth part of the compressed provisions we had -brought with us. The amount of carbonic acid we breathed was also unnaturally -low, but why this was, I am quite unable to explain. -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap06"></a>VI.<br /> -The Landing on the Moon</h2> - -<p> -I remember how one day Cavor suddenly opened six of our shutters and blinded me -so that I cried aloud at him. The whole area was moon, a stupendous scimitar of -white dawn with its edge hacked out by notches of darkness, the crescent shore -of an ebbing tide of darkness, out of which peaks and pinnacles came glittering -into the blaze of the sun. I take it the reader has seen pictures or -photographs of the moon and that I need not describe the broader features of -that landscape, those spacious ring-like ranges vaster than any terrestrial -mountains, their summits shining in the day, their shadows harsh and deep, the -grey disordered plains, the ridges, hills, and craterlets, all passing at last -from a blazing illumination into a common mystery of black. Athwart this world -we were flying scarcely a hundred miles above its crests and pinnacles. And now -we could see, what no eye on earth will ever see, that under the blaze of the -day the harsh outlines of the rocks and ravines of the plains and crater floor -grew grey and indistinct under a thickening haze, that the white of their lit -surfaces broke into lumps and patches, and broke again and shrank and vanished, -and that here and there strange tints of brown and olive grew and spread. -</p> - -<p> -But little time we had for watching then. For now we had come to the real -danger of our journey. We had to drop ever closer to the moon as we spun about -it, to slacken our pace and watch our chance, until at last we could dare to -drop upon its surface. -</p> - -<p> -For Cavor that was a time of intense exertion; for me it was an anxious -inactivity. I seemed perpetually to be getting out of his way. He leapt about -the sphere from point to point with an agility that would have been impossible -on earth. He was perpetually opening and closing the Cavorite windows, making -calculations, consulting his chronometer by means of the glow lamp during those -last eventful hours. For a long time we had all our windows closed and hung -silently in darkness hurling through space. -</p> - -<p> -Then he was feeling for the shutter studs, and suddenly four windows were open. -I staggered and covered my eyes, drenched and scorched and blinded by the -unaccustomed splendour of the sun beneath my feet. Then again the shutters -snapped, leaving my brain spinning in a darkness that pressed against the eyes. -And after that I floated in another vast, black silence. -</p> - -<p> -Then Cavor switched on the electric light, and told me he proposed to bind all -our luggage together with the blankets about it, against the concussion of our -descent. We did this with our windows closed, because in that way our goods -arranged themselves naturally at the centre of the sphere. That too was a -strange business; we two men floating loose in that spherical space, and -packing and pulling ropes. Imagine it if you can! No up nor down, and every -effort resulting in unexpected movements. Now I would be pressed against the -glass with the full force of Cavor’s thrust, now I would be kicking -helplessly in a void. Now the star of the electric light would be overhead, now -under foot. Now Cavor’s feet would float up before my eyes, and now we -would be crossways to each other. But at last our goods were safely bound -together in a big soft bale, all except two blankets with head holes that we -were to wrap about ourselves. -</p> - -<p> -Then for a flash Cavor opened a window moonward, and we saw that we were -dropping towards a huge central crater with a number of minor craters grouped -in a sort of cross about it. And then again Cavor flung our little sphere open -to the scorching, blinding sun. I think he was using the sun’s attraction -as a brake. “Cover yourself with a blanket,” he cried, thrusting -himself from me, and for a moment I did not understand. -</p> - -<p> -Then I hauled the blanket from beneath my feet and got it about me and over my -head and eyes. Abruptly he closed the shutters again, snapped one open again -and closed it, then suddenly began snapping them all open, each safely into its -steel roller. There came a jar, and then we were rolling over and over, bumping -against the glass and against the big bale of our luggage, and clutching at -each other, and outside some white substance splashed as if we were rolling -down a slope of snow.... -</p> - -<p> -Over, clutch, bump, clutch, bump, over.... -</p> - -<p> -Came a thud, and I was half buried under the bale of our possessions, and for a -space everything was still. Then I could hear Cavor puffing and grunting, and -the snapping of a shutter in its sash. I made an effort, thrust back our -blanket-wrapped luggage, and emerged from beneath it. Our open windows were -just visible as a deeper black set with stars. -</p> - -<p> -We were still alive, and we were lying in the darkness of the shadow of the -wall of the great crater into which we had fallen. -</p> - -<p> -We sat getting our breath again, and feeling the bruises on our limbs. I -don’t think either of us had had a very clear expectation of such rough -handling as we had received. I struggled painfully to my feet. “And -now,” said I, “to look at the landscape of the moon! But—! -It’s tremendously dark, Cavor!” -</p> - -<p> -The glass was dewy, and as I spoke I wiped at it with my blanket. -“We’re half an hour or so beyond the day,” he said. “We -must wait.” -</p> - -<p> -It was impossible to distinguish anything. We might have been in a sphere of -steel for all that we could see. My rubbing with the blanket simply smeared the -glass, and as fast as I wiped it, it became opaque again with freshly condensed -moisture mixed with an increasing quantity of blanket hairs. Of course I ought -not to have used the blanket. In my efforts to clear the glass I slipped upon -the damp surface, and hurt my shin against one of the oxygen cylinders that -protruded from our bale. -</p> - -<p> -The thing was exasperating—it was absurd. Here we were just arrived upon -the moon, amidst we knew not what wonders, and all we could see was the grey -and streaming wall of the bubble in which we had come. -</p> - -<p> -“Confound it!” I said, “but at this rate we might have -stopped at home;” and I squatted on the bale and shivered, and drew my -blanket closer about me. -</p> - -<p> -Abruptly the moisture turned to spangles and fronds of frost. “Can you -reach the electric heater,” said Cavor. “Yes—that black knob. -Or we shall freeze.” -</p> - -<p> -I did not wait to be told twice. “And now,” said I, “what are -we to do?” -</p> - -<p> -“Wait,” he said. -</p> - -<p> -“Wait?” -</p> - -<p> -“Of course. We shall have to wait until our air gets warm again, and then -this glass will clear. We can’t do anything till then. It’s night -here yet; we must wait for the day to overtake us. Meanwhile, don’t you -feel hungry?” -</p> - -<p> -For a space I did not answer him, but sat fretting. I turned reluctantly from -the smeared puzzle of the glass and stared at his face. “Yes,” I -said, “I am hungry. I feel somehow enormously disappointed. I had -expected—I don’t know what I had expected, but not this.” -</p> - -<p> -I summoned my philosophy, and rearranging my blanket about me sat down on the -bale again and began my first meal on the moon. I don’t think I finished -it—I forget. Presently, first in patches, then running rapidly together -into wider spaces, came the clearing of the glass, came the drawing of the -misty veil that hid the moon world from our eyes. -</p> - -<p> -We peered out upon the landscape of the moon. -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap07"></a>VII.<br /> -Sunrise on the Moon</h2> - -<p> -As we saw it first it was the wildest and most desolate of scenes. We were in -an enormous amphitheatre, a vast circular plain, the floor of the giant crater. -Its cliff-like walls closed us in on every side. From the westward the light of -the unseen sun fell upon them, reaching to the very foot of the cliff, and -showed a disordered escarpment of drab and greyish rock, lined here and there -with banks and crevices of snow. This was perhaps a dozen miles away, but at -first no intervening atmosphere diminished in the slightest the minutely -detailed brilliancy with which these things glared at us. They stood out clear -and dazzling against a background of starry blackness that seemed to our -earthly eyes rather a gloriously spangled velvet curtain than the spaciousness -of the sky. -</p> - -<p> -The eastward cliff was at first merely a starless selvedge to the starry dome. -No rosy flush, no creeping pallor, announced the commencing day. Only the -Corona, the Zodiacal light, a huge cone-shaped, luminous haze, pointing up -towards the splendour of the morning star, warned us of the imminent nearness -of the sun. -</p> - -<p> -Whatever light was about us was reflected by the westward cliffs. It showed a -huge undulating plain, cold and grey, a grey that deepened eastward into the -absolute raven darkness of the cliff shadow. Innumerable rounded grey summits, -ghostly hummocks, billows of snowy substance, stretching crest beyond crest -into the remote obscurity, gave us our first inkling of the distance of the -crater wall. These hummocks looked like snow. At the time I thought they were -snow. But they were not—they were mounds and masses of frozen air. -</p> - -<p> -So it was at first; and then, sudden, swift, and amazing, came the lunar day. -</p> - -<p> -The sunlight had crept down the cliff, it touched the drifted masses at its -base and incontinently came striding with seven-leagued boots towards us. The -distant cliff seemed to shift and quiver, and at the touch of the dawn a reek -of grey vapour poured upward from the crater floor, whirls and puffs and -drifting wraiths of grey, thicker and broader and denser, until at last the -whole westward plain was steaming like a wet handkerchief held before the fire, -and the westward cliffs were no more than refracted glare beyond. -</p> - -<p> -“It is air,” said Cavor. “It must be air—or it would -not rise like this—at the mere touch of a sun-beam. And at this -pace....” -</p> - -<p> -He peered upwards. “Look!” he said. -</p> - -<p> -“What?” I asked. -</p> - -<p> -“In the sky. Already. On the blackness—a little touch of blue. See! -The stars seem larger. And the little ones and all those dim nebulosities we -saw in empty space—they are hidden!” -</p> - -<p> -Swiftly, steadily, the day approached us. Grey summit after grey summit was -overtaken by the blaze, and turned to a smoking white intensity. At last there -was nothing to the west of us but a bank of surging fog, the tumultuous advance -and ascent of cloudy haze. The distant cliff had receded farther and farther, -had loomed and changed through the whirl, and foundered and vanished at last in -its confusion. -</p> - -<p> -Nearer came that steaming advance, nearer and nearer, coming as fast as the -shadow of a cloud before the south-west wind. About us rose a thin anticipatory -haze. -</p> - -<p> -Cavor gripped my arm. “What?” I said. -</p> - -<p> -“Look! The sunrise! The sun!” -</p> - -<p> -He turned me about and pointed to the brow of the eastward cliff, looming above -the haze about us, scarce lighter than the darkness of the sky. But now its -line was marked by strange reddish shapes, tongues of vermilion flame that -writhed and danced. I fancied it must be spirals of vapour that had caught the -light and made this crest of fiery tongues against the sky, but indeed it was -the solar prominences I saw, a crown of fire about the sun that is forever -hidden from earthly eyes by our atmospheric veil. -</p> - -<p> -And then—the sun! -</p> - -<p> -Steadily, inevitably came a brilliant line, came a thin edge of intolerable -effulgence that took a circular shape, became a bow, became a blazing sceptre, -and hurled a shaft of heat at us as though it was a spear. -</p> - -<p> -It seemed verily to stab my eyes! I cried aloud and turned about blinded, -groping for my blanket beneath the bale. -</p> - -<p> -And with that incandescence came a sound, the first sound that had reached us -from without since we left the earth, a hissing and rustling, the stormy -trailing of the aerial garment of the advancing day. And with the coming of the -sound and the light the sphere lurched, and blinded and dazzled we staggered -helplessly against each other. It lurched again, and the hissing grew louder. I -had shut my eyes perforce, I was making clumsy efforts to cover my head with my -blanket, and this second lurch sent me helplessly off my feet. I fell against -the bale, and opening my eyes had a momentary glimpse of the air just outside -our glass. It was running—it was boiling—like snow into which a -white-hot rod is thrust. What had been solid air had suddenly at the touch of -the sun become a paste, a mud, a slushy liquefaction, that hissed and bubbled -into gas. -</p> - -<p> -There came a still more violent whirl of the sphere and we had clutched one -another. In another moment we were spun about again. Round we went and over, -and then I was on all fours. The lunar dawn had hold of us. It meant to show us -little men what the moon could do with us. -</p> - -<p> -I caught a second glimpse of things without, puffs of vapour, half liquid -slush, excavated, sliding, falling, sliding. We dropped into darkness. I went -down with Cavor’s knees in my chest. Then he seemed to fly away from me, -and for a moment I lay with all the breath out of my body staring upward. A -toppling crag of the melting stuff had splashed over us, buried us, and now it -thinned and boiled off us. I saw the bubbles dancing on the glass above. I -heard Cavor exclaiming feebly. -</p> - -<p> -Then some huge landslip in the thawing air had caught us, and spluttering -expostulation, we began to roll down a slope, rolling faster and faster, -leaping crevasses and rebounding from banks, faster and faster, westward into -the white-hot boiling tumult of the lunar day. -</p> - -<p> -Clutching at one another we spun about, pitched this way and that, our bale of -packages leaping at us, pounding at us. We collided, we gripped, we were torn -asunder—our heads met, and the whole universe burst into fiery darts and -stars! On the earth we should have smashed one another a dozen times, but on -the moon, luckily for us, our weight was only one-sixth of what it is -terrestrially, and we fell very mercifully. I recall a sensation of utter -sickness, a feeling as if my brain were upside down within my skull, and -then— -</p> - -<p class="p2"> -Something was at work upon my face, some thin feelers worried my ears. Then I -discovered the brilliance of the landscape around was mitigated by blue -spectacles. Cavor bent over me, and I saw his face upside down, his eyes also -protected by tinted goggles. His breath came irregularly, and his lip was -bleeding from a bruise. “Better?” he said, wiping the blood with -the back of his hand. -</p> - -<p> -Everything seemed swaying for a space, but that was simply my giddiness. I -perceived that he had closed some of the shutters in the outer sphere to save -me—from the direct blaze of the sun. I was aware that everything about us -was very brilliant. -</p> - -<p> -“Lord!” I gasped. “But this—” -</p> - -<p> -I craned my neck to see. I perceived there was a blinding glare outside, an -utter change from the gloomy darkness of our first impressions. “Have I -been insensible long?” I asked. -</p> - -<p> -“I don’t know—the chronometer is broken. Some little time.... -My dear chap! I have been afraid...” -</p> - -<p> -I lay for a space taking this in. I saw his face still bore evidences of -emotion. For a while I said nothing. I passed an inquisitive hand over my -contusions, and surveyed his face for similar damages. The back of my right -hand had suffered most, and was skinless and raw. My forehead was bruised and -had bled. He handed me a little measure with some of the restorative—I -forget the name of it—he had brought with us. After a time I felt a -little better. I began to stretch my limbs carefully. Soon I could talk. -</p> - -<p> -“It wouldn’t have done,” I said, as though there had been no -interval. -</p> - -<p> -“No! it <i>wouldn’t</i>.” -</p> - -<p> -He thought, his hands hanging over his knees. He peered through the glass and -then stared at me. “Good Lord!” he said. “<i>No!</i>” -</p> - -<p> -“What has happened?” I asked after a pause. “Have we jumped -to the tropics?” -</p> - -<p> -“It was as I expected. This air has evaporated—if it is air. At any -rate, it has evaporated, and the surface of the moon is showing. We are lying -on a bank of earthy rock. Here and there bare soil is exposed. A queer sort of -soil!” -</p> - -<p> -It occurred to him that it was unnecessary to explain. He assisted me into a -sitting position, and I could see with my own eyes. -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap08"></a>VIII.<br /> -A Lunar Morning</h2> - -<p> -The harsh emphasis, the pitiless black and white of scenery had altogether -disappeared. The glare of the sun had taken upon itself a faint tinge of amber; -the shadows upon the cliff of the crater wall were deeply purple. To the -eastward a dark bank of fog still crouched and sheltered from the sunrise, but -to the westward the sky was blue and clear. I began to realise the length of my -insensibility. -</p> - -<p> -We were no longer in a void. An atmosphere had arisen about us. The outline of -things had gained in character, had grown acute and varied; save for a shadowed -space of white substance here and there, white substance that was no longer air -but snow, the arctic appearance had gone altogether. Everywhere broad rusty -brown spaces of bare and tumbled earth spread to the blaze of the sun. Here and -there at the edge of the snowdrifts were transient little pools and eddies of -water, the only things stirring in that expanse of barrenness. The sunlight -inundated the upper two blinds of our sphere and turned our climate to high -summer, but our feet were still in shadow, and the sphere was lying upon a -drift of snow. -</p> - -<p> -And scattered here and there upon the slope, and emphasised by little white -threads of unthawed snow upon their shady sides, were shapes like sticks, dry -twisted sticks of the same rusty hue as the rock upon which they lay. That -caught one’s thoughts sharply. Sticks! On a lifeless world? Then as my -eye grew more accustomed to the texture of their substance, I perceived that -almost all this surface had a fibrous texture, like the carpet of brown needles -one finds beneath the shade of pine trees. -</p> - -<p> -“Cavor!” I said. -</p> - -<p> -“Yes.” -</p> - -<p> -“It may be a dead world now—but once—” -</p> - -<p> -Something arrested my attention. I had discovered among these needles a number -of little round objects. And it seemed to me that one of these had moved. -“Cavor,” I whispered. -</p> - -<p> -“What?” -</p> - -<p> -But I did not answer at once. I stared incredulous. For an instant I could not -believe my eyes. I gave an inarticulate cry. I gripped his arm. I pointed. -“Look!” I cried, finding my tongue. “There! Yes! And -there!” -</p> - -<p> -His eyes followed my pointing finger. “Eh?” he said. -</p> - -<p> -How can I describe the thing I saw? It is so petty a thing to state, and yet it -seemed so wonderful, so pregnant with emotion. I have said that amidst the -stick-like litter were these rounded bodies, these little oval bodies that -might have passed as very small pebbles. And now first one and then another had -stirred, had rolled over and cracked, and down the crack of each of them showed -a minute line of yellowish green, thrusting outward to meet the hot -encouragement of the newly-risen sun. For a moment that was all, and then there -stirred, and burst a third! -</p> - -<p> -“It is a seed,” said Cavor. And then I heard him whisper very -softly, “<i>Life!</i>” -</p> - -<p> -“Life!” And immediately it poured upon us that our vast journey had -not been made in vain, that we had come to no arid waste of minerals, but to a -world that lived and moved! We watched intensely. I remember I kept rubbing the -glass before me with my sleeve, jealous of the faintest suspicion of mist. -</p> - -<p> -The picture was clear and vivid only in the middle of the field. All about that -centre the dead fibres and seeds were magnified and distorted by the curvature -of the glass. But we could see enough! One after another all down the sunlit -slope these miraculous little brown bodies burst and gaped apart, like -seed-pods, like the husks of fruits; opened eager mouths that drank in the -heat and light pouring in a cascade from the newly-risen sun. -</p> - -<p> -Every moment more of these seed coats ruptured, and even as they did so the -swelling pioneers overflowed their rent-distended seed-cases, and passed into -the second stage of growth. With a steady assurance, a swift deliberation, -these amazing seeds thrust a rootlet downward to the earth and a queer little -bundle-like bud into the air. In a little while the whole slope was dotted with -minute plantlets standing at attention in the blaze of the sun. -</p> - -<p> -They did not stand for long. The bundle-like buds swelled and strained and -opened with a jerk, thrusting out a coronet of little sharp tips, spreading a -whorl of tiny, spiky, brownish leaves, that lengthened rapidly, lengthened -visibly even as we watched. The movement was slower than any animal’s, -swifter than any plant’s I have ever seen before. How can I suggest it to -you—the way that growth went on? The leaf tips grew so that they moved -onward even while we looked at them. The brown seed-case shrivelled and was -absorbed with an equal rapidity. Have you ever on a cold day taken a -thermometer into your warm hand and watched the little thread of mercury creep -up the tube? These moon plants grew like that. -</p> - -<p> -In a few minutes, as it seemed, the buds of the more forward of these plants -had lengthened into a stem and were even putting forth a second whorl of -leaves, and all the slope that had seemed so recently a lifeless stretch of -litter was now dark with the stunted olive-green herbage of bristling spikes -that swayed with the vigour of their growing. -</p> - -<p> -I turned about, and behold! along the upper edge of a rock to the eastward a -similar fringe in a scarcely less forward condition swayed and bent, dark -against the blinding glare of the sun. And beyond this fringe was the -silhouette of a plant mass, branching clumsily like a cactus, and swelling -visibly, swelling like a bladder that fills with air. -</p> - -<p> -Then to the westward also I discovered that another such distended form was -rising over the scrub. But here the light fell upon its sleek sides, and I -could see that its colour was a vivid orange hue. It rose as one watched it; if -one looked away from it for a minute and then back, its outline had changed; it -thrust out blunt congested branches until in a little time it rose a coralline -shape of many feet in height. Compared with such a growth the terrestrial -puff-ball, which will sometimes swell a foot in diameter in a single night, -would be a hopeless laggard. But then the puff-ball grows against a -gravitational pull six times that of the moon. Beyond, out of gullies and flats -that had been hidden from us, but not from the quickening sun, over reefs and -banks of shining rock, a bristling beard of spiky and fleshy vegetation was -straining into view, hurrying tumultuously to take advantage of the brief day -in which it must flower and fruit and seed again and die. It was like a -miracle, that growth. So, one must imagine, the trees and plants arose at the -Creation and covered the desolation of the new-made earth. -</p> - -<p> -Imagine it! Imagine that dawn! The resurrection of the frozen air, the stirring -and quickening of the soil, and then this silent uprising of vegetation, this -unearthly ascent of fleshiness and spikes. Conceive it all lit by a blaze that -would make the intensest sunlight of earth seem watery and weak. And still -around this stirring jungle, wherever there was shadow, lingered banks of -bluish snow. And to have the picture of our impression complete, you must bear -in mind that we saw it all through a thick bent glass, distorting it as things -are distorted by a lens, acute only in the centre of the picture, and very -bright there, and towards the edges magnified and unreal. -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap09"></a>IX.<br /> -Prospecting Begins</h2> - -<p> -We ceased to gaze. We turned to each other, the same thought, the same question -in our eyes. For these plants to grow, there must be some air, however -attenuated, air that we also should be able to breathe. -</p> - -<p> -“The manhole?” I said. -</p> - -<p> -“Yes!” said Cavor, “if it is air we see!” -</p> - -<p> -“In a little while,” I said, “these plants will be as high as -we are. Suppose—suppose after all— Is it certain? How do you know -that stuff <i>is</i> air? It may be nitrogen—it may be carbonic acid -even!” -</p> - -<p> -“That’s easy,” he said, and set about proving it. He produced -a big piece of crumpled paper from the bale, lit it, and thrust it hastily -through the man-hole valve. I bent forward and peered down through the thick -glass for its appearance outside, that little flame on whose evidence depended -so much! -</p> - -<p> -I saw the paper drop out and lie lightly upon the snow. The pink flame of its -burning vanished. For an instant it seemed to be extinguished. And then I saw a -little blue tongue upon the edge of it that trembled, and crept, and spread! -</p> - -<p> -Quietly the whole sheet, save where it lay in immediate contact with the snow, -charred and shrivelled and sent up a quivering thread of smoke. There was no -doubt left to me; the atmosphere of the moon was either pure oxygen or air, and -capable therefore—unless its tenuity was excessive—of supporting -our alien life. We might emerge—and live! -</p> - -<p> -I sat down with my legs on either side of the manhole and prepared to unscrew -it, but Cavor stopped me. “There is first a little precaution,” he -said. He pointed out that although it was certainly an oxygenated atmosphere -outside, it might still be so rarefied as to cause us grave injury. He reminded -me of mountain sickness, and of the bleeding that often afflicts aeronauts who -have ascended too swiftly, and he spent some time in the preparation of a -sickly-tasting drink which he insisted on my sharing. It made me feel a little -numb, but otherwise had no effect on me. Then he permitted me to begin -unscrewing. -</p> - -<p> -Presently the glass stopper of the manhole was so far undone that the denser -air within our sphere began to escape along the thread of the screw, singing as -a kettle sings before it boils. Thereupon he made me desist. It speedily became -evident that the pressure outside was very much less than it was within. How -much less it was we had no means of telling. -</p> - -<p> -I sat grasping the stopper with both hands, ready to close it again if, in -spite of our intense hope, the lunar atmosphere should after all prove too -rarefied for us, and Cavor sat with a cylinder of compressed oxygen at hand to -restore our pressure. We looked at one another in silence, and then at the -fantastic vegetation that swayed and grew visibly and noiselessly without. And -ever that shrill piping continued. -</p> - -<p> -My blood-vessels began to throb in my ears, and the sound of Cavor’s -movements diminished. I noted how still everything had become, because of the -thinning of the air. -</p> - -<p> -As our air sizzled out from the screw the moisture of it condensed in little -puffs. -</p> - -<p> -Presently I experienced a peculiar shortness of breath that lasted indeed -during the whole of the time of our exposure to the moon’s exterior -atmosphere, and a rather unpleasant sensation about the ears and finger-nails -and the back of the throat grew upon my attention, and presently passed off -again. -</p> - -<p> -But then came vertigo and nausea that abruptly changed the quality of my -courage. I gave the lid of the manhole half a turn and made a hasty explanation -to Cavor; but now he was the more sanguine. He answered me in a voice that -seemed extraordinarily small and remote, because of the thinness of the air -that carried the sound. He recommended a nip of brandy, and set me the example, -and presently I felt better. I turned the manhole stopper back again. The -throbbing in my ears grew louder, and then I remarked that the piping note of -the outrush had ceased. For a time I could not be sure that it had ceased. -</p> - -<p> -“Well?” said Cavor, in the ghost of a voice. -</p> - -<p> -“Well?” said I. -</p> - -<p> -“Shall we go on?” -</p> - -<p> -I thought. “Is this all?” -</p> - -<p> -“If you can stand it.” -</p> - -<p> -By way of answer I went on unscrewing. I lifted the circular operculum from its -place and laid it carefully on the bale. A flake or so of snow whirled and -vanished as that thin and unfamiliar air took possession of our sphere. I -knelt, and then seated myself at the edge of the manhole, peering over it. -Beneath, within a yard of my face, lay the untrodden snow of the moon. -</p> - -<p> -There came a little pause. Our eyes met. -</p> - -<p> -“It doesn’t distress your lungs too much?” said Cavor. -</p> - -<p> -“No,” I said. “I can stand this.” -</p> - -<p> -He stretched out his hand for his blanket, thrust his head through its central -hole, and wrapped it about him. He sat down on the edge of the manhole, he let -his feet drop until they were within six inches of the lunar ground. He -hesitated for a moment, then thrust himself forward, dropped these intervening -inches, and stood upon the untrodden soil of the moon. -</p> - -<p> -As he stepped forward he was refracted grotesquely by the edge of the glass. He -stood for a moment looking this way and that. Then he drew himself together and -leapt. -</p> - -<p> -The glass distorted everything, but it seemed to me even then to be an -extremely big leap. He had at one bound become remote. He seemed twenty or -thirty feet off. He was standing high upon a rocky mass and gesticulating back -to me. Perhaps he was shouting—but the sound did not reach me. But how -the deuce had he done this? I felt like a man who has just seen a new conjuring -trick. -</p> - -<p> -In a puzzled state of mind I too dropped through the manhole. I stood up. Just -in front of me the snowdrift had fallen away and made a sort of ditch. I made a -step and jumped. -</p> - -<p> -I found myself flying through the air, saw the rock on which he stood coming to -meet me, clutched it and clung in a state of infinite amazement. -</p> - -<p> -I gasped a painful laugh. I was tremendously confused. Cavor bent down and -shouted in piping tones for me to be careful. -</p> - -<p> -I had forgotten that on the moon, with only an eighth part of the earth’s -mass and a quarter of its diameter, my weight was barely a sixth what it was on -earth. But now that fact insisted on being remembered. -</p> - -<p> -“We are out of Mother Earth’s leading-strings now,” he said. -</p> - -<p> -With a guarded effort I raised myself to the top, and moving as cautiously as a -rheumatic patient, stood up beside him under the blaze of the sun. The sphere -lay behind us on its dwindling snowdrift thirty feet away. -</p> - -<p> -As far as the eye could see over the enormous disorder of rocks that formed the -crater floor, the same bristling scrub that surrounded us was starting into -life, diversified here and there by bulging masses of a cactus form, and -scarlet and purple lichens that grew so fast they seemed to crawl over the -rocks. The whole area of the crater seemed to me then to be one similar -wilderness up to the very foot of the surrounding cliff. -</p> - -<p> -This cliff was apparently bare of vegetation save at its base, and with -buttresses and terraces and platforms that did not very greatly attract our -attention at the time. It was many miles away from us in every direction; we -seemed to be almost at the centre of the crater, and we saw it through a -certain haziness that drove before the wind. For there was even a wind now in -the thin air, a swift yet weak wind that chilled exceedingly but exerted little -pressure. It was blowing round the crater, as it seemed, to the hot illuminated -side from the foggy darkness under the sunward wall. It was difficult to look -into this eastward fog; we had to peer with half-closed eyes beneath the shade -of our hands, because of the fierce intensity of the motionless sun. -</p> - -<p> -“It seems to be deserted,” said Cavor, “absolutely -desolate.” -</p> - -<p> -I looked about me again. I retained even then a clinging hope of some -quasi-human evidence, some pinnacle of building, some house or engine, but -everywhere one looked spread the tumbled rocks in peaks and crests, and the -darting scrub and those bulging cacti that swelled and swelled, a flat negation -as it seemed of all such hope. -</p> - -<p> -“It looks as though these plants had it to themselves,” I said. -“I see no trace of any other creature.” -</p> - -<p> -“No insects—no birds, no! Not a trace, not a scrap nor particle of -animal life. If there was—what would they do in the night? ... No; -there’s just these plants alone.” -</p> - -<p> -I shaded my eyes with my hand. “It’s like the landscape of a dream. -These things are less like earthly land plants than the things one imagines -among the rocks at the bottom of the sea. Look at that yonder! One might -imagine it a lizard changed into a plant. And the glare!” -</p> - -<p> -“This is only the fresh morning,” said Cavor. -</p> - -<p> -He sighed and looked about him. “This is no world for men,” he -said. “And yet in a way—it appeals.” -</p> - -<p> -He became silent for a time, then commenced his meditative humming. -</p> - -<p> -I started at a gentle touch, and found a thin sheet of livid lichen lapping -over my shoe. I kicked at it and it fell to powder, and each speck began to -grow. -</p> - -<p> -I heard Cavor exclaim sharply, and perceived that one of the fixed bayonets of -the scrub had pricked him. He hesitated, his eyes sought among the rocks about -us. A sudden blaze of pink had crept up a ragged pillar of crag. It was a most -extraordinary pink, a livid magenta. -</p> - -<p> -“Look!” said I, turning, and behold Cavor had vanished. -</p> - -<p> -For an instant I stood transfixed. Then I made a hasty step to look over the -verge of the rock. But in my surprise at his disappearance I forgot once more -that we were on the moon. The thrust of my foot that I made in striding would -have carried me a yard on earth; on the moon it carried me six—a good -five yards over the edge. For the moment the thing had something of the effect -of those nightmares when one falls and falls. For while one falls sixteen feet -in the first second of a fall on earth, on the moon one falls two, and with -only a sixth of one’s weight. I fell, or rather I jumped down, about ten -yards I suppose. It seemed to take quite a long time, five or six seconds, I -should think. I floated through the air and fell like a feather, knee-deep in a -snow-drift in the bottom of a gully of blue-grey, white-veined rock. -</p> - -<p> -I looked about me. “Cavor!” I cried; but no Cavor was visible. -</p> - -<p> -“Cavor!” I cried louder, and the rocks echoed me. -</p> - -<p> -I turned fiercely to the rocks and clambered to the summit of them. -“Cavor!” I cried. My voice sounded like the voice of a lost lamb. -</p> - -<p> -The sphere, too, was not in sight, and for a moment a horrible feeling of -desolation pinched my heart. -</p> - -<p> -Then I saw him. He was laughing and gesticulating to attract my attention. He -was on a bare patch of rock twenty or thirty yards away. I could not hear his -voice, but “jump” said his gestures. I hesitated, the distance -seemed enormous. Yet I reflected that surely I must be able to clear a greater -distance than Cavor. -</p> - -<p> -I made a step back, gathered myself together, and leapt with all my might. I -seemed to shoot right up in the air as though I should never come down. -</p> - -<p> -It was horrible and delightful, and as wild as a nightmare, to go flying off in -this fashion. I realised my leap had been altogether too violent. I flew clean -over Cavor’s head and beheld a spiky confusion in a gully spreading to -meet my fall. I gave a yelp of alarm. I put out my hands and straightened my -legs. -</p> - -<p> -I hit a huge fungoid bulk that burst all about me, scattering a mass of orange -spores in every direction, and covering me with orange powder. I rolled over -spluttering, and came to rest convulsed with breathless laughter. -</p> - -<p> -I became aware of Cavor’s little round face peering over a bristling -hedge. He shouted some faded inquiry. “Eh?” I tried to shout, but -could not do so for want of breath. He made his way towards me, coming gingerly -among the bushes. -</p> - -<p> -“We’ve got to be careful,” he said. “This moon has no -discipline. She’ll let us smash ourselves.” -</p> - -<p> -He helped me to my feet. “You exerted yourself too much,” he said, -dabbing at the yellow stuff with his hand to remove it from my garments. -</p> - -<p> -I stood passive and panting, allowing him to beat off the jelly from my knees -and elbows and lecture me upon my misfortunes. “We don’t quite -allow for the gravitation. Our muscles are scarcely educated yet. We must -practise a little, when you have got your breath.” -</p> - -<p> -I pulled two or three little thorns out of my hand, and sat for a time on a -boulder of rock. My muscles were quivering, and I had that feeling of personal -disillusionment that comes at the first fall to the learner of cycling on -earth. -</p> - -<p> -It suddenly occurred to Cavor that the cold air in the gully, after the -brightness of the sun, might give me a fever. So we clambered back into the -sunlight. We found that beyond a few abrasions I had received no serious -injuries from my tumble, and at Cavor’s suggestion we were presently -looking round for some safe and easy landing-place for my next leap. We chose a -rocky slab some ten yards off, separated from us by a little thicket of -olive-green spikes. -</p> - -<p> -“Imagine it there!” said Cavor, who was assuming the airs of a -trainer, and he pointed to a spot about four feet from my toes. This leap I -managed without difficulty, and I must confess I found a certain satisfaction -in Cavor’s falling short by a foot or so and tasting the spikes of the -scrub. “One has to be careful, you see,” he said, pulling out his -thorns, and with that he ceased to be my mentor and became my fellow-learner in -the art of lunar locomotion. -</p> - -<p> -We chose a still easier jump and did it without difficulty, and then leapt back -again, and to and fro several times, accustoming our muscles to the new -standard. I could never have believed had I not experienced it, how rapid that -adaptation would be. In a very little time indeed, certainly after fewer than -thirty leaps, we could judge the effort necessary for a distance with almost -terrestrial assurance. -</p> - -<p> -And all this time the lunar plants were growing around us, higher and denser -and more entangled, every moment thicker and taller, spiked plants, green -cactus masses, fungi, fleshy and lichenous things, strangest radiate and -sinuous shapes. But we were so intent upon our leaping, that for a time we gave -no heed to their unfaltering expansion. -</p> - -<p> -An extraordinary elation had taken possession of us. Partly, I think, it was -our sense of release from the confinement of the sphere. Mainly, however, the -thin sweetness of the air, which I am certain contained a much larger -proportion of oxygen than our terrestrial atmosphere. In spite of the strange -quality of all about us, I felt as adventurous and experimental as a cockney -would do placed for the first time among mountains and I do not think it -occurred to either of us, face to face though we were with the unknown, to be -very greatly afraid. -</p> - -<p> -We were bitten by a spirit of enterprise. We selected a lichenous kopje perhaps -fifteen yards away, and landed neatly on its summit one after the other. -“Good!” we cried to each other; “good!” and Cavor made -three steps and went off to a tempting slope of snow a good twenty yards and -more beyond. I stood for a moment struck by the grotesque effect of his soaring -figure—his dirty cricket cap, and spiky hair, his little round body, his -arms and his knicker-bockered legs tucked up tightly—against the weird -spaciousness of the lunar scene. A gust of laughter seized me, and then I -stepped off to follow. Plump! I dropped beside him. -</p> - -<p> -We made a few gargantuan strides, leapt three or four times more, and sat down -at last in a lichenous hollow. Our lungs were painful. We sat holding our sides -and recovering our breath, looking appreciation to one another. Cavor panted -something about “amazing sensations.” And then came a thought into -my head. For the moment it did not seem a particularly appalling thought, -simply a natural question arising out of the situation. -</p> - -<p> -“By the way,” I said, “where exactly is the sphere?” -</p> - -<p> -Cavor looked at me. “Eh?” -</p> - -<p> -The full meaning of what we were saying struck me sharply. -</p> - -<p> -“Cavor!” I cried, laying a hand on his arm, “where is the -sphere?” -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap10"></a>X.<br /> -Lost Men in the Moon</h2> - -<p> -His face caught something of my dismay. He stood up and stared about him at the -scrub that fenced us in and rose about us, straining upward in a passion of -growth. He put a dubious hand to his lips. He spoke with a sudden lack of -assurance. “I think,” he said slowly, “we left it ... -somewhere ... about <i>there</i>.” -</p> - -<p> -He pointed a hesitating finger that wavered in an arc. -</p> - -<p> -“I’m not sure.” His look of consternation deepened. -“Anyhow,” he said, with his eyes on me, “it can’t be -far.” -</p> - -<p> -We had both stood up. We made unmeaning ejaculations, our eyes sought in the -twining, thickening jungle round about us. -</p> - -<p> -All about us on the sunlit slopes frothed and swayed the darting shrubs, the -swelling cactus, the creeping lichens, and wherever the shade remained the -snow-drifts lingered. North, south, east, and west spread an identical monotony -of unfamiliar forms. And somewhere, buried already among this tangled -confusion, was our sphere, our home, our only provision, our only hope of -escape from this fantastic wilderness of ephemeral growths into which we had -come. -</p> - -<p> -“I think after all,” he said, pointing suddenly, “it might be -over there.” -</p> - -<p> -“No,” I said. “We have turned in a curve. See! here is the -mark of my heels. It’s clear the thing must be more to the eastward, much -more. No—the sphere must be over there.” -</p> - -<p> -“I <i>think</i>,” said Cavor, “I kept the sun upon my right -all the time.” -</p> - -<p> -“Every leap, it seems to <i>me</i>,” I said, “my shadow flew -before me.” -</p> - -<p> -We stared into one another’s eyes. The area of the crater had become -enormously vast to our imaginations, the growing thickets already impenetrably -dense. -</p> - -<p> -“Good heavens! What fools we have been!” -</p> - -<p> -“It’s evident that we must find it again,” said Cavor, -“and that soon. The sun grows stronger. We should be fainting with the -heat already if it wasn’t so dry. And ... I’m hungry.” -</p> - -<p> -I stared at him. I had not suspected this aspect of the matter before. But it -came to me at once—a positive craving. “Yes,” I said with -emphasis. “I am hungry too.” -</p> - -<p> -He stood up with a look of active resolution. “Certainly we must find the -sphere.” -</p> - -<p> -As calmly as possible we surveyed the interminable reefs and thickets that -formed the floor of the crater, each of us weighing in silence the chances of -our finding the sphere before we were overtaken by heat and hunger. -</p> - -<p> -“It can’t be fifty yards from here,” said Cavor, with -indecisive gestures. “The only thing is to beat round about until we come -upon it.” -</p> - -<p> -“That is all we can do,” I said, without any alacrity to begin our -hunt. “I wish this confounded spike bush did not grow so fast!” -</p> - -<p> -“That’s just it,” said Cavor. “But it was lying on a -bank of snow.” -</p> - -<p> -I stared about me in the vain hope of recognising some knoll or shrub that had -been near the sphere. But everywhere was a confusing sameness, everywhere the -aspiring bushes, the distending fungi, the dwindling snow banks, steadily and -inevitably changed. The sun scorched and stung, the faintness of an -unaccountable hunger mingled with our infinite perplexity. And even as we stood -there, confused and lost amidst unprecedented things, we became aware for the -first time of a sound upon the moon other than the air of the growing plants, -the faint sighing of the wind, or those that we ourselves had made. -</p> - -<p> -Boom.... Boom.... Boom. -</p> - -<p> -It came from beneath our feet, a sound in the earth. We seemed to hear it with -our feet as much as with our ears. Its dull resonance was muffled by distance, -thick with the quality of intervening substance. No sound that I can imagine -could have astonished us more, or have changed more completely the quality of -things about us. For this sound, rich, slow, and deliberate, seemed to us as -though it could be nothing but the striking of some gigantic buried clock. -</p> - -<p> -Boom.... Boom.... Boom. -</p> - -<p> -Sound suggestive of still cloisters, of sleepless nights in crowded cities, of -vigils and the awaited hour, of all that is orderly and methodical in life, -booming out pregnant and mysterious in this fantastic desert! To the eye -everything was unchanged: the desolation of bushes and cacti waving silently in -the wind, stretched unbroken to the distant cliffs, the still dark sky was -empty overhead, and the hot sun hung and burned. And through it all, a warning, -a threat, throbbed this enigma of sound. -</p> - -<p> -Boom.... Boom.... Boom.... -</p> - -<p> -We questioned one another in faint and faded voices. -</p> - -<p> -“A clock?” -</p> - -<p> -“Like a clock!” -</p> - -<p> -“What is it?” -</p> - -<p> -“What can it be?” -</p> - -<p> -“Count,” was Cavor’s belated suggestion, and at that word the -striking ceased. -</p> - -<p> -The silence, the rhythmic disappointment of the silence, came as a fresh shock. -For a moment one could doubt whether one had ever heard a sound. Or whether it -might not still be going on. Had I indeed heard a sound? -</p> - -<p> -I felt the pressure of Cavor’s hand upon my arm. He spoke in an -undertone, as though he feared to wake some sleeping thing. “Let us keep -together,” he whispered, “and look for the sphere. We must get back -to the sphere. This is beyond our understanding.” -</p> - -<p> -“Which way shall we go?” -</p> - -<p> -He hesitated. An intense persuasion of presences, of unseen things about us and -near us, dominated our minds. What could they be? Where could they be? Was this -arid desolation, alternately frozen and scorched, only the outer rind and mask -of some subterranean world? And if so, what sort of world? What sort of -inhabitants might it not presently disgorge upon us? -</p> - -<p> -And then, stabbing the aching stillness as vivid and sudden as an unexpected -thunderclap, came a clang and rattle as though great gates of metal had -suddenly been flung apart. -</p> - -<p> -It arrested our steps. We stood gaping helplessly. Then Cavor stole towards me. -</p> - -<p> -“I do not understand!” he whispered close to my face. He waved his -hand vaguely skyward, the vague suggestion of still vaguer thoughts. -</p> - -<p> -“A hiding-place! If anything came...” -</p> - -<p> -I looked about us. I nodded my head in assent to him. -</p> - -<p> -We started off, moving stealthily with the most exaggerated precautions against -noise. We went towards a thicket of scrub. A clangour like hammers flung about -a boiler hastened our steps. “We must crawl,” whispered Cavor. -</p> - -<p> -The lower leaves of the bayonet plants, already overshadowed by the newer ones -above, were beginning to wilt and shrivel so that we could thrust our way in -among the thickening stems without serious injury. A stab in the face or arm we -did not heed. At the heart of the thicket I stopped, and stared panting into -Cavor’s face. -</p> - -<p> -“Subterranean,” he whispered. “Below.” -</p> - -<p> -“They may come out.” -</p> - -<p> -“We must find the sphere!” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes,” I said; “but how?” -</p> - -<p> -“Crawl till we come to it.” -</p> - -<p> -“But if we don’t?” -</p> - -<p> -“Keep hidden. See what they are like.” -</p> - -<p> -“We will keep together,” said I. -</p> - -<p> -He thought. “Which way shall we go?” -</p> - -<p> -“We must take our chance.” -</p> - -<p> -We peered this way and that. Then very circumspectly, we began to crawl through -the lower jungle, making, so far as we could judge, a circuit, halting now at -every waving fungus, at every sound, intent only on the sphere from which we -had so foolishly emerged. Ever and again from out of the earth beneath us came -concussions, beatings, strange, inexplicable, mechanical sounds; and once, and -then again, we thought we heard something, a faint rattle and tumult, borne to -us through the air. But fearful as we were we dared essay no vantage-point to -survey the crater. For long we saw nothing of the beings whose sounds were so -abundant and insistent. But for the faintness of our hunger and the drying of -our throats that crawling would have had the quality of a very vivid dream. It -was so absolutely unreal. The only element with any touch of reality was these -sounds. -</p> - -<p> -Picture it to yourself! About us the dream-like jungle, with the silent bayonet -leaves darting overhead, and the silent, vivid, sun-splashed lichens under our -hands and knees, waving with the vigour of their growth as a carpet waves when -the wind gets beneath it. Ever and again one of the bladder fungi, bulging and -distending under the sun, loomed upon us. Ever and again some novel shape in -vivid colour obtruded. The very cells that built up these plants were as large -as my thumb, like beads of coloured glass. And all these things were saturated -in the unmitigated glare of the sun, were seen against a sky that was bluish -black and spangled still, in spite of the sunlight, with a few surviving stars. -Strange! the very forms and texture of the stones were strange. It was all -strange, the feeling of one’s body was unprecedented, every other -movement ended in a surprise. The breath sucked thin in one’s throat, the -blood flowed through one’s ears in a throbbing tide—thud, thud, -thud, thud.... -</p> - -<p> -And ever and again came gusts of turmoil, hammering, the clanging and throb of -machinery, and presently—the bellowing of great beasts! -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap11"></a>XI.<br /> -The Mooncalf Pastures</h2> - -<p> -So we two poor terrestrial castaways, lost in that wild-growing moon jungle, -crawled in terror before the sounds that had come upon us. We crawled, as it -seemed, a long time before we saw either Selenite or mooncalf, though we heard -the bellowing and gruntulous noises of these latter continually drawing nearer -to us. We crawled through stony ravines, over snow slopes, amidst fungi that -ripped like thin bladders at our thrust, emitting a watery humour, over a -perfect pavement of things like puff-balls, and beneath interminable thickets -of scrub. And ever more helplessly our eyes sought for our abandoned sphere. -The noise of the mooncalves would at times be a vast flat calf-like sound, at -times it rose to an amazed and wrathy bellowing, and again it would become a -clogged bestial sound, as though these unseen creatures had sought to eat and -bellow at the same time. -</p> - -<p> -Our first view was but an inadequate transitory glimpse, yet none the less -disturbing because it was incomplete. Cavor was crawling in front at the time, -and he first was aware of their proximity. He stopped dead, arresting me with a -single gesture. -</p> - -<p> -A crackling and smashing of the scrub appeared to be advancing directly upon -us, and then, as we squatted close and endeavoured to judge of the nearness and -direction of this noise, there came a terrific bellow behind us, so close and -vehement that the tops of the bayonet scrub bent before it, and one felt the -breath of it hot and moist. And, turning about, we saw indistinctly through a -crowd of swaying stems the mooncalf’s shining sides, and the long line of -its back loomed out against the sky. -</p> - -<p> -Of course it is hard for me now to say how much I saw at that time, because my -impressions were corrected by subsequent observation. First of all impressions -was its enormous size; the girth of its body was some fourscore feet, its -length perhaps two hundred. Its sides rose and fell with its laboured -breathing. I perceived that its gigantic, flabby body lay along the ground, and -that its skin was of a corrugated white, dappling into blackness along the -backbone. But of its feet we saw nothing. I think also that we saw then the -profile at least of the almost brainless head, with its fat-encumbered neck, -its slobbering omnivorous mouth, its little nostrils, and tight shut eyes. (For -the mooncalf invariably shuts its eyes in the presence of the sun.) We had a -glimpse of a vast red pit as it opened its mouth to bleat and bellow again; we -had a breath from the pit, and then the monster heeled over like a ship, -dragged forward along the ground, creasing all its leathery skin, rolled again, -and so wallowed past us, smashing a path amidst the scrub, and was speedily -hidden from our eyes by the dense interlacings beyond. Another appeared more -distantly, and then another, and then, as though he was guiding these animated -lumps of provender to their pasture, a Selenite came momentarily into ken. My -grip upon Cavor’s foot became convulsive at the sight of him, and we -remained motionless and peering long after he had passed out of our range. -</p> - -<p> -By contrast with the mooncalves he seemed a trivial being, a mere ant, scarcely -five feet high. He was wearing garments of some leathery substance, so that no -portion of his actual body appeared, but of this, of course, we were entirely -ignorant. He presented himself, therefore, as a compact, bristling creature, -having much of the quality of a complicated insect, with whip-like tentacles -and a clanging arm projecting from his shining cylindrical body case. The form -of his head was hidden by his enormous many-spiked helmet—we discovered -afterwards that he used the spikes for prodding refractory mooncalves—and -a pair of goggles of darkened glass, set very much at the side, gave a -bird-like quality to the metallic apparatus that covered his face. His arms did -not project beyond his body case, and he carried himself upon short legs that, -wrapped though they were in warm coverings, seemed to our terrestrial eyes -inordinately flimsy. They had very short thighs, very long shanks, and little -feet. -</p> - -<p> -In spite of his heavy-looking clothing, he was progressing with what would be, -from the terrestrial point of view, very considerable strides, and his clanging -arm was busy. The quality of his motion during the instant of his passing -suggested haste and a certain anger, and soon after we had lost sight of him we -heard the bellow of a mooncalf change abruptly into a short, sharp squeal -followed by the scuffle of its acceleration. And gradually that bellowing -receded, and then came to an end, as if the pastures sought had been attained. -</p> - -<p> -We listened. For a space the moon world was still. But it was some time before -we resumed our crawling search for the vanished sphere. -</p> - -<p> -When next we saw mooncalves they were some little distance away from us in a -place of tumbled rocks. The less vertical surfaces of the rocks were thick with -a speckled green plant growing in dense mossy clumps, upon which these -creatures were browsing. We stopped at the edge of the reeds amidst which we -were crawling at the sight of them, peering out at then and looking round for a -second glimpse of a Selenite. They lay against their food like stupendous -slugs, huge, greasy hulls, eating greedily and noisily, with a sort of sobbing -avidity. They seemed monsters of mere fatness, clumsy and overwhelmed to a -degree that would make a Smithfield ox seem a model of agility. Their busy, -writhing, chewing mouths, and eyes closed, together with the appetising sound -of their munching, made up an effect of animal enjoyment that was singularly -stimulating to our empty frames. -</p> - -<p> -“Hogs!” said Cavor, with unusual passion. “Disgusting -hogs!” and after one glare of angry envy crawled off through the bushes -to our right. I stayed long enough to see that the speckled plant was quite -hopeless for human nourishment, then crawled after him, nibbling a quill of it -between my teeth. -</p> - -<p> -Presently we were arrested again by the proximity of a Selenite, and this time -we were able to observe him more exactly. Now we could see that the Selenite -covering was indeed clothing, and not a sort of crustacean integument. He was -quite similar in his costume to the former one we had glimpsed, except that -ends of something like wadding were protruding from his neck, and he stood on a -promontory of rock and moved his head this way and that, as though he was -surveying the crater. We lay quite still, fearing to attract his attention if -we moved, and after a time he turned about and disappeared. -</p> - -<p> -We came upon another drove of mooncalves bellowing up a ravine, and then we -passed over a place of sounds, sounds of beating machinery as if some huge hall -of industry came near the surface there. And while these sounds were still -about us we came to the edge of a great open space, perhaps two hundred yards -in diameter, and perfectly level. Save for a few lichens that advanced from its -margin this space was bare, and presented a powdery surface of a dusty yellow -colour. We were afraid to strike out across this space, but as it presented -less obstruction to our crawling than the scrub, we went down upon it and began -very circumspectly to skirt its edge. -</p> - -<p> -For a little while the noises from below ceased and everything, save for the -faint stir of the growing vegetation, was very still. Then abruptly there began -an uproar, louder, more vehement, and nearer than any we had so far heard. Of a -certainty it came from below. Instinctively we crouched as flat as we could, -ready for a prompt plunge into the thicket beside us. Each knock and throb -seemed to vibrate through our bodies. Louder grew this throbbing and beating, -and that irregular vibration increased until the whole moon world seemed to be -jerking and pulsing. -</p> - -<p> -“Cover,” whispered Cavor, and I turned towards the bushes. -</p> - -<p> -At that instant came a thud like the thud of a gun, and then a thing -happened—it still haunts me in my dreams. I had turned my head to look at -Cavor’s face, and thrust out my hand in front of me as I did so. And my -hand met nothing! I plunged suddenly into a bottomless hole! -</p> - -<p> -My chest hit something hard, and I found myself with my chin on the edge of an -unfathomable abyss that had suddenly opened beneath me, my hand extended -stiffly into the void. The whole of that flat circular area was no more than a -gigantic lid, that was now sliding sideways from off the pit it had covered -into a slot prepared for it. -</p> - -<p> -Had it not been for Cavor I think I should have remained rigid, hanging over -this margin and staring into the enormous gulf below, until at last the edges -of the slot scraped me off and hurled me into its depths. But Cavor had not -received the shock that had paralysed me. He had been a little distance from -the edge when the lid had first opened, and perceiving the peril that held me -helpless, gripped my legs and pulled me backward. I came into a sitting -position, crawled away from the edge for a space on all fours, then staggered -up and ran after him across the thundering, quivering sheet of metal. It seemed -to be swinging open with a steadily accelerated velocity, and the bushes in -front of me shifted sideways as I ran. -</p> - -<p> -I was none too soon. Cavor’s back vanished amidst the bristling thicket, -and as I scrambled up after him, the monstrous valve came into its position -with a clang. For a long time we lay panting, not daring to approach the pit. -</p> - -<p> -But at last very cautiously and bit by bit we crept into a position from which -we could peer down. The bushes about us creaked and waved with the force of a -breeze that was blowing down the shaft. We could see nothing at first except -smooth vertical walls descending at last into an impenetrable black. And then -very gradually we became aware of a number of very faint and little lights -going to and fro. -</p> - -<p> -For a time that stupendous gulf of mystery held us so that we forgot even our -sphere. In time, as we grew more accustomed to the darkness, we could make out -very small, dim, elusive shapes moving about among those needle-point -illuminations. We peered amazed and incredulous, understanding so little that -we could find no words to say. We could distinguish nothing that would give us -a clue to the meaning of the faint shapes we saw. -</p> - -<p> -“What can it be?” I asked; “what can it be?” -</p> - -<p> -“The engineering!... They must live in these caverns during the night, -and come out during the day.” -</p> - -<p> -“Cavor!” I said. “Can they be—<i>that</i>—it was -something like—men?” -</p> - -<p> -“<i>That</i> was not a man.” -</p> - -<p> -“We dare risk nothing!” -</p> - -<p> -“We dare do nothing until we find the sphere!” -</p> - -<p> -“We <i>can</i> do nothing until we find the sphere.” -</p> - -<p> -He assented with a groan and stirred himself to move. He stared about him for a -space, sighed, and indicated a direction. We struck out through the jungle. For -a time we crawled resolutely, then with diminishing vigour. Presently among -great shapes of flabby purple there came a noise of trampling and cries about -us. We lay close, and for a long time the sounds went to and fro and very near. -But this time we saw nothing. I tried to whisper to Cavor that I could hardly -go without food much longer, but my mouth had become too dry for whispering. -</p> - -<p> -“Cavor,” I said, “I must have food.” -</p> - -<p> -He turned a face full of dismay towards me. “It’s a case for -holding out,” he said. -</p> - -<p> -“But I <i>must</i>,” I said, “and look at my lips!” -</p> - -<p> -“I’ve been thirsty some time.” -</p> - -<p> -“If only some of that snow had remained!” -</p> - -<p> -“It’s clean gone! We’re driving from arctic to tropical at -the rate of a degree a minute....” -</p> - -<p> -I gnawed my hand. -</p> - -<p> -“The sphere!” he said. “There is nothing for it but the -sphere.” -</p> - -<p> -We roused ourselves to another spurt of crawling. My mind ran entirely on -edible things, on the hissing profundity of summer drinks, more particularly I -craved for beer. I was haunted by the memory of a sixteen gallon cask that had -swaggered in my Lympne cellar. I thought of the adjacent larder, and especially -of steak and kidney pie—tender steak and plenty of kidney, and rich, -thick gravy between. Ever and again I was seized with fits of hungry yawning. -We came to flat places overgrown with fleshy red things, monstrous coralline -growths; as we pushed against them they snapped and broke. I noted the quality -of the broken surfaces. The confounded stuff certainly looked of a biteable -texture. Then it seemed to me that it smelt rather well. -</p> - -<p> -I picked up a fragment and sniffed at it. -</p> - -<p> -“Cavor,” I said in a hoarse undertone. -</p> - -<p> -He glanced at me with his face screwed up. “Don’t,” he said. -I put down the fragment, and we crawled on through this tempting fleshiness for -a space. -</p> - -<p> -“Cavor,” I asked, “why <i>not?</i>” -</p> - -<p> -“Poison,” I heard him say, but he did not look round. -</p> - -<p> -We crawled some way before I decided. -</p> - -<p> -“I’ll chance it,” said I. -</p> - -<p> -He made a belated gesture to prevent me. I stuffed my mouth full. He crouched -watching my face, his own twisted into the oddest expression. “It’s -good,” I said. -</p> - -<p> -“O Lord!” he cried. -</p> - -<p> -He watched me munch, his face wrinkled between desire and disapproval, then -suddenly succumbed to appetite and began to tear off huge mouthfuls. For a time -we did nothing but eat. -</p> - -<p> -The stuff was not unlike a terrestrial mushroom, only it was much laxer in -texture, and, as one swallowed it, it warmed the throat. At first we -experienced a mere mechanical satisfaction in eating; then our blood began to -run warmer, and we tingled at the lips and fingers, and then new and slightly -irrelevant ideas came bubbling up in our minds. -</p> - -<p> -“It’s good,” said I. “Infernally good! What a home for -our surplus population! Our poor surplus population,” and I broke off -another large portion. It filled me with a curiously benevolent satisfaction -that there was such good food in the moon. The depression of my hunger gave way -to an irrational exhilaration. The dread and discomfort in which I had been -living vanished entirely. I perceived the moon no longer as a planet from which -I most earnestly desired the means of escape, but as a possible refuge from -human destitution. I think I forgot the Selenites, the mooncalves, the lid, and -the noises completely so soon as I had eaten that fungus. -</p> - -<p> -Cavor replied to my third repetition of my “surplus population” -remark with similar words of approval. I felt that my head swam, but I put this -down to the stimulating effect of food after a long fast. “Ess’lent -discov’ry yours, Cavor,” said I. “Se’nd on’y to -the ‘tato.” -</p> - -<p> -“Whajer mean?” asked Cavor. “‘Scovery of the -moon—se’nd on’y to the tato?” -</p> - -<p> -I looked at him, shocked at his suddenly hoarse voice, and by the badness of -his articulation. It occurred to me in a flash that he was intoxicated, -possibly by the fungus. It also occurred to me that he erred in imagining that -he had discovered the moon; he had not discovered it, he had only reached it. I -tried to lay my hand on his arm and explain this to him, but the issue was too -subtle for his brain. It was also unexpectedly difficult to express. After a -momentary attempt to understand me—I remember wondering if the fungus had -made my eyes as fishy as his—he set off upon some observations on his own -account. -</p> - -<p> -“We are,” he announced with a solemn hiccup, “the creashurs -o’ what we eat and drink.” -</p> - -<p> -He repeated this, and as I was now in one of my subtle moods, I determined to -dispute it. Possibly I wandered a little from the point. But Cavor certainly -did not attend at all properly. He stood up as well as he could, putting a hand -on my head to steady himself, which was disrespectful, and stood staring about -him, quite devoid now of any fear of the moon beings. -</p> - -<p> -I tried to point out that this was dangerous for some reason that was not -perfectly clear to me, but the word “dangerous” had somehow got -mixed with “indiscreet,” and came out rather more like -“injurious” than either; and after an attempt to disentangle them, -I resumed my argument, addressing myself principally to the unfamiliar but -attentive coralline growths on either side. I felt that it was necessary to -clear up this confusion between the moon and a potato at once—I wandered -into a long parenthesis on the importance of precision of definition in -argument. I did my best to ignore the fact that my bodily sensations were no -longer agreeable. -</p> - -<p> -In some way that I have now forgotten, my mind was led back to projects of -colonisation. “We must annex this moon,” I said. “There must -be no shilly-shally. This is part of the White Man’s Burthen. -Cavor—we are—<i>hic</i>—Satap—mean Satraps! Nempire -Cæsar never dreamt. B’in all the newspapers. Cavorecia. Bedfordecia. -Bedfordecia—hic—Limited. Mean—unlimited! Practically.” -</p> - -<p> -Certainly I was intoxicated. -</p> - -<p> -I embarked upon an argument to show the infinite benefits our arrival would -confer on the moon. I involved myself in a rather difficult proof that the -arrival of Columbus was, on the whole, beneficial to America. I found I had -forgotten the line of argument I had intended to pursue, and continued to -repeat “sim’lar to C’lumbus,” to fill up time. -</p> - -<p> -From that point my memory of the action of that abominable fungus becomes -confused. I remember vaguely that we declared our intention of standing no -nonsense from any confounded insects, that we decided it ill became men to hide -shamefully upon a mere satellite, that we equipped ourselves with huge armfuls -of the fungus—whether for missile purposes or not I do not -know—and, heedless of the stabs of the bayonet scrub, we started forth -into the sunshine. -</p> - -<p> -Almost immediately we must have come upon the Selenites. There were six of -them, and they were marching in single file over a rocky place, making the most -remarkable piping and whining sounds. They all seemed to become aware of us at -once, all instantly became silent and motionless, like animals, with their -faces turned towards us. -</p> - -<p> -For a moment I was sobered. -</p> - -<p> -“Insects,” murmured Cavor, “insects! And they think I’m -going to crawl about on my stomach—on my vertebrated stomach! -</p> - -<p> -“Stomach,” he repeated slowly, as though he chewed the indignity. -</p> - -<p> -Then suddenly, with a sort of fury, he made three vast strides and leapt -towards them. He leapt badly; he made a series of somersaults in the air, -whirled right over them, and vanished with an enormous splash amidst the cactus -bladders. What the Selenites made of this amazing, and to my mind undignified -irruption from another planet, I have no means of guessing. I seem to remember -the sight of their backs as they ran in all directions, but I am not sure. All -these last incidents before oblivion came are vague and faint in my mind. I -know I made a step to follow Cavor, and tripped and fell headlong among the -rocks. I was, I am certain, suddenly and vehemently ill. I seem to remember a -violent struggle and being gripped by metallic clasps.... -</p> - -<p class="p2"> -My next clear recollection is that we were prisoners at we knew not what depths -beneath the moon’s surface; we were in darkness amidst strange -distracting noises; our bodies were covered with scratches and bruises, and our -heads racked with pain. -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap12"></a>XII.<br /> -The Selenite’s Face</h2> - -<p> -I found myself sitting crouched together in a tumultuous darkness. For a long -time I could not understand where I was, nor how I had come to this perplexity. -I thought of the cupboard into which I had been thrust at times when I was a -child, and then of a very dark and noisy bedroom in which I had slept during an -illness. But these sounds about me were not the noises I had known, and there -was a thin flavour in the air like the wind of a stable. Then I supposed we -must still be at work upon the sphere, and that somehow I had got into the -cellar of Cavor’s house. I remembered we had finished the sphere, and -fancied I must still be in it and travelling through space. -</p> - -<p> -“Cavor,” I said, “cannot we have some light?” -</p> - -<p> -There came no answer. -</p> - -<p> -“Cavor!” I insisted. -</p> - -<p> -I was answered by a groan. “My head!” I heard him say; “my -head!” -</p> - -<p> -I attempted to press my hands to my brow, which ached, and discovered they were -tied together. This startled me very much. I brought them up to my mouth and -felt the cold smoothness of metal. They were chained together. I tried to -separate my legs and made out they were similarly fastened, and also that I was -fastened to the ground by a much thicker chain about the middle of my body. -</p> - -<p> -I was more frightened than I had yet been by anything in all our strange -experiences. For a time I tugged silently at my bonds. “Cavor!” I -cried out sharply. “Why am I tied? Why have you tied me hand and -foot?” -</p> - -<p> -“I haven’t tied you,” he answered. “It’s the -Selenites.” -</p> - -<p> -The Selenites! My mind hung on that for a space. Then my memories came back to -me: the snowy desolation, the thawing of the air, the growth of the plants, our -strange hopping and crawling among the rocks and vegetation of the crater. All -the distress of our frantic search for the sphere returned to me.... Finally -the opening of the great lid that covered the pit! -</p> - -<p> -Then as I strained to trace our later movements down to our present plight, the -pain in my head became intolerable. I came to an insurmountable barrier, an -obstinate blank. -</p> - -<p> -“Cavor!” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes?” -</p> - -<p> -“Where are we?” -</p> - -<p> -“How should I know?” -</p> - -<p> -“Are we dead?” -</p> - -<p> -“What nonsense!” -</p> - -<p> -“They’ve got us, then!” -</p> - -<p> -He made no answer but a grunt. The lingering traces of the poison seemed to -make him oddly irritable. -</p> - -<p> -“What do you mean to do?” -</p> - -<p> -“How should I know what to do?” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, very well!” said I, and became silent. Presently, I was roused -from a stupor. “O <i>Lord!</i>” I cried; “I wish you’d -stop that buzzing!” -</p> - -<p> -We lapsed into silence again, listening to the dull confusion of noises like -the muffled sounds of a street or factory that filled our ears. I could make -nothing of it, my mind pursued first one rhythm and then another, and -questioned it in vain. But after a long time I became aware of a new and -sharper element, not mingling with the rest but standing out, as it were, -against that cloudy background of sound. It was a series of relatively very -little definite sounds, tappings and rubbings, like a loose spray of ivy -against a window or a bird moving about upon a box. We listened and peered -about us, but the darkness was a velvet pall. There followed a noise like the -subtle movement of the wards of a well-oiled lock. And then there appeared -before me, hanging as it seemed in an immensity of black, a thin bright line. -</p> - -<p> -“Look!” whispered Cavor very softly. -</p> - -<p> -“What is it?” -</p> - -<p> -“I don’t know.” -</p> - -<p> -We stared. -</p> - -<p> -The thin bright line became a band, and broader and paler. It took upon itself -the quality of a bluish light falling upon a white-washed wall. It ceased to be -parallel-sided; it developed a deep indentation on one side. I turned to remark -this to Cavor, and was amazed to see his ear in a brilliant -illumination—all the rest of him in shadow. I twisted my head round as -well as my bonds would permit. “Cavor,” I said, “it’s -behind!” -</p> - -<p> -His ear vanished—gave place to an eye! -</p> - -<p> -Suddenly the crack that had been admitting the light broadened out, and -revealed itself as the space of an opening door. Beyond was a sapphire vista, -and in the doorway stood a grotesque outline silhouetted against the glare. -</p> - -<p> -We both made convulsive efforts to turn, and failing, sat staring over our -shoulders at this. My first impression was of some clumsy quadruped with -lowered head. Then I perceived it was the slender pinched body and short and -extremely attenuated bandy legs of a Selenite, with his head depressed between -his shoulders. He was without the helmet and body covering they wear upon the -exterior. -</p> - -<p> -He was a blank, black figure to us, but instinctively our imaginations supplied -features to his very human outline. I, at least, took it instantly that he was -somewhat hunchbacked, with a high forehead and long features. -</p> - -<p> -He came forward three steps and paused for a time. His movements seemed -absolutely noiseless. Then he came forward again. He walked like a bird, his -feet fell one in front of the other. He stepped out of the ray of light that -came through the doorway, and it seemed as though he vanished altogether in the -shadow. -</p> - -<p> -For a moment my eyes sought him in the wrong place, and then I perceived him -standing facing us both in the full light. Only the human features I had -attributed to him were not there at all! -</p> - -<p> -Of course I ought to have expected that, only I didn’t. It came to me as -an absolute, for a moment an overwhelming shock. It seemed as though it -wasn’t a face, as though it must needs be a mask, a horror, a deformity, -that would presently be disavowed or explained. There was no nose, and the -thing had dull bulging eyes at the side—in the silhouette I had supposed -they were ears. There were no ears.... I have tried to draw one of these heads, -but I cannot. There was a mouth, downwardly curved, like a human mouth in a -face that stares ferociously.... -</p> - -<p> -The neck on which the head was poised was jointed in three places, almost like -the short joints in the leg of a crab. The joints of the limbs I could not see, -because of the puttee-like straps in which they were swathed, and which formed -the only clothing the being wore. -</p> - -<p> -There the thing was, looking at us! -</p> - -<p> -At the time my mind was taken up by the mad impossibility of the creature. I -suppose he also was amazed, and with more reason, perhaps, for amazement than -we. Only, confound him! he did not show it. We did at least know what had -brought about this meeting of incompatible creatures. But conceive how it would -seem to decent Londoners, for example, to come upon a couple of living things, -as big as men and absolutely unlike any other earthly animals, careering about -among the sheep in Hyde Park! It must have taken him like that. -</p> - -<p> -Figure us! We were bound hand and foot, fagged and filthy; our beards two -inches long, our faces scratched and bloody. Cavor you must imagine in his -knickerbockers (torn in several places by the bayonet scrub) his Jaegar shirt -and old cricket cap, his wiry hair wildly disordered, a tail to every quarter -of the heavens. In that blue light his face did not look red but very dark, his -lips and the drying blood upon my hands seemed black. If possible I was in a -worse plight than he, on account of the yellow fungus into which I had jumped. -Our jackets were unbuttoned, and our shoes had been taken off and lay at our -feet. And we were sitting with our backs to this queer bluish light, peering at -such a monster as Durer might have invented. -</p> - -<p> -Cavor broke the silence; started to speak, went hoarse, and cleared his throat. -Outside began a terrific bellowing, as if a mooncalf were in trouble. It ended -in a shriek, and everything was still again. -</p> - -<p> -Presently the Selenite turned about, flickered into the shadow, stood for a -moment retrospective at the door, and then closed it on us; and once more we -were in that murmurous mystery of darkness into which we had awakened. -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap13"></a>XIII.<br /> -Mr. Cavor Makes Some Suggestions</h2> - -<p> -For a time neither of us spoke. To focus together all the things we had brought -upon ourselves seemed beyond my mental powers. -</p> - -<p> -“They’ve got us,” I said at last. -</p> - -<p> -“It was that fungus.” -</p> - -<p> -“Well—if I hadn’t taken it we should have fainted and -starved.” -</p> - -<p> -“We might have found the sphere.” -</p> - -<p> -I lost my temper at his persistence, and swore to myself. For a time we hated -one another in silence. I drummed with my fingers on the floor between my -knees, and gritted the links of my fetters together. Presently I was forced to -talk again. -</p> - -<p> -“What do you make of it, anyhow?” I asked humbly. -</p> - -<p> -“They are reasonable creatures—they can make things and do things. -Those lights we saw...” -</p> - -<p> -He stopped. It was clear he could make nothing of it. -</p> - -<p> -When he spoke again it was to confess, “After all, they are more human -than we had a right to expect. I suppose—” -</p> - -<p> -He stopped irritatingly. -</p> - -<p> -“Yes?” -</p> - -<p> -“I suppose, anyhow—on any planet where there is an intelligent -animal—it will carry its brain case upward, and have hands, and walk -erect.” -</p> - -<p> -Presently he broke away in another direction. -</p> - -<p> -“We are some way in,” he said. “I mean—perhaps a couple -of thousand feet or more.” -</p> - -<p> -“Why?” -</p> - -<p> -“It’s cooler. And our voices are so much louder. That faded -quality—it has altogether gone. And the feeling in one’s ears and -throat.” -</p> - -<p> -I had not noted that, but I did now. -</p> - -<p> -“The air is denser. We must be some depths—a mile even, we may -be—inside the moon.” -</p> - -<p> -“We never thought of a world inside the moon.” -</p> - -<p> -“No.” -</p> - -<p> -“How could we?” -</p> - -<p> -“We might have done. Only one gets into habits of mind.” -</p> - -<p> -He thought for a time. -</p> - -<p> -“<i>Now</i>,” he said, “it seems such an obvious -thing.” -</p> - -<p> -“Of course! The moon must be enormously cavernous, with an atmosphere -within, and at the centre of its caverns a sea. -</p> - -<p> -“One knew that the moon had a lower specific gravity than the earth, one -knew that it had little air or water outside, one knew, too, that it was sister -planet to the earth, and that it was unaccountable that it should be different -in composition. The inference that it was hollowed out was as clear as day. And -yet one never saw it as a fact. Kepler, of course—” -</p> - -<p> -His voice had the interest now of a man who has discerned a pretty sequence of -reasoning. -</p> - -<p> -“Yes,” he said, “Kepler with his <i>sub-volvani</i> was right -after all.” -</p> - -<p> -“I wish you had taken the trouble to find that out before we came,” -I said. -</p> - -<p> -He answered nothing, buzzing to himself softly, as he pursued his thoughts. My -temper was going. -</p> - -<p> -“What do you think has become of the sphere, anyhow?” I asked. -</p> - -<p> -“Lost,” he said, like a man who answers an uninteresting question. -</p> - -<p> -“Among those plants?” -</p> - -<p> -“Unless they find it.” -</p> - -<p> -“And then?” -</p> - -<p> -“How can I tell?” -</p> - -<p> -“Cavor,” I said, with a sort of hysterical bitterness, -“things look bright for my Company...” -</p> - -<p> -He made no answer. -</p> - -<p> -“Good Lord!” I exclaimed. “Just think of all the trouble we -took to get into this pickle! What did we come for? What are we after? What was -the moon to us or we to the moon? We wanted too much, we tried too much. We -ought to have started the little things first. It was you proposed the moon! -Those Cavorite spring blinds! I am certain we could have worked them for -terrestrial purposes. Certain! Did you really understand what I proposed? A -steel cylinder—” -</p> - -<p> -“Rubbish!” said Cavor. -</p> - -<p> -We ceased to converse. -</p> - -<p> -For a time Cavor kept up a broken monologue without much help from me. -</p> - -<p> -“If they find it,” he began, “if they find it ... what will -they do with it? Well, that’s a question. It may be that’s -<i>the</i> question. They won’t understand it, anyhow. If they understood -that sort of thing they would have come long since to the earth. Would they? -Why shouldn’t they? But they would have sent something—they -couldn’t keep their hands off such a possibility. No! But they will -examine it. Clearly they are intelligent and inquisitive. They will examine -it—get inside it—trifle with the studs. Off! ... That would mean -the moon for us for all the rest of our lives. Strange creatures, strange -knowledge....” -</p> - -<p> -“As for strange knowledge—” said I, and language failed me. -</p> - -<p> -“Look here, Bedford,” said Cavor, “you came on this -expedition of your own free will.” -</p> - -<p> -“You said to me, ‘Call it prospecting’.” -</p> - -<p> -“There’s always risks in prospecting.” -</p> - -<p> -“Especially when you do it unarmed and without thinking out every -possibility.” -</p> - -<p> -“I was so taken up with the sphere. The thing rushed on us, and carried -us away.” -</p> - -<p> -“Rushed on <i>me</i>, you mean.” -</p> - -<p> -“Rushed on me just as much. How was I to know when I set to work on -molecular physics that the business would bring me here—of all -places?” -</p> - -<p> -“It’s this accursed science,” I cried. “It’s the -very Devil. The mediæval priests and persecutors were right and the Moderns are -all wrong. You tamper with it—and it offers you gifts. And directly you -take them it knocks you to pieces in some unexpected way. Old passions and new -weapons—now it upsets your religion, now it upsets your social ideas, now -it whirls you off to desolation and misery!” -</p> - -<p> -“Anyhow, it’s no use your quarrelling with me <i>now</i>. These -creatures—these Selenites, or whatever we choose to call them—have -got us tied hand and foot. Whatever temper you choose to go through with it in, -you will have to go through with it.... We have experiences before us that will -need all our coolness.” -</p> - -<p> -He paused as if he required my assent. But I sat sulking. “Confound your -science!” I said. -</p> - -<p> -“The problem is communication. Gestures, I fear, will be different. -Pointing, for example. No creatures but men and monkeys point.” -</p> - -<p> -That was too obviously wrong for me. “Pretty nearly every animal,” -I cried, “points with its eyes or nose.” -</p> - -<p> -Cavor meditated over that. “Yes,” he said at last, “and we -don’t. There’s such differences—such differences!” -</p> - -<p> -“One might.... But how can I tell? There is speech. The sounds they make, -a sort of fluting and piping. I don’t see how we are to imitate that. Is -it their speech, that sort of thing? They may have different senses, different -means of communication. Of course they are minds and we are minds; there must -be something in common. Who knows how far we may not get to an -understanding?” -</p> - -<p> -“The things are outside us,” I said. “They’re more -different from us than the strangest animals on earth. They are a different -clay. What is the good of talking like this?” -</p> - -<p> -Cavor thought. “I don’t see that. Where there are minds they will -have something <i>similar</i>—even though they have been evolved on -different planets. Of course if it was a question of instincts, if we or they -are no more than animals—” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, <i>are</i> they? They’re much more like ants on their hind -legs than human beings, and who ever got to any sort of understanding with -ants?” -</p> - -<p> -“But these machines and clothing! No, I don’t hold with you, -Bedford. The difference is wide—” -</p> - -<p> -“It’s insurmountable.” -</p> - -<p> -“The resemblance must bridge it. I remember reading once a paper by the -late Professor Galton on the possibility of communication between the planets. -Unhappily, at that time it did not seem probable that that would be of any -material benefit to me, and I fear I did not give it the attention I should -have done—in view of this state of affairs. Yet.... Now, let me see! -</p> - -<p> -“His idea was to begin with those broad truths that must underlie all -conceivable mental existences and establish a basis on those. The great -principles of geometry, to begin with. He proposed to take some leading -proposition of Euclid’s, and show by construction that its truth was -known to us, to demonstrate, for example, that the angles at the base of an -isosceles triangle are equal, and that if the equal sides be produced the -angles on the other side of the base are equal also, or that the square on the -hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the -two other sides. By demonstrating our knowledge of these things we should -demonstrate our possession of a reasonable intelligence.... Now, suppose I ... -I might draw the geometrical figure with a wet finger, or even trace it in the -air....” -</p> - -<p> -He fell silent. I sat meditating his words. For a time his wild hope of -communication, of interpretation, with these weird beings held me. Then that -angry despair that was a part of my exhaustion and physical misery resumed its -sway. I perceived with a sudden novel vividness the extraordinary folly of -everything I had ever done. “Ass!” I said; “oh, ass, -unutterable ass.... I seem to exist only to go about doing preposterous things. -Why did we ever leave the thing? ... Hopping about looking for patents and -concessions in the craters of the moon!... If only we had had the sense to -fasten a handkerchief to a stick to show where we had left the sphere!” -</p> - -<p> -I subsided, fuming. -</p> - -<p> -“It is clear,” meditated Cavor, “they are intelligent. One -can hypothecate certain things. As they have not killed us at once, they must -have ideas of mercy. Mercy! at any rate of restraint. Possibly of intercourse. -They may meet us. And this apartment and the glimpses we had of its guardian. -These fetters! A high degree of intelligence...” -</p> - -<p> -“I wish to heaven,” cried I, “I’d thought even twice! -Plunge after plunge. First one fluky start and then another. It was my -confidence in you! <i>Why</i> didn’t I stick to my play? That was what I -was equal to. That was my world and the life I was made for. I could have -finished that play. I’m certain ... it was a good play. I had the -scenario as good as done. Then.... Conceive it! leaping to the moon! -Practically—I’ve thrown my life away! That old woman in the inn -near Canterbury had better sense.” -</p> - -<p> -I looked up, and stopped in mid-sentence. The darkness had given place to that -bluish light again. The door was opening, and several noiseless Selenites were -coming into the chamber. I became quite still, staring at their grotesque -faces. -</p> - -<p> -Then suddenly my sense of disagreeable strangeness changed to interest. I -perceived that the foremost and second carried bowls. One elemental need at -least our minds could understand in common. They were bowls of some metal that, -like our fetters, looked dark in that bluish light; and each contained a number -of whitish fragments. All the cloudy pain and misery that oppressed me rushed -together and took the shape of hunger. I eyed these bowls wolfishly, and, -though it returned to me in dreams, at that time it seemed a small matter that -at the end of the arms that lowered one towards me were not hands, but a sort -of flap and thumb, like the end of an elephant’s trunk. The stuff in the -bowl was loose in texture, and whitish brown in colour—rather like lumps -of some cold souffle, and it smelt faintly like mushrooms. From a partially -divided carcass of a mooncalf that we presently saw, I am inclined to believe -it must have been mooncalf flesh. -</p> - -<p> -My hands were so tightly chained that I could barely contrive to reach the -bowl; but when they saw the effort I made, two of them dexterously released one -of the turns about my wrist. Their tentacle hands were soft and cold to my -skin. I immediately seized a mouthful of the food. It had the same laxness in -texture that all organic structures seem to have upon the moon; it tasted -rather like a gauffre or a damp meringue, but in no way was it disagreeable. I -took two other mouthfuls. “I <i>wanted</i>—foo’!” said -I, tearing off a still larger piece.... -</p> - -<p> -For a time we ate with an utter absence of self-consciousness. We ate and -presently drank like tramps in a soup kitchen. Never before nor since have I -been hungry to the ravenous pitch, and save that I have had this very -experience I could never have believed that, a quarter of a million of miles -out of our proper world, in utter perplexity of soul, surrounded, watched, -touched by beings more grotesque and inhuman than the worst creations of a -nightmare, it would be possible for me to eat in utter forgetfulness of all -these things. They stood about us watching us, and ever and again making a -slight elusive twittering that stood, I suppose, in the stead of speech. I did -not even shiver at their touch. And when the first zeal of my feeding was over, -I could note that Cavor, too, had been eating with the same shameless abandon. -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap14"></a>XIV.<br /> -Experiments in intercourse</h2> - -<p> -When at last we had made an end of eating, the Selenites linked our hands -closely together again, and then untwisted the chains about our feet and -rebound them, so as to give us a limited freedom of movement. Then they -unfastened the chains about our waists. To do all this they had to handle us -freely, and ever and again one of their queer heads came down close to my face, -or a soft tentacle-hand touched my head or neck. I don’t remember that I -was afraid then or repelled by their proximity. I think that our incurable -anthropomorphism made us imagine there were human heads inside their masks. The -skin, like everything else, looked bluish, but that was on account of the -light; and it was hard and shiny, quite in the beetle-wing fashion, not soft, -or moist, or hairy, as a vertebrated animal’s would be. Along the crest -of the head was a low ridge of whitish spines running from back to front, and a -much larger ridge curved on either side over the eyes. The Selenite who untied -me used his mouth to help his hands. -</p> - -<p> -“They seem to be releasing us,” said Cavor. “Remember we are -on the moon! Make no sudden movements!” -</p> - -<p> -“Are you going to try that geometry?” -</p> - -<p> -“If I get a chance. But, of course, they may make an advance -first.” -</p> - -<p> -We remained passive, and the Selenites, having finished their arrangements, -stood back from us, and seemed to be looking at us. I say seemed to be, because -as their eyes were at the side and not in front, one had the same difficulty in -determining the direction in which they were looking as one has in the case of -a hen or a fish. They conversed with one another in their reedy tones, that -seemed to me impossible to imitate or define. The door behind us opened wider, -and, glancing over my shoulder, I saw a vague large space beyond, in which -quite a little crowd of Selenites were standing. They seemed a curiously -miscellaneous rabble. -</p> - -<p> -“Do they want us to imitate those sounds?” I asked Cavor. -</p> - -<p> -“I don’t think so,” he said. -</p> - -<p> -“It seems to me that they are trying to make us understand -something.” -</p> - -<p> -“I can’t make anything of their gestures. Do you notice this one, -who is worrying with his head like a man with an uncomfortable collar?” -</p> - -<p> -“Let us shake our heads at him.” -</p> - -<p> -We did that, and finding it ineffectual, attempted an imitation of the -Selenites’ movements. That seemed to interest them. At any rate they all -set up the same movement. But as that seemed to lead to nothing, we desisted at -last and so did they, and fell into a piping argument among themselves. Then -one of them, shorter and very much thicker than the others, and with a -particularly wide mouth, squatted down suddenly beside Cavor, and put his hands -and feet in the same posture as Cavor’s were bound, and then by a -dexterous movement stood up. -</p> - -<p> -“Cavor,” I shouted, “they want us to get up!” -</p> - -<p> -He stared open-mouthed. “That’s it!” he said. -</p> - -<p> -And with much heaving and grunting, because our hands were tied together, we -contrived to struggle to our feet. The Selenites made way for our elephantine -heavings, and seemed to twitter more volubly. As soon as we were on our feet -the thick-set Selenite came and patted each of our faces with his tentacles, -and walked towards the open doorway. That also was plain enough, and we -followed him. We saw that four of the Selenites standing in the doorway were -much taller than the others, and clothed in the same manner as those we had -seen in the crater, namely, with spiked round helmets and cylindrical -body-cases, and that each of the four carried a goad with spike and guard made -of that same dull-looking metal as the bowls. These four closed about us, one -on either side of each of us, as we emerged from our chamber into the cavern -from which the light had come. -</p> - -<p> -We did not get our impression of that cavern all at once. Our attention was -taken up by the movements and attitudes of the Selenites immediately about us, -and by the necessity of controlling our motion, lest we should startle and -alarm them and ourselves by some excessive stride. In front of us was the -short, thick-set being who had solved the problem of asking us to get up, -moving with gestures that seemed, almost all of them, intelligible to us, -inviting us to follow him. His spout-like face turned from one of us to the -other with a quickness that was clearly interrogative. For a time, I say, we -were taken up with these things. -</p> - -<p> -But at last the great place that formed a background to our movements asserted -itself. It became apparent that the source of much, at least, of the tumult of -sounds which had filled our ears ever since we had recovered from the -stupefaction of the fungus was a vast mass of machinery in active movement, -whose flying and whirling parts were visible indistinctly over the heads and -between the bodies of the Selenites who walked about us. And not only did the -web of sounds that filled the air proceed from this mechanism, but also the -peculiar blue light that irradiated the whole place. We had taken it as a -natural thing that a subterranean cavern should be artificially lit, and even -now, though the fact was patent to my eyes, I did not really grasp its import -until presently the darkness came. The meaning and structure of this huge -apparatus we saw I cannot explain, because we neither of us learnt what it was -for or how it worked. One after another, big shafts of metal flung out and up -from its centre, their heads travelling in what seemed to me to be a parabolic -path; each dropped a sort of dangling arm as it rose towards the apex of its -flight and plunged down into a vertical cylinder, forcing this down before it. -About it moved the shapes of tenders, little figures that seemed vaguely -different from the beings about us. As each of the three dangling arms of the -machine plunged down, there was a clank and then a roaring, and out of the top -of the vertical cylinder came pouring this incandescent substance that lit the -place, and ran over as milk runs over a boiling pot, and dripped luminously -into a tank of light below. It was a cold blue light, a sort of phosphorescent -glow but infinitely brighter, and from the tanks into which it fell it ran in -conduits athwart the cavern. -</p> - -<p> -Thud, thud, thud, thud, came the sweeping arms of this unintelligible -apparatus, and the light substance hissed and poured. At first the thing seemed -only reasonably large and near to us, and then I saw how exceedingly little the -Selenites upon it seemed, and I realised the full immensity of cavern and -machine. I looked from this tremendous affair to the faces of the Selenites -with a new respect. I stopped, and Cavor stopped, and stared at this thunderous -engine. -</p> - -<p> -“But this is stupendous!” I said. “What can it be for?” -</p> - -<p> -Cavor’s blue-lit face was full of an intelligent respect. “I -can’t dream! Surely these beings— Men could not make a thing like -that! Look at those arms, are they on connecting rods?” -</p> - -<p> -The thick-set Selenite had gone some paces unheeded. He came back and stood -between us and the great machine. I avoided seeing him, because I guessed -somehow that his idea was to beckon us onward. He walked away in the direction -he wished us to go, and turned and came back, and flicked our faces to attract -our attention. -</p> - -<p> -Cavor and I looked at one another. -</p> - -<p> -“Cannot we show him we are interested in the machine?” I said. -</p> - -<p> -“Yes,” said Cavor. “We’ll try that.” He turned to -our guide and smiled, and pointed to the machine, and pointed again, and then -to his head, and then to the machine. By some defect of reasoning he seemed to -imagine that broken English might help these gestures. “Me look -‘im,” he said, “me think ‘im very much. Yes.” -</p> - -<p> -His behaviour seemed to check the Selenites in their desire for our progress -for a moment. They faced one another, their queer heads moved, the twittering -voices came quick and liquid. Then one of them, a lean, tall creature, with a -sort of mantle added to the puttee in which the others were dressed, twisted -his elephant trunk of a hand about Cavor’s waist, and pulled him gently -to follow our guide, who again went on ahead. Cavor resisted. “We may -just as well begin explaining ourselves now. They may think we are new animals, -a new sort of mooncalf perhaps! It is most important that we should show an -intelligent interest from the outset.” -</p> - -<p> -He began to shake his head violently. “No, no,” he said, “me -not come on one minute. Me look at ‘im.” -</p> - -<p> -“Isn’t there some geometrical point you might bring in -<i>apropos</i> of that affair?” I suggested, as the Selenites conferred -again. -</p> - -<p> -“Possibly a parabolic—” he began. -</p> - -<p> -He yelled loudly, and leaped six feet or more! -</p> - -<p> -One of the four armed moon-men had pricked him with a goad! -</p> - -<p> -I turned on the goad-bearer behind me with a swift threatening gesture, and he -started back. This and Cavor’s sudden shout and leap clearly astonished -all the Selenites. They receded hastily, facing us. For one of those moments -that seem to last for ever, we stood in angry protest, with a scattered -semicircle of these inhuman beings about us. -</p> - -<p> -“He pricked me!” said Cavor, with a catching of the voice. -</p> - -<p> -“I saw him,” I answered. -</p> - -<p> -“Confound it!” I said to the Selenites; “we’re not -going to stand that! What on earth do you take us for?” -</p> - -<p> -I glanced quickly right and left. Far away across the blue wilderness of cavern -I saw a number of other Selenites running towards us; broad and slender they -were, and one with a larger head than the others. The cavern spread wide and -low, and receded in every direction into darkness. Its roof, I remember, seemed -to bulge down as if with the weight of the vast thickness of rocks that -prisoned us. There was no way out of it—no way out of it. Above, below, -in every direction, was the unknown, and these inhuman creatures, with goads -and gestures, confronting us, and we two unsupported men! -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap15"></a>XV.<br /> -The Giddy Bridge</h2> - -<p> -Just for a moment that hostile pause endured. I suppose that both we and the -Selenites did some very rapid thinking. My clearest impression was that there -was nothing to put my back against, and that we were bound to be surrounded and -killed. The overwhelming folly of our presence there loomed over me in black, -enormous reproach. Why had I ever launched myself on this mad, inhuman -expedition? -</p> - -<p> -Cavor came to my side and laid his hand on my arm. His pale and terrified face -was ghastly in the blue light. -</p> - -<p> -“We can’t do anything,” he said. “It’s a mistake. -They don’t understand. We must go. As they want us to go.” -</p> - -<p> -I looked down at him, and then at the fresh Selenites who were coming to help -their fellows. “If I had my hands free—” -</p> - -<p> -“It’s no use,” he panted. -</p> - -<p> -“No.” -</p> - -<p> -“We’ll go.” -</p> - -<p> -And he turned about and led the way in the direction that had been indicated -for us. -</p> - -<p> -I followed, trying to look as subdued as possible, and feeling at the chains -about my wrists. My blood was boiling. I noted nothing more of that cavern, -though it seemed to take a long time before we had marched across it, or if I -noted anything I forgot it as I saw it. My thoughts were concentrated, I think, -upon my chains and the Selenites, and particularly upon the helmeted ones with -the goads. At first they marched parallel with us, and at a respectful -distance, but presently they were overtaken by three others, and then they drew -nearer, until they were within arms length again. I winced like a beaten horse -as they came near to us. The shorter, thicker Selenite marched at first on our -right flank, but presently came in front of us again. -</p> - -<p> -How well the picture of that grouping has bitten into my brain; the back of -Cavor’s downcast head just in front of me, and the dejected droop of his -shoulders, and our guide’s gaping visage, perpetually jerking about him, -and the goad-bearers on either side, watchful, yet open-mouthed—a blue -monochrome. And after all, I <i>do</i> remember one other thing besides the -purely personal affair, which is, that a sort of gutter came presently across -the floor of the cavern, and then ran along by the side of the path of rock we -followed. And it was full of that same bright blue luminous stuff that flowed -out of the great machine. I walked close beside it, and I can testify it -radiated not a particle of heat. It was brightly shining, and yet it was -neither warmer nor colder than anything else in the cavern. -</p> - -<p> -Clang, clang, clang, we passed right under the thumping levers of another vast -machine, and so came at last to a wide tunnel, in which we could even hear the -pad, pad, of our shoeless feet, and which, save for the trickling thread of -blue to the right of us, was quite unlit. The shadows made gigantic travesties -of our shapes and those of the Selenites on the irregular wall and roof of the -tunnel. Ever and again crystals in the walls of the tunnel scintillated like -gems, ever and again the tunnel expanded into a stalactitic cavern, or gave off -branches that vanished into darkness. -</p> - -<p> -We seemed to be marching down that tunnel for a long time. “Trickle, -trickle,” went the flowing light very softly, and our footfalls and their -echoes made an irregular paddle, paddle. My mind settled down to the question -of my chains. If I were to slip off one turn <i>so</i>, and then to twist it -<i>so</i> ... -</p> - -<p> -If I tried to do it very gradually, would they see I was slipping my wrist out -of the looser turn? If they did, what would they do? -</p> - -<p> -“Bedford,” said Cavor, “it goes down. It keeps on going -down.” -</p> - -<p> -His remark roused me from my sullen pre-occupation. -</p> - -<p> -“If they wanted to kill us,” he said, dropping back to come level -with me, “there is no reason why they should not have done it.” -</p> - -<p> -“No,” I admitted, “that’s true.” -</p> - -<p> -“They don’t understand us,” he said, “they think we are -merely strange animals, some wild sort of mooncalf birth, perhaps. It will be -only when they have observed us better that they will begin to think we have -minds—” -</p> - -<p> -“When you trace those geometrical problems,” said I. -</p> - -<p> -“It may be that.” -</p> - -<p> -We tramped on for a space. -</p> - -<p> -“You see,” said Cavor, “these may be Selenites of a lower -class.” -</p> - -<p> -“The infernal fools!” said I viciously, glancing at their -exasperating faces. -</p> - -<p> -“If we endure what they do to us—” -</p> - -<p> -“We’ve got to endure it,” said I. -</p> - -<p> -“There may be others less stupid. This is the mere outer fringe of their -world. It must go down and down, cavern, passage, tunnel, down at last to the -sea—hundreds of miles below.” -</p> - -<p> -His words made me think of the mile or so of rock and tunnel that might be over -our heads already. It was like a weight dropping on my shoulders. “Away -from the sun and air,” I said. “Even a mine half a mile deep is -stuffy.” -</p> - -<p> -“This is not, anyhow. It’s probable—Ventilation! The air -would blow from the dark side of the moon to the sunlit, and all the carbonic -acid would well out there and feed those plants. Up this tunnel, for example, -there is quite a breeze. And what a world it must be. The earnest we have in -that shaft, and those machines—” -</p> - -<p> -“And the goad,” I said. “Don’t forget the goad!” -</p> - -<p> -He walked a little in front of me for a time. -</p> - -<p> -“Even that goad—” he said. -</p> - -<p> -“Well?” -</p> - -<p> -“I was angry at the time. But—it was perhaps necessary we should -get on. They have different skins, and probably different nerves. They may not -understand our objection—just as a being from Mars might not like our -earthly habit of nudging.” -</p> - -<p> -“They’d better be careful how they nudge <i>me</i>.” -</p> - -<p> -“And about that geometry. After all, their way is a way of understanding, -too. They begin with the elements of life and not of thought. Food. Compulsion. -Pain. They strike at fundamentals.” -</p> - -<p> -“There’s no doubt about <i>that</i>,” I said. -</p> - -<p> -He went on to talk of the enormous and wonderful world into which we were being -taken. I realised slowly from his tone, that even now he was not absolutely in -despair at the prospect of going ever deeper into this inhuman planet-burrow. -His mind ran on machines and invention, to the exclusion of a thousand dark -things that beset me. It wasn’t that he intended to make any use of these -things, he simply wanted to know them. -</p> - -<p> -“After all,” he said, “this is a tremendous occasion. It is -the meeting of two worlds! What are we going to see? Think of what is below us -here.” -</p> - -<p> -“We shan’t see much if the light isn’t better,” I -remarked. -</p> - -<p> -“This is only the outer crust. Down below— On this scale— -There will be everything. Do you notice how different they seem one from -another? The story we shall take back!” -</p> - -<p> -“Some rare sort of animal,” I said, “might comfort himself in -that way while they were bringing him to the Zoo.... It doesn’t follow -that we are going to be shown all these things.” -</p> - -<p> -“When they find we have reasonable minds,” said Cavor, “they -will want to learn about the earth. Even if they have no generous emotions, -they will teach in order to learn.... And the things they must know! The -unanticipated things!” -</p> - -<p> -He went on to speculate on the possibility of their knowing things he had never -hoped to learn on earth, speculating in that way, with a raw wound from that -goad already in his skin! Much that he said I forget, for my attention was -drawn to the fact that the tunnel along which we had been marching was opening -out wider and wider. We seemed, from the feeling of the air, to be going out -into a huge space. But how big the space might really be we could not tell, -because it was unlit. Our little stream of light ran in a dwindling thread and -vanished far ahead. Presently the rocky walls had vanished altogether on either -hand. There was nothing to be seen but the path in front of us and the -trickling hurrying rivulet of blue phosphorescence. The figures of Cavor and -the guiding Selenite marched before me, the sides of their legs and heads that -were towards the rivulet were clear and bright blue, their darkened sides, now -that the reflection of the tunnel wall no longer lit them, merged -indistinguishably in the darkness beyond. -</p> - -<p> -And soon I perceived that we were approaching a declivity of some sort, because -the little blue stream dipped suddenly out of sight. -</p> - -<p> -In another moment, as it seemed, we had reached the edge. The shining stream -gave one meander of hesitation and then rushed over. It fell to a depth at -which the sound of its descent was absolutely lost to us. Far below was a -bluish glow, a sort of blue mist—at an infinite distance below. And the -darkness the stream dropped out of became utterly void and black, save that a -thing like a plank projected from the edge of the cliff and stretched out and -faded and vanished altogether. There was a warm air blowing up out of the gulf. -</p> - -<p> -For a moment I and Cavor stood as near the edge as we dared, peering into a -blue-tinged profundity. And then our guide was pulling at my arm. -</p> - -<p> -Then he left me, and walked to the end of that plank and stepped upon it, -looking back. Then when he perceived we watched him, he turned about and went -on along it, walking as surely as though he was on firm earth. For a moment his -form was distinct, then he became a blue blur, and then vanished into the -obscurity. I became aware of some vague shape looming darkly out of the black. -</p> - -<p> -There was a pause. “Surely!—” said Cavor. -</p> - -<p> -One of the other Selenites walked a few paces out upon the plank, and turned -and looked back at us unconcernedly. The others stood ready to follow after us. -Our guide’s expectant figure reappeared. He was returning to see why we -had not advanced. -</p> - -<p> -“What is that beyond there?” I asked. -</p> - -<p> -“I can’t see.” -</p> - -<p> -“We can’t cross this at any price,” said I. -</p> - -<p> -“I could not go three steps on it,” said Cavor, “even with my -hands free.” -</p> - -<p> -We looked at each other’s drawn faces in blank consternation. -</p> - -<p> -“They can’t know what it is to be giddy!” said Cavor. -</p> - -<p> -“It’s quite impossible for us to walk that plank.” -</p> - -<p> -“I don’t believe they see as we do. I’ve been watching them. -I wonder if they know this is simply blackness for us. How can we make them -understand?” -</p> - -<p> -“Anyhow, we must make them understand.” -</p> - -<p> -I think we said these things with a vague half hope the Selenites might somehow -understand. I knew quite clearly that all that was needed was an explanation. -Then as I saw their faces, I realised that an explanation was impossible. Just -here it was that our resemblances were not going to bridge our differences. -Well, I wasn’t going to walk the plank, anyhow. I slipped my wrist very -quickly out of the coil of chain that was loose, and then began to twist my -wrists in opposite directions. I was standing nearest to the bridge, and as I -did this two of the Selenites laid hold of me, and pulled me gently towards it. -</p> - -<p> -I shook my head violently. “No go,” I said, “no use. You -don’t understand.” -</p> - -<p> -Another Selenite added his compulsion. I was forced to step forward. -</p> - -<p> -“I’ve got an idea,” said Cavor; but I knew his ideas. -</p> - -<p> -“Look here!” I exclaimed to the Selenites. “Steady on! -It’s all very well for you—” -</p> - -<p> -I sprang round upon my heel. I burst out into curses. For one of the armed -Selenites had stabbed me behind with his goad. -</p> - -<p> -I wrenched my wrists free from the little tentacles that held them. I turned on -the goad-bearer. “Confound you!” I cried. “I’ve warned -you of that. What on earth do you think I’m made of, to stick that into -me? If you touch me again—” -</p> - -<p> -By way of answer he pricked me forthwith. -</p> - -<p> -I heard Cavor’s voice in alarm and entreaty. Even then I think he wanted -to compromise with these creatures. “I say, Bedford,” he cried, -“I know a way!” But the sting of that second stab seemed to set -free some pent-up reserve of energy in my being. Instantly the link of the -wrist-chain snapped, and with it snapped all considerations that had held us -unresisting in the hands of these moon creatures. For that second, at least, I -was mad with fear and anger. I took no thought of consequences. I hit straight -out at the face of the thing with the goad. The chain was twisted round my -fist. -</p> - -<p> -There came another of these beastly surprises of which the moon world is full. -</p> - -<p> -My mailed hand seemed to go clean through him. He smashed like—like some -softish sort of sweet with liquid in it! He broke right in! He squelched and -splashed. It was like hitting a damp toadstool. The flimsy body went spinning a -dozen yards, and fell with a flabby impact. I was astonished. I was incredulous -that any living thing could be so flimsy. For an instant I could have believed -the whole thing a dream. -</p> - -<p> -Then it had become real and imminent again. Neither Cavor nor the other -Selenites seemed to have done anything from the time when I had turned about to -the time when the dead Selenite hit the ground. Every one stood back from us -two, every one alert. That arrest seemed to last at least a second after the -Selenite was down. Every one must have been taking the thing in. I seem to -remember myself standing with my arm half retracted, trying also to take it in. -“What next?” clamoured my brain; “what next?” Then in a -moment every one was moving! -</p> - -<p> -I perceived we must get our chains loose, and that before we could do this -these Selenites had to be beaten off. I faced towards the group of the three -goad-bearers. Instantly one threw his goad at me. It swished over my head, and -I suppose went flying into the abyss behind. -</p> - -<p> -I leaped right at him with all my might as the goad flew over me. He turned to -run as I jumped, and I bore him to the ground, came down right upon him, and -slipped upon his smashed body and fell. He seemed to wriggle under my foot. -</p> - -<p> -I came into a sitting position, and on every hand the blue backs of the -Selenites were receding into the darkness. I bent a link by main force and -untwisted the chain that had hampered me about the ankles, and sprang to my -feet, with the chain in my hand. Another goad, flung javelin-wise, whistled by -me, and I made a rush towards the darkness out of which it had come. Then I -turned back towards Cavor, who was still standing in the light of the rivulet -near the gulf convulsively busy with his wrists, and at the same time jabbering -nonsense about his idea. -</p> - -<p> -“Come on!” I cried. -</p> - -<p> -“My hands!” he answered. -</p> - -<p> -Then, realising that I dared not run back to him, because my ill-calculated -steps might carry me over the edge, he came shuffling towards me, with his -hands held out before him. -</p> - -<p> -I gripped his chains at once to unfasten them. -</p> - -<p> -“Where are they?” he panted. -</p> - -<p> -“Run away. They’ll come back. They’re throwing things! Which -way shall we go?” -</p> - -<p> -“By the light. To that tunnel. Eh?” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes,” said I, and his hands were free. -</p> - -<p> -I dropped on my knees and fell to work on his ankle bonds. Whack came -something—I know not what—and splashed the livid streamlet into -drops about us. Far away on our right a piping and whistling began. -</p> - -<p> -I whipped the chain off his feet, and put it in his hand. “Hit with -that!” I said, and without waiting for an answer, set off in big bounds -along the path by which we had come. I had a nasty sort of feeling that these -things could jump out of the darkness on to my back. I heard the impact of his -leaps come following after me. -</p> - -<p> -We ran in vast strides. But that running, you must understand, was an -altogether different thing from any running on earth. On earth one leaps and -almost instantly hits the ground again, but on the moon, because of its weaker -pull, one shot through the air for several seconds before one came to earth. In -spite of our violent hurry this gave an effect of long pauses, pauses in which -one might have counted seven or eight. “Step,” and one soared off! -All sorts of questions ran through my mind: “Where are the Selenites? -What will they do? Shall we ever get to that tunnel? Is Cavor far behind? Are -they likely to cut him off?” Then whack, stride, and off again for -another step. -</p> - -<p> -I saw a Selenite running in front of me, his legs going exactly as a -man’s would go on earth, saw him glance over his shoulder, and heard him -shriek as he ran aside out of my way into the darkness. He was, I think, our -guide, but I am not sure. Then in another vast stride the walls of rock had -come into view on either hand, and in two more strides I was in the tunnel, and -tempering my pace to its low roof. I went on to a bend, then stopped and turned -back, and plug, plug, plug, Cavor came into view, splashing into the stream of -blue light at every stride, and grew larger and blundered into me. We stood -clutching each other. For a moment, at least, we had shaken off our captors and -were alone. -</p> - -<p> -We were both very much out of breath. We spoke in panting, broken sentences. -</p> - -<p> -“You’ve spoilt it all!” panted Cavor. “Nonsense,” -I cried. “It was that or death!” -</p> - -<p> -“What are we to do?” -</p> - -<p> -“Hide.” -</p> - -<p> -“How can we?” -</p> - -<p> -“It’s dark enough.” -</p> - -<p> -“But where?” -</p> - -<p> -“Up one of these side caverns.” -</p> - -<p> -“And then?” -</p> - -<p> -“Think.” -</p> - -<p> -“Right—come on.” -</p> - -<p> -We strode on, and presently came to a radiating dark cavern. Cavor was in -front. He hesitated, and chose a black mouth that seemed to promise good -hiding. He went towards it and turned. -</p> - -<p> -“It’s dark,” he said. -</p> - -<p> -“Your legs and feet will light us. You’re wet with that luminous -stuff.” -</p> - -<p> -“But—” -</p> - -<p> -A tumult of sounds, and in particular a sound like a clanging gong, advancing -up the main tunnel, became audible. It was horribly suggestive of a tumultuous -pursuit. We made a bolt for the unlit side cavern forthwith. As we ran along it -our way was lit by the irradiation of Cavor’s legs. “It’s -lucky,” I panted, “they took off our boots, or we should fill this -place with clatter.” On we rushed, taking as small steps as we could to -avoid striking the roof of the cavern. After a time we seemed to be gaining on -the uproar. It became muffled, it dwindled, it died away. -</p> - -<p> -I stopped and looked back, and I heard the pad, pad of Cavor’s feet -receding. Then he stopped also. “Bedford,” he whispered; -“there’s a sort of light in front of us.” -</p> - -<p> -I looked, and at first could see nothing. Then I perceived his head and -shoulders dimly outlined against a fainter darkness. I saw, also, that this -mitigation of the darkness was not blue, as all the other light within the moon -had been, but a pallid grey, a very vague, faint white, the daylight colour. -Cavor noted this difference as soon, or sooner, than I did, and I think, too, -that it filled him with much the same wild hope. -</p> - -<p> -“Bedford,” he whispered, and his voice trembled. “That -light—it is possible—” -</p> - -<p> -He did not dare to say the thing he hoped. Then came a pause. Suddenly I knew -by the sound of his feet that he was striding towards that pallor. I followed -him with a beating heart. -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap16"></a>XVI.<br /> -Points of View</h2> - -<p> -The light grew stronger as we advanced. In a little time it was nearly as -strong as the phosphorescence on Cavor’s legs. Our tunnel was expanding -into a cavern, and this new light was at the farther end of it. I perceived -something that set my hopes leaping and bounding. -</p> - -<p> -“Cavor,” I said, “it comes from above! I am certain it comes -from above!” -</p> - -<p> -He made no answer, but hurried on. -</p> - -<p> -Indisputably it was a grey light, a silvery light. -</p> - -<p> -In another moment we were beneath it. It filtered down through a chink in the -walls of the cavern, and as I stared up, drip, came a drop of water upon my -face. I started and stood aside—drip, fell another drop quite audibly on -the rocky floor. -</p> - -<p> -“Cavor,” I said, “if one of us lifts the other, he can reach -that crack!” -</p> - -<p> -“I’ll lift you,” he said, and incontinently hoisted me as -though I was a baby. -</p> - -<p> -I thrust an arm into the crack, and just at my finger tips found a little ledge -by which I could hold. I could see the white light was very much brighter now. -I pulled myself up by two fingers with scarcely an effort, though on earth I -weigh twelve stone, reached to a still higher corner of rock, and so got my -feet on the narrow ledge. I stood up and searched up the rocks with my fingers; -the cleft broadened out upwardly. “It’s climbable,” I said to -Cavor. “Can you jump up to my hand if I hold it down to you?” -</p> - -<p> -I wedged myself between the sides of the cleft, rested knee and foot on the -ledge, and extended a hand. I could not see Cavor, but I could hear the rustle -of his movements as he crouched to spring. Then whack and he was hanging to my -arm—and no heavier than a kitten! I lugged him up until he had a hand on -my ledge, and could release me. -</p> - -<p> -“Confound it!” I said, “any one could be a mountaineer on the -moon;” and so set myself in earnest to the climbing. For a few minutes I -clambered steadily, and then I looked up again. The cleft opened out steadily, -and the light was brighter. Only— -</p> - -<p> -It was not daylight after all. -</p> - -<p> -In another moment I could see what it was, and at the sight I could have beaten -my head against the rocks with disappointment. For I beheld simply an -irregularly sloping open space, and all over its slanting floor stood a forest -of little club-shaped fungi, each shining gloriously with that pinkish silvery -light. For a moment I stared at their soft radiance, then sprang forward and -upward among them. I plucked up half a dozen and flung them against the rocks, -and then sat down, laughing bitterly, as Cavor’s ruddy face came into -view. -</p> - -<p> -“It’s phosphorescence again!” I said. “No need to -hurry. Sit down and make yourself at home.” And as he spluttered over our -disappointment, I began to lob more of these growths into the cleft. -</p> - -<p> -“I thought it was daylight,” he said. -</p> - -<p> -“Daylight!” cried I. “Daybreak, sunset, clouds, and windy -skies! Shall we ever see such things again?” -</p> - -<p> -As I spoke, a little picture of our world seemed to rise before me, bright and -little and clear, like the background of some old Italian picture. “The -sky that changes, and the sea that changes, and the hills and the green trees -and the towns and cities shining in the sun. Think of a wet roof at sunset, -Cavor! Think of the windows of a westward house!” He made no answer. -</p> - -<p> -“Here we are burrowing in this beastly world that isn’t a world, -with its inky ocean hidden in some abominable blackness below, and outside that -torrid day and that death stillness of night. And all these things that are -chasing us now, beastly men of leather—insect men, that come out of a -nightmare! After all, they’re right! What business have we here smashing -them and disturbing their world! For all we know the whole planet is up and -after us already. In a minute we may hear them whimpering, and their gongs -going. What are we to do? Where are we to go? Here we are as comfortable as -snakes from Jamrach’s loose in a Surbiton villa!” -</p> - -<p> -“It was your fault,” said Cavor. -</p> - -<p> -“My fault!” I shouted. “Good Lord!” -</p> - -<p> -“I had an idea!” -</p> - -<p> -“Curse your ideas!” -</p> - -<p> -“If we had refused to budge—” -</p> - -<p> -“Under those goads?” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes. They would have carried us!” -</p> - -<p> -“Over that bridge?” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes. They must have carried us from outside.” -</p> - -<p> -“I’d rather be carried by a fly across a ceiling.” -</p> - -<p> -“Good Heavens!” -</p> - -<p> -I resumed my destruction of the fungi. Then suddenly I saw something that -struck me even then. “Cavor,” I said, “these chains are of -gold!” -</p> - -<p> -He was thinking intently, with his hands gripping his cheeks. He turned his -head slowly and stared at me, and when I had repeated my words, at the twisted -chain about his right hand. “So they are,” he said, “so they -are.” His face lost its transitory interest even as he looked. He -hesitated for a moment, then went on with his interrupted meditation. I sat for -a space puzzling over the fact that I had only just observed this, until I -considered the blue light in which we had been, and which had taken all the -colour out of the metal. And from that discovery I also started upon a train of -thought that carried me wide and far. I forgot that I had just been asking what -business we had in the moon. Gold.... -</p> - -<p> -It was Cavor who spoke first. “It seems to me that there are two courses -open to us.” -</p> - -<p> -“Well?” -</p> - -<p> -“Either we can attempt to make our way—fight our way if -necessary—out to the exterior again, and then hunt for our sphere until -we find it, or the cold of the night comes to kill us, or else—” -</p> - -<p> -He paused. “Yes?” I said, though I knew what was coming. -</p> - -<p> -“We might attempt once more to establish some sort of understanding with -the minds of the people in the moon.” -</p> - -<p> -“So far as I’m concerned—it’s the first.” -</p> - -<p> -“I doubt.” -</p> - -<p> -“I don’t.” -</p> - -<p> -“You see,” said Cavor, “I do not think we can judge the -Selenites by what we have seen of them. Their central world, their civilised -world will be far below in the profounder caverns about their sea. This region -of the crust in which we are is an outlying district, a pastoral region. At any -rate, that is my interpretation. These Selenites we have seen may be only the -equivalent of cowboys and engine-tenders. Their use of goads—in all -probability mooncalf goads—the lack of imagination they show in expecting -us to be able to do just what they can do, their indisputable brutality, all -seem to point to something of that sort. But if we endured—” -</p> - -<p> -“Neither of us could endure a six-inch plank across the bottomless pit -for very long.” -</p> - -<p> -“No,” said Cavor; “but then—” -</p> - -<p> -“I <i>won’t</i>,” I said. -</p> - -<p> -He discovered a new line of possibilities. “Well, suppose we got -ourselves into some corner, where we could defend ourselves against these hinds -and labourers. If, for example, we could hold out for a week or so, it is -probable that the news of our appearance would filter down to the more -intelligent and populous parts—” -</p> - -<p> -“If they exist.” -</p> - -<p> -“They must exist, or whence came those tremendous machines?” -</p> - -<p> -“That’s possible, but it’s the worst of the two -chances.” -</p> - -<p> -“We might write up inscriptions on walls—” -</p> - -<p> -“How do we know their eyes would see the sort of marks we made?” -</p> - -<p> -“If we cut them—” -</p> - -<p> -“That’s possible, of course.” -</p> - -<p> -I took up a new thread of thought. “After all,” I said, “I -suppose you don’t think these Selenites so infinitely wiser than -men.” -</p> - -<p> -“They must know a lot more—or at least a lot of different -things.” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes, but—” I hesitated. -</p> - -<p> -“I think you’ll quite admit, Cavor, that you’re rather an -exceptional man.” -</p> - -<p> -“How?” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, you—you’re a rather lonely man—have been, that -is. You haven’t married.” -</p> - -<p> -“Never wanted to. But why—” -</p> - -<p> -“And you never grew richer than you happened to be?” -</p> - -<p> -“Never wanted that either.” -</p> - -<p> -“You’ve just rooted after knowledge?” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, a certain curiosity is natural—” -</p> - -<p> -“You think so. That’s just it. You think every other mind wants to -<i>know</i>. I remember once, when I asked you why you conducted all these -researches, you said you wanted your F.R.S., and to have the stuff called -Cavorite, and things like that. You know perfectly well you didn’t do it -for that; but at the time my question took you by surprise, and you felt you -ought to have something to look like a motive. Really you conducted researches -because you <i>had</i> to. It’s your twist.” -</p> - -<p> -“Perhaps it is—” -</p> - -<p> -“It isn’t one man in a million has that twist. Most men -want—well, various things, but very few want knowledge for its own sake. -<i>I</i> don’t, I know perfectly well. Now, these Selenites seem to be a -driving, busy sort of being, but how do you know that even the most intelligent -will take an interest in us or our world? I don’t believe they’ll -even know we have a world. They never come out at night—they’d -freeze if they did. They’ve probably never seen any heavenly body at all -except the blazing sun. How are they to know there is another world? What does -it matter to them if they do? Well, even if they <i>have</i> had a glimpse of a -few stars, or even of the earth crescent, what of that? Why should people -living <i>inside</i> a planet trouble to observe that sort of thing? Men -wouldn’t have done it except for the seasons and sailing; why should the -moon people?... -</p> - -<p> -“Well, suppose there are a few philosophers like yourself. They are just -the very Selenites who’ll never have heard of our existence. Suppose a -Selenite had dropped on the earth when you were at Lympne, you’d have -been the last man in the world to hear he had come. You never read a newspaper! -You see the chances against you. Well, it’s for these chances we’re -sitting here doing nothing while precious time is flying. I tell you -we’ve got into a fix. We’ve come unarmed, we’ve lost our -sphere, we’ve got no food, we’ve shown ourselves to the Selenites, -and made them think we’re strange, strong, dangerous animals; and unless -these Selenites are perfect fools, they’ll set about now and hunt us till -they find us, and when they find us they’ll try to take us if they can, -and kill us if they can’t, and that’s the end of the matter. If -they take us, they’ll probably kill us, through some misunderstanding. -After we’re done for, they may discuss us perhaps, but we shan’t -get much fun out of that.” -</p> - -<p> -“Go on.” -</p> - -<p> -“On the other hand, here’s gold knocking about like cast iron at -home. If only we can get some of it back, if only we can find our sphere again -before they do, and get back, then—” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes?” -</p> - -<p> -“We might put the thing on a sounder footing. Come back in a bigger -sphere with guns.” -</p> - -<p> -“Good Lord!” cried Cavor, as though that was horrible. -</p> - -<p> -I shied another luminous fungus down the cleft. -</p> - -<p> -“Look here, Cavor,” I said, “I’ve half the voting power -anyhow in this affair, and this is a case for a practical man. I’m a -practical man, and you are not. I’m not going to trust to Selenites and -geometrical diagrams if I can help it. That’s all. Get back. Drop all -this secrecy—or most of it. And come again.” -</p> - -<p> -He reflected. “When I came to the moon,” he said, “I ought to -have come alone.” -</p> - -<p> -“The question before the meeting,” I said, “is how to get -back to the sphere.” -</p> - -<p> -For a time we nursed our knees in silence. Then he seemed to decide for my -reasons. -</p> - -<p> -“I think,” he said, “one can get data. It is clear that while -the sun is on this side of the moon the air will be blowing through this planet -sponge from the dark side hither. On this side, at any rate, the air will be -expanding and flowing out of the moon caverns into the craters.... Very well, -there’s a draught here.” -</p> - -<p> -“So there is.” -</p> - -<p> -“And that means that this is not a dead end; somewhere behind us this -cleft goes on and up. The draught is blowing up, and that is the way we have to -go. If we try to get up any sort of chimney or gully there is, we shall not -only get out of these passages where they are hunting for us—” -</p> - -<p> -“But suppose the gully is too narrow?” -</p> - -<p> -“We’ll come down again.” -</p> - -<p> -“Ssh!” I said suddenly; “what’s that?” -</p> - -<p> -We listened. At first it was an indistinct murmur, and then one picked out the -clang of a gong. “They must think we are mooncalves,” said I, -“to be frightened at that.” -</p> - -<p> -“They’re coming along that passage,” said Cavor. -</p> - -<p> -“They must be.” -</p> - -<p> -“They’ll not think of the cleft. They’ll go past.” -</p> - -<p> -I listened again for a space. “This time,” I whispered, -“they’re likely to have some sort of weapon.” -</p> - -<p> -Then suddenly I sprang to my feet. “Good heavens, Cavor!” I cried. -“But they <i>will!</i> They’ll see the fungi I have been pitching -down. They’ll—” -</p> - -<p> -I didn’t finish my sentence. I turned about and made a leap over the -fungus tops towards the upper end of the cavity. I saw that the space turned -upward and became a draughty cleft again, ascending to impenetrable darkness. I -was about to clamber up into this, and then with a happy inspiration turned -back. -</p> - -<p> -“What are you doing?” asked Cavor. -</p> - -<p> -“Go on!” said I, and went back and got two of the shining fungi, -and putting one into the breast pocket of my flannel jacket, so that it stuck -out to light our climbing, went back with the other for Cavor. The noise of the -Selenites was now so loud that it seemed they must be already beneath the -cleft. But it might be they would have difficulty in clambering in to it, or -might hesitate to ascend it against our possible resistance. At any rate, we -had now the comforting knowledge of the enormous muscular superiority our birth -in another planet gave us. In other minute I was clambering with gigantic -vigour after Cavor’s blue-lit heels. -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap17"></a>XVII.<br /> -The Fight in the Cave of the Moon Butchers</h2> - -<p> -I do not know how far we clambered before we came to the grating. It may be we -ascended only a few hundred feet, but at the time it seemed to me we might have -hauled and jammed and hopped and wedged ourselves through a mile or more of -vertical ascent. Whenever I recall that time, there comes into my head the -heavy clank of our golden chains that followed every movement. Very soon my -knuckles and knees were raw, and I had a bruise on one cheek. After a time the -first violence of our efforts diminished, and our movements became more -deliberate and less painful. The noise of the pursuing Selenites had died away -altogether. It seemed almost as though they had not traced us up the crack -after all, in spite of the tell-tale heap of broken fungi that must have lain -beneath it. At times the cleft narrowed so much that we could scarce squeeze up -it; at others it expanded into great drusy cavities, studded with prickly -crystals or thickly beset with dull, shining fungoid pimples. Sometimes it -twisted spirally, and at other times slanted down nearly to the horizontal -direction. Ever and again there was the intermittent drip and trickle of water -by us. Once or twice it seemed to us that small living things had rustled out -of our reach, but what they were we never saw. They may have been venomous -beasts for all I know, but they did us no harm, and we were now tuned to a -pitch when a weird creeping thing more or less mattered little. And at last, -far above, came the familiar bluish light again, and then we saw that it -filtered through a grating that barred our way. -</p> - -<p> -We whispered as we pointed this out to one another, and became more and more -cautious in our ascent. Presently we were close under the grating, and by -pressing my face against its bars I could see a limited portion of the cavern -beyond. It was clearly a large space, and lit no doubt by some rivulet of the -same blue light that we had seen flow from the beating machinery. An -intermittent trickle of water dropped ever and again between the bars near my -face. -</p> - -<p> -My first endeavour was naturally to see what might be upon the floor of the -cavern, but our grating lay in a depression whose rim hid all this from our -eyes. Our foiled attention then fell back upon the suggestion of the various -sounds we heard, and presently my eye caught a number of faint shadows that -played across the dim roof far overhead. -</p> - -<p> -Indisputably there were several Selenites, perhaps a considerable number, in -this space, for we could hear the noises of their intercourse, and faint sounds -that I identified as their footfalls. There was also a succession of regularly -repeated sounds—chid, chid, chid—which began and ceased, suggestive -of a knife or spade hacking at some soft substance. Then came a clank as if of -chains, a whistle and a rumble as of a truck running over a hollowed place, and -then again that chid, chid, chid resumed. The shadows told of shapes that moved -quickly and rhythmically, in agreement with that regular sound, and rested when -it ceased. -</p> - -<p> -We put our heads close together, and began to discuss these things in noiseless -whispers. -</p> - -<p> -“They are occupied,” I said, “they are occupied in some -way.” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes.” -</p> - -<p> -“They’re not seeking us, or thinking of us.” -</p> - -<p> -“Perhaps they have not heard of us.” -</p> - -<p> -“Those others are hunting about below. If suddenly we appeared -here—” -</p> - -<p> -We looked at one another. -</p> - -<p> -“There might be a chance to parley,” said Cavor. -</p> - -<p> -“No,” I said. “Not as we are.” -</p> - -<p> -For a space we remained, each occupied by his own thoughts. -</p> - -<p> -Chid, chid, chid went the chipping, and the shadows moved to and fro. -</p> - -<p> -I looked at the grating. “It’s flimsy,” I said. “We -might bend two of the bars and crawl through.” -</p> - -<p> -We wasted a little time in vague discussion. Then I took one of the bars in -both hands, and got my feet up against the rock until they were almost on a -level with my head, and so thrust against the bar. It bent so suddenly that I -almost slipped. I clambered about and bent the adjacent bar in the opposite -direction, and then took the luminous fungus from my pocket and dropped it down -the fissure. -</p> - -<p> -“Don’t do anything hastily,” whispered Cavor, as I twisted -myself up through the opening I had enlarged. I had a glimpse of busy figures -as I came through the grating, and immediately bent down, so that the rim of -the depression in which the grating lay hid me from their eyes, and so lay -flat, signalling advice to Cavor as he also prepared to come through. Presently -we were side by side in the depression, peering over the edge at the cavern and -its occupants. -</p> - -<p> -It was a much larger cavern than we had supposed from our first glimpse of it, -and we looked up from the lowest portion of its sloping floor. It widened out -as it receded from us, and its roof came down and hid the remoter portion -altogether. And lying in a line along its length, vanishing at last far away in -that tremendous perspective, were a number of huge shapes, huge pallid hulls, -upon which the Selenites were busy. At first they seemed big white cylinders of -vague import. Then I noted the heads upon them lying towards us, eyeless and -skinless like the heads of sheep at a butcher’s, and perceived they were -the carcasses of mooncalves being cut up, much as the crew of a whaler might -cut up a moored whale. They were cutting off the flesh in strips, and on some -of the farther trunks the white ribs were showing. It was the sound of their -hatchets that made that chid, chid, chid. Some way away a thing like a trolley -cable, drawn and loaded with chunks of lax meat, was running up the slope of -the cavern floor. This enormous long avenue of hulls that were destined to be -food gave us a sense of the vast populousness of the moon world second only to -the effect of our first glimpse down the shaft. -</p> - -<p> -It seemed to me at first that the Selenites must be standing on -trestle-supported planks,<a href="#fn-2" name="fnref-2" id="fnref-2"><sup>[2]</sup></a> -and then I saw that the planks and supports and the hatchets were really of the -same leaden hue as my fetters had seemed before white light came to bear on -them. A number of very thick-looking crowbars lay about the floor, and had -apparently assisted to turn the dead mooncalf over on its side. They were -perhaps six feet long, with shaped handles, very tempting-looking weapons. The -whole place was lit by three transverse streams of the blue fluid. -</p> - -<p class="footnote"> -<a name="fn-2" id="fn-2"></a> <a href="#fnref-2">[2]</a> -I do not remember seeing any wooden things on the moon; doors, tables, -everything corresponding to our terrestrial joinery was made of metal, and I -believe for the most part of gold, which as a metal would, of course, naturally -recommend itself—other things being equal—on account of the ease in -working it, and its toughness and durability. -</p> - -<p> -We lay for a long time noting all these things in silence. “Well?” -said Cavor at last. -</p> - -<p> -I crouched over and turned to him. I had come upon a brilliant idea. -“Unless they lowered those bodies by a crane,” I said, “we -must be nearer the surface than I thought.” -</p> - -<p> -“Why?” -</p> - -<p> -“The mooncalf doesn’t hop, and it hasn’t got wings.” -</p> - -<p> -He peered over the edge of the hollow again. “I wonder now—” -he began. “After all, we have never gone far from the -surface—” -</p> - -<p> -I stopped him by a grip on his arm. I had heard a noise from the cleft below -us! -</p> - -<p> -We twisted ourselves about, and lay as still as death, with every sense alert. -In a little while I did not doubt that something was quietly ascending the -cleft. Very slowly and quite noiselessly I assured myself of a good grip on my -chain, and waited for that something to appear. -</p> - -<p> -“Just look at those chaps with the hatchets again,” I said. -</p> - -<p> -“They’re all right,” said Cavor. -</p> - -<p> -I took a sort of provisional aim at the gap in the grating. I could hear now -quite distinctly the soft twittering of the ascending Selenites, the dab of -their hands against the rock, and the falling of dust from their grips as they -clambered. -</p> - -<p> -Then I could see that there was something moving dimly in the blackness below -the grating, but what it might be I could not distinguish. The whole thing -seemed to hang fire just for a moment—then smash! I had sprung to my -feet, struck savagely at something that had flashed out at me. It was the keen -point of a spear. I have thought since that its length in the narrowness of the -cleft must have prevented its being sloped to reach me. Anyhow, it shot out -from the grating like the tongue of a snake, and missed and flew back and -flashed again. But the second time I snatched and caught it, and wrenched it -away, but not before another had darted ineffectually at me. -</p> - -<p> -I shouted with triumph as I felt the hold of the Selenite resist my pull for a -moment and give, and then I was jabbing down through the bars, amidst squeals -from the darkness, and Cavor had snapped off the other spear, and was leaping -and flourishing it beside me, and making inefficient jabs. Clang, clang, came -up through the grating, and then an axe hurtled through the air and whacked -against the rocks beyond, to remind me of the fleshers at the carcasses up the -cavern. -</p> - -<p> -I turned, and they were all coming towards us in open order waving their axes. -They were short, thick, little beggars, with long arms, strikingly different -from the ones we had seen before. If they had not heard of us before, they must -have realised the situation with incredible swiftness. I stared at them for a -moment, spear in hand. “Guard that grating, Cavor,” I cried, howled -to intimidate them, and rushed to meet them. Two of them missed with their -hatchets, and the rest fled incontinently. Then the two also were sprinting -away up the cavern, with hands clenched and heads down. I never saw men run -like them! -</p> - -<p> -I knew the spear I had was no good for me. It was thin and flimsy, only -effectual for a thrust, and too long for a quick recover. So I only chased the -Selenites as far as the first carcass, and stopped there and picked up one of -the crowbars that were lying about. It felt comfortingly heavy, and equal to -smashing any number of Selenites. I threw away my spear, and picked up a second -crowbar for the other hand. I felt five times better than I had with the spear. -I shook the two threateningly at the Selenites, who had come to a halt in a -little crowd far away up the cavern, and then turned about to look at Cavor. -</p> - -<p> -He was leaping from side to side of the grating, making threatening jabs with -his broken spear. That was all right. It would keep the Selenites -down—for a time at any rate. I looked up the cavern again. What on earth -were we going to do now? -</p> - -<p> -We were cornered in a sort of way already. But these butchers up the cavern had -been surprised, they were probably scared, and they had no special weapons, -only those little hatchets of theirs. And that way lay escape. Their sturdy -little forms—ever so much shorter and thicker than the mooncalf -herds—were scattered up the slope in a way that was eloquent of -indecision. I had the moral advantage of a mad bull in a street. But for all -that, there seemed a tremendous crowd of them. Very probably there was. Those -Selenites down the cleft had certainly some infernally long spears. It might be -they had other surprises for us.... But, confound it! if we charged up the cave -we should let them up behind us, and if we didn’t those little brutes up -the cave would probably get reinforced. Heaven alone knew what tremendous -engines of warfare—guns, bombs, terrestrial torpedoes—this unknown -world below our feet, this vaster world of which we had only pricked the outer -cuticle, might not presently send up to our destruction. It became clear the -only thing to do was to charge! It became clearer as the legs of a number of -fresh Selenites appeared running down the cavern towards us. -</p> - -<p> -“Bedford!” cried Cavor, and behold! he was halfway between me and -the grating. -</p> - -<p> -“Go back!” I cried. “What are you doing—” -</p> - -<p> -“They’ve got—it’s like a gun!” -</p> - -<p> -And struggling in the grating between those defensive spears appeared the head -and shoulders of a singularly lean and angular Selenite, bearing some -complicated apparatus. -</p> - -<p> -I realised Cavor’s utter incapacity for the fight we had in hand. For a -moment I hesitated. Then I rushed past him whirling my crowbars, and shouting -to confound the aim of the Selenite. He was aiming in the queerest way with the -thing against his stomach. “<i>Chuzz!</i>” The thing wasn’t a -gun; it went off like a cross-bow more, and dropped me in the middle of a leap. -</p> - -<p> -I didn’t fall down, I simply came down a little shorter than I should -have done if I hadn’t been hit, and from the feel of my shoulder the -thing might have tapped me and glanced off. Then my left hand hit against the -shaft, and I perceived there was a sort of spear sticking half through my -shoulder. The moment after I got home with the crowbar in my right hand, and -hit the Selenite fair and square. He collapsed—he crushed and -crumpled—his head smashed like an egg. -</p> - -<p> -I dropped a crowbar, pulled the spear out of my shoulder, and began to jab it -down the grating into the darkness. At each jab came a shriek and twitter. -Finally I hurled the spear down upon them with all my strength, leapt up, -picked up the crowbar again, and started for the multitude up the cavern. -</p> - -<p> -“Bedford!” cried Cavor. “Bedford!” as I flew past him. -</p> - -<p> -I seem to remember his footsteps coming on behind me. -</p> - -<p> -Step, leap ... whack, step, leap.... Each leap seemed to last ages. With each, -the cave opened out and the number of Selenites visible increased. At first -they seemed all running about like ants in a disturbed ant-hill, one or two -waving hatchets and coming to meet me, more running away, some bolting sideways -into the avenue of carcasses, then presently others came in sight carrying -spears, and then others. I saw a most extraordinary thing, all hands and feet, -bolting for cover. The cavern grew darker farther up. -</p> - -<p> -Flick! something flew over my head. Flick! As I soared in mid-stride I saw a -spear hit and quiver in one of the carcasses to my left. Then, as I came down, -one hit the ground before me, and I heard the remote chuzz! with which their -things were fired. Flick, flick! for a moment it was a shower. They were -volleying! -</p> - -<p> -I stopped dead. -</p> - -<p> -I don’t think I thought clearly then. I seem to remember a kind of -stereotyped phrase running through my mind: “Zone of fire, seek -cover!” I know I made a dash for the space between two of the carcasses, -and stood there panting and feeling very wicked. -</p> - -<p> -I looked round for Cavor, and for a moment it seemed as if he had vanished from -the world. Then he came out of the darkness between the row of the carcasses -and the rocky wall of the cavern. I saw his little face, dark and blue, and -shining with perspiration and emotion. -</p> - -<p> -He was saying something, but what it was I did not heed. I had realised that we -might work from mooncalf to mooncalf up the cave until we were near enough to -charge home. It was charge or nothing. “Come on!” I said, and led -the way. -</p> - -<p> -“Bedford!” he cried unavailingly. -</p> - -<p> -My mind was busy as we went up that narrow alley between the dead bodies and -the wall of the cavern. The rocks curved about—they could not enfilade -us. Though in that narrow space we could not leap, yet with our earth-born -strength we were still able to go very much faster than the Selenites. I -reckoned we should presently come right among them. Once we were on them, they -would be nearly as formidable as black beetles. Only there would first of all -be a volley. I thought of a stratagem. I whipped off my flannel jacket as I -ran. -</p> - -<p> -“Bedford!” panted Cavor behind me. -</p> - -<p> -I glanced back. “What?” said I. -</p> - -<p> -He was pointing upward over the carcasses. “White light!” he said. -“White light again!” -</p> - -<p> -I looked, and it was even so; a faint white ghost of light in the remoter -cavern roof. That seemed to give me double strength. -</p> - -<p> -“Keep close,” I said. A flat, long Selenite dashed out of the -darkness, and squealed and fled. I halted, and stopped Cavor with my hand. I -hung my jacket over my crowbar, ducked round the next carcass, dropped jacket -and crowbar, showed myself, and darted back. -</p> - -<p> -“Chuzz-flick,” just one arrow came. We were close on the Selenites, -and they were standing in a crowd, broad, short, and tall together, with a -little battery of their shooting implements pointing down the cave. Three or -four other arrows followed the first, then their fire ceased. -</p> - -<p> -I stuck out my head, and escaped by a hair’s-breadth. This time I drew a -dozen shots or more, and heard the Selenites shouting and twittering as if with -excitement as they shot. I picked up jacket and crowbar again. -</p> - -<p> -“<i>Now!</i>” said I, and thrust out the jacket. -</p> - -<p> -“Chuzz-zz-zz-zz! Chuzz!” In an instant my jacket had grown a thick -beard of arrows, and they were quivering all over the carcass behind us. -Instantly I slipped the crowbar out of the jacket, dropped the jacket—for -all I know to the contrary it is lying up there in the moon now—and -rushed out upon them. -</p> - -<p> -For a minute perhaps it was massacre. I was too fierce to discriminate, and the -Selenites were probably too scared to fight. At any rate they made no sort of -fight against me. I saw scarlet, as the saying is. I remember I seemed to be -wading among those leathery, thin things as a man wades through tall grass, -mowing and hitting, first right, then left; smash. Little drops of moisture -flew about. I trod on things that crushed and piped and went slippery. The -crowd seemed to open and close and flow like water. They seemed to have no -combined plan whatever. There were spears flew about me, I was grazed over the -ear by one. I was stabbed once in the arm and once in the cheek, but I only -found that out afterwards, when the blood had had time to run and cool and feel -wet. -</p> - -<p> -What Cavor did I do not know. For a space it seemed that this fighting had -lasted for an age, and must needs go on for ever. Then suddenly it was all -over, and there was nothing to be seen but the backs of heads bobbing up and -down as their owners ran in all directions.... I seemed altogether unhurt. I -ran forward some paces, shouting, then turned about. I was amazed. -</p> - -<p> -I had come right through them in vast flying strides, they were all behind me, -and running hither and thither to hide. -</p> - -<p> -I felt an enormous astonishment at the evaporation of the great fight into -which I had hurled myself, and not a little exultation. It did not seem to me -that I had discovered the Selenites were unexpectedly flimsy, but that I was -unexpectedly strong. I laughed stupidly. This fantastic moon! -</p> - -<p> -I glanced for a moment at the smashed and writhing bodies that were scattered -over the cavern floor, with a vague idea of further violence, then hurried on -after Cavor. -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap18"></a>XVIII.<br /> -In the Sunlight</h2> - -<p> -Presently we saw that the cavern before us opened upon a hazy void. In another -moment we had emerged upon a sort of slanting gallery, that projected into a -vast circular space, a huge cylindrical pit running vertically up and down. -Round this pit the slanting gallery ran without any parapet or protection for a -turn and a half, and then plunged high above into the rock again. Somehow it -reminded me then of one of those spiral turns of the railway through the Saint -Gothard. It was all tremendously huge. I can scarcely hope to convey to you the -Titanic proportion of all that place, the Titanic effect of it. Our eyes -followed up the vast declivity of the pit wall, and overhead and far above we -beheld a round opening set with faint stars, and half of the lip about it well -nigh blinding with the white light of the sun. At that we cried aloud -simultaneously. -</p> - -<p> -“Come on!” I said, leading the way. -</p> - -<p> -“But there?” said Cavor, and very carefully stepped nearer the edge -of the gallery. I followed his example, and craned forward and looked down, but -I was dazzled by that gleam of light above, and I could see only a bottomless -darkness with spectral patches of crimson and purple floating therein. Yet if I -could not see, I could hear. Out of this darkness came a sound, a sound like -the angry hum one can hear if one puts one’s ear outside a hive of bees, -a sound out of that enormous hollow, it may be, four miles beneath our feet... -</p> - -<p> -For a moment I listened, then tightened my grip on my crowbar, and led the way -up the gallery. -</p> - -<p> -“This must be the shaft we looked down upon,” said Cavor. -“Under that lid.” -</p> - -<p> -“And below there, is where we saw the lights.” -</p> - -<p> -“The lights!” said he. “Yes—the lights of the world -that now we shall never see.” -</p> - -<p> -“We’ll come back,” I said, for now we had escaped so much I -was rashly sanguine that we should recover the sphere. -</p> - -<p> -His answer I did not catch. -</p> - -<p> -“Eh?” I asked. -</p> - -<p> -“It doesn’t matter,” he answered, and we hurried on in -silence. -</p> - -<p> -I suppose that slanting lateral way was four or five miles long, allowing for -its curvature, and it ascended at a slope that would have made it almost -impossibly steep on earth, but which one strode up easily under lunar -conditions. We saw only two Selenites during all that portion of our flight, -and directly they became aware of us they ran headlong. It was clear that the -knowledge of our strength and violence had reached them. Our way to the -exterior was unexpectedly plain. The spiral gallery straightened into a steeply -ascendent tunnel, its floor bearing abundant traces of the mooncalves, and so -straight and short in proportion to its vast arch, that no part of it was -absolutely dark. Almost immediately it began to lighten, and then far off and -high up, and quite blindingly brilliant, appeared its opening on the exterior, -a slope of Alpine steepness surmounted by a crest of bayonet shrub, tall and -broken down now, and dry and dead, in spiky silhouette against the sun. -</p> - -<p> -And it is strange that we men, to whom this very vegetation had seemed so weird -and horrible a little time ago, should now behold it with the emotion a -home-coming exile might feel at sight of his native land. We welcomed even the -rareness of the air that made us pant as we ran, and which rendered speaking no -longer the easy thing that it had been, but an effort to make oneself heard. -Larger grew the sunlit circle above us, and larger, and all the nearer tunnel -sank into a rim of indistinguishable black. We saw the dead bayonet shrub no -longer with any touch of green in it, but brown and dry and thick, and the -shadow of its upper branches high out of sight made a densely interlaced -pattern upon the tumbled rocks. And at the immediate mouth of the tunnel was a -wide trampled space where the mooncalves had come and gone. -</p> - -<p> -We came out upon this space at last into a light and heat that hit and pressed -upon us. We traversed the exposed area painfully, and clambered up a slope -among the scrub stems, and sat down at last panting in a high place beneath the -shadow of a mass of twisted lava. Even in the shade the rock felt hot. -</p> - -<p> -The air was intensely hot, and we were in great physical discomfort, but for -all that we were no longer in a nightmare. We seemed to have come to our own -province again, beneath the stars. All the fear and stress of our flight -through the dim passages and fissures below had fallen from us. That last fight -had filled us with an enormous confidence in ourselves so far as the Selenites -were concerned. We looked back almost incredulously at the black opening from -which we had just emerged. Down there it was, in a blue glow that now in our -memories seemed the next thing to absolute darkness, we had met with things -like mad mockeries of men, helmet-headed creatures, and had walked in fear -before them, and had submitted to them until we could submit no longer. And -behold, they had smashed like wax and scattered like chaff, and fled and -vanished like the creatures of a dream! -</p> - -<p> -I rubbed my eyes, doubting whether we had not slept and dreamt these things by -reason of the fungus we had eaten, and suddenly discovered the blood upon my -face, and then that my shirt was sticking painfully to my shoulder and arm. -</p> - -<p> -“Confound it!” I said, gauging my injuries with an investigatory -hand, and suddenly that distant tunnel mouth became, as it were, a watching -eye. -</p> - -<p> -“Cavor!” I said; “what are they going to do now? And what are -we going to do?” -</p> - -<p> -He shook his head, with his eyes fixed upon the tunnel. “How can one tell -what they will do?” -</p> - -<p> -“It depends on what they think of us, and I don’t see how we can -begin to guess that. And it depends upon what they have in reserve. It’s -as you say, Cavor, we have touched the merest outside of this world. They may -have all sorts of things inside here. Even with those shooting things they -might make it bad for us.... -</p> - -<p> -“Yet after all,” I said, “even if we <i>don’t</i> find -the sphere at once, there is a chance for us. We might hold out. Even through -the night. We might go down there again and make a fight for it.” -</p> - -<p> -I stared about me with speculative eyes. The character of the scenery had -altered altogether by reason of the enormous growth and subsequent drying of -the scrub. The crest on which we sat was high, and commanded a wide prospect of -the crater landscape, and we saw it now all sere and dry in the late autumn of -the lunar afternoon. Rising one behind the other were long slopes and fields of -trampled brown where the mooncalves had pastured, and far away in the full -blaze of the sun a drove of them basked slumberously, scattered shapes, each -with a blot of shadow against it like sheep on the side of a down. But never a -sign of a Selenite was to be seen. Whether they had fled on our emergence from -the interior passages, or whether they were accustomed to retire after driving -out the mooncalves, I cannot guess. At the time I believed the former was the -case. -</p> - -<p> -“If we were to set fire to all this stuff,” I said, “we might -find the sphere among the ashes.” -</p> - -<p> -Cavor did not seem to hear me. He was peering under his hand at the stars, that -still, in spite of the intense sunlight, were abundantly visible in the sky. -“How long do you think we’ve have been here?” he asked at -last. -</p> - -<p> -“Been where?” -</p> - -<p> -“On the moon.” -</p> - -<p> -“Two earthly days, perhaps.” -</p> - -<p> -“More nearly ten. Do you know, the sun is past its zenith, and sinking in -the west. In four days’ time or less it will be night.” -</p> - -<p> -“But—we’ve only eaten once!” -</p> - -<p> -“I know that. And— But there are the stars!” -</p> - -<p> -“But why should time seem different because we are on a smaller -planet?” -</p> - -<p> -“I don’t know. There it is!” -</p> - -<p> -“How does one tell time?” -</p> - -<p> -“Hunger—fatigue—all those things are different. Everything is -different—everything. To me it seems that since first we came out of the -sphere has been only a question of hours—long hours—at most.” -</p> - -<p> -“Ten days,” I said; “that leaves—” I looked up at -the sun for a moment, and then saw that it was halfway from the zenith to the -western edge of things. “Four days! ... Cavor, we mustn’t sit here -and dream. How do you think we may begin?” -</p> - -<p> -I stood up. “We must get a fixed point we can recognise—we might -hoist a flag, or a handkerchief, or something—and quarter the ground, and -work round that.” -</p> - -<p> -He stood up beside me. -</p> - -<p> -“Yes,” he said, “there is nothing for it but to hunt the -sphere. Nothing. We may find it—certainly we may find it. And if -not—” -</p> - -<p> -“We must keep on looking.” -</p> - -<p> -He looked this way and that, glanced up at the sky and down at the tunnel, and -astonished me by a sudden gesture of impatience. “Oh! but we have done -foolishly! To have come to this pass! Think how it might have been, and the -things we might have done!” -</p> - -<p> -“We might do something yet.” -</p> - -<p> -“Never the thing we might have done. Here below our feet is a world. -Think of what that world must be! Think of that machine we saw, and the lid and -the shaft! They were just remote outlying things, and those creatures we have -seen and fought with no more than ignorant peasants, dwellers in the outskirts, -yokels and labourers half akin to brutes. Down below! Caverns beneath caverns, -tunnels, structures, ways... It must open out, and be greater and wider and -more populous as one descends. Assuredly. Right down at the last the central -sea that washes round the core of the moon. Think of its inky waters under the -spare lights—if, indeed, their eyes <i>need</i> lights! Think of the -cascading tributaries pouring down their channels to feed it! Think of the -tides upon its surface, and the rush and swirl of its ebb and flow! Perhaps -they have ships that go upon it, perhaps down there are mighty cities and -swarming ways, and wisdom and order passing the wit of man. And we may die here -upon it, and never see the masters who <i>must</i> be—ruling over these -things! We may freeze and die here, and the air will freeze and thaw upon us, -and then—! Then they will come upon us, come on our stiff and silent -bodies, and find the sphere we cannot find, and they will understand at last -too late all the thought and effort that ended here in vain!” -</p> - -<p> -His voice for all that speech sounded like the voice of someone heard in a -telephone, weak and far away. -</p> - -<p> -“But the darkness,” I said. -</p> - -<p> -“One might get over that.” -</p> - -<p> -“How?” -</p> - -<p> -“I don’t know. How am I to know? One might carry a torch, one might -have a lamp— The others—might understand.” -</p> - -<p> -He stood for a moment with his hands held down and a rueful face, staring out -over the waste that defied him. Then with a gesture of renunciation he turned -towards me with proposals for the systematic hunting of the sphere. -</p> - -<p> -“We can return,” I said. -</p> - -<p> -He looked about him. “First of all we shall have to get to earth.” -</p> - -<p> -“We could bring back lamps to carry and climbing irons, and a hundred -necessary things.” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes,” he said. -</p> - -<p> -“We can take back an earnest of success in this gold.” -</p> - -<p> -He looked at my golden crowbars, and said nothing for a space. He stood with -his hands clasped behind his back, staring across the crater. At last he signed -and spoke. “It was <i>I</i> found the way here, but to find a way -isn’t always to be master of a way. If I take my secret back to earth, -what will happen? I do not see how I can keep my secret for a year, for even a -part of a year. Sooner or later it must come out, even if other men rediscover -it. And then ... Governments and powers will struggle to get hither, they will -fight against one another, and against these moon people; it will only spread -warfare and multiply the occasions of war. In a little while, in a very little -while, if I tell my secret, this planet to its deepest galleries will be strewn -with human dead. Other things are doubtful, but that is certain. It is not as -though man had any use for the moon. What good would the moon be to men? Even -of their own planet what have they made but a battle-ground and theatre of -infinite folly? Small as his world is, and short as his time, he has still in -his little life down there far more than he can do. No! Science has toiled too -long forging weapons for fools to use. It is time she held her hand. Let him -find it out for himself again—in a thousand years’ time.” -</p> - -<p> -“There are methods of secrecy,” I said. -</p> - -<p> -He looked up at me and smiled. “After all,” he said, “why -should one worry? There is little chance of our finding the sphere, and down -below things are brewing. It’s simply the human habit of hoping till we -die that makes us think of return. Our troubles are only beginning. We have -shown these moon folk violence, we have given them a taste of our quality, and -our chances are about as good as a tiger’s that has got loose and killed -a man in Hyde Park. The news of us must be running down from gallery to -gallery, down towards the central parts.... No sane beings will ever let us -take that sphere back to earth after so much as they have seen of us.” -</p> - -<p> -“We aren’t improving our chances,” said I, “by sitting -here.” -</p> - -<p> -We stood up side by side. -</p> - -<p> -“After all,” he said, “we must separate. We must stick up a -handkerchief on these tall spikes here and fasten it firmly, and from this as a -centre we must work over the crater. You must go westward, moving out in -semicircles to and fro towards the setting sun. You must move first with your -shadow on your right until it is at right angles with the direction of your -handkerchief, and then with your shadow on your left. And I will do the same to -the east. We will look into every gully, examine every skerry of rocks; we will -do all we can to find my sphere. If we see the Selenites we will hide from them -as well as we can. For drink we must take snow, and if we feel the need of -food, we must kill a mooncalf if we can, and eat such flesh as it -has—raw—and so each will go his own way.” -</p> - -<p> -“And if one of us comes upon the sphere?” -</p> - -<p> -“He must come back to the white handkerchief, and stand by it and signal -to the other.” -</p> - -<p> -“And if neither?” -</p> - -<p> -Cavor glanced up at the sun. “We go on seeking until the night and cold -overtake us.” -</p> - -<p> -“Suppose the Selenites have found the sphere and hidden it?” -</p> - -<p> -He shrugged his shoulders. -</p> - -<p> -“Or if presently they come hunting us?” -</p> - -<p> -He made no answer. -</p> - -<p> -“You had better take a club,” I said. -</p> - -<p> -He shook his head, and stared away from me across the waste. -</p> - -<p> -But for a moment he did not start. He looked round at me shyly, hesitated. -“<i>Au revoir</i>,” he said. -</p> - -<p> -I felt an odd stab of emotion. A sense of how we had galled each other, and -particularly how I must have galled him, came to me. “Confound it,” -thought I, “we might have done better!” I was on the point of -asking him to shake hands—for that, somehow, was how I felt just -then—when he put his feet together and leapt away from me towards the -north. He seemed to drift through the air as a dead leaf would do, fell -lightly, and leapt again. I stood for a moment watching him, then faced -westward reluctantly, pulled myself together, and with something of the feeling -of a man who leaps into icy water, selected a leaping point, and plunged -forward to explore my solitary half of the moon world. I dropped rather -clumsily among rocks, stood up and looked about me, clambered on to a rocky -slab, and leapt again.... -</p> - -<p> -When presently I looked for Cavor he was hidden from my eyes, but the -handkerchief showed out bravely on its headland, white in the blaze of the sun. -</p> - -<p> -I determined not to lose sight of that handkerchief whatever might betide. -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap19"></a>XIX.<br /> -Mr. Bedford Alone</h2> - -<p> -In a little while it seemed to me as though I had always been alone on the -moon. I hunted for a time with a certain intentness, but the heat was still -very great, and the thinness of the air felt like a hoop about one’s -chest. I came presently into a hollow basin bristling with tall, brown, dry -fronds about its edge, and I sat down under these to rest and cool. I intended -to rest for only a little while. I put down my clubs beside me, and sat resting -my chin on my hands. I saw with a sort of colourless interest that the rocks of -the basin, where here and there the crackling dry lichens had shrunk away to -show them, were all veined and splattered with gold, that here and there bosses -of rounded and wrinkled gold projected from among the litter. What did that -matter now? A sort of languor had possession of my limbs and mind, I did not -believe for a moment that we should ever find the sphere in that vast -desiccated wilderness. I seemed to lack a motive for effort until the Selenites -should come. Then I supposed I should exert myself, obeying that unreasonable -imperative that urges a man before all things to preserve and defend his life, -albeit he may preserve it only to die more painfully in a little while. -</p> - -<p> -Why had we come to the moon? -</p> - -<p> -The thing presented itself to me as a perplexing problem. What is this spirit -in man that urges him for ever to depart from happiness and security, to toil, -to place himself in danger, to risk even a reasonable certainty of death? It -dawned upon me up there in the moon as a thing I ought always to have known, -that man is not made simply to go about being safe and comfortable and well fed -and amused. Almost any man, if you put the thing to him, not in words, but in -the shape of opportunities, will show that he knows as much. Against his -interest, against his happiness, he is constantly being driven to do -unreasonable things. Some force not himself impels him, and go he must. But -why? Why? Sitting there in the midst of that useless moon gold, amidst the -things of another world, I took count of all my life. Assuming I was to die a -castaway upon the moon, I failed altogether to see what purpose I had served. I -got no light on that point, but at any rate it was clearer to me than it had -ever been in my life before that I was not serving my own purpose, that all my -life I had in truth never served the purposes of my private life. Whose -purposes, what purposes, was I serving? ... I ceased to speculate on why we had -come to the moon, and took a wider sweep. Why had I come to the earth? Why had -I a private life at all? ... I lost myself at last in bottomless -speculations.... -</p> - -<p> -My thoughts became vague and cloudy, no longer leading in definite directions. -I had not felt heavy or weary—I cannot imagine one doing so upon the -moon—but I suppose I was greatly fatigued. At any rate I slept. -</p> - -<p> -Slumbering there rested me greatly, I think, and the sun was setting and the -violence of the heat abating, through all the time I slumbered. When at last I -was roused from my slumbers by a remote clamour, I felt active and capable -again. I rubbed my eyes and stretched my arms. I rose to my feet—I was a -little stiff—and at once prepared to resume my search. I shouldered my -golden clubs, one on each shoulder, and went on out of the ravine of the -gold-veined rocks. -</p> - -<p> -The sun was certainly lower, much lower than it had been; the air was very much -cooler. I perceived I must have slept some time. It seemed to me that a faint -touch of misty blueness hung about the western cliff. I leapt to a little boss -of rock and surveyed the crater. I could see no signs of mooncalves or -Selenites, nor could I see Cavor, but I could see my handkerchief far off, -spread out on its thicket of thorns. I looked about me, and then leapt forward -to the next convenient view-point. -</p> - -<p> -I beat my way round in a semicircle, and back again in a still remoter -crescent. It was very fatiguing and hopeless. The air was really very much -cooler, and it seemed to me that the shadow under the westward cliff was -growing broad. Ever and again I stopped and reconnoitred, but there was no sign -of Cavor, no sign of Selenites; and it seemed to me the mooncalves must have -been driven into the interior again—I could see none of them. I became -more and more desirous of seeing Cavor. The winged outline of the sun had sunk -now, until it was scarcely the distance of its diameter from the rim of the -sky. I was oppressed by the idea that the Selenites would presently close their -lids and valves, and shut us out under the inexorable onrush of the lunar -night. It seemed to me high time that he abandoned his search, and that we took -counsel together. I felt how urgent it was that we should decide soon upon our -course. We had failed to find the sphere, we no longer had time to seek it, and -once these valves were closed with us outside, we were lost men. The great -night of space would descend upon us—that blackness of the void which is -the only absolute death. All my being shrank from that approach. We must get -into the moon again, though we were slain in doing it. I was haunted by a -vision of our freezing to death, of our hammering with our last strength on the -valve of the great pit. -</p> - -<p> -I took no thought any more of the sphere. I thought only of finding Cavor -again. I was half inclined to go back into the moon without him, rather than -seek him until it was too late. I was already half-way back towards our -handkerchief, when suddenly— -</p> - -<p> -I saw the sphere! -</p> - -<p> -I did not find it so much as it found me. It was lying much farther to the -westward than I had gone, and the sloping rays of the sinking sun reflected -from its glass had suddenly proclaimed its presence in a dazzling beam. For an -instant I thought this was some new device of the Selenites against us, and -then I understood. -</p> - -<p> -I threw up my arms, shouted a ghostly shout, and set off in vast leaps towards -it. I missed one of my leaps and dropped into a deep ravine and twisted my -ankle, and after that I stumbled at almost every leap. I was in a state of -hysterical agitation, trembling violently, and quite breathless long before I -got to it. Three times at least I had to stop with my hands resting on my side -and in spite of the thin dryness of the air, the perspiration was wet upon my -face. -</p> - -<p> -I thought of nothing but the sphere until I reached it, I forgot even my -trouble of Cavor’s whereabouts. My last leap flung me with my hands hard -against its glass; then I lay against it panting, and trying vainly to shout, -“Cavor! here is the sphere!” When I had recovered a little I peered -through the thick glass, and the things inside seemed tumbled. I stooped to -peer closer. Then I attempted to get in. I had to hoist it over a little to get -my head through the manhole. The screw stopper was inside, and I could see now -that nothing had been touched, nothing had suffered. It lay there as we had -left it when we had dropped out amidst the snow. For a time I was wholly -occupied in making and remaking this inventory. I found I was trembling -violently. It was good to see that familiar dark interior again! I cannot tell -you how good. Presently I crept inside and sat down among the things. I looked -through the glass at the moon world and shivered. I placed my gold clubs upon -the table, and sought out and took a little food; not so much because I wanted -it, but because it was there. Then it occurred to me that it was time to go out -and signal for Cavor. But I did not go out and signal for Cavor forthwith. -Something held me to the sphere. -</p> - -<p> -After all, everything was coming right. There would be still time for us to get -more of the magic stone that gives one mastery over men. Away there, close -handy, was gold for the picking up; and the sphere would travel as well half -full of gold as though it were empty. We could go back now, masters of -ourselves and our world, and then— -</p> - -<p> -I roused myself at last, and with an effort got myself out of the sphere. I -shivered as I emerged, for the evening air was growing very cold. I stood in -the hollow staring about me. I scrutinised the bushes round me very carefully -before I leapt to the rocky shelf hard by, and took once more what had been my -first leap in the moon. But now I made it with no effort whatever. -</p> - -<p> -The growth and decay of the vegetation had gone on apace, and the whole aspect -of the rocks had changed, but still it was possible to make out the slope on -which the seeds had germinated, and the rocky mass from which we had taken our -first view of the crater. But the spiky shrub on the slope stood brown and sere -now, and thirty feet high, and cast long shadows that stretched out of sight, -and the little seeds that clustered in its upper branches were brown and ripe. -Its work was done, and it was brittle and ready to fall and crumple under the -freezing air, so soon as the nightfall came. And the huge cacti, that had -swollen as we watched them, had long since burst and scattered their spores to -the four quarters of the moon. Amazing little corner in the universe—the -landing place of men! -</p> - -<p> -Some day, thought I, I will have an inscription standing there right in the -midst of the hollow. It came to me, if only this teeming world within knew of -the full import of the moment, how furious its tumult would become! -</p> - -<p> -But as yet it could scarcely be dreaming of the significance of our coming. For -if it did, the crater would surely be an uproar of pursuit, instead of as still -as death! I looked about for some place from which I might signal Cavor, and -saw that same patch of rock to which he had leapt from my present standpoint, -still bare and barren in the sun. For a moment I hesitated at going so far from -the sphere. Then with a pang of shame at that hesitation, I leapt.... -</p> - -<p> -From this vantage point I surveyed the crater again. Far away at the top of the -enormous shadow I cast was the little white handkerchief fluttering on the -bushes. It was very little and very far, and Cavor was not in sight. It seemed -to me that by this time he ought to be looking for me. That was the agreement. -But he was nowhere to be seen. -</p> - -<p> -I stood waiting and watching, hands shading my eyes, expecting every moment to -distinguish him. Very probably I stood there for quite a long time. I tried to -shout, and was reminded of the thinness of the air. I made an undecided step -back towards the sphere. But a lurking dread of the Selenites made me hesitate -to signal my whereabouts by hoisting one of our sleeping-blankets on to the -adjacent scrub. I searched the crater again. -</p> - -<p> -It had an effect of emptiness that chilled me. And it was still. Any sound from -the Selenites in the world beneath had died away. It was as still as death. -Save for the faint stir of the shrub about me in the little breeze that was -rising, there was no sound nor shadow of a sound. And the breeze blew chill. -</p> - -<p> -Confound Cavor! -</p> - -<p> -I took a deep breath. I put my hands to the sides of my mouth. -“Cavor!” I bawled, and the sound was like some manikin shouting far -away. -</p> - -<p> -I looked at the handkerchief, I looked behind me at the broadening shadow of -the westward cliff, I looked under my hand at the sun. It seemed to me that -almost visibly it was creeping down the sky. -</p> - -<p> -I felt I must act instantly if I was to save Cavor. I whipped off my vest and -flung it as a mark on the sere bayonets of the shrubs behind me, and then set -off in a straight line towards the handkerchief. Perhaps it was a couple of -miles away—a matter of a few hundred leaps and strides. I have already -told how one seemed to hang through those lunar leaps. In each suspense I -sought Cavor, and marvelled why he should be hidden. In each leap I could feel -the sun setting behind me. Each time I touched the ground I was tempted to go -back. -</p> - -<p> -A last leap and I was in the depression below our handkerchief, a stride, and I -stood on our former vantage point within arms’ reach of it. I stood up -straight and scanned the world about me, between its lengthening bars of -shadow. Far away, down a long declivity, was the opening of the tunnel up which -we had fled, and my shadow reached towards it, stretched towards it, and -touched it, like a finger of the night. -</p> - -<p> -Not a sign of Cavor, not a sound in all the stillness, only the stir and waving -of the scrub and of the shadows increased. And suddenly and violently I -shivered. “Cav—” I began, and realised once more the -uselessness of the human voice in that thin air. Silence. The silence of death. -</p> - -<p> -Then it was my eye caught something—a little thing lying, perhaps fifty -yards away down the slope, amidst a litter of bent and broken branches. What -was it? I knew, and yet for some reason I would not know. I went nearer to it. -It was the little cricket-cap Cavor had worn. I did not touch it, I stood -looking at it. -</p> - -<p> -I saw then that the scattered branches about it had been forcibly smashed and -trampled. I hesitated, stepped forward, and picked it up. -</p> - -<p> -I stood with Cavor’s cap in my hand, staring at the trampled reeds and -thorns about me. On some of them were little smears of something dark, -something that I dared not touch. A dozen yards away, perhaps, the rising -breeze dragged something into view, something small and vividly white. -</p> - -<p> -It was a little piece of paper crumpled tightly, as though it had been clutched -tightly. I picked it up, and on it were smears of red. My eye caught faint -pencil marks. I smoothed it out, and saw uneven and broken writing ending at -last in a crooked streak upon the paper. -</p> - -<p> -I set myself to decipher this. -</p> - -<p> -“I have been injured about the knee, I think my kneecap is hurt, and I -cannot run or crawl,” it began—pretty distinctly written. -</p> - -<p> -Then less legibly: “They have been chasing me for some time, and it is -only a question of”—the word “time” seemed to have been -written here and erased in favour of something illegible—“before -they get me. They are beating all about me.” -</p> - -<p> -Then the writing became convulsive. “I can hear them,” I guessed -the tracing meant, and then it was quite unreadable for a space. Then came a -little string of words that were quite distinct: “a different sort of -Selenite altogether, who appears to be directing the—” The writing -became a mere hasty confusion again. -</p> - -<p> -“They have larger brain cases—much larger, and slenderer bodies, -and very short legs. They make gentle noises, and move with organized -deliberation... -</p> - -<p> -“And though I am wounded and helpless here, their appearance still gives -me hope.” That was like Cavor. “They have not shot at me or -attempted... injury. I intend—” -</p> - -<p> -Then came the sudden streak of the pencil across the paper, and on the back and -edges—blood! -</p> - -<p> -And as I stood there stupid, and perplexed, with this dumbfounding relic in my -hand, something very soft and light and chill touched my hand for a moment and -ceased to be, and then a thing, a little white speck, drifted athwart a shadow. -It was a tiny snowflake, the first snowflake, the herald of the night. -</p> - -<p> -I looked up with a start, and the sky had darkened almost to blackness, and was -thick with a gathering multitude of coldly watchful stars. I looked eastward, -and the light of that shrivelled world was touched with sombre bronze; -westward, and the sun robbed now by a thickening white mist of half its heat -and splendour, was touching the crater rim, was sinking out of sight, and all -the shrubs and jagged and tumbled rocks stood out against it in a bristling -disorder of black shapes. Into the great lake of darkness westward, a vast -wreath of mist was sinking. A cold wind set all the crater shivering. Suddenly, -for a moment, I was in a puff of falling snow, and all the world about me grey -and dim. -</p> - -<p> -And then it was I heard, not loud and penetrating as at first, but faint and -dim like a dying voice, that tolling, that same tolling that had welcomed the -coming of the day: Boom!... Boom!... Boom!... -</p> - -<p> -It echoed about the crater, it seemed to throb with the throbbing of the -greater stars, the blood-red crescent of the sun’s disc sank as it tolled -out: Boom!... Boom!... Boom!... -</p> - -<p> -What had happened to Cavor? All through that tolling I stood there stupidly, -and at last the tolling ceased. -</p> - -<p> -And suddenly the open mouth of the tunnel down below there, shut like an eye -and vanished out of sight. -</p> - -<p> -Then indeed was I alone. -</p> - -<p> -Over me, around me, closing in on me, embracing me ever nearer, was the -Eternal; that which was before the beginning, and that which triumphs over the -end; that enormous void in which all light and life and being is but the thin -and vanishing splendour of a falling star, the cold, the stillness, the -silence—the infinite and final Night of space. -</p> - -<p> -The sense of solitude and desolation became the sense of an overwhelming -presence that stooped towards me, that almost touched me. -</p> - -<p> -“No,” I cried. “<i>No!</i> Not yet! not yet! Wait! Wait! Oh, -wait!” My voice went up to a shriek. I flung the crumpled paper from me, -scrambled back to the crest to take my bearings, and then, with all the will -that was in me, leapt out towards the mark I had left, dim and distant now in -the very margin of the shadow. -</p> - -<p> -Leap, leap, leap, and each leap was seven ages. -</p> - -<p> -Before me the pale serpent-girdled section of the sun sank and sank, and the -advancing shadow swept to seize the sphere before I could reach it. I was two -miles away, a hundred leaps or more, and the air about me was thinning out as -it thins under an air-pump, and the cold was gripping at my joints. But had I -died, I should have died leaping. Once, and then again my foot slipped on the -gathering snow as I leapt and shortened my leap; once I fell short into bushes -that crashed and smashed into dusty chips and nothingness, and once I stumbled -as I dropped and rolled head over heels into a gully, and rose bruised and -bleeding and confused as to my direction. -</p> - -<p> -But such incidents were as nothing to the intervals, those awful pauses when -one drifted through the air towards that pouring tide of night. My breathing -made a piping noise, and it was as though knives were whirling in my lungs. My -heart seemed to beat against the top of my brain. “Shall I reach it? O -Heaven! Shall I reach it?” -</p> - -<p> -My whole being became anguish. -</p> - -<p> -“Lie down!” screamed my pain and despair; “lie down!” -</p> - -<p> -The nearer I struggled, the more awfully remote it seemed. I was numb, I -stumbled, I bruised and cut myself and did not bleed. -</p> - -<p> -It was in sight. -</p> - -<p> -I fell on all fours, and my lungs whooped. -</p> - -<p> -I crawled. The frost gathered on my lips, icicles hung from my moustache, I was -white with the freezing atmosphere. -</p> - -<p> -I was a dozen yards from it. My eyes had become dim. “Lie down!” -screamed despair; “lie down!” -</p> - -<p> -I touched it, and halted. “Too late!” screamed despair; “lie -down!” -</p> - -<p> -I fought stiffly with it. I was on the manhole lip, a stupefied, half-dead -being. The snow was all about me. I pulled myself in. There lurked within a -little warmer air. -</p> - -<p> -The snowflakes—the airflakes—danced in about me, as I tried with -chilling hands to thrust the valve in and spun it tight and hard. I sobbed. -“I will,” I chattered in my teeth. And then, with fingers that -quivered and felt brittle, I turned to the shutter studs. -</p> - -<p> -As I fumbled with the switches—for I had never controlled them -before—I could see dimly through the steaming glass the blazing red -streamers of the sinking sun, dancing and flickering through the snowstorm, and -the black forms of the scrub thickening and bending and breaking beneath the -accumulating snow. Thicker whirled the snow and thicker, black against the -light. What if even now the switches overcame me? Then something clicked under -my hands, and in an instant that last vision of the moon world was hidden from -my eyes. I was in the silence and darkness of the inter-planetary sphere. -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap20"></a>XX.<br /> -Mr. Bedford in Infinite Space</h2> - -<p> -It was almost as though I had been killed. Indeed, I could imagine a man -suddenly and violently killed would feel very much as I did. One moment, a -passion of agonising existence and fear; the next, darkness and stillness, -neither light nor life nor sun, moon nor stars, the blank infinite. Although -the thing was done by my own act, although I had already tasted this very of -effect in Cavor’s company, I felt astonished, dumbfounded, and -overwhelmed. I seemed to be borne upward into an enormous darkness. My fingers -floated off the studs, I hung as if I were annihilated, and at last very softly -and gently I came against the bale and the golden chain, and the crowbars that -had drifted to the middle of the sphere. -</p> - -<p> -I do not know how long that drifting took. In the sphere of course, even more -than on the moon, one’s earthly time sense was ineffectual. At the touch -of the bale it was as if I had awakened from a dreamless sleep. I immediately -perceived that if I wanted to keep awake and alive I must get a light or open a -window, so as to get a grip of something with my eyes. And besides, I was cold. -I kicked off from the bale, therefore, clawed on to the thin cords within the -glass, crawled along until I got to the manhole rim, and so got my bearings for -the light and blind studs, took a shove off, and flying once round the bale, -and getting a scare from something big and flimsy that was drifting loose, I -got my hand on the cord quite close to the studs, and reached them. I lit the -little lamp first of all to see what it was I had collided with, and discovered -that old copy of <i>Lloyd’s News</i> had slipped its moorings, and was -adrift in the void. That brought me out of the infinite to my own proper -dimensions again. It made me laugh and pant for a time, and suggested the idea -of a little oxygen from one of the cylinders. After that I lit the heater until -I felt warm, and then I took food. Then I set to work in a very gingerly -fashion on the Cavorite blinds, to see if I could guess by any means how the -sphere was travelling. -</p> - -<p> -The first blind I opened I shut at once, and hung for a time flattened and -blinded by the sunlight that had hit me. After thinking a little I started upon -the windows at right angles to this one, and got the huge crescent moon and the -little crescent earth behind it, the second time. I was amazed to find how far -I was from the moon. I had reckoned that not only should I have little or none -of the “kick-off” that the earth’s atmosphere had given us at -our start, but that the tangential “fly off” of the moon’s -spin would be at least twenty-eight times less than the earth’s. I had -expected to discover myself hanging over our crater, and on the edge of the -night, but all that was now only a part of the outline of the white crescent -that filled the sky. And Cavor—? -</p> - -<p> -He was already infinitesimal. -</p> - -<p> -I tried to imagine what could have happened to him. But at that time I could -think of nothing but death. I seemed to see him, bent and smashed at the foot -of some interminably high cascade of blue. And all about him the stupid insects -stared... -</p> - -<p> -Under the inspiring touch of the drifting newspaper I became practical again -for a while. It was quite clear to me that what I had to do was to get back to -earth, but as far as I could see I was drifting away from it. Whatever had -happened to Cavor, even if he was still alive, which seemed to me incredible -after that blood-stained scrap, I was powerless to help him. There he was, -living or dead behind the mantle of that rayless night, and there he must -remain at least until I could summon our fellow men to his assistance. Should I -do that? Something of the sort I had in my mind; to come back to earth if it -were possible, and then as maturer consideration might determine, either to -show and explain the sphere to a few discreet persons, and act with them, or -else to keep my secret, sell my gold, obtain weapons, provisions, and an -assistant, and return with these advantages to deal on equal terms with the -flimsy people of the moon, to rescue Cavor, if that were still possible, and at -any rate to procure a sufficient supply of gold to place my subsequent -proceedings on a firmer basis. But that was hoping far; I had first to get -back. -</p> - -<p> -I set myself to decide just exactly how the return to earth could be contrived. -As I struggled with that problem I ceased to worry about what I should do when -I got there. At last my only care was to get back. -</p> - -<p> -I puzzled out at last that my best chance would be to drop back towards the -moon as near as I dared in order to gather velocity, then to shut my windows, -and fly behind it, and when I was past to open my earthward windows, and so get -off at a good pace homeward. But whether I should ever reach the earth by that -device, or whether I might not simply find myself spinning about it in some -hyperbolic or parabolic curve or other, I could not tell. Later I had a happy -inspiration, and by opening certain windows to the moon, which had appeared in -the sky in front of the earth, I turned my course aside so as to head off the -earth, which it had become evident to me I must pass behind without some such -expedient. I did a very great deal of complicated thinking over these -problems—for I am no mathematician—and in the end I am certain it -was much more my good luck than my reasoning that enabled me to hit the earth. -Had I known then, as I know now, the mathematical chances there were against -me, I doubt if I should have troubled even to touch the studs to make any -attempt. And having puzzled out what I considered to be the thing to do, I -opened all my moonward windows, and squatted down—the effort lifted me -for a time some feet or so into the air, and I hung there in the oddest -way—and waited for the crescent to get bigger and bigger until I felt I -was near enough for safety. Then I would shut the windows, fly past the moon -with the velocity I had got from it—if I did not smash upon it—and -so go on towards the earth. -</p> - -<p> -And that is what I did. -</p> - -<p> -At last I felt my moonward start was sufficient. I shut out the sight of the -moon from my eyes, and in a state of mind that was, I now recall, incredibly -free from anxiety or any distressful quality, I sat down to begin a vigil in -that little speck of matter in infinite space that would last until I should -strike the earth. The heater had made the sphere tolerably warm, the air had -been refreshed by the oxygen, and except for that faint congestion of the head -that was always with me while I was away from earth, I felt entire physical -comfort. I had extinguished the light again, lest it should fail me in the end; -I was in darkness, save for the earthshine and the glitter of the stars below -me. Everything was so absolutely silent and still that I might indeed have been -the only being in the universe, and yet, strangely enough, I had no more -feeling of loneliness or fear than if I had been lying in bed on earth. Now, -this seems all the stranger to me, since during my last hours in that crater of -the moon, the sense of my utter loneliness had been an agony.... -</p> - -<p> -Incredible as it will seem, this interval of time that I spent in space has no -sort of proportion to any other interval of time in my life. Sometimes it -seemed as though I sat through immeasurable eternities like some god upon a -lotus leaf, and again as though there was a momentary pause as I leapt from -moon to earth. In truth, it was altogether some weeks of earthly time. But I -had done with care and anxiety, hunger or fear, for that space. I floated, -thinking with a strange breadth and freedom of all that we had undergone, and -of all my life and motives, and the secret issues of my being. I seemed to -myself to have grown greater and greater, to have lost all sense of movement; -to be floating amidst the stars, and always the sense of earth’s -littleness and the infinite littleness of my life upon it, was implicit in my -thoughts. -</p> - -<p> -I can’t profess to explain the things that happened in my mind. No doubt -they could all be traced directly or indirectly to the curious physical -conditions under which I was living. I set them down here just for what they -are worth, and without any comment. The most prominent quality of it was a -pervading doubt of my own identity. I became, if I may so express it, -dissociate from Bedford; I looked down on Bedford as a trivial, incidental -thing with which I chanced to be connected. I saw Bedford in many -relations—as an ass or as a poor beast, where I had hitherto been -inclined to regard him with a quiet pride as a very spirited or rather forcible -person. I saw him not only as an ass, but as the son of many generations of -asses. I reviewed his school-days and his early manhood, and his first -encounter with love, very much as one might review the proceedings of an ant in -the sand. Something of that period of lucidity I regret still hangs about me, -and I doubt if I shall ever recover the full-bodied self satisfaction of my -early days. But at the time the thing was not in the least painful, because I -had that extraordinary persuasion that, as a matter of fact, I was no more -Bedford than I was any one else, but only a mind floating in the still serenity -of space. Why should I be disturbed about this Bedford’s shortcomings? I -was not responsible for him or them. -</p> - -<p> -For a time I struggled against this really very grotesque delusion. I tried to -summon the memory of vivid moments, of tender or intense emotions to my -assistance; I felt that if I could recall one genuine twinge of feeling the -growing severance would be stopped. But I could not do it. I saw Bedford -rushing down Chancery Lane, hat on the back of his head, coat tails flying out, -<i>en route</i> for his public examination. I saw him dodging and bumping -against, and even saluting, other similar little creatures in that swarming -gutter of people. Me? I saw Bedford that same evening in the sitting-room of a -certain lady, and his hat was on the table beside him, and it wanted brushing -badly, and he was in tears. Me? I saw him with that lady in various attitudes -and emotions—I never felt so detached before.... I saw him hurrying off -to Lympne to write a play, and accosting Cavor, and in his shirt sleeves -working at the sphere, and walking out to Canterbury because he was afraid to -come! Me? I did not believe it. -</p> - -<p> -I still reasoned that all this was hallucination due to my solitude, and the -fact that I had lost all weight and sense of resistance. I endeavoured to -recover that sense by banging myself about the sphere, by pinching my hands and -clasping them together. Among other things, I lit the light, captured that torn -copy of <i>Lloyd’s</i>, and read those convincingly realistic -advertisements about the Cutaway bicycle, and the gentleman of private means, -and the lady in distress who was selling those “forks and spoons.” -There was no doubt they existed surely enough, and, said I, “This is your -world, and you are Bedford, and you are going back to live among things like -that for all the rest of your life.” But the doubts within me could still -argue: “It is not you that is reading, it is Bedford, but you are not -Bedford, you know. That’s just where the mistake comes in.” -</p> - -<p> -“Confound it!” I cried; “and if I am not Bedford, what am -I?” -</p> - -<p> -But in that direction no light was forthcoming, though the strangest fancies -came drifting into my brain, queer remote suspicions, like shadows seen from -away. Do you know, I had a sort of idea that really I was something quite -outside not only the world, but all worlds, and out of space and time, and that -this poor Bedford was just a peephole through which I looked at life? ... -</p> - -<p> -Bedford! However I disavowed him, there I was most certainly bound up with him, -and I knew that wherever or whatever I might be, I must needs feel the stress -of his desires, and sympathise with all his joys and sorrows until his life -should end. And with the dying of Bedford—what then? ... -</p> - -<p> -Enough of this remarkable phase of my experiences! I tell it here simply to -show how one’s isolation and departure from this planet touched not only -the functions and feeling of every organ of the body, but indeed also the very -fabric of the mind, with strange and unanticipated disturbances. All through -the major portion of that vast space journey I hung thinking of such immaterial -things as these, hung dissociated and apathetic, a cloudy megalomaniac, as it -were, amidst the stars and planets in the void of space; and not only the world -to which I was returning, but the blue-lit caverns of the Selenites, their -helmet faces, their gigantic and wonderful machines, and the fate of Cavor, -dragged helpless into that world, seemed infinitely minute and altogether -trivial things to me. -</p> - -<p> -Until at last I began to feel the pull of the earth upon my being, drawing me -back again to the life that is real for men. And then, indeed, it grew clearer -and clearer to me that I was quite certainly Bedford after all, and returning -after amazing adventures to this world of ours, and with a life that I was very -likely to lose in this return. I set myself to puzzle out the conditions under -which I must fall to earth. -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap21"></a>XXI.<br /> -Mr. Bedford at Littlestone</h2> - -<p> -My line of flight was about parallel with the surface as I came into the upper -air. The temperature of the sphere began to rise forthwith. I knew it behoved -me to drop at once. Far below me, in a darkling twilight, stretched a great -expanse of sea. I opened every window I could, and fell—out of sunshine -into evening, and out of evening into night. Vaster grew the earth and vaster, -swallowing up the stars, and the silvery translucent starlit veil of cloud it -wore spread out to catch me. At last the world seemed no longer a sphere but -flat, and then concave. It was no longer a planet in the sky, but the world of -Man. I shut all but an inch or so of earthward window, and dropped with a -slackening velocity. The broadening water, now so near that I could see the -dark glitter of the waves, rushed up to meet me. The sphere became very hot. I -snapped the last strip of window, and sat scowling and biting my knuckles, -waiting for the impact.... -</p> - -<p> -The sphere hit the water with a huge splash: it must have sent it fathoms high. -At the splash I flung the Cavorite shutters open. Down I went, but slower and -slower, and then I felt the sphere pressing against my feet, and so drove up -again as a bubble drives. And at the last I was floating and rocking upon the -surface of the sea, and my journey in space was at an end. -</p> - -<p> -The night was dark and overcast. Two yellow pinpoints far away showed the -passing of a ship, and nearer was a red glare that came and went. Had not the -electricity of my glow-lamp exhausted itself, I could have got picked up that -night. In spite of the inordinate fatigue I was beginning to feel, I was -excited now, and for a time hopeful, in a feverish, impatient way, that so my -travelling might end. -</p> - -<p> -But at last I ceased to move about, and sat, wrists on knees, staring at a -distant red light. It swayed up and down, rocking, rocking. My excitement -passed. I realised I had yet to spend another night at least in the sphere. I -perceived myself infinitely heavy and fatigued. And so I fell asleep. -</p> - -<p> -A change in my rhythmic motion awakened me. I peered through the refracting -glass, and saw that I had come aground upon a huge shallow of sand. Far away I -seemed to see houses and trees, and seaward a curved, vague distortion of a -ship hung between sea and sky. -</p> - -<p> -I stood up and staggered. My one desire was to emerge. The manhole was upward, -and I wrestled with the screw. Slowly I opened the manhole. At last the air was -singing in again as once it had sung out. But this time I did not wait until -the pressure was adjusted. In another moment I had the weight of the window on -my hands, and I was open, wide open, to the old familiar sky of earth. -</p> - -<p> -The air hit me on the chest so that I gasped. I dropped the glass screw. I -cried out, put my hands to my chest, and sat down. For a time I was in pain. -Then I took deep breaths. At last I could rise and move about again. -</p> - -<p> -I tried to thrust my head through the manhole, and the sphere rolled over. It -was as though something had lugged my head down directly it emerged. I ducked -back sharply, or I should have been pinned face under water. After some -wriggling and shoving I managed to crawl out upon sand, over which the -retreating waves still came and went. -</p> - -<p> -I did not attempt to stand up. It seemed to me that my body must be suddenly -changed to lead. Mother Earth had her grip on me now—no Cavorite -intervening. I sat down heedless of the water that came over my feet. -</p> - -<p> -It was dawn, a grey dawn, rather overcast but showing here and there a long -patch of greenish grey. Some way out a ship was lying at anchor, a pale -silhouette of a ship with one yellow light. The water came rippling in in long -shallow waves. Away to the right curved the land, a shingle bank with little -hovels, and at last a lighthouse, a sailing mark and a point. Inland stretched -a space of level sand, broken here and there by pools of water, and ending a -mile away perhaps in a low shore of scrub. To the north-east some isolated -watering-place was visible, a row of gaunt lodging-houses, the tallest things -that I could see on earth, dull dabs against the brightening sky. What strange -men can have reared these vertical piles in such an amplitude of space I do not -know. There they are, like pieces of Brighton lost in the waste. -</p> - -<p> -For a long time I sat there, yawning and rubbing my face. At last I struggled -to rise. It made me feel that I was lifting a weight. I stood up. -</p> - -<p> -I stared at the distant houses. For the first time since our starvation in the -crater I thought of earthly food. “Bacon,” I whispered, -“eggs. Good toast and good coffee.... And how the devil am I going to get -all this stuff to Lympne?” I wondered where I was. It was an east shore -anyhow, and I had seen Europe before I dropped. -</p> - -<p> -I heard footsteps crunching in the sand, and a little round-faced, -friendly-looking man in flannels, with a bathing towel wrapped about his -shoulders, and his bathing dress over his arm, appeared up the beach. I knew -instantly that I must be in England. He was staring most intently at the sphere -and me. He advanced staring. I dare say I looked a ferocious savage -enough—dirty, unkempt, to an indescribable degree; but it did not occur -to me at the time. He stopped at a distance of twenty yards. “Hul-lo, my -man!” he said doubtfully. -</p> - -<p> -“Hullo yourself!” said I. -</p> - -<p> -He advanced, reassured by that. “What on earth is that thing?” he -asked. -</p> - -<p> -“Can you tell me where I am?” I asked. -</p> - -<p> -“That’s Littlestone,” he said, pointing to the houses; -“and that’s Dungeness! Have you just landed? What’s that -thing you’ve got? Some sort of machine?” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes.” -</p> - -<p> -“Have you floated ashore? Have you been wrecked or something? What is -it?” -</p> - -<p> -I meditated swiftly. I made an estimate of the little man’s appearance as -he drew nearer. “By Jove!” he said, “you’ve had a time -of it! I thought you— Well— Where were you cast away? Is that thing -a sort of floating thing for saving life?” -</p> - -<p> -I decided to take that line for the present. I made a few vague affirmatives. -“I want help,” I said hoarsely. “I want to get some stuff up -the beach—stuff I can’t very well leave about.” I became -aware of three other pleasant-looking young men with towels, blazers, and straw -hats, coming down the sands towards me. Evidently the early bathing section of -this Littlestone. -</p> - -<p> -“Help!” said the young man: “rather!” He became vaguely -active. “What particularly do you want done?” He turned round and -gesticulated. The three young men accelerated their pace. In a minute they -were about me, plying me with questions I was indisposed to answer. -“I’ll tell all that later,” I said. “I’m dead -beat. I’m a rag.” -</p> - -<p> -“Come up to the hotel,” said the foremost little man. -“We’ll look after that thing there.” -</p> - -<p> -I hesitated. “I can’t,” I said. “In that sphere -there’s two big bars of gold.” -</p> - -<p> -They looked incredulously at one another, then at me with a new inquiry. I went -to the sphere, stooped, crept in, and presently they had the Selenites’ -crowbars and the broken chain before them. If I had not been so horribly fagged -I could have laughed at them. It was like kittens round a beetle. They -didn’t know what to do with the stuff. The fat little man stooped and -lifted the end of one of the bars, and then dropped it with a grunt. Then they -all did. -</p> - -<p> -“It’s lead, or gold!” said one. -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, it’s <i>gold!</i>” said another. -</p> - -<p> -“Gold, right enough,” said the third. -</p> - -<p> -Then they all stared at me, and then they all stared at the ship lying at -anchor. -</p> - -<p> -“I say!” cried the little man. “But where did you get -that?” -</p> - -<p> -I was too tired to keep up a lie. “I got it in the moon.” -</p> - -<p> -I saw them stare at one another. -</p> - -<p> -“Look here!” said I, “I’m not going to argue now. Help -me carry these lumps of gold up to the hotel—I guess, with rests, two of -you can manage one, and I’ll trail this chain thing—and I’ll -tell you more when I’ve had some food.” -</p> - -<p> -“And how about that thing?” -</p> - -<p> -“It won’t hurt there,” I said. “Anyhow—confound -it!—it must stop there now. If the tide comes up, it will float all -right.” -</p> - -<p> -And in a state of enormous wonderment, these young men most obediently hoisted -my treasures on their shoulders, and with limbs that felt like lead I headed a -sort of procession towards that distant fragment of “sea-front.” -Half-way there we were reinforced by two awe-stricken little girls with spades, -and later a lean little boy, with a penetrating sniff, appeared. He was, I -remember, wheeling a bicycle, and he accompanied us at a distance of about a -hundred yards on our right flank, and then I suppose, gave us up as -uninteresting, mounted his bicycle and rode off over the level sands in the -direction of the sphere. -</p> - -<p> -I glanced back after him. -</p> - -<p> -“<i>He</i> won’t touch it,” said the stout young man -reassuringly, and I was only too willing to be reassured. -</p> - -<p> -At first something of the grey of the morning was in my mind, but presently the -sun disengaged itself from the level clouds of the horizon and lit the world, -and turned the leaden sea to glittering waters. My spirits rose. A sense of the -vast importance of the things I had done and had yet to do came with the -sunlight into my mind. I laughed aloud as the foremost man staggered under my -gold. When indeed I took my place in the world, how amazed the world would be! -</p> - -<p> -If it had not been for my inordinate fatigue, the landlord of the Littlestone -hotel would have been amusing, as he hesitated between my gold and my -respectable company on the one and my filthy appearance on the other. But at -last I found myself in a terrestrial bathroom once more with warm water to wash -myself with, and a change of raiment, preposterously small indeed, but anyhow -clean, that the genial little man had lent me. He lent me a razor too, but I -could not screw up my resolution to attack even the outposts of the bristling -beard that covered my face. -</p> - -<p> -I sat down to an English breakfast and ate with a sort of languid -appetite—an appetite many weeks old and very decrepit—and stirred -myself to answer the questions of the four young men. And I told them the -truth. -</p> - -<p> -“Well,” said I, “as you press me—I got it in the -moon.” -</p> - -<p> -“The moon?” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes, the moon in the sky.” -</p> - -<p> -“But how do you mean?” -</p> - -<p> -“What I say, confound it!” -</p> - -<p> -“Then you have just come from the moon?” -</p> - -<p> -“Exactly! through space—in that ball.” And I took a delicious -mouthful of egg. I made a private note that when I went back to the moon I -would take a box of eggs. -</p> - -<p> -I could see clearly that they did not believe one word of what I told them, but -evidently they considered me the most respectable liar they had ever met. They -glanced at one another, and then concentrated the fire of their eyes on me. I -fancy they expected a clue to me in the way I helped myself to salt. They -seemed to find something significant in my peppering my egg. These strangely -shaped masses of gold they had staggered under held their minds. There the -lumps lay in front of me, each worth thousands of pounds, and as impossible for -any one to steal as a house or a piece of land. As I looked at their curious -faces over my coffee-cup, I realised something of the enormous wilderness of -explanations into which I should have to wander to render myself comprehensible -again. -</p> - -<p> -“You don’t <i>really</i> mean—” began the youngest -young man, in the tone of one who speaks to an obstinate child. -</p> - -<p> -“Just pass me that toast-rack,” I said, and shut him up completely. -</p> - -<p> -“But look here, I say,” began one of the others. “We’re -not going to believe that, you know.” -</p> - -<p> -“Ah, well,” said I, and shrugged my shoulders. -</p> - -<p> -“He doesn’t want to tell us,” said the youngest young man in -a stage aside; and then, with an appearance of great <i>sang-froid</i>, -“You don’t mind if I take a cigarette?” -</p> - -<p> -I waved him a cordial assent, and proceeded with my breakfast. Two of the -others went and looked out of the farther window and talked inaudibly. I was -struck by a thought. “The tide,” I said, “is running -out?” -</p> - -<p> -There was a pause, a doubt who should answer me. -</p> - -<p> -“It’s near the ebb,” said the fat little man. -</p> - -<p> -“Well, anyhow,” I said, “it won’t float far.” -</p> - -<p> -I decapitated my third egg, and began a little speech. “Look here,” -I said. “Please don’t imagine I’m surly or telling you -uncivil lies, or anything of that sort. I’m forced almost, to be a little -short and mysterious. I can quite understand this is as queer as it can be, and -that your imaginations must be going it. I can assure you, you’re in at a -memorable time. But I can’t make it clear to you now—it’s -impossible. I give you my word of honour I’ve come from the moon, and -that’s all I can tell you.... All the same, I’m tremendously -obliged to you, you know, tremendously. I hope that my manner hasn’t in -any way given you offence.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, not in the least!” said the youngest young man affably. -“We can quite understand,” and staring hard at me all the time, he -heeled his chair back until it very nearly upset, and recovered with some -exertion. “Not a bit of it,” said the fat young man. -</p> - -<p> -“Don’t you imagine <i>that!</i>” and they all got up and -dispersed, and walked about and lit cigarettes, and generally tried to show -they were perfectly amiable and disengaged, and entirely free from the -slightest curiosity about me and the sphere. “I’m going to keep an -eye on that ship out there all the same,” I heard one of them remarking -in an undertone. If only they could have forced themselves to it, they would, I -believe, even have gone out and left me. I went on with my third egg. -</p> - -<p> -“The weather,” the fat little man remarked presently, “has -been immense, has it not? I don’t know <i>when</i> we have had such a -summer.” -</p> - -<p> -Phoo-whizz! Like a tremendous rocket! -</p> - -<p> -And somewhere a window was broken.... -</p> - -<p> -“What’s that?” said I. -</p> - -<p> -“It isn’t—?” cried the little man, and rushed to the -corner window. -</p> - -<p> -All the others rushed to the window likewise. I sat staring at them. -</p> - -<p> -Suddenly I leapt up, knocked over my third egg, rushed for the window also. I -had just thought of something. “Nothing to be seen there,” cried -the little man, rushing for the door. -</p> - -<p> -“It’s that boy!” I cried, bawling in hoarse fury; -“it’s that accursed boy!” and turning about I pushed the -waiter aside—he was just bringing me some more toast—and rushed -violently out of the room and down and out upon the queer little esplanade in -front of the hotel. -</p> - -<p> -The sea, which had been smooth, was rough now with hurrying cat’s-paws, -and all about where the sphere had been was tumbled water like the wake of a -ship. Above, a little puff of cloud whirled like dispersing smoke, and the -three or four people on the beach were staring up with interrogative faces -towards the point of that unexpected report. And that was all! Boots and waiter -and the four young men in blazers came rushing out behind me. Shouts came from -windows and doors, and all sorts of worrying people came into -sight—agape. -</p> - -<p> -For a time I stood there, too overwhelmed by this new development to think of -the people. -</p> - -<p> -At first I was too stunned to see the thing as any definite disaster—I -was just stunned, as a man is by some accidental violent blow. It is only -afterwards he begins to appreciate his specific injury. -</p> - -<p> -“Good Lord!” -</p> - -<p> -I felt as though somebody was pouring funk out of a can down the back of my -neck. My legs became feeble. I had got the first intimation of what the -disaster meant for me. There was that confounded boy—sky high! I was -utterly left. There was the gold in the coffee-room—my only possession on -earth. How would it all work out? The general effect was of a gigantic -unmanageable confusion. -</p> - -<p> -“I say,” said the voice of the little man behind. “I -<i>say</i>, you know.” -</p> - -<p> -I wheeled about, and there were twenty or thirty people, a sort of irregular -investment of people, all bombarding me with dumb interrogation, with infinite -doubt and suspicion. I felt the compulsion of their eyes intolerably. I groaned -aloud. -</p> - -<p> -“I <i>can’t</i>,” I shouted. “I tell you I can’t! -I’m not equal to it! You must puzzle and—and be damned to -you!” -</p> - -<p> -I gesticulated convulsively. He receded a step as though I had threatened him. -I made a bolt through them into the hotel. I charged back into the coffee-room, -rang the bell furiously. I gripped the waiter as he entered. “D’ye -hear?” I shouted. “Get help and carry these bars up to my room -right away.” -</p> - -<p> -He failed to understand me, and I shouted and raved at him. A scared-looking -little old man in a green apron appeared, and further two of the young men in -flannels. I made a dash at them and commandeered their services. As soon as the -gold was in my room I felt free to quarrel. “Now get out,” I -shouted; “all of you get out if you don’t want to see a man go mad -before your eyes!” And I helped the waiter by the shoulder as he -hesitated in the doorway. And then, as soon as I had the door locked on them -all, I tore off the little man’s clothes again, shied them right and -left, and got into bed forthwith. And there I lay swearing and panting and -cooling for a very long time. -</p> - -<p> -At last I was calm enough to get out of bed and ring up the round-eyed waiter -for a flannel nightshirt, a soda and whisky, and some good cigars. And these -things being procured me, after an exasperating delay that drove me several -times to the bell, I locked the door again and proceeded very deliberately to -look the entire situation in the face. -</p> - -<p> -The net result of the great experiment presented itself as an absolute failure. -It was a rout, and I was the sole survivor. It was an absolute collapse, and -this was the final disaster. There was nothing for it but to save myself, and -as much as I could in the way of prospects from our <i>débâcle</i>. At one -fatal crowning blow all my vague resolutions of return and recovery had -vanished. My intention of going back to the moon, of getting a sphereful of -gold, and afterwards of having a fragment of Cavorite analysed and so -recovering the great secret—perhaps, finally, even of recovering -Cavor’s body—all these ideas vanished altogether. -</p> - -<p> -I was the sole survivor, and that was all. -</p> - -<p class="p2"> -I think that going to bed was one of the luckiest ideas I have ever had in an -emergency. I really believe I should either have got loose-headed or done some -indiscreet thing. But there, locked in and secure from all interruptions, I -could think out the position in all its bearings and make my arrangements at -leisure. -</p> - -<p> -Of course, it was quite clear to me what had happened to the boy. He had -crawled into the sphere, meddled with the studs, shut the Cavorite windows, and -gone up. It was highly improbable he had screwed the manhole stopper, and, even -if he had, the chances were a thousand to one against his getting back. It was -fairly evident that he would gravitate with my bales to somewhere near the -middle of the sphere and remain there, and so cease to be a legitimate -terrestrial interest, however remarkable he might seem to the inhabitants of -some remote quarter of space. I very speedily convinced myself on that point. -And as for any responsibility I might have in the matter, the more I reflected -upon that, the clearer it became that if only I kept quiet about things, I need -not trouble myself about that. If I was faced by sorrowing parents demanding -their lost boy, I had merely to demand my lost sphere—or ask them what -they meant. At first I had had a vision of weeping parents and guardians, and -all sorts of complications; but now I saw that I simply had to keep my mouth -shut, and nothing in that way could arise. And, indeed, the more I lay and -smoked and thought, the more evident became the wisdom of impenetrability. -</p> - -<p> -It is within the right of every British citizen, provided he does not commit -damage nor indecorum, to appear suddenly wherever he pleases, and as ragged and -filthy as he pleases, and with whatever amount of virgin gold he sees fit to -encumber himself, and no one has any right at all to hinder and detain him in -this procedure. I formulated that at last to myself, and repeated it over as a -sort of private Magna Charta of my liberty. -</p> - -<p> -Once I had put that issue on one side, I could take up and consider in an -equable manner certain considerations I had scarcely dared to think of before, -namely, those arising out of the circumstances of my bankruptcy. But now, -looking at this matter calmly and at leisure, I could see that if only I -suppressed my identity by a temporary assumption of some less well-known name, -and if I retained the two months’ beard that had grown upon me, the risks -of any annoyance from the spiteful creditor to whom I have already alluded -became very small indeed. From that to a definite course of rational worldly -action was plain sailing. It was all amazingly petty, no doubt, but what was -there remaining for me to do? -</p> - -<p> -Whatever I did I was resolved that I would keep myself level and right side up. -</p> - -<p> -I ordered up writing materials, and addressed a letter to the New Romney -Bank—the nearest, the waiter informed me—telling the manager I -wished to open an account with him, and requesting him to send two trustworthy -persons properly authenticated in a cab with a good horse to fetch some -hundredweight of gold with which I happened to be encumbered. I signed the -letter “Blake,” which seemed to me to be a thoroughly respectable -sort of name. This done, I got a Folkstone Blue Book, picked out an outfitter, -and asked him to send a cutter to measure me for a dark tweed suit, ordering at -the same time a valise, dressing bag, brown boots, shirts, hat (to fit), and so -forth; and from a watchmaker I also ordered a watch. And these letters being -despatched, I had up as good a lunch as the hotel could give, and then lay -smoking a cigar, as calm and ordinary as possible, until in accordance with my -instructions two duly authenticated clerks came from the bank and weighed and -took away my gold. After which I pulled the clothes over my ears in order to -drown any knocking, and went very comfortably to sleep. -</p> - -<p> -I went to sleep. No doubt it was a prosaic thing for the first man back from -the moon to do, and I can imagine that the young and imaginative reader will -find my behaviour disappointing. But I was horribly fatigued and bothered, and, -confound it! what else was there to do? There certainly was not the remotest -chance of my being believed, if I had told my story then, and it would -certainly have subjected me to intolerable annoyances. I went to sleep. When at -last I woke up again I was ready to face the world as I have always been -accustomed to face it since I came to years of discretion. And so I got away to -Italy, and there it is I am writing this story. If the world will not have it -as fact, then the world may take it as fiction. It is no concern of mine. -</p> - -<p> -And now that the account is finished, I am amazed to think how completely this -adventure is gone and done with. Everybody believes that Cavor was a not very -brilliant scientific experimenter who blew up his house and himself at Lympne, -and they explain the bang that followed my arrival at Littlestone by a -reference to the experiments with explosives that are going on continually at -the government establishment of Lydd, two miles away. I must confess that -hitherto I have not acknowledged my share in the disappearance of Master Tommy -Simmons, which was that little boy’s name. That, perhaps, may prove a -difficult item of corroboration to explain away. They account for my appearance -in rags with two bars of indisputable gold upon the Littlestone beach in -various ingenious ways—it doesn’t worry me what they think of me. -They say I have strung all these things together to avoid being questioned too -closely as to the source of my wealth. I would like to see the man who could -invent a story that would hold together like this one. Well, they must take it -as fiction—there it is. -</p> - -<p> -I have told my story—and now, I suppose, I have to take up the worries of -this terrestrial life again. Even if one has been to the moon, one has still to -earn a living. So I am working here at Amalfi, on the scenario of that play I -sketched before Cavor came walking into my world, and I am trying to piece my -life together as it was before ever I saw him. I must confess that I find it -hard to keep my mind on the play when the moonshine comes into my room. It is -full moon here, and last night I was out on the pergola for hours, staring away -at the shining blankness that hides so much. Imagine it! tables and chairs, and -trestles and bars of gold! Confound it!—if only one could hit on that -Cavorite again! But a thing like that doesn’t come twice in a life. Here -I am, a little better off than I was at Lympne, and that is all. And Cavor has -committed suicide in a more elaborate way than any human being ever did before. -So the story closes as finally and completely as a dream. It fits in so little -with all the other things of life, so much of it is so utterly remote from all -human experience, the leaping, the eating, the breathing, and these weightless -times, that indeed there are moments when, in spite of my moon gold, I do more -than half believe myself that the whole thing was a dream.... -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap22"></a>XXII.<br /> -The Astonishing Communication of Mr. Julius Wendigee</h2> - -<p> -When I had finished my account of my return to the earth at Littlestone, I -wrote, “The End,” made a flourish, and threw my pen aside, fully -believing that the whole story of the First Men in the Moon was done. Not only -had I done this, but I had placed my manuscript in the hands of a literary -agent, had permitted it to be sold, had seen the greater portion of it appear -in the <i>Strand Magazine</i>, and was setting to work again upon the scenario -of the play I had commenced at Lympne before I realised that the end was not -yet. And then, following me from Amalfi to Algiers, there reached me (it is now -about six months ago) one of the most astounding communications I have ever -been fated to receive. Briefly, it informed me that Mr. Julius Wendigee, a -Dutch electrician, who has been experimenting with certain apparatus akin to -the apparatus used by Mr. Tesla in America, in the hope of discovering some -method of communication with Mars, was receiving day by day a curiously -fragmentary message in English, which was indisputably emanating from Mr. Cavor -in the moon. -</p> - -<p> -At first I thought the thing was an elaborate practical joke by some one who -had seen the manuscript of my narrative. I answered Mr. Wendigee jestingly, but -he replied in a manner that put such suspicion altogether aside, and in a state -of inconceivable excitement I hurried from Algiers to the little observatory -upon the Monte Rosa in which he was working. In the presence of his record and -his appliances—and above all of the messages from Cavor that were coming -to hand—my lingering doubts vanished. I decided at once to accept a -proposal he made to me to remain with him, assisting him to take down the -record from day to day, and endeavouring with him to send a message back to the -moon. Cavor, we learnt, was not only alive, but free, in the midst of an almost -inconceivable community of these ant-like beings, these ant-men, in the blue -darkness of the lunar caves. He was lamed, it seemed, but otherwise in quite -good health—in better health, he distinctly said, than he usually enjoyed -on earth. He had had a fever, but it had left no bad effects. But curiously -enough he seemed to be labouring under a conviction that I was either dead in -the moon crater or lost in the deep of space. -</p> - -<p> -His message began to be received by Mr. Wendigee when that gentleman was -engaged in quite a different investigation. The reader will no doubt recall the -little excitement that began the century, arising out of an announcement by Mr. -Nikola Tesla, the American electrical celebrity, that he had received a message -from Mars. His announcement renewed attention to a fact that had long been -familiar to scientific people, namely: that from some unknown source in space, -waves of electromagnetic disturbance, entirely similar to those used by Signor -Marconi for his wireless telegraphy, are constantly reaching the earth. Besides -Tesla quite a number of other observers have been engaged in perfecting -apparatus for receiving and recording these vibrations, though few would go so -far as to consider them actual messages from some extraterrestrial sender. -Among that few, however, we must certainly count Mr. Wendigee. Ever since 1898 -he had devoted himself almost entirely to this subject, and being a man of -ample means he had erected an observatory on the flanks of Monte Rosa, in a -position singularly adapted in every way for such observations. -</p> - -<p> -My scientific attainments, I must admit, are not great, but so far as they -enable me to judge, Mr. Wendigee’s contrivances for detecting and -recording any disturbances in the electromagnetic conditions of space are -singularly original and ingenious. And by a happy combination of circumstances -they were set up and in operation about two months before Cavor made his first -attempt to call up the earth. Consequently we have fragments of his -communication even from the beginning. Unhappily, they are only fragments, and -the most momentous of all the things that he had to tell humanity—the -instructions, that is, for the making of Cavorite, if, indeed, he ever -transmitted them—have throbbed themselves away unrecorded into space. We -never succeeded in getting a response back to Cavor. He was unable to tell, -therefore, what we had received or what we had missed; nor, indeed, did he -certainly know that any one on earth was really aware of his efforts to reach -us. And the persistence he displayed in sending eighteen long descriptions of -lunar affairs—as they would be if we had them complete—shows how -much his mind must have turned back towards his native planet since he left it -two years ago. -</p> - -<p> -You can imagine how amazed Mr. Wendigee must have been when he discovered his -record of electromagnetic disturbances interlaced by Cavor’s -straightforward English. Mr. Wendigee knew nothing of our wild journey -moonward, and suddenly—this English out of the void! -</p> - -<p> -It is well the reader should understand the conditions under which it would -seem these messages were sent. Somewhere within the moon Cavor certainly had -access for a time to a considerable amount of electrical apparatus, and it -would seem he rigged up—perhaps furtively—a transmitting -arrangement of the Marconi type. This he was able to operate at irregular -intervals: sometimes for only half an hour or so, sometimes for three or four -hours at a stretch. At these times he transmitted his earthward message, -regardless of the fact that the relative position of the moon and points upon -the earth’s surface is constantly altering. As a consequence of this and -of the necessary imperfections of our recording instruments his communication -comes and goes in our records in an extremely fitful manner; it becomes -blurred; it “fades out” in a mysterious and altogether exasperating -way. And added to this is the fact that he was not an expert operator; he had -partly forgotten, or never completely mastered, the code in general use, and as -he became fatigued he dropped words and misspelt in a curious manner. -</p> - -<p> -Altogether we have probably lost quite half of the communications he made, and -much we have is damaged, broken, and partly effaced. In the abstract that -follows the reader must be prepared therefore for a considerable amount of -break, hiatus, and change of topic. Mr. Wendigee and I are collaborating in a -complete and annotated edition of the Cavor record, which we hope to publish, -together with a detailed account of the instruments employed, beginning with -the first volume in January next. That will be the full and scientific report, -of which this is only the popular transcript. But here we give at least -sufficient to complete the story I have told, and to give the broad outlines of -the state of that other world so near, so akin, and yet so dissimilar to our -own. -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap23"></a>XXIII.<br /> -An Abstract of the Six Messages First Received from Mr. Cavor</h2> - -<p> -The two earlier messages of Mr. Cavor may very well be reserved for that larger -volume. They simply tell, with greater brevity and with a difference in several -details that is interesting, but not of any vital importance, the bare facts of -the making of the sphere and our departure from the world. Throughout, Cavor -speaks of me as a man who is dead, but with a curious change of temper as he -approaches our landing on the moon. “Poor Bedford,” he says of me, -and “this poor young man,” and he blames himself for inducing a -young man, “by no means well equipped for such adventures,” to -leave a planet “on which he was indisputably fitted to succeed” on -so precarious a mission. I think he underrates the part my energy and practical -capacity played in bringing about the realisation of his theoretical sphere. -“We arrived,” he says, with no more account of our passage through -space than if we had made a journey of common occurrence in a railway train. -</p> - -<p> -And then he becomes increasingly unfair to me. Unfair, indeed, to an extent I -should not have expected in a man trained in the search for truth. Looking back -over my previously written account of these things, I must insist that I have -been altogether juster to Cavor than he has been to me. I have extenuated -little and suppressed nothing. But his account is:— -</p> - -<p> -“It speedily became apparent that the entire strangeness of our -circumstances and surroundings—great loss of weight, attenuated but -highly oxygenated air, consequent exaggeration of the results of muscular -effort, rapid development of weird plants from obscure spores, lurid -sky—was exciting my companion unduly. On the moon his character seemed to -deteriorate. He became impulsive, rash, and quarrelsome. In a little while his -folly in devouring some gigantic vesicles and his consequent intoxication led -to our capture by the Selenites—before we had had the slightest -opportunity of properly observing their ways....” -</p> - -<p> -(He says, you observe, nothing of his own concession to these same -“vesicles.”) -</p> - -<p> -And he goes on from that point to say that “We came to a difficult -passage with them, and Bedford mistaking certain gestures of -theirs”—pretty gestures they were!—“gave way to a panic -violence. He ran amuck, killed three, and perforce I had to flee with him after -the outrage. Subsequently we fought with a number who endeavoured to bar our -way, and slew seven or eight more. It says much for the tolerance of these -beings that on my recapture I was not instantly slain. We made our way to the -exterior and separated in the crater of our arrival, to increase our chances of -recovering our sphere. But presently I came upon a body of Selenites, led by -two who were curiously different, even in form, from any of these we had seen -hitherto, with larger heads and smaller bodies, and much more elaborately -wrapped about. And after evading them for some time I fell into a crevasse, cut -my head rather badly, and displaced my patella, and, finding crawling very -painful, decided to surrender—if they would still permit me to do so. -This they did, and, perceiving my helpless condition, carried me with them -again into the moon. And of Bedford I have heard or seen nothing more, nor, so -far as I can gather, has any Selenite. Either the night overtook him in the -crater, or else, which is more probable, he found the sphere, and, desiring to -steal a march upon me, made off with it—only, I fear, to find it -uncontrollable, and to meet a more lingering fate in outer space.” -</p> - -<p> -And with that Cavor dismisses me and goes on to more interesting topics. I -dislike the idea of seeming to use my position as his editor to deflect his -story in my own interest, but I am obliged to protest here against the turn he -gives these occurrences. He said nothing about that gasping message on the -blood-stained paper in which he told, or attempted to tell, a very different -story. The dignified self-surrender is an altogether new view of the affair -that has come to him, I must insist, since he began to feel secure among the -lunar people; and as for the “stealing a march” conception, I am -quite willing to let the reader decide between us on what he has before him. I -know I am not a model man—I have made no pretence to be. But am I -<i>that?</i> -</p> - -<p> -However, that is the sum of my wrongs. From this point I can edit Cavor with an -untroubled mind, for he mentions me no more. -</p> - -<p> -It would seem the Selenites who had come upon him carried him to some point in -the interior down “a great shaft” by means of what he describes as -“a sort of balloon.” We gather from the rather confused passage in -which he describes this, and from a number of chance allusions and hints in -other and subsequent messages, that this “great shaft” is one of an -enormous system of artificial shafts that run, each from what is called a lunar -“crater,” downwards for very nearly a hundred miles towards the -central portion of our satellite. These shafts communicate by transverse -tunnels, they throw out abysmal caverns and expand into great globular places; -the whole of the moon’s substance for a hundred miles inward, indeed, is -a mere sponge of rock. “Partly,” says Cavor, “this sponginess -is natural, but very largely it is due to the enormous industry of the -Selenites in the past. The enormous circular mounds of the excavated rock and -earth it is that form these great circles about the tunnels known to earthly -astronomers (misled by a false analogy) as volcanoes.” -</p> - -<p> -It was down this shaft they took him, in this “sort of balloon” he -speaks of, at first into an inky blackness and then into a region of -continually increasing phosphorescence. Cavor’s despatches show him to be -curiously regardless of detail for a scientific man, but we gather that this -light was due to the streams and cascades of water—“no doubt -containing some phosphorescent organism”—that flowed ever more -abundantly downward towards the Central Sea. And as he descended, he says, -“The Selenites also became luminous.” And at last far below him he -saw, as it were, a lake of heatless fire, the waters of the Central Sea, -glowing and eddying in strange perturbation, “like luminous blue milk -that is just on the boil.” -</p> - -<p> -“This Lunar Sea,” says Cavor, in a later passage, “is not a -stagnant ocean; a solar tide sends it in a perpetual flow around the lunar -axis, and strange storms and boilings and rushings of its waters occur, and at -times cold winds and thunderings that ascend out of it into the busy ways of -the great ant-hill above. It is only when the water is in motion that it gives -out light; in its rare seasons of calm it is black. Commonly, when one sees it, -its waters rise and fall in an oily swell, and flakes and big rafts of shining, -bubbly foam drift with the sluggish, faintly glowing current. The Selenites -navigate its cavernous straits and lagoons in little shallow boats of a -canoe-like shape; and even before my journey to the galleries about the Grand -Lunar, who is Master of the Moon, I was permitted to make a brief excursion on -its waters. -</p> - -<p> -“The caverns and passages are naturally very tortuous. A large proportion -of these ways are known only to expert pilots among the fishermen, and not -infrequently Selenites are lost for ever in their labyrinths. In their remoter -recesses, I am told, strange creatures lurk, some of them terrible and -dangerous creatures that all the science of the moon has been unable to -exterminate. There is particularly the Rapha, an inextricable mass of clutching -tentacles that one hacks to pieces only to multiply; and the Tzee, a darting -creature that is never seen, so subtly and suddenly does it slay...” -</p> - -<p> -He gives us a gleam of description. -</p> - -<p> -“I was reminded on this excursion of what I have read of the Mammoth -Caves; if only I had had a yellow flambeau instead of the pervading blue light, -and a solid-looking boatman with an oar instead of a scuttle-faced Selenite -working an engine at the back of the canoe, I could have imagined I had -suddenly got back to earth. The rocks about us were very various, sometimes -black, sometimes pale blue and veined, and once they flashed and glittered as -though we had come into a mine of sapphires. And below one saw the ghostly -phosphorescent fishes flash and vanish in the hardly less phosphorescent deep. -Then, presently, a long ultra-marine vista down the turgid stream of one of the -channels of traffic, and a landing stage, and then, perhaps, a glimpse up the -enormous crowded shaft of one of the vertical ways. -</p> - -<p> -“In one great place heavy with glistening stalactites a number of boats -were fishing. We went alongside one of these and watched the long-armed -Selenites winding in a net. They were little, hunchbacked insects, with very -strong arms, short, bandy legs, and crinkled face-masks. As they pulled at it -that net seemed the heaviest thing I had come upon in the moon; it was loaded -with weights—no doubt of gold—and it took a long time to draw, for -in those waters the larger and more edible fish lurk deep. The fish in the net -came up like a blue moonrise—a blaze of darting, tossing blue. -</p> - -<p> -“Among their catch was a many-tentaculate, evil-eyed black thing, -ferociously active, whose appearance they greeted with shrieks and twitters, -and which with quick, nervous movements they hacked to pieces by means of -little hatchets. All its dissevered limbs continued to lash and writhe in a -vicious manner. Afterwards, when fever had hold of me, I dreamt again and again -of that bitter, furious creature rising so vigorous and active out of the -unknown sea. It was the most active and malignant thing of all the living -creatures I have yet seen in this world inside the moon.... -</p> - -<p class="p2"> -“The surface of this sea must be very nearly two hundred miles (if not -more) below the level of the moon’s exterior; all the cities of the moon -lie, I learnt, immediately above this Central Sea, in such cavernous spaces and -artificial galleries as I have described, and they communicate with the -exterior by enormous vertical shafts which open invariably in what are called -by earthly astronomers the ‘craters’ of the moon. The lid covering -one such aperture I had already seen during the wanderings that had preceded my -capture. -</p> - -<p> -“Upon the condition of the less central portion of the moon I have not -yet arrived at very precise knowledge. There is an enormous system of caverns -in which the mooncalves shelter during the night; and there are abattoirs and -the like—in one of these it was that I and Bedford fought with the -Selenite butchers—and I have since seen balloons laden with meat -descending out of the upper dark. I have as yet scarcely learnt as much of -these things as a Zulu in London would learn about the British corn supplies in -the same time. It is clear, however, that these vertical shafts and the -vegetation of the surface must play an essential role in ventilating and -keeping fresh the atmosphere of the moon. At one time, and particularly on my -first emergence from my prison, there was certainly a cold wind blowing -<i>down</i> the shaft, and later there was a kind of sirocco upward that -corresponded with my fever. For at the end of about three weeks I fell ill of -an indefinable sort of fever, and in spite of sleep and the quinine tabloids -that very fortunately I had brought in my pocket, I remained ill and fretting -miserably, almost to the time when I was taken into the presence of the Grand -Lunar, who is Master of the Moon. -</p> - -<p> -“I will not dilate on the wretchedness of my condition,” he -remarks, “during those days of ill-health.” And he goes on with -great amplitude with details I omit here. “My temperature,” he -concludes, “kept abnormally high for a long time, and I lost all desire -for food. I had stagnant waking intervals, and sleep tormented by dreams, and -at one phase I was, I remember, so weak as to be earth-sick and almost -hysterical. I longed almost intolerably for colour to break the everlasting -blue...” -</p> - -<p> -He reverts again presently to the topic of this sponge-caught lunar atmosphere. -I am told by astronomers and physicists that all he tells is in absolute -accordance with what was already known of the moon’s condition. Had -earthly astronomers had the courage and imagination to push home a bold -induction, says Mr. Wendigee, they might have foretold almost everything that -Cavor has to say of the general structure of the moon. They know now pretty -certainly that moon and earth are not so much satellite and primary as smaller -and greater sisters, made out of one mass, and consequently made of the same -material. And since the density of the moon is only three-fifths that of the -earth, there can be nothing for it but that she is hollowed out by a great -system of caverns. There was no necessity, said Sir Jabez Flap, F.R.S., that -most entertaining exponent of the facetious side of the stars, that we should -ever have gone to the moon to find out such easy inferences, and points the pun -with an allusion to Gruyère, but he certainly might have announced his -knowledge of the hollowness of the moon before. And if the moon is hollow, then -the apparent absence of air and water is, of course, quite easily explained. -The sea lies within at the bottom of the caverns, and the air travels through -the great sponge of galleries, in accordance with simple physical laws. The -caverns of the moon, on the whole, are very windy places. As the sunlight comes -round the moon the air in the outer galleries on that side is heated, its -pressure increases, some flows out on the exterior and mingles with the -evaporating air of the craters (where the plants remove its carbonic acid), -while the greater portion flows round through the galleries to replace the -shrinking air of the cooling side that the sunlight has left. There is, -therefore, a constant eastward breeze in the air of the outer galleries, and an -upflow during the lunar day up the shafts, complicated, of course, very greatly -by the varying shape of the galleries, and the ingenious contrivances of the -Selenite mind.... -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap24"></a>XXIV.<br /> -The Natural History of the Selenites</h2> - -<p> -The messages of Cavor from the sixth up to the sixteenth are for the most part -so much broken, and they abound so in repetitions, that they scarcely form a -consecutive narrative. They will be given in full, of course, in the scientific -report, but here it will be far more convenient to continue simply to abstract -and quote as in the former chapter. We have subjected every word to a keen -critical scrutiny, and my own brief memories and impressions of lunar things -have been of inestimable help in interpreting what would otherwise have been -impenetrably dark. And, naturally, as living beings, our interest centres far -more upon the strange community of lunar insects in which he was living, it -would seem, as an honoured guest than upon the mere physical condition of their -world. -</p> - -<p> -I have already made it clear, I think, that the Selenites I saw resembled man -in maintaining the erect attitude, and in having four limbs, and I have -compared the general appearance of their heads and the jointing of their limbs -to that of insects. I have mentioned, too, the peculiar consequence of the -smaller gravitation of the moon on their fragile slightness. Cavor confirms me -upon all these points. He calls them “animals,” though of course -they fall under no division of the classification of earthly creatures, and he -points out “the insect type of anatomy had, fortunately for men, never -exceeded a relatively very small size on earth.” The largest terrestrial -insects, living or extinct, do not, as a matter of fact, measure six inches in -length; “but here, against the lesser gravitation of the moon, a creature -certainly as much an insect as vertebrate seems to have been able to attain to -human and ultra-human dimensions.” -</p> - -<p> -He does not mention the ant, but throughout his allusions the ant is -continually being brought before my mind, in its sleepless activity, in its -intelligence and social organisation, in its structure, and more particularly -in the fact that it displays, in addition to the two forms, the male and the -female form, that almost all other animals possess, a number of other sexless -creatures, workers, soldiers, and the like, differing from one another in -structure, character, power, and use, and yet all members of the same species. -For these Selenites, also, have a great variety of forms. Of course, they are -not only colossally greater in size than ants, but also, in Cavor’s -opinion at least, in intelligence, morality, and social wisdom are they -colossally greater than men. And instead of the four or five different forms of -ant that are found, there are almost innumerably different forms of Selenite. I -had endeavoured to indicate the very considerable difference observable in such -Selenites of the outer crust as I happened to encounter; the differences in -size and proportions were certainly as wide as the differences between the most -widely separated races of men. But such differences as I saw fade absolutely to -nothing in comparison with the huge distinctions of which Cavor tells. It would -seem the exterior Selenites I saw were, indeed, mostly engaged in kindred -occupations—mooncalf herds, butchers, fleshers, and the like. But within -the moon, practically unsuspected by me, there are, it seems, a number of other -sorts of Selenite, differing in size, differing in the relative size of part to -part, differing in power and appearance, and yet not different species of -creatures, but only different forms of one species, and retaining through all -their variations a certain common likeness that marks their specific unity. The -moon is, indeed, a sort of vast ant-hill, only, instead of there being only -four or five sorts of ant, there are many hundred different sorts of Selenite, -and almost every gradation between one sort and another. -</p> - -<p> -It would seem the discovery came upon Cavor very speedily. I infer rather than -learn from his narrative that he was captured by the mooncalf herds under the -direction of these other Selenites who “have larger brain cases (heads?) -and very much shorter legs.” Finding he would not walk even under the -goad, they carried him into darkness, crossed a narrow, plank-like bridge that -may have been the identical bridge I had refused, and put him down in something -that must have seemed at first to be some sort of lift. This was the -balloon—it had certainly been absolutely invisible to us in the -darkness—and what had seemed to me a mere plank-walking into the void was -really, no doubt, the passage of the gangway. In this he descended towards -constantly more luminous caverns of the moon. At first they descended in -silence—save for the twitterings of the Selenites—and then into a -stir of windy movement. In a little while the profound blackness had made his -eyes so sensitive that he began to see more and more of the things about him, -and at last the vague took shape. -</p> - -<p> -“Conceive an enormous cylindrical space,” says Cavor, in his -seventh message, “a quarter of a mile across, perhaps; very dimly lit at -first and then brighter, with big platforms twisting down its sides in a spiral -that vanishes at last below in a blue profundity; and lit even more -brightly—one could not tell how or why. Think of the well of the very -largest spiral staircase or lift-shaft that you have ever looked down, and -magnify that by a hundred. Imagine it at twilight seen through blue glass. -Imagine yourself looking down that; only imagine also that you feel -extraordinarily light, and have got rid of any giddy feeling you might have on -earth, and you will have the first conditions of my impression. Round this -enormous shaft imagine a broad gallery running in a much steeper spiral than -would be credible on earth, and forming a steep road protected from the gulf -only by a little parapet that vanishes at last in perspective a couple of miles -below. -</p> - -<p> -“Looking up, I saw the very fellow of the downward vision; it had, of -course, the effect of looking into a very steep cone. A wind was blowing down -the shaft, and far above I fancy I heard, growing fainter and fainter, the -bellowing of the mooncalves that were being driven down again from their -evening pasturage on the exterior. And up and down the spiral galleries were -scattered numerous moon people, pallid, faintly luminous beings, regarding our -appearance or busied on unknown errands. -</p> - -<p> -“Either I fancied it or a flake of snow came drifting down on the icy -breeze. And then, falling like a snowflake, a little figure, a little -man-insect, clinging to a parachute, drove down very swiftly towards the -central places of the moon. -</p> - -<p> -“The big-headed Selenite sitting beside me, seeing me move my head with -the gesture of one who saw, pointed with his trunk-like ‘hand’ and -indicated a sort of jetty coming into sight very far below: a little -landing-stage, as it were, hanging into the void. As it swept up towards us our -pace diminished very rapidly, and in a few moments, as it seemed, we were -abreast of it, and at rest. A mooring-rope was flung and grasped, and I found -myself pulled down to a level with a great crowd of Selenites, who jostled to -see me. -</p> - -<p> -“It was an incredible crowd. Suddenly and violently there was forced upon -my attention the vast amount of difference there is amongst these beings of the -moon. -</p> - -<p> -“Indeed, there seemed not two alike in all that jostling multitude. They -differed in shape, they differed in size, they rang all the horrible changes on -the theme of Selenite form! Some bulged and overhung, some ran about among the -feet of their fellows. All of them had a grotesque and disquieting suggestion -of an insect that has somehow contrived to mock humanity; but all seemed to -present an incredible exaggeration of some particular feature: one had a vast -right fore-limb, an enormous antennal arm, as it were; one seemed all leg, -poised, as it were, on stilts; another protruded the edge of his face mask into -a nose-like organ that made him startlingly human until one saw his -expressionless gaping mouth. The strange and (except for the want of mandibles -and palps) most insect-like head of the mooncalf-minders underwent, indeed, the -most incredible transformations: here it was broad and low, here high and -narrow; here its leathery brow was drawn out into horns and strange features; -here it was whiskered and divided, and there with a grotesquely human profile. -One distortion was particularly conspicuous. There were several brain cases -distended like bladders to a huge size, with the face mask reduced to quite -small proportions. There were several amazing forms, with heads reduced to -microscopic proportions and blobby bodies; and fantastic, flimsy things that -existed, it would seem, only as a basis for vast, trumpet-like protrusions of -the lower part of the mask. And oddest of all, as it seemed to me for the -moment, two or three of these weird inhabitants of a subterranean world, a -world sheltered by innumerable miles of rock from sun or rain, <i>carried -umbrellas</i> in their tentaculate hands—real terrestrial looking -umbrellas! And then I thought of the parachutist I had watched descend. -</p> - -<p> -“These moon people behaved exactly as a human crowd might have done in -similar circumstances: they jostled and thrust one another, they shoved one -another aside, they even clambered upon one another to get a glimpse of me. -Every moment they increased in numbers, and pressed more urgently upon the -discs of my ushers”—Cavor does not explain what he means by -this—“every moment fresh shapes emerged from the shadows and forced -themselves upon my astounded attention. And presently I was signed and helped -into a sort of litter, and lifted up on the shoulders of strong-armed bearers, -and so borne through the twilight over this seething multitude towards the -apartments that were provided for me in the moon. All about me were eyes, -faces, masks, a leathery noise like the rustling of beetle wings, and a great -bleating and cricket-like twittering of Selenite voices.” -</p> - -<p class="p2"> -We gather he was taken to a “hexagonal apartment,” and there for a -space he was confined. Afterwards he was given a much more considerable -liberty; indeed, almost as much freedom as one has in a civilised town on -earth. And it would appear that the mysterious being who is the ruler and -master of the moon appointed two Selenites “with large heads” to -guard and study him, and to establish whatever mental communications were -possible with him. And, amazing and incredible as it may seem, these two -creatures, these fantastic men insects, these beings of other world, were -presently communicating with Cavor by means of terrestrial speech. -</p> - -<p> -Cavor speaks of them as Phi-oo and Tsi-puff. Phi-oo, he says, was about 5 feet -high; he had small slender legs about 18 inches long, and slight feet of the -common lunar pattern. On these balanced a little body, throbbing with the -pulsations of his heart. He had long, soft, many-jointed arms ending in a -tentacled grip, and his neck was many-jointed in the usual way, but -exceptionally short and thick. His head, says Cavor—apparently alluding -to some previous description that has gone astray in space—“is of -the common lunar type, but strangely modified. The mouth has the usual -expressionless gape, but it is unusually small and pointing downward, and the -mask is reduced to the size of a large flat nose-flap. On either side are the -little eyes. -</p> - -<p> -“The rest of the head is distended into a huge globe and the chitinous -leathery cuticle of the mooncalf herds thins out to a mere membrane, through -which the pulsating brain movements are distinctly visible. He is a creature, -indeed, with a tremendously hypertrophied brain, and with the rest of his -organism both relatively and absolutely dwarfed.” -</p> - -<p> -In another passage Cavor compares the back view of him to Atlas supporting the -world. Tsi-puff it seems was a very similar insect, but his “face” -was drawn out to a considerable length, and the brain hypertrophy being in -different regions, his head was not round but pear-shaped, with the stalk -downward. There were also litter-carriers, lopsided beings, with enormous -shoulders, very spidery ushers, and a squat foot attendant in Cavor’s -retinue. -</p> - -<p> -The manner in which Phi-oo and Tsi-puff attacked the problem of speech was -fairly obvious. They came into this “hexagonal cell” in which Cavor -was confined, and began imitating every sound he made, beginning with a cough. -He seems to have grasped their intention with great quickness, and to have -begun repeating words to them and pointing to indicate the application. The -procedure was probably always the same. Phi-oo would attend to Cavor for a -space, then point also and say the word he had heard. -</p> - -<p> -The first word he mastered was “man,” and the second -“Mooney”—which Cavor on the spur of the moment seems to have -used instead of “Selenite” for the moon race. As soon as Phi-oo was -assured of the meaning of a word he repeated it to Tsi-puff, who remembered it -infallibly. They mastered over one hundred English nouns at their first -session. -</p> - -<p> -Subsequently it seems they brought an artist with them to assist the work of -explanation with sketches and diagrams—Cavor’s drawings being -rather crude. “He was,” says Cavor, “a being with an active -arm and an arresting eye,” and he seemed to draw with incredible -swiftness. -</p> - -<p> -The eleventh message is undoubtedly only a fragment of a longer communication. -After some broken sentences, the record of which is unintelligible, it goes -on:— -</p> - -<p> -“But it will interest only linguists, and delay me too long, to give the -details of the series of intent parleys of which these were the beginning, and, -indeed, I very much doubt if I could give in anything like the proper order all -the twistings and turnings that we made in our pursuit of mutual comprehension. -Verbs were soon plain sailing—at least, such active verbs as I could -express by drawings; some adjectives were easy, but when it came to abstract -nouns, to prepositions, and the sort of hackneyed figures of speech, by means -of which so much is expressed on earth, it was like diving in cork-jackets. -Indeed, these difficulties were insurmountable until to the sixth lesson came a -fourth assistant, a being with a huge football-shaped head, whose <i>forte</i> -was clearly the pursuit of intricate analogy. He entered in a preoccupied -manner, stumbling against a stool, and the difficulties that arose had to be -presented to him with a certain amount of clamour and hitting and pricking -before they reached his apprehension. But once he was involved his penetration -was amazing. Whenever there came a need of thinking beyond Phi-oo’s by no -means limited scope, this prolate-headed person was in request, but he -invariably told the conclusion to Tsi-puff, in order that it might be -remembered; Tsi-puff was ever the arsenal for facts. And so we advanced again. -</p> - -<p> -“It seemed long and yet brief—a matter of days—before I was -positively talking with these insects of the moon. Of course, at first it was -an intercourse infinitely tedious and exasperating, but imperceptibly it has -grown to comprehension. And my patience has grown to meet its limitations, -Phi-oo it is who does all the talking. He does it with a vast amount of -meditative provisional ‘M’m—M’m’ and has caught -up one or two phrases, If I may say,’ ‘If you understand,’ -and beads all his speech with them. -</p> - -<p> -“Thus he would discourse. Imagine him explaining his artist. -</p> - -<p> -“‘M’m—M’m—he—if I may say—draw. -Eat little—drink little—draw. Love draw. No other thing. Hate all -who not draw like him. Angry. Hate all who draw like him better. Hate most -people. Hate all who not think all world for to draw. Angry. M’m. All -things mean nothing to him—only draw. He like you ... if you -understand.... New thing to draw. Ugly—striking. Eh? -</p> - -<p> -“‘He’—turning to Tsi-puff—‘love remember -words. Remember wonderful more than any. Think no, draw no—remember. -Say’—here he referred to his gifted assistant for a -word—‘histories—all things. He hear once—say -ever.’ -</p> - -<p> -“It is more wonderful to me than I dreamt that anything ever could be -again, to hear, in this perpetual obscurity, these extraordinary -creatures—for even familiarity fails to weaken the inhuman effect of -their appearance—continually piping a nearer approach to coherent earthly -speech—asking questions, giving answers. I feel that I am casting back to -the fable-hearing period of childhood again, when the ant and the grasshopper -talked together and the bee judged between them...” -</p> - -<p class="p2"> -And while these linguistic exercises were going on Cavor seems to have -experienced a considerable relaxation of his confinement. “The first -dread and distrust our unfortunate conflict aroused is being,” he said, -“continually effaced by the deliberate rationality of all I do.... I am -now able to come and go as I please, or I am restricted only for my own good. -So it is I have been able to get at this apparatus, and, assisted by a happy -find among the material that is littered in this enormous store-cave, I have -contrived to despatch these messages. So far not the slightest attempt has been -made to interfere with me in this, though I have made it quite clear to Phi-oo -that I am signalling to the earth. -</p> - -<p> -“‘You talk to other?’ he asked, watching me. -</p> - -<p> -“‘Others,’ said I. -</p> - -<p> -“‘Others,’ he said. ‘Oh yes, Men?’ -</p> - -<p> -“And I went on transmitting.” -</p> - -<p class="p2"> -Cavor was continually making corrections in his previous accounts of the -Selenites as fresh facts flowed upon him to modify his conclusions, and -accordingly one gives the quotations that follow with a certain amount of -reservation. They are quoted from the ninth, thirteenth, and sixteenth -messages, and, altogether vague and fragmentary as they are, they probably give -as complete a picture of the social life of this strange community as mankind -can now hope to have for many generations. -</p> - -<p> -“In the moon,” says Cavor, “every citizen knows his place. He -is born to that place, and the elaborate discipline of training and education -and surgery he undergoes fits him at last so completely to it that he has -neither ideas nor organs for any purpose beyond it. ‘Why should -he?’ Phi-oo would ask. If, for example, a Selenite is destined to be a -mathematician, his teachers and trainers set out at once to that end. They -check any incipient disposition to other pursuits, they encourage his -mathematical bias with a perfect psychological skill. His brain grows, or at -least the mathematical faculties of his brain grow, and the rest of him only so -much as is necessary to sustain this essential part of him. At last, save for -rest and food, his one delight lies in the exercise and display of his faculty, -his one interest in its application, his sole society with other specialists in -his own line. His brain grows continually larger, at least so far as the -portions engaging in mathematics are concerned; they bulge ever larger and seem -to suck all life and vigour from the rest of his frame. His limbs shrivel, his -heart and digestive organs diminish, his insect face is hidden under its -bulging contours. His voice becomes a mere stridulation for the stating of -formulæ; he seems deaf to all but properly enunciated problems. The faculty of -laughter, save for the sudden discovery of some paradox, is lost to him; his -deepest emotion is the evolution of a novel computation. And so he attains his -end. -</p> - -<p> -“Or, again, a Selenite appointed to be a minder of mooncalves is from his -earliest years induced to think and live mooncalf, to find his pleasure in -mooncalf lore, his exercise in their tending and pursuit. He is trained to -become wiry and active, his eye is indurated to the tight wrappings, the -angular contours that constitute a ‘smart mooncalfishness.’ He -takes at last no interest in the deeper part of the moon; he regards all -Selenites not equally versed in mooncalves with indifference, derision, or -hostility. His thoughts are of mooncalf pastures, and his dialect an -accomplished mooncalf technique. So also he loves his work, and discharges in -perfect happiness the duty that justifies his being. And so it is with all -sorts and conditions of Selenites—each is a perfect unit in a world -machine.... -</p> - -<p> -“These beings with big heads, on whom the intellectual labours fall, form -a sort of aristocracy in this strange society, and at the head of them, -quintessential of the moon, is that marvellous gigantic ganglion the Grand -Lunar, into whose presence I am finally to come. The unlimited development of -the minds of the intellectual class is rendered possible by the absence of any -bony skull in the lunar anatomy, that strange box of bone that clamps about the -developing brain of man, imperiously insisting ‘thus far and no -farther’ to all his possibilities. They fall into three main classes -differing greatly in influence and respect. There are administrators, of whom -Phi-oo is one, Selenites of considerable initiative and versatility, -responsible each for a certain cubic content of the moon’s bulk; the -experts like the football-headed thinker, who are trained to perform certain -special operations; and the erudite, who are the repositories of all knowledge. -To the latter class belongs Tsi-puff, the first lunar professor of terrestrial -languages. With regard to these latter, it is a curious little thing to note -that the unlimited growth of the lunar brain has rendered unnecessary the -invention of all those mechanical aids to brain work which have distinguished -the career of man. There are no books, no records of any sort, no libraries or -inscriptions. All knowledge is stored in distended brains much as the -honey-ants of Texas store honey in their distended abdomens. The lunar Somerset -House and the lunar British Museum Library are collections of living brains... -</p> - -<p> -“The less specialised administrators, I note, do for the most part take a -very lively interest in me whenever they encounter me. They will come out of -the way and stare at me and ask questions to which Phi-oo will reply. I see -them going hither and thither with a retinue of bearers, attendants, shouters, -parachute-carriers, and so forth—queer groups to see. The experts for the -most part ignore me completely, even as they ignore each other, or notice me -only to begin a clamorous exhibition of their distinctive skill. The erudite -for the most part are rapt in an impervious and apoplectic complacency, from -which only a denial of their erudition can rouse them. Usually they are led -about by little watchers and attendants, and often there are small and -active-looking creatures, small females usually, that I am inclined to think -are a sort of wife to them; but some of the profounder scholars are altogether -too great for locomotion, and are carried from place to place in a sort of -sedan tub, wabbling jellies of knowledge that enlist my respectful -astonishment. I have just passed one in coming to this place where I am -permitted to amuse myself with these electrical toys, a vast, shaven, shaky -head, bald and thin-skinned, carried on his grotesque stretcher. In front and -behind came his bearers, and curious, almost trumpet-faced, news disseminators -shrieked his fame. -</p> - -<p> -“I have already mentioned the retinues that accompany most of the -intellectuals: ushers, bearers, valets, extraneous tentacles and muscles, as it -were, to replace the abortive physical powers of these hypertrophied minds. -Porters almost invariably accompany them. There are also extremely swift -messengers with spider-like legs and ‘hands’ for grasping -parachutes, and attendants with vocal organs that could well nigh wake the -dead. Apart from their controlling intelligence these subordinates are as inert -and helpless as umbrellas in a stand. They exist only in relation to the orders -they have to obey, the duties they have to perform. -</p> - -<p> -“The bulk of these insects, however, who go to and fro upon the spiral -ways, who fill the ascending balloons and drop past me clinging to flimsy -parachutes are, I gather, of the operative class. ‘Machine hands,’ -indeed, some of these are in actual nature—it is no figure of speech, the -single tentacle of the mooncalf herd is profoundly modified for clawing, -lifting, guiding, the rest of them no more than necessary subordinate -appendages to these important parts. Some, who I suppose deal with -bell-striking mechanisms, have enormously developed auditory organs; some whose -work lies in delicate chemical operations project a vast olfactory organ; -others again have flat feet for treadles with anchylosed joints; and -others—who I have been told are glassblowers—seem mere -lung-bellows. But every one of these common Selenites I have seen at work is -exquisitely adapted to the social need it meets. Fine work is done by -fined-down workers, amazingly dwarfed and neat. Some I could hold on the palm -of my hand. There is even a sort of turnspit Selenite, very common, whose duty -and only delight it is to apply the motive power for various small appliances. -And to rule over these things and order any erring tendency there might be in -some aberrant natures are the most muscular beings I have seen in the moon, a -sort of lunar police, who must have been trained from their earliest years to -give a perfect respect and obedience to the swollen heads. -</p> - -<p> -“The making of these various sorts of operative must be a very curious -and interesting process. I am very much in the dark about it, but quite -recently I came upon a number of young Selenites confined in jars from which -only the fore-limbs protruded, who were being compressed to become -machine-minders of a special sort. The extended ‘hand’ in this -highly developed system of technical education is stimulated by irritants and -nourished by injection, while the rest of the body is starved. Phi-oo, unless I -misunderstood him, explained that in the earlier stages these queer little -creatures are apt to display signs of suffering in their various cramped -situations, but they easily become indurated to their lot; and he took me on to -where a number of flexible-minded messengers were being drawn out and broken -in. It is quite unreasonable, I know, but such glimpses of the educational -methods of these beings affect me disagreeably. I hope, however, that may pass -off, and I may be able to see more of this aspect of their wonderful social -order. That wretched-looking hand-tentacle sticking out of its jar seemed to -have a sort of limp appeal for lost possibilities; it haunts me still, -although, of course it is really in the end a far more humane proceeding than -our earthly method of leaving children to grow into human beings, and then -making machines of them. -</p> - -<p> -“Quite recently, too—I think it was on the eleventh or twelfth -visit I made to this apparatus—I had a curious light upon the lives of -these operatives. I was being guided through a short cut hither, instead of -going down the spiral, and by the quays to the Central Sea. From the devious -windings of a long, dark gallery, we emerged into a vast, low cavern, pervaded -by an earthy smell, and as things go in this darkness, rather brightly lit. The -light came from a tumultuous growth of livid fungoid shapes—some indeed -singularly like our terrestrial mushrooms, but standing as high or higher than -a man. -</p> - -<p> -“‘Mooneys eat these?’ said I to Phi-oo. -</p> - -<p> -“‘Yes, food.’ -</p> - -<p> -“‘Goodness me!’ I cried; ‘what’s that?’ -</p> - -<p> -“My eye had just caught the figure of an exceptionally big and ungainly -Selenite lying motionless among the stems, face downward. We stopped. -</p> - -<p> -“‘Dead?’ I asked. (For as yet I have seen no dead in the -moon, and I have grown curious.) -</p> - -<p> -“‘<i>No!</i>’ exclaimed Phi-oo. -‘Him—worker—no work to do. Get little drink then—make -sleep—till we him want. What good him wake, eh? No want him walking -about.’ -</p> - -<p> -“‘There’s another!’ cried I. -</p> - -<p> -“And indeed all that huge extent of mushroom ground was, I found, -peppered with these prostrate figures sleeping under an opiate until the moon -had need of them. There were scores of them of all sorts, and we were able to -turn over some of them, and examine them more precisely than I had been able to -do previously. They breathed noisily at my doing so, but did not wake. One, I -remember very distinctly: he left a strong impression, I think, because some -trick of the light and of his attitude was strongly suggestive of a drawn-up -human figure. His fore-limbs were long, delicate tentacles—he was some -kind of refined manipulator—and the pose of his slumber suggested a -submissive suffering. No doubt it was a mistake for me to interpret his -expression in that way, but I did. And as Phi-oo rolled him over into the -darkness among the livid fleshiness again I felt a distinctly unpleasant -sensation, although as he rolled the insect in him was confessed. -</p> - -<p> -“It simply illustrates the unthinking way in which one acquires habits of -feeling. To drug the worker one does not want and toss him aside is surely far -better than to expel him from his factory to wander starving in the streets. In -every complicated social community there is necessarily a certain intermittency -of employment for all specialised labour, and in this way the trouble of an -‘unemployed’ problem is altogether anticipated. And yet, so -unreasonable are even scientifically trained minds, I still do not like the -memory of those prostrate forms amidst those quiet, luminous arcades of fleshy -growth, and I avoid that short cut in spite of the inconveniences of the -longer, more noisy, and more crowded alternative. -</p> - -<p class="p2"> -“My alternative route takes me round by a huge, shadowy cavern, very -crowded and clamorous, and here it is I see peering out of the hexagonal -openings of a sort of honeycomb wall, or parading a large open space behind, or -selecting the toys and amulets made to please them by the dainty-tentacled -jewellers who work in kennels below, the mothers of the moon world—the -queen bees, as it were, of the hive. They are noble-looking beings, -fantastically and sometimes quite beautifully adorned, with a proud carriage, -and, save for their mouths, almost microscopic heads. -</p> - -<p> -“Of the condition of the moon sexes, marrying and giving in marriage, and -of birth and so forth among the Selenites, I have as yet been able to learn -very little. With the steady progress of Phi-oo in English, however, my -ignorance will no doubt as steadily disappear. I am of opinion that, as with -the ants and bees, there is a large majority of the members in this community -of the neuter sex. Of course on earth in our cities there are now many who -never live that life of parentage which is the natural life of man. Here, as -with the ants, this thing has become a normal condition of the race, and the -whole of such replacement as is necessary falls upon this special and by no -means numerous class of matrons, the mothers of the moon-world, large and -stately beings beautifully fitted to bear the larval Selenite. Unless I -misunderstand an explanation of Phi-oo’s, they are absolutely incapable -of cherishing the young they bring into the moon; periods of foolish indulgence -alternate with moods of aggressive violence, and as soon as possible the little -creatures, who are quite soft and flabby and pale coloured, are transferred to -the charge of celibate females, women ‘workers’ as it were, who in -some cases possess brains of almost masculine dimensions.” -</p> - -<p class="p2"> -Just at this point, unhappily, this message broke off. Fragmentary and -tantalising as the matter constituting this chapter is, it does nevertheless -give a vague, broad impression of an altogether strange and wonderful -world—a world with which our own may have to reckon we know not how -speedily. This intermittent trickle of messages, this whispering of a record -needle in the stillness of the mountain slopes, is the first warning of such a -change in human conditions as mankind has scarcely imagined heretofore. In that -satellite of ours there are new elements, new appliances, traditions, an -overwhelming avalanche of new ideas, a strange race with whom we must -inevitably struggle for mastery—gold as common as iron or wood... -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap25"></a>XXV.<br /> -The Grand Lunar</h2> - -<p> -The penultimate message describes, with occasionally elaborate detail, the -encounter between Cavor and the Grand Lunar, who is the ruler or master of the -moon. Cavor seems to have sent most of it without interference, but to have -been interrupted in the concluding portion. The second came after an interval -of a week. -</p> - -<p> -The first message begins: “At last I am able to resume this—” -it then becomes illegible for a space, and after a time resumed in -mid-sentence. -</p> - -<p> -The missing words of the following sentence are probably “the -crowd.” There follows quite clearly: “grew ever denser as we drew -near the palace of the Grand Lunar—if I may call a series of excavations -a palace. Everywhere faces stared at me—blank, chitinous gapes and masks, -eyes peering over tremendous olfactory developments, eyes beneath monstrous -forehead plates; and undergrowth of smaller creatures dodged and yelped, and -helmet faces poised on sinuous, long-jointed necks appeared craning over -shoulders and beneath armpits. Keeping a welcome space about me marched a -cordon of stolid, scuttle-headed guards, who had joined us on our leaving the -boat in which we had come along the channels of the Central Sea. The quick-eyed -artist with the little brain joined us also, and a thick bunch of lean -porter-insects swayed and struggled under the multitude of conveniences that -were considered essential to my state. I was carried in a litter during the -final stage of our journey. This litter was made of some very ductile metal -that looked dark to me, meshed and woven, and with bars of paler metal, and -about me as I advanced there grouped itself a long and complicated procession. -</p> - -<p> -“In front, after the manner of heralds, marched four trumpet-faced -creatures making a devastating bray; and then came squat, resolute-moving -ushers before and behind, and on either hand a galaxy of learned heads, a sort -of animated encyclopedia, who were, Phi-oo explained, to stand about the Grand -Lunar for purposes of reference. (Not a thing in lunar science, not a point of -view or method of thinking, that these wonderful beings did not carry in their -heads!) Followed guards and porters, and then Phi-oo’s shivering brain -borne also on a litter. Then came Tsi-puff in a slightly less important litter; -then myself on a litter of greater elegance than any other, and surrounded by -my food and drink attendants. More trumpeters came next, splitting the ear with -vehement outcries, and then several big brains, special correspondents one -might well call them, or historiographers, charged with the task of observing -and remembering every detail of this epoch-making interview. A company of -attendants, bearing and dragging banners and masses of scented fungus and -curious symbols, vanished in the darkness behind. The way was lined by ushers -and officers in caparisons that gleamed like steel, and beyond their line, so -far as my eyes could pierce the gloom, the heads of that enormous crowd -extended. -</p> - -<p> -“I will own that I am still by no means indurated to the peculiar effect -of the Selenite appearance, and to find myself, as it were, adrift on this -broad sea of excited entomology was by no means agreeable. Just for a space I -had something very like what I should imagine people mean when they speak of -the ‘horrors.’ It had come to me before in these lunar caverns, -when on occasion I have found myself weaponless and with an undefended back, -amidst a crowd of these Selenites, but never quite so vividly. It is, of -course, as absolutely irrational a feeling as one could well have, and I hope -gradually to subdue it. But just for a moment, as I swept forward into the -welter of the vast crowd, it was only by gripping my litter tightly and -summoning all my will-power that I succeeded in avoiding an outcry or some such -manifestation. It lasted perhaps three minutes; then I had myself in hand -again. -</p> - -<p> -“We ascended the spiral of a vertical way for some time, and then passed -through a series of huge halls dome-roofed and elaborately decorated. The -approach to the Grand Lunar was certainly contrived to give one a vivid -impression of his greatness. Each cavern one entered seemed greater and more -boldly arched than its predecessor. This effect of progressive size was -enhanced by a thin haze of faintly phosphorescent blue incense that thickened -as one advanced, and robbed even the nearer figures of clearness. I seemed to -advance continually to something larger, dimmer, and less material. -</p> - -<p> -“I must confess that all this multitude made me feel extremely shabby and -unworthy. I was unshaven and unkempt; I had brought no razor; I had a coarse -beard over my mouth. On earth I have always been inclined to despise any -attention to my person beyond a proper care for cleanliness; but under the -exceptional circumstances in which I found myself, representing, as I did, my -planet and my kind, and depending very largely upon the attractiveness of my -appearance for a proper reception, I could have given much for something a -little more artistic and dignified than the husks I wore. I had been so serene -in the belief that the moon was uninhabited as to overlook such precautions -altogether. As it was I was dressed in a flannel jacket, knickerbockers, and -golfing stockings, stained with every sort of dirt the moon offered, slippers -(of which the left heel was wanting), and a blanket, through a hole in which I -thrust my head. (These clothes, indeed, I still wear.) Sharp bristles are -anything but an improvement to my cast of features, and there was an unmended -tear at the knee of my knickerbockers that showed conspicuously as I squatted -in my litter; my right stocking, too, persisted in getting about my ankle. I am -fully alive to the injustice my appearance did humanity, and if by any -expedient I could have improvised something a little out of the way and -imposing I would have done so. But I could hit upon nothing. I did what I could -with my blanket—folding it somewhat after the fashion of a toga, and for -the rest I sat as upright as the swaying of my litter permitted. -</p> - -<p> -“Imagine the largest hall you have ever been in, imperfectly lit with -blue light and obscured by a grey-blue fog, surging with metallic or livid-grey -creatures of such a mad diversity as I have hinted. Imagine this hall to end in -an open archway beyond which is a still larger hall, and beyond this yet -another and still larger one, and so on. At the end of the vista, dimly seen, a -flight of steps, like the steps of Ara Coeli at Rome, ascend out of sight. -Higher and higher these steps appear to go as one draws nearer their base. But -at last I came under a huge archway and beheld the summit of these steps, and -upon it the Grand Lunar exalted on his throne. -</p> - -<p> -“He was seated in what was relatively a blaze of incandescent blue. This, -and the darkness about him gave him an effect of floating in a blue-black void. -He seemed a small, self-luminous cloud at first, brooding on his sombre throne; -his brain case must have measured many yards in diameter. For some reason that -I cannot fathom a number of blue search-lights radiated from behind the throne -on which he sat, and immediately encircling him was a halo. About him, and -little and indistinct in this glow, a number of body-servants sustained and -supported him, and overshadowed and standing in a huge semicircle beneath him -were his intellectual subordinates, his remembrancers and computators and -searchers and servants, and all the distinguished insects of the court of the -moon. Still lower stood ushers and messengers, and then all down the countless -steps of the throne were guards, and at the base, enormous, various, -indistinct, vanishing at last into an absolute black, a vast swaying multitude -of the minor dignitaries of the moon. Their feet made a perpetual scraping -whisper on the rocky floor, as their limbs moved with a rustling murmur. -</p> - -<p> -“As I entered the penultimate hall the music rose and expanded into an -imperial magnificence of sound, and the shrieks of the news-bearers died -away.... -</p> - -<p> -“I entered the last and greatest hall.... -</p> - -<p> -“My procession opened out like a fan. My ushers and guards went right and -left, and the three litters bearing myself and Phi-oo and Tsi-puff marched -across a shiny darkness of floor to the foot of the giant stairs. Then began a -vast throbbing hum, that mingled with the music. The two Selenites dismounted, -but I was bidden remain seated—I imagine as a special honour. The music -ceased, but not that humming, and by a simultaneous movement of ten thousand -respectful heads my attention was directed to the enhaloed supreme intelligence -that hovered above me. -</p> - -<p> -“At first as I peered into the radiating glow this quintessential brain -looked very much like an opaque, featureless bladder with dim, undulating -ghosts of convolutions writhing visibly within. Then beneath its enormity and -just above the edge of the throne one saw with a start minute elfin eyes -peering out of the glow. No face, but eyes, as if they peered through holes. At -first I could see no more than these two staring little eyes, and then below I -distinguished the little dwarfed body and its insect-jointed limbs shrivelled -and white. The eyes stared down at me with a strange intensity, and the lower -part of the swollen globe was wrinkled. Ineffectual-looking little -hand-tentacles steadied this shape on the throne.... -</p> - -<p> -“It was great. It was pitiful. One forgot the hall and the crowd. -</p> - -<p> -“I ascended the staircase by jerks. It seemed to me that this darkly -glowing brain case above us spread over me, and took more and more of the whole -effect into itself as I drew nearer. The tiers of attendants and helpers -grouped about their master seemed to dwindle and fade into the night. I saw -that shadowy attendants were busy spraying that great brain with a cooling -spray, and patting and sustaining it. For my own part, I sat gripping my -swaying litter and staring at the Grand Lunar, unable to turn my gaze aside. -And at last, as I reached a little landing that was separated only by ten steps -or so from the supreme seat, the woven splendour of the music reached a climax -and ceased, and I was left naked, as it were, in that vastness, beneath the -still scrutiny of the Grand Lunar’s eyes. -</p> - -<p> -“He was scrutinising the first man he had ever seen.... -</p> - -<p> -“My eyes dropped at last from his greatness to the ant figures in the -blue mist about him, and then down the steps to the massed Selenites, still and -expectant in their thousands, packed on the floor below. Once again an -unreasonable horror reached out towards me.... And passed. -</p> - -<p> -“After the pause came the salutation. I was assisted from my litter, and -stood awkwardly while a number of curious and no doubt deeply symbolical -gestures were vicariously performed for me by two slender officials. The -encyclopaedic galaxy of the learned that had accompanied me to the entrance of -the last hall appeared two steps above me and left and right of me, in -readiness for the Grand Lunar’s need, and Phi-oo’s pale brain -placed itself about half-way up to the throne in such a position as to -communicate easily between us without turning his back on either the Grand -Lunar or myself. Tsi-puff took up a position behind him. Dexterous ushers -sidled sideways towards me, keeping a full face to the Presence. I seated -myself Turkish fashion, and Phi-oo and Tsi-puff also knelt down above me. There -came a pause. The eyes of the nearer court went from me to the Grand Lunar and -came back to me, and a hissing and piping of expectation passed across the -hidden multitudes below and ceased. -</p> - -<p> -“That humming ceased. -</p> - -<p> -“For the first and last time in my experience the moon was silent. -</p> - -<p> -“I became aware of a faint wheezy noise. The Grand Lunar was addressing -me. It was like the rubbing of a finger upon a pane of glass. -</p> - -<p> -“I watched him attentively for a time, and then glanced at the alert -Phi-oo. I felt amidst these slender beings ridiculously thick and fleshy and -solid; my head all jaw and black hair. My eyes went back to the Grand Lunar. He -had ceased; his attendants were busy, and his shining superficies was -glistening and running with cooling spray. -</p> - -<p> -“Phi-oo meditated through an interval. He consulted Tsi-puff. Then he -began piping his recognisable English—at first a little nervously, so -that he was not very clear. -</p> - -<p> -“‘M’m—the Grand Lunar—wished to say—wishes -to say—he gathers you are—m’m—men—that you are a -man from the planet earth. He wishes to say that he welcomes you—welcomes -you—and wishes to learn—learn, if I may use the word—the -state of your world, and the reason why you came to this.’ -</p> - -<p> -“He paused. I was about to reply when he resumed. He proceeded to remarks -of which the drift was not very clear, though I am inclined to think they were -intended to be complimentary. He told me that the earth was to the moon what -the sun is to the earth, and that the Selenites desired very greatly to learn -about the earth and men. He then told me no doubt in compliment also, the -relative magnitude and diameter of earth and moon, and the perpetual wonder and -speculation with which the Selenites had regarded our planet. I meditated with -downcast eyes, and decided to reply that men too had wondered what might lie in -the moon, and had judged it dead, little recking of such magnificence as I had -seen that day. The Grand Lunar, in token of recognition, caused his long blue -rays to rotate in a very confusing manner, and all about the great hall ran the -pipings and whisperings and rustlings of the report of what I had said. He then -proceeded to put to Phi-oo a number of inquiries which were easier to answer. -</p> - -<p> -“He understood, he explained, that we lived on the surface of the earth, -that our air and sea were outside the globe; the latter part, indeed, he -already knew from his astronomical specialists. He was very anxious to have -more detailed information of what he called this extraordinary state of -affairs, for from the solidity of the earth there had always been a disposition -to regard it as uninhabitable. He endeavoured first to ascertain the extremes -of temperature to which we earth beings were exposed, and he was deeply -interested by my descriptive treatment of clouds and rain. His imagination was -assisted by the fact that the lunar atmosphere in the outer galleries of the -night side is not infrequently very foggy. He seemed inclined to marvel that we -did not find the sunlight too intense for our eyes, and was interested in my -attempt to explain that the sky was tempered to a bluish colour through the -refraction of the air, though I doubt if he clearly understood that. I -explained how the iris of the human eyes can contract the pupil and save the -delicate internal structure from the excess of sunlight, and was allowed to -approach within a few feet of the Presence in order that this structure might -be seen. This led to a comparison of the lunar and terrestrial eyes. The former -is not only excessively sensitive to such light as men can see, but it can also -<i>see</i> heat, and every difference in temperature within the moon renders -objects visible to it. -</p> - -<p> -“The iris was quite a new organ to the Grand Lunar. For a time he amused -himself by flashing his rays into my face and watching my pupils contract. As a -consequence, I was dazzled and blinded for some little time.... -</p> - -<p> -“But in spite of that discomfort I found something reassuring by -insensible degrees in the rationality of this business of question and answer. -I could shut my eyes, think of my answer, and almost forget that the the Grand -Lunar has no face.... -</p> - -<p> -“When I had descended again to my proper place the Grand Lunar asked how -we sheltered ourselves from heat and storms, and I expounded to him the arts of -building and furnishing. Here we wandered into misunderstandings and -cross-purposes, due largely, I must admit, to the looseness of my expressions. -For a long time I had great difficulty in making him understand the nature of a -house. To him and his attendant Selenites it seemed, no doubt, the most -whimsical thing in the world that men should build houses when they might -descend into excavations, and an additional complication was introduced by the -attempt I made to explain that men had originally begun their homes in caves, -and that they were now taking their railways and many establishments beneath -the surface. Here I think a desire for intellectual completeness betrayed me. -There was also a considerable tangle due to an equally unwise attempt on my -part to explain about mines. Dismissing this topic at last in an incomplete -state, the Grand Lunar inquired what we did with the interior of our globe. -</p> - -<p> -“A tide of twittering and piping swept into the remotest corners of that -great assembly when it was at last made clear that we men know absolutely -nothing of the contents of the world upon which the immemorial generations of -our ancestors had been evolved. Three times had I to repeat that of all the -4000 miles of distance between the earth and its centre men knew only to the -depth of a mile, and that very vaguely. I understood the Grand Lunar to ask why -had I come to the moon seeing we had scarcely touched our own planet yet, but -he did not trouble me at that time to proceed to an explanation, being too -anxious to pursue the details of this mad inversion of all his ideas. -</p> - -<p> -“He reverted to the question of weather, and I tried to describe the -perpetually changing sky, and snow, and frost and hurricanes. ‘But when -the night comes,’ he asked, ‘is it not cold?’ -</p> - -<p> -“I told him it was colder than by day. -</p> - -<p> -“‘And does not your atmosphere freeze?’ -</p> - -<p> -“I told him not; that it was never cold enough for that, because our -nights were so short. -</p> - -<p> -“‘Not even liquefy?’ -</p> - -<p> -“I was about to say ‘No,’ but then it occurred to me that one -part at least of our atmosphere, the water vapour of it, does sometimes liquefy -and form dew, and sometimes freeze and form frost—a process perfectly -analogous to the freezing of all the external atmosphere of the moon during its -longer night. I made myself clear on this point, and from that the Grand Lunar -went on to speak with me of sleep. For the need of sleep that comes so -regularly every twenty-four hours to all things is part also of our earthly -inheritance. On the moon they rest only at rare intervals, and after -exceptional exertions. Then I tried to describe to him the soft splendours of a -summer night, and from that I passed to a description of those animals that -prowl by night and sleep by day. I told him of lions and tigers, and here it -seemed as though we had come to a deadlock. For, save in their waters, there -are no creatures in the moon not absolutely domestic and subject to his will, -and so it has been for immemorial years. They have monstrous water creatures, -but no evil beasts, and the idea of anything strong and large existing -‘outside’ in the night is very difficult for them....” -</p> - -<p> -[The record is here too broken to transcribe for the space of perhaps twenty -words or more.] -</p> - -<p> -“He talked with his attendants, as I suppose, upon the strange -superficiality and unreasonableness of (man) who lives on the mere surface of a -world, a creature of waves and winds, and all the chances of space, who cannot -even unite to overcome the beasts that prey upon his kind, and yet who dares to -invade another planet. During this aside I sat thinking, and then at his desire -I told him of the different sorts of men. He searched me with questions. -‘And for all sorts of work you have the same sort of men. But who thinks? -Who governs?’ -</p> - -<p> -“I gave him an outline of the democratic method. -</p> - -<p> -“When I had done he ordered cooling sprays upon his brow, and then -requested me to repeat my explanation conceiving something had miscarried. -</p> - -<p> -“‘Do they not do different things, then?’ said Phi-oo. -</p> - -<p> -“Some, I admitted, were thinkers and some officials; some hunted, some -were mechanics, some artists, some toilers. ‘But <i>all</i> rule,’ -I said. -</p> - -<p> -“‘And have they not different shapes to fit them to their different -duties?’ -</p> - -<p> -“‘None that you can see,’ I said, ‘except perhaps, for -clothes. Their minds perhaps differ a little,’ I reflected. -</p> - -<p> -“‘Their minds must differ a great deal,’ said the Grand -Lunar, ‘or they would all want to do the same things.’ -</p> - -<p> -“In order to bring myself into a closer harmony with his preconceptions, -I said that his surmise was right. ‘It was all hidden in the -brain,’ I said; but the difference was there. Perhaps if one could see -the minds and souls of men they would be as varied and unequal as the -Selenites. There were great men and small men, men who could reach out far and -wide, men who could go swiftly; noisy, trumpet-minded men, and men who could -remember without thinking....’” [The record is indistinct for three -words.] -</p> - -<p> -“He interrupted me to recall me to my previous statements. ‘But you -said all men rule?’ he pressed. -</p> - -<p> -“‘To a certain extent,’ I said, and made, I fear, a denser -fog with my explanation. -</p> - -<p> -“He reached out to a salient fact. ‘Do you mean,’ asked, -‘that there is no Grand Earthly?’ -</p> - -<p> -“I thought of several people, but assured him finally there was none. I -explained that such autocrats and emperors as we had tried upon earth had -usually ended in drink, or vice, or violence, and that the large and -influential section of the people of the earth to which I belonged, the -Anglo-Saxons, did not mean to try that sort of thing again. At which the Grand -Lunar was even more amazed. -</p> - -<p> -“‘But how do you keep even such wisdom as you have?’ he -asked; and I explained to him the way we helped our limited [A word omitted -here, probably “brains.”] with libraries of books. I explained to -him how our science was growing by the united labours of innumerable little -men, and on that he made no comment save that it was evident we had mastered -much in spite of our social savagery, or we could not have come to the moon. -Yet the contrast was very marked. With knowledge the Selenites grew and -changed; mankind stored their knowledge about them and remained -brutes—equipped. He said this...” [Here there is a short piece of -the record indistinct.] -</p> - -<p> -“He then caused me to describe how we went about this earth of ours, and -I described to him our railways and ships. For a time he could not understand -that we had had the use of steam only one hundred years, but when he did he was -clearly amazed. (I may mention as a singular thing, that the Selenites use -years to count by, just as we do on earth, though I can make nothing of their -numeral system. That, however, does not matter, because Phi-oo understands -ours.) From that I went on to tell him that mankind had dwelt in cities only -for nine or ten thousand years, and that we were still not united in one -brotherhood, but under many different forms of government. This astonished the -Grand Lunar very much, when it was made clear to him. At first he thought we -referred merely to administrative areas. -</p> - -<p> -“‘Our States and Empires are still the rawest sketches of what -order will some day be,’ I said, and so I came to tell him....” -[At this point a length of record that probably represents thirty or forty -words is totally illegible.] -</p> - -<p> -“The Grand Lunar was greatly impressed by the folly of men in clinging to -the inconvenience of diverse tongues. ‘They want to communicate, and yet -not to communicate,’ he said, and then for a long time he questioned me -closely concerning war. -</p> - -<p> -“He was at first perplexed and incredulous. ‘You mean to -say,’ he asked, seeking confirmation, ‘that you run about over the -surface of your world—this world, whose riches you have scarcely begun to -scrape—killing one another for beasts to eat?’ -</p> - -<p> -“I told him that was perfectly correct. -</p> - -<p> -“He asked for particulars to assist his imagination. -</p> - -<p> -“‘But do not ships and your poor little cities get injured?’ -he asked, and I found the waste of property and conveniences seemed to impress -him almost as much as the killing. ‘Tell me more,’ said the Grand -Lunar; ‘make me see pictures. I cannot conceive these things.’ -</p> - -<p> -“And so, for a space, though something loath, I told him the story of -earthly War. -</p> - -<p> -“I told him of the first orders and ceremonies of war, of warnings and -ultimatums, and the marshalling and marching of troops. I gave him an idea of -manoeuvres and positions and battle joined. I told him of sieges and assaults, -of starvation and hardship in trenches, and of sentinels freezing in the snow. -I told him of routs and surprises, and desperate last stands and faint hopes, -and the pitiless pursuit of fugitives and the dead upon the field. I told, too, -of the past, of invasions and massacres, of the Huns and Tartars, and the wars -of Mahomet and the Caliphs, and of the Crusades. And as I went on, and Phi-oo -translated, the Selenites cooed and murmured in a steadily intensified emotion. -</p> - -<p> -“I told them an ironclad could fire a shot of a ton twelve miles, and go -through 20 feet of iron—and how we could steer torpedoes under water. I -went on to describe a Maxim gun in action, and what I could imagine of the -Battle of Colenso. The Grand Lunar was so incredulous that he interrupted the -translation of what I had said in order to have my verification of my account. -They particularly doubted my description of the men cheering and rejoicing as -they went into battle. -</p> - -<p> -“‘But surely they do not like it!’ translated Phi-oo. -</p> - -<p> -“I assured them men of my race considered battle the most glorious -experience of life, at which the whole assembly was stricken with amazement. -</p> - -<p> -“‘But what good is this war?’ asked the Grand Lunar, sticking -to his theme. -</p> - -<p> -“‘Oh! as for <i>good</i>!’ said I; ‘it thins the -population!’ -</p> - -<p> -“‘But why should there be a need—?’ -</p> - -<p> -“There came a pause, the cooling sprays impinged upon his brow, and then -he spoke again.” -</p> - -<p class="footnote"> -At this point a series of undulations that have been apparent as a perplexing -complication as far back as Cavor’s description of the silence that fell -before the first speaking of the Grand Lunar become confusingly predominant in -the record. These undulations are evidently the result of radiations proceeding -from a lunar source, and their persistent approximation to the alternating -signals of Cavor is curiously suggestive of some operator deliberately seeking -to mix them in with his message and render it illegible. At first they are -small and regular, so that with a little care and the loss of very few words we -have been able to disentangle Cavor’s message; then they become broad and -larger, then suddenly they are irregular, with an irregularity that gives the -effect at last of some one scribbling through a line of writing. For a long -time nothing can be made of this madly zigzagging trace; then quite abruptly -the interruption ceases, leaves a few words clear, and then resumes and -continues for the rest of the message, completely obliterating whatever Cavor -was attempting to transmit. Why, if this is indeed a deliberate intervention, -the Selenites should have preferred to let Cavor go on transmitting his message -in happy ignorance of their obliteration of its record, when it was clearly -quite in their power and much more easy and convenient for them to stop his -proceedings at any time, is a problem to which I can contribute nothing. The -thing seems to have happened so, and that is all I can say. This last rag of -his description of the Grand Lunar begins in mid-sentence. -</p> - -<p> -“...interrogated me very closely upon my secret. I was able in a little -while to get to an understanding with them, and at last to elucidate what has -been a puzzle to me ever since I realised the vastness of their science, -namely, how it is they themselves have never discovered Cavorite.’ I find -they know of it as a theoretical substance, but they have always regarded it as -a practical impossibility, because for some reason there is no helium in the -moon, and helium...” -</p> - -<p class="footnote"> -Across the last letters of helium slashes the resumption of that obliterating -trace. Note that word “secret,” for on that, and that alone, I base -my interpretation of the message that follows, the last message, as both Mr. -Wendigee and myself now believe it to be, that he is ever likely to send us. -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap26"></a>XXVI.<br /> -The Last Message Cavor sent to the Earth</h2> - -<p> -On this unsatisfactory manner the penultimate message of Cavor dies out. One -seems to see him away there in the blue obscurity amidst his apparatus intently -signalling us to the last, all unaware of the curtain of confusion that drops -between us; all unaware, too, of the final dangers that even then must have -been creeping upon him. His disastrous want of vulgar common sense had utterly -betrayed him. He had talked of war, he had talked of all the strength and -irrational violence of men, of their insatiable aggressions, their tireless -futility of conflict. He had filled the whole moon world with this impression -of our race, and then I think it is plain that he made the most fatal admission -that upon himself alone hung the possibility—at least for a long -time—of any further men reaching the moon. The line the cold, inhuman -reason of the moon would take seems plain enough to me, and a suspicion of it, -and then perhaps some sudden sharp realisation of it, must have come to him. -One imagines him about the moon with the remorse of this fatal indiscretion -growing in his mind. During a certain time I am inclined to guess the Grand -Lunar was deliberating the new situation, and for all that time Cavor may have -gone as free as ever he had gone. But obstacles of some sort prevented his -getting to his electromagnetic apparatus again after that message I have just -given. For some days we received nothing. Perhaps he was having fresh -audiences, and trying to evade his previous admissions. Who can hope to guess? -</p> - -<p> -And then suddenly, like a cry in the night, like a cry that is followed by a -stillness, came the last message. It is the briefest fragment, the broken -beginnings of two sentences. -</p> - -<p> -The first was: “I was mad to let the Grand Lunar know—” -</p> - -<p> -There was an interval of perhaps a minute. One imagines some interruption from -without. A departure from the instrument—a dreadful hesitation among the -looming masses of apparatus in that dim, blue-lit cavern—a sudden rush -back to it, full of a resolve that came too late. Then, as if it were hastily -transmitted came: “Cavorite made as follows: take—” -</p> - -<p> -There followed one word, a quite unmeaning word as it stands: -“uless.” -</p> - -<p> -And that is all. -</p> - -<p> -It may be he made a hasty attempt to spell “useless” when his fate -was close upon him. Whatever it was that was happening about that apparatus we -cannot tell. Whatever it was we shall never, I know, receive another message -from the moon. For my own part a vivid dream has come to my help, and I see, -almost as plainly as though I had seen it in actual fact, a blue-lit shadowy -dishevelled Cavor struggling in the grip of these insect Selenites, struggling -ever more desperately and hopelessly as they press upon him, shouting, -expostulating, perhaps even at last fighting, and being forced backwards step -by step out of all speech or sign of his fellows, for evermore into the -Unknown—into the dark, into that silence that has no end.... -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1013 ***</div> -</body> -</html> - |