It was tremendously difficult stuff, but I do not thing he ever suspected how much I did not understand him.
No sound that I can imagine could have astonished us more, or have changed more completely the quality of things about us.
Once home, he said to the genie: "Build me a palace of the finest marble, set with jasper, agate, and other precious stones.
But neither can two great and powerful groups of nations take comfort from our present course.
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.
This, and the darkness about him gave him an effect of floating in a blue-black void.
And the little ones and all those dim nebulosities we saw in empty space - they are hidden! " Swiftly, steadily, the day approached us.
And if the moon is hollow, then the apparent absence of air and water is, of course, quite easily explained.
It will be wise, I think " - he laid a muddy hand on my arm" if nothing were said of this affair beyond ourselves.
For a moment that was all, and then there stirred, and burst a third! "It is a seed," said Cavor.
I did as he directed, and thrust my feet against the bales of food cases and air cylinders to prevent their falling upon me.
We were cut off from all exterior gravitation, only the attraction of objects within our sphere had effect.
He walked away in the direction he wished us to go, and turned and came back, and flicked our faces to attract our attention.
Larger grew the sunlit circle above us, and larger, and all the nearer tunnel sank into a rim of indistinguishable black.
"You'd better take a walk this afternoon." "No," I said obstinately; "I'm going to finish this brickwork." And I did, and insured myself a night of insomnia.
The air was really very much cooler, and it seemed to me that the shadow under the westward cliff was growing broad.
I could not see Cavor, but I could hear the rustle of his movements as he crouched to spring.
"Remember we are on the moon! Make no sudden movements!" "Are you going to try that geometry?" "If I get a chance.
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.
Chapter 12 The Selenite's Face I FOUND myself sitting crouched together in a tumultuous darkness.
Under the inspiring touch of the drifting newspaper I became practical again for a while.
There was also a considerable tangle due to an equally unwise attempt on my part to explain about mines.
Then she saw the snow by the door - a soft drift, like blows in when you open the door.
"If that is all," replied Aladdin, "you shall soon be happy." He left her and rubbed the lamp, and when the genie appeared commanded him to bring a roc's egg.
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.
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.
Hitherto - " " My dear sir, say no more." " But really can you spare the time? " " There is no rest like change of occupation," I said, with profound conviction.
Alter some wriggling and shoving I managed to crawl out upon sand, over which the retreating waves still came and went.
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.
I found I had forgotten the line of argument I had intended to pursue, and continued to repeat "Simlar to C'lumbus," to fill up time.
I can scarcely hope to convey to you the Titanic proportion of all that place, the Titanic effect of it.
As I struggled with that problem I ceased to worry about what I should do when I got there.
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.
"No." "We'll go." And he turned about and led the way in the direction that had been indicated for us.
Pour out the oil it contains, and bring it me." He drew a ring from his finger and gave it to Aladdin, bidding him prosper.
I was in a state of hysterical agitation, trembling violently, and quite breathless long before I got to it.
The Sultan was surprised to receive his jewels again, and visited Aladdin, who showed him the window finished.
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.
I embarked upon an argument to show the infinite benefits our arrival would confer on the moon.
It would have whipped the air off the world as one peels a banana, and flung it thousands of miles.
The noise of the Selenites was now so loud that it seemed they must be already beneath the cleft.
We will look into every gully, examine every skerry of rocks; we will do all we can to find my sphere.
He made indifferent conversation in the most formal way, then abruptly he came to business.
"They must think we are mooncalves," said I, "to be frightened at that." "They're coming along that passage, said Cavor.
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations.
I hung my jacket over my crowbar, ducked round the next carcass, dropped jacket and crowbar, showed myself, and darted back.
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.
Away to the right curved the land, a shingle bank with little hovels, and at last a lighthouse, a sailing mark and a point.
When he spoke again it was to confess, "After all, they are more human than we had a right to expect.
Imagine it if you can! No up nor down, and every effort resulting in unexpected movements.
The Princess, not knowing its value, laughingly bade the slave take it and make the exchange.
Flick! As I soared in mid-stride I saw a spear hit and quiver in one of the carcasses to my left.
We set to work at once to reconstruct his laboratory and proceed with our experiments.
"White light again!" I looked, and it was even so, a faint white ghost of light in the remoter cavern roof.
At first I thought the thing was an elaborate practical by some one who had seen the manuscript of my narrative.
He then had recourse to the genie, who gave him another set of plates, and thus they lived many years.
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.
Now they came like that array of spectres that once beleaguered Prague, and camped around me.
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.
Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us here the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you.
If, for example, a Selenite is destined to be a mathematician, his teachers and trainers set out at once to that end.
"Cavor!" I said; "what are they going to do now? And what are we going to do?" He shook his head, with his eyes fixed upon the tunnel.
And at the immediate mouth of the tunnel was a wide trampled space where the mooncalves had come and gone.
I heard Cavor exclaim sharply, and perceived that one of the fixed bayonets of the scrub had pricked him.
When he got to the palace there was such a noise going on round him that the Princess bade her slave look out the window and ask what was the matter.
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.
Then my left hand hit again the shaft, and I perceived there was a sort of spear sticking half through my shoulder.
Happily the kitchen door had stood the pressure upon it, so that all my crockery and cooking materials had survived.
One cannot foresee everything, you know, and I cannot consent for one moment to add the burthen of practical considerations to my theorising.
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.
The Princess lifted her veil as she went in, and looked so beautiful that Aladdin fell in love with her at first sight.
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.
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.
And then - The chimneys jerked heavenward, smashing into a string of bricks as they rose, and the roof and a miscellany of furniture followed.
"It seemed long and yet brief - a matter of days - before I was positively talking with these insects of the moon.
Had earthly astronomers had the courage and imagination to push home a bold induction, says Mr.
He sat down on the edge of the manhole, he let his feet drop until they were within six inches of the lunar ground.
I stood up and searched up the rocks with my fingers; the cleft broadened out upwardly.
The slave said it was the holy woman, curing people by her touch of their ailments, whereupon the Princess, who had long desired to see Fatima, sent for her.
Then abruptly there began an uproar, louder, more vehement, and nearer than any we had so far heard.
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.
There was a mouth, downwardly curved, like a human mouth in a face that stares ferociously.
"Yes," he said, "Kepler with his sub-volvani was right after all." "I wish you had taken the trouble to find that out before we came," I said.
I have mentioned, too, the peculiar consequence of the smaller gravitation of the moon on their fragile slightness.
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.
I fell against the bale, and opening my eyes had a momentary glimpse of the air just outside our glass.
Who knows how far we may not get to an understanding?" "The things are outside us," I said.
In front and behind came his bearers, and curious, almost trumpet-faced, news disseminators shrieked his fame.
Suddenly, for a moment, I was in a puff of falling snow, and all the world about me gray and dim.
Far away I seemed to see houses and trees, and seaward a curve, vague distortion of a ship hung between sea and sky.
"Lie down!" screamed my pain and despair; "lie down!" The near I struggled, the more awfully remote it seemed.
And, indeed, the more I lay and smoked and thought, the more evident became the wisdom of impenetrability.
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.
Aladdin mounted his horse and passed through the streets, the slaves strewing gold as they went.
And gradually that bellowing receded, and then came to an end, as if the pastures sought had been attained.
Men have watched this planet systematically with telescopes for over two hundred years.
Aladdin's mother then dressed herself carefully, and walked to the palace with her slaves, while he followed her on horseback.
At the appointed hour the genie fetched in the shivering bridegroom, laid him in his place, and transported the bed back to the palace.
He begged to know what was amiss, and she told him that all her pleasure in the hall was spoilt for want of a roc's egg hanging from the dome.
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.
The tranquil sunset had vanished, the sky was dark with scurrying clouds, everything was flattened and swaying with the gale.
our last best hope in an age where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace, we renew our pledge of support.
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.
But at last the great place that formed a background to our movements asserted itself.
"I'm going to keep an eye on that ship out there all the same," I heard one of them remarking in an undertone.
"The less specialised administrators, I note, do for the most part take a very lively interest in me whenever they encounter me.
They lay against their food like stupendous slugs, huge, greasy hulls, eating greedily and noisily, with a sort of sobbing avidity.
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.
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.
A large fragment of fencing came sailing past me, dropped edgeways, hit the ground and fell flat, and then the worst was over.
If only we had had the sense to fasten a handkerchief to a stick to show where we had left the sphere! I subsided, fuming.
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 caught a second glimpse of things without, puffs of vapour, half liquid slush, excavated, sliding, falling, sliding.
"There is nothing for it but the sphere." We roused ourselves to another spurt of crawling.
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 can quite understand this is as queer as it can be, and that your imaginations must be going it.
"It's quite impossible for us to walk that plank." "I don't believe they see as we do.
It showed a huge undulating plain, cold and gray, a gray that deepened eastward into the absolute raven darkness of the cliff shadow.
Aladdin tried to run away, but the magician caught him and gave him a blow that knocked him down.
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.
The magician cried out in a great hurry: "Make haste and give me the lamp." This Aladdin refused to do until he was out of the cave.
I come here to enjoy the sunset." "You don't." "Sir? " "You never look at it." "Never look at it? " "No.
"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.
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.
I remember reading once a paper by the late Professor Galton on the possibility of communication between the planets.
We must be some depths - a mile even, we may be - inside the moon." "We never thought of a world inside the moon." "No." "How could we?" "We might have done.
The absentmindedness that had just escaped depopulating the terrestrial globe, might at any moment result in some other grave inconvenience.
Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and precise proposals for the inspection and control of arms.
These things are less like earthly land plants than the things one imagines among the rocks at the bottom of the sea.
We could see nothing at first except smooth vertical walls descending at last into an impenetrable black.
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.
The genie appeared, and at the magician's command carried him, together with the palace and the Princess in it, to a lonely place in Africa.
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.
It made me laugh and pant for a time, and suggested the idea of a little oxygen from one of the cylinders.
Apart from their controlling intelligence these subordinates are as inert and helpless as umbrellas in a stand.
Doubt has been thrown upon this detail, but I am almost certain it was helium he had sent him in sealed stone jars.
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.
Coupled with that was a queer sensation in the head, an apoplectic effect almost, and a thumping of blood vessels at the ears.
And now that the account is finished, I am amazed to think how completely this adventure is gone and done with.
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.
.and bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations.
Then I could hear Cavor puffing and grunting, and the snapping of a shutter in its sash.
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.
And soon I perceived that we were approaching a declivity of some sort, because the little blue stream dipped suddenly out of sight.
I had a nasty sort of feeling that these things could jump out of the darkness on to my back.
The breath sucked thin in one's throat, the blood flowed through one's ears in a throbbing tide - thud, thud, thud, thud....
At last he clasped his hands in prayer, and in so doing rubbed the ring, which the magician had forgotten to take from him.
The Sultan embraced him, the envious vizier meanwhile hinting that it was the work of enchantment.
But they were not - they were mounds and masses of frozen air? So it was at first, and then, sudden, swift, and amazing, came the lunar day.
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.
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.
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.
They say I have strung all these things together to avoid being questioned too closely as to the source of my wealth.
Why had we come to the moon? The thing presented itself to me as a perplexing problem.
"Under that lid." "And below there, is where we saw the lights." "The lights!" said he.
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.
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.
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 think that going to bed was one of the luckiest ideas I have ever had in an emergency.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned.
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.
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.
Athwart this world we were flying scarcely a hundred miles above its crests and pinnacles.
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.
.remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof.
Let all our neighbors know that we shall join with them to oppose aggression or subversion anywhere in the Americas.
I saw then that the scattered branches about it had been forcibly smashed and trampled.
I was being guided through a short cut hither, instead of going down the spiral, and by the quays to the Central Sea.
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.
I entered the copse, dashing from one tree to another and clinging to them, and for a space I sought him in vain.
I had turned my head to look at Cavor's face, and thrust out my hand in front of me as I so.
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.
For a time, whether it was long or short I do not know, there was nothing but blank darkness.
(For as yet I have seen no dead the moon, and I have grown curious.) "'No! ' exclaimed Phi-oo.
I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
A dozen yards away, perhaps, the rising breeze dragged something into view, something small and vividly white.
"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.
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 dropped a crowbar, pulled the spear out of my shoulder, and began to jab it down the grating into the darkness.
"I never did hold with them ballooneys," she said evidently under the impression that this was a common excursion enough.
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.
The following night exactly the same thing happened, and next morning, on the Princess's refusing to speak, the Sultan threatened to cut off her head.
And there it would have lain and fizzled, like one or two other little things these scientific people have lit and dropped about us.
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 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.
The 45-point loss topped Boston's previous worst of 42 points, a 128-84 loss at Portland on Jan.
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.
Finally Cindi slipped in beside him, but she would keep her eyes open! This was all too strange! It was warm and soft.
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.
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.
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.
Some tattered ends of garment fluttered out from its middle portion and streamed before the wind.
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.
A flake or so of snow whirled and vanished as that thin and unfamiliar air took possession of our sphere.
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.
How was I to know when I set to work on molecular physics that the business would bring me here - of all places?" "It's this accursed science," I cried.
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.
We lay quite still, fearing to attract his attention if we moved, and after a time he turned about and disappeared.
By demonstrating our knowledge of these things we should demonstrate our possession of a reasonable intelligence...
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.
He seemed to drift through the air as a dead leaf would do, fell lightly, and leapt again.
Besides this, six slaves, beautifully dressed, to wait on my mother; and lastly, ten thousand pieces of gold in ten purses." No sooner said then done.
It is only when the water is in motion that it gives out light; in its rare seasons of calm it is black.
"I assured them men of my race considered battle the most glorious experience of life, at which the whole assembly was stricken with amazement.
I see them going hither and thither with a retinue of bearers, attendants, shouters, parachute-carriers, and so forth - queer groups to see.
"Rights of pre-emption," came floating into my head - planetary rights of pre-emption.
Very well, there's a draught here." "So there is." "And that means that this is not a dead end; somewhere behind us this cleft goes on and up.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
An intermittent trickle of water dropped ever and again between the bars near my face.
There came a little jerk, a noise like champagne being uncorked in another room, and a faint whistling sound.
And then very gradually we became aware of a number of very faint and little lights going to and fro.
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.
We did this with our windows closed, because in that way our goods arranged themselves naturally at the centre of the sphere.
They were so richly dressed, with such splendid jewels, that everyone crowded to see them and the basins of gold they carried on their heads.
They cut a tree, strung cranberries and popcorn, and their Mom made Santa Claus cookies.
"Below." "They may come out." "We must find the sphere!" "Yes," I said; "but how?" "Crawl till we come to it." "But if we don't?" "Keep hidden.
But what do you expect? I thought the moon was a dead world." He shrugged his shoulders.
They will come out of the way and stare at me and ask questions to which Phi-oo will reply.
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!...
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.
"No! Banish all that! Think yourself a sort of ultra-arctic voyager exploring the desolate places of space.
"I told them an ironclad could fire a shot of a ton twelve miles, and go through 20 ft.
At least they didn't creak! She reached the floor and crabbed her toes into her pom-pom slippers before glancing over at Christopher.
Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce.
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.
Anyhow, it shot out from the grating like the tongue of a snake, and missed and flew back and flashed again.
She sat bolt upright! Had this all been only a dream! Grabbing the rail, she hung upside down and peered into the lower bunk.
The reader will no doubt recall the little excitement that began the century, arising out an announcement by Mr.
The news of us must be running down from gallery to gallery, down towards the central parts.
I stood waiting and watching, hands shading my eyes, expecting every moment to distinguish him.
"My temperature," he concludes, "kept abnormally high for a long time, and I lost all desire for food.
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.
Now the pull of gravitation was towards the moon, and for all I knew to the contrary our earth was overhead.
He answered me in a voice that seemed extraordinarily small and remote, because of the thinness of the air that carried the sound.
I perceived that he had closed some of the shutters in the outer sphere to save me - from the direct blaze of the sun.
The shadows made gigantic travesties of our shapes and those of the Selenites on the irregular wall and roof of the tunnel.
Our only hitch was the strike of the three labourers, who objected to my activity as a foreman.
One of the other Selenites walked a few paces out upon the plank, and turned and looked back at us unconcernedly.
But if we endured -" "Neither of us could endure a six-inch plank across the bottomless pit for very long." "No," said Cavor; "but then -" "I won't," I said.
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.
I took three steps from the verandah towards Cavor's house, and even as I did so came the wind.
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.
I followed, trying to look as subdued as possible, and feeling at the chains about my wrists.
"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.
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.
"But in spite of that discomfort I found something reassuring by insensible degrees in the rationality of this business of question and answer.
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.
His imagination was assisted by the fact that the lunar atmosphere in the outer galleries of the night side is not infrequently very foggy.
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.
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.
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.
Then he came out of the darkness between the row of the carcasses and the rocky wall of the cavern.
At last there was nothing to the west of us but a bank of surging fog, the tumultuous advance and ascent of cloudy haze.
I was haunted by the memory of a sixteen gallon cask that had swaggered in my Lympne cellar.
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.
Even with my aid we found some little difficulty, and meanwhile we kept at work restoring the laboratory.
I have told my story - and now, I suppose, I have to take up the worries of this terrestrial life again.
I had come right through them in vast flying strides, they were all behind me, and running hither and thither to hide.
The train was much too small for Cindi and Christopher to get on, but it was moving away, so they followed it into another tunnel.
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.
Strange creatures, strange knowledge ..." "As for strange knowledge - " said I, and language failed me.
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.
For a time I stood there, too overwhelmed by this new development to think of the people.
Perhaps you have met that flaming sense of outraged virtue, or perhaps you have only felt it.
Then at once any heavy body that chances to be in that direction will attract us " I sat taking it in.
Altogether we did not consume one-hundredth part of the compressed provisions we had brought with us.
My thoughts were concentrated, I think, upon my chains and the Selenites, and particularly upon the helmeted ones with the goads.
He warned me that it would make my head swim, and advised me to extend my hands against the glass to break my fall.
There was nothing to be seen but the path in front of us and the trickling hurrying rivulet of blue phosphorescence.
Instantly my coat tails were over my head, and I was progressing in great leaps and bounds, and quite against my will, towards him.
.ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the Freedom of Man.
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.
The magician flew into a terrible passion, and throwing some more powder on to the fire, he said something, and the stone rolled back into its place.
His spout-like face turned from one of us to the other with a quickness that was clearly interrogative.
To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share: we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends.
When he came to himself he told his mother what had passed, and showed her the lamp and the fruits he had gathered in the garden, which were in reality precious stones.
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.
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.
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.
But that running, you must understand, was an altogether different thing from any running on earth.
And still around this stirring jungle, wherever there was shadow, lingered banks of bluish snow.
The manner in which Phi-oo and Tsi-puff attacked the problem of speech was fairly obvious.
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.
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.
For a space it seemed that this fighting had lasted for an age, and must needs go on for ever.
"False wretch!" said the Sultan, "come hither," and showed him from the window the place where his palace had stood.
Nerves purely! Alter that I worked a little more carefully, and took a trudge for an hour every day.
Somehow it reminded me then one of those spiral turns of the railway through the Saint Gothard.
It was dawn, a gray dawn, rather overcast but showing here and there a long patch of greenish gray.
I saw that the space turned upward and became a draughty cleft again, ascending to impenetrable darkness.
Cavor panted something about "amazing sensations." And then came a thought into my head.
Whatever temper you choose to go through with it in, you will have to go through with it.
My mind was preoccupied with another problem, and I'm apt to disregard these practical side issues.
"You're not safe to get anywhere, and if you do - how will you get back? " "I've just thought of that," said Cavor.
"Partly," says Cavor, "this sponginess is natural, but very largely it is due to the enormous industry of the Selenites in the past.
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.
It wasn't that he intended to make any use of these things, he simply wanted to know them.
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.
They are noble-looking beings, fantastically and sometimes quite beautifully adorned, with a proud carriage, and, save for their mouths, almost microscopic heads.
"Confound it!" I said to the Selenites; "We're not going to stand that! What on earth do you take us for?" I glanced quickly right and left.
I would like to see the man who could invent a story that would hold together like this one.
Sitting now surrounded by all the circumstances of wealth, there is a luxury in admitting my extremity.
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.
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.
I think that our incurable anthropomorphism made us imagine there were human heads inside their masks.
A box that glowed! Glowed green! With heart pounding she lifted the lid! There was a perfect emerald! On a fine gold chain.
They came into this " hexagonal cell" in which Cavor was confined, and began imitating every sound he made, beginning with a cough.
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.
They must have carried us from outside." "I'd rather be carried by a fly across a ceiling." "Good Heavens!" I resumed my destruction of the fungi.
I involved myself in a rather difficult proof that the arrival of Columbus was, on the whole, beneficial to America.
After all, there is a touch of aggression in demanding of a man you don't know why he hums on a public footpath.
At the end of the vista, dimly seen, a flight of steps, like the steps of Ara Coeli at Rome, ascend out of sight.
Two yellow pinpoints far away showed the passing of a ship, and nearer was a red glare that came and went.
It was blowing I round the crater, as it seemed, to the hot illuminated side from the foggy darkness under the sunward wall.
You're wet with that luminous stuff." "But - " A tumult of sounds, and in particular a sound like a clanging gong, advancing up the main tunnel, became audible.
Instinctively we crouched as flat as we could, ready for a prompt plunge into the thicket beside us.
But we were so intent upon our leaping, that for a time we gave no heed to their unfaltering expansion.
Whoosh! He was gone! Cindi dived after him! Down! Around! Down! Around! The ice was cold and not cold at the same time.
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.
"Dis- gusting hogs!" and after one glare of angry envy crawled off through the bushes to our right.
"What have I done, uncle?" he said piteously; whereupon the magician said more kindly: "Fear nothing, but obey me.
By some defect of reasoning he seemed to imagine that broken English might help these gestures.
Mainly, however, the thin sweetness of the air, which I am certain contained a much larger proportion of oxygen than our terrestrial atmosphere.
"How can one tell what they will do?" "It depends on what they think of us, and I don't see how we can begin to guess that.
But now its line was marked by strange reddish shapes, tongues of vermilion flame that writhed and danced.
Just as they arrived he picked up a big green emerald and started polishing it rapidly.
I told him of lions and tigers, and here it seemed as though we had come to a deadlock.
"We're not going to believe that, you know." "Ah, well," said I, and shrugged my shoulders.
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.
Then he seemed to fly away from me, and for a moment I lay with all the breath out of my body staring upward.
I made myself clear on this point, and from that the Grand Lunar went on to speak with me of sleep.
There were several brain cases distended like bladders to a huge size, with the face mask reduced to quite small proportions.
"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.
The dawn found us both still at work - we kept our electric light going heedless of the day.
What the Selenites made of this amazing, and to my mind undignified irruption from another planet, I have no means of guessing.
but every one of these common Selenites I have seen at work is exquisitely adapted to the social need it meets.
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.
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.
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 - I roused myself at last, and with an effort got myself out of the sphere.
He stepped out of the ray of light that came through the doorway, and it seemed as though he vanished altogether in the shadow.
.and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today.
They conversed with one another in their reedy tones, that seemed to me impossible to imitate or define.
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.
"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.
It widened out as it receded from us, and its roof came down and hid the remoter portion altogether.
I have thought since that its length in the narrowness of the cleft must have prevented its being sloped to reach me.
The world is very different now, for man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life.
And then there appeared before me, hanging as it seemed in an immensity of black, a thin bright line.
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 previously.
And up and down the spiral galleries were scattered numerous moon people, pallid, faintly luminous beings, regarding our appearance or busied on unknown errands.
What on earth do you think I'm made of, to stick that into me? If you touch me again - " By way of answer he pricked me forthwith.
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.
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 filled me with a curiously benevolent satisfaction that there was such good food in the moon.
He seems to have grasped their intention with great quickness, and to have begun repeating words to them and pointing to indicate the application.
It was the big port of England in Roman times, Portus Lemanus, and now the sea is four miles away.
At first they descended in silence - save for the twitterings of the Selenites - and then into a stir of windy movement.
And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forbears fought are still at issue around the globe.
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.
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.
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.
Who can hope to guess? And then suddenly, like a cry in the night, like a cry that is followed by a stillness, came the last message.
I will open a blind -" Came a click, and then a window in the outer case yawned open.
Note that word "secret," for that, and that alone, I base my interpretation of the message that follows, the last message, as both Mr.
Think of a wet roof at sunset, Cavor! Think of the windows of a westward house!" He made no answer.
These can easily be worked by springs, and released and checked by electricity conveyed by platinum wires fused through the glass.
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.
Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
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.
When Jordan was called for a foul during the run, he vehemently put up an argument that nearly drew a technical - even though the Wizards were leading by 27..
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 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.
Shouts came from windows and doors, and all sorts of worrying people came into sight - agape.
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.
My scientific attainments, I must admit, are not great, but so far as they enable me to judge, Mr.
Chapter 4 Inside the Sphere "GO ON," said Cavor, as I sat across the edge of the manhole, and looked down into the black interior of the sphere.
Well, it's for these chances we're sitting here doing nothing while precious time is flying.
"Yes." "It may be a dead world now - but once -" Something arrested my attention.
He changed clothes with her, coloured his face like hers, put on her veil, and murdered her, that she might tell no tales.
I went to the sphere, stooped, crept in, and presently they had the Selenites' crowbars and the broken chain before them.
I peered through the refracting glass, and saw that I had come aground upon a huge shallow of sand.
I gave the lid of the manhole half a turn and made a hasty explanation to Cavor; but now he was the more sanguine.
Although vampires are not part of Romania's folklore, witches were tortured and burned as late as 1753.
He told me of a work-shed he had, and of three assistants - originally jobbing carpenters - whom he had trained.
Promptly at nine they snuggled into their bunk beds with the flannel sheets and checkered blankets.
My command is that to-night you bring hither the bride and bridegroom." "Master, I obey," said the genie.
Later, he showed his still has some acceleration, blowing past Tony Delk on the right wing and drawing a foul as he approached the basket.
It was all strange, the feeling of one's body was unprecedented, every other movement ended in a surprise.
In some way that I have now forgotten, my mind was led back to projects of colonisation.
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.
"This is Imperial! I haven't been dreaming of this sort of thing." Once the chill of my opposition was removed, his own pent-up excitement had play.
When he returned she asked him to drink her health in the wine of Africa, handing him her cup in exchange for his, as a sign she was reconciled to him.
I thought of the adjacent larder, and especially of steak and kidney pie - tender steak and plenty of kidney, and rich, thick gravy between.
He had picked out the foolish Aladdin for this purpose, intending to get the lamp and kill him afterwards.
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.
"The tide," I said, "is running out?" There was a pause, a doubt who should answer me.
In the sphere of course, even more than on the moon, one's earthly time sense was ineffectual.
We must practise a little, when you have got your breath." I pulled two or three little thorns out of my hand, and sat for a time on a boulder of rock.
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.
He said we had not overmuch energy stored, and that what we had we must economise for reading.
It speedily became evident that the pressure outside was very much less than it was within.
Why had I ever launched my self on this mad, inhuman expedition? Cavor came to my side and laid his hand on my arm.
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.
Dismissing this topic at last in an incomplete state, the Grand Lunar inquired what we did with the interior of our globe.
I dropped rather clumsily among rocks, stood up and looked about me, clambered on to a rocky slab, and leapt again.
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.
"'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.
I perceived there was a blinding glare outside, an utter change from the gloomy darkness of our first impressions.
Much as it amazed and exercised me at the time, it would be impossible to reproduce it here.
We were still very near - Cavor told me the distance was perhaps eight hundred miles and the huge terrestrial disc filled all heaven.
"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.
Yes." His behaviour seemed to check the Selenites in their desire for our progress for a moment.
I looked round for Cavor, and for a moment it seemed as if he had vanished from the world.
I think he underrates the part my energy and practical capacity played in bringing about the realisation of his theoretical sphere.
I was a little sorry for the baker, who was a very decent man indeed, but even for him I hoped.
The two Selenites dismounted, but I was bidden remain seated - I imagine as a special honour.
I tried to make him understand his duties and responsibilities in the matter - our duties and responsibilities in the matter.
There were six of them, and they were marching in single file over a rocky place, making the most remarkable piping and whining sounds.
Christopher's nose was hung with icicles and Cindi's bottom was freezing under her gown.
Their central world, their civilised world will be far below in the profounder caverns about their sea.
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.
The people, indeed, looked so threatening that the Sultan gave way and ordered Aladdin to be unbound, and pardoned him in the sight of the crowd.
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.
"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.
I stood passive and panting, allowing him to beat off the jelly from my knees and elbows and lecture me upon my misfortunes.
We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.
Save for a few lichens that advanced from its margin this space was bare, and presented a powdery surface of a dusty yellow colour.
I snapped the last strip of window, and sat scowling and biting my knuckles, waiting for the impact.
The eyes stared down at me with a strange intensity, and the lower part of the swollen globe was wrinkled.
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.
I've watched you thirteen nights, and not once have you looked at the sunset - not once." He knitted his brows like one who encounters a problem.
The record is here too broken to transcribe for the space of perhaps twenty words or more.
He was leaping from side to side of the grating, making threatening jabs with his broken spear.
The area of the crater had become enormously vast to our imaginations, the growing thickets already impenetrably dense.
"This time," I whispered, "they're likely to have some sort of weapon." Then suddenly I sprang to my feet.
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.
"Yet after all," I said, "even if we don't find the sphere at once, there is a chance for us.
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.
Where there are minds they will have something similar - even though they have been evolved on different planets.
But when the magician came near, Aladdin, seizing his dagger, pierced him to the heart.
Was it by accident that one window was left unfinished?" "No, sir, by design," returned Aladdin.
Chapter 7 Sunrise on the Moon As we saw it first it was the wildest and most desolate of scenes.
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.
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.
The Selenites made way for our elephantine heavings, and seemed to twitter more volubly.
But the quality of utter detachment and independence! I had not reckoned on things like this.
If they had not heard of us before, they must have realised the situation with incredible swiftness.
Presently we were side by side in the depression, peering over the edge at the cavern and its occupants.
There was no nose, and the thing had dull bulging eyes at the side - in the silhouette I had supposed they were ears.
If I persist, I doubt not but he will use violence." Aladdin comforted her, and left her for a while.
Everywhere broad rusty brown spaces of bare and tumbled earth spread to the blaze of the sun.
"And yet in a way - it appeals." He became silent for a time, then commenced his meditative humming.
The air was intensely hot, and we were in great physical discomfort, but for all that we were no longer in a nightmare.
"A clock?" "Like a clock!" "What is it?" "What can it be?" "Count," was Cavor's belated suggestion, and at that word the striking ceased.
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.
Aladdin found everything as the magician had said, gathered some fruit off the trees, and, having got the lamp, arrived at the mouth of the cave.
We made a few gargantuan strides, leapt three or four times more, and sat down at last in a lichenous hollow.
" 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.
Then suddenly, with a shout of fury, he made three vast strides and leapt towards them.
Off to the public-house in Lympne to discuss the question of the furnaces over some trivial refreshment.
Ever and again one of the bladder fungi, bulging and distending under the sun, loomed upon us.
"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.
Aladdin told him what had happened, and showed him the dead body of the magician, that he might believe.
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.
It was the most active and malignant thing of all the living creatures I have yet seen in this world inside the moon.
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.
"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.
In that blue light his face did not look red but very dark, his lips and the drying blood upon my hands seemed black.
"And I'm behind! I have to deliver all these tonight!" "I don't believe you", said Cindi.
And these things annoy you? " For some reason I was beginning to relent towards him.
"We can take back an earnest of success in this gold." He looked at my golden crowbars, and said nothing for a space.
The trees about the building swayed and whirled and tore themselves to pieces, that sprang towards the flare.
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.
Aladdin knowing that their task was vain, bade them undo their work and carry the jewels back, and the genie finished the window at his command.
For a moment I listened, then tightened my grip on my crowbar, and led the way up the gallery.
They sat down by a fountain and the magician pulled a cake from his girdle, which he divided between them.
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!" I stared.
It was horrible and delightful, and as wild as a nightmare, to go flying off in this fashion.
The stuff was not unlike a terrestrial mushroom, only it was much laxer in texture, and, as one swallowed it, it warmed the throat.
For the moment the thing had something of the effect of those nightmares when one falls and falls.
"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.
I was too fierce to discriminate, and the Selenites were probably too scared to fight.
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.
They all seemed to become aware of us at once, all instantly became silent and motionless, like animals, with their faces turned towards us.
He said nothing about that gasping message on the blood-stained paper in which he told, or attempted to tell, a very different story.
Sometimes it twisted spirally, and at other times slanted down nearly to the horizontal direction.
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.
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.
He set the defensive tone with four blocks in the first quarter and finished with 20 points, six rebounds and six blocks.
Why do you do it? Every night you come making a noise" "Making a noise? " "Like this " - I imitated his buzzing noise.
She had gone to sleep! Her little brother had stolen her secret! She was disgusted! There was the tree - it's lights twinkling softly.
He was made captain of the Sultan's armies, and won several battles for him, but remained as courteous as before, and lived thus in peace and content for several years.
Remoter rose the Wealden Hills, faint and blue, while to the left the hazy marsh spread out spacious and serene.
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.
His mind ran on machines and invention, to the exclusion of a thousand dark things that beset me.
I told him shortly, "I'm not coming with you in the sphere." I met all his protests with a sullen persistence.
