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 climbing into the blaze of the sun.
I take it the reader has seen pictures or photographs of the moon,
so that I need not describe the broader features of that landscape,
those spacious ringlike 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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....
Over, clutch, bump, clutch, bump, over....
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.
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.
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!”
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.”
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.
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.
“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.
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.”