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.
Why had we come to the moon?
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....
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.
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.
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 afar off, spread out on its thicket of thorns.
I looked about me, and then leapt forward to the next convenient
view-point.
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.
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--