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.
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 6 in. 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 ultrahuman dimensions.”
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 have 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.
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 those 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.
[Illustration: “They carried him into darkness”]
“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.
“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 self-luminous beings, regarding our appearance or busied on
unknown errands.
“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.
“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.
“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.
“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, _carried
umbrellas_ in their tentaculate hands!--real terrestrial-looking
umbrellas! And then I thought of the parachutist I had watched descend.
“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....”
* * * * *
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
another world, were presently communicating with Cavor by means of
terrestrial speech.
Cavor speaks of them as Phi-oo and Tsi-puff. Phi-oo, he says, was
about 5 ft. high; he had small, slender legs about 18 in. 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.
“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.”
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,
lop-sided beings with enormous shoulders, very spidery ushers, and a
squat foot attendant in Cavor’s retinue.
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.
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.
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.
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:--
“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 _forte_ 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.
“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 he has caught up
one or two phrases, ‘If I may say,’ ‘If you understand,’ and beads all
his speech with them.
“Thus he would discourse. Imagine him explaining his artist.
“‘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?
“‘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.’
“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....”
* * * * *
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.
“‘You talk to other?’ he asked, watching me.
“‘Others,’ said I.
“‘Others,’ he said. ‘Oh yes. Men?’
“And I went on transmitting.”
* * * * *
Cavor was continually making corrections in his previous accounts
of the Selenites as fresh facts flowed in 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.
“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.
“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....
“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 the 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 this 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....
“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.
“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.
“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
glass-blowers--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 supply 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.
“The making of these various sorts of operative must be a very curious
and interesting process. I am still 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-limbed 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.
“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 of 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.
“‘Mooneys eat these?” said I to Phi-oo.
“‘Yes, food.’
“‘Goodness me!’ I cried; ‘what’s that?’
“My eye had just caught the figure of an exceptionally big and ungainly
Selenite lying motionless among the stems, face downward. We stopped.
“‘Dead?’ I asked. (For as yet I have seen no dead in the moon, and I
have grown curious.)
“‘_No!_’ 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.’
“‘There’s another!’ cried I.
“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 quite 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.
“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.
* * * * *
“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.
“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.”
* * * * *
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, new 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....