The penultimate message describes, with occasionally even elaborate
detail, the encounter between Cavor and the Grand Lunar, who is the
ruler or master of the moon. Cavor seems to have sent most of it
without interference, but to have been interrupted in the concluding
portion. The second came after an interval of a week.
The first message begins: “At last I am able to resume this--” it then
becomes illegible for a space, and after a time resumes in mid-sentence.
The missing words of the following sentence are probably “the crowd.”
There follows quite clearly: “grew ever denser as we drew near the
palace of the Grand Lunar--if I may call a series of excavations a
palace. Everywhere faces stared at me--blank, chitinous gapes and
masks, eyes peering over tremendous olfactory developments, eyes
beneath monstrous forehead plates; an undergrowth of smaller creatures
dodged and yelped, and helmet faces poised on sinuous, long-jointed
necks appeared craning over shoulders and beneath armpits. Keeping
a welcome space about me marched a cordon of stolid, scuttle-headed
guards, who had joined us on our leaving the boat in which we had come
along the channels of the Central Sea. The quick-eyed artist with the
little brain joined us also, and a thick bunch of lean porter-insects
swayed and struggled under the multitude of conveniences that were
considered essential to my state. I was carried in a litter during the
final stage of our journey. This litter was made of some very ductile
metal that looked dark to me, meshed and woven, and with bars of paler
metal, and about me as I advanced there grouped itself a long and
complicated procession.
“In front, after the manner of heralds, marched four trumpet-faced
creatures making a devastating bray; and then came squat,
resolute-moving ushers before and behind, and on either hand a galaxy
of learned heads, a sort of animated encyclopædia, who were, Phi-oo
explained, to stand about the Grand Lunar for purposes of reference.
(Not a thing in lunar science, not a point of view or method of
thinking, that these wonderful beings did not carry in their heads!)
Followed guards and porters, and then Phi-oo’s shivering brain borne
also on a litter. Then came Tsi-puff in a slightly less important
litter; then myself on a litter of greater elegance than any other, and
surrounded by my food and drink attendants. More trumpeters came next,
splitting the ear with vehement outcries, and then several big brains,
special correspondents one might well call them, or historiographers,
charged with the task of observing and remembering every detail of this
epoch-making interview. A company of attendants, bearing and dragging
banners and masses of scented fungus and curious symbols, vanished
in the darkness behind. The way was lined by ushers and officers in
caparisons that gleamed like steel, and beyond their line, so far as my
eyes could pierce the gloom, the heads of that enormous crowd extended.
“I will own that I am still by no means indurated to the peculiar
effect of the Selenite appearance, and to find myself, as it were,
adrift on this broad sea of excited entomology was by no means
agreeable. Just for a space I had something very like what I should
imagine people mean when they speak of the ‘horrors.’ It had come
to me before in these lunar caverns, when on occasion I have found
myself weaponless and with an undefended back, amidst a crowd of these
Selenites, but never quite so vividly. It is, of course, as absolutely
irrational a feeling as one could well have, and I hope gradually to
subdue it. But just for a moment, as I swept forward into the welter of
the vast crowd, it was only by gripping my litter tightly and summoning
all my will-power that I succeeded in avoiding an outcry or some such
manifestation. It lasted perhaps three minutes; then I had myself in
hand again.
“We ascended the spiral of a vertical way for some time and then passed
through a series of huge halls, dome-roofed and elaborately decorated.
The approach to the Grand Lunar was certainly contrived to give one
a vivid impression of his greatness. Each cavern one entered seemed
greater and more boldly arched than its predecessor. This effect of
progressive size was enhanced by a thin haze of faintly phosphorescent
blue incense that thickened as one advanced, and robbed even the nearer
figures of clearness. I seemed to advance continually to something
larger, dimmer, and less material.
“I must confess that all this multitude made me feel extremely shabby
and unworthy. I was unshaven and unkempt; I had brought no razor;
I had a coarse beard over my mouth. On earth I have always been
inclined to despise any attention to my person beyond a proper care
for cleanliness; but under the exceptional circumstances in which
I found myself, representing, as I did, my planet and my kind, and
depending very largely upon the attractiveness of my appearance for
a proper reception, I could have given much for something a little
more artistic and dignified than the husks I wore. I had been so
serene in the belief that the moon was uninhabited as to overlook such
precautions altogether. As it was I was dressed in a flannel jacket,
knickerbockers, and golfing stockings, stained with every sort of dirt
the moon offered; slippers (of which the left heel was wanting), and
a blanket, through a hole in which I thrust my head. (These clothes,
indeed, I still wear.) Sharp bristles are anything but an improvement
to my cast of features, and there was an unmended tear at the knee of
my knickerbockers that showed conspicuously as I squatted in my litter;
my right stocking, too, persisted in getting about my ankle. I am
fully alive to the injustice my appearance did humanity, and if by any
expedient I could have improvised something a little out of the way
and imposing I would have done so. But I could hit upon nothing. I did
what I could with my blanket--folding it somewhat after the fashion of
a toga, and for the rest I sat as upright as the swaying of my litter
permitted.
“Imagine the largest hall you have ever been in, imperfectly lit with
blue light and obscured by a grey-blue fog, surging with metallic or
livid-grey creatures of such a mad diversity as I have hinted. Imagine
this hall to end in an open archway beyond which is a still larger
hall, and beyond this yet another and still larger one, and so on. At
the end of the vista, dimly seen, a flight of steps, like the steps of
Ara Cœli at Rome, ascend out of sight. Higher and higher these steps
appear to go as one draws nearer their base. But at last I came under
a huge archway and beheld the summit of these steps, and upon it the
Grand Lunar exalted on his throne.
“He was seated in what was relatively a blaze of incandescent blue.
This, and the darkness about him, gave him an effect of floating in
a blue-black void. He seemed a small, self-luminous cloud at first,
brooding on his sombre throne; his brain case must have measured many
yards in diameter. For some reason that I cannot fathom a number of
blue search-lights radiated from behind the throne on which he sat,
and immediately encircling him was a halo. About him, and little and
indistinct in this glow, a number of body-servants sustained and
supported him, and overshadowed and standing in a huge semicircle
beneath him were his intellectual subordinates, his remembrancers and
computators and searchers and servants, and all the distinguished
insects of the court of the moon. Still lower stood ushers and
messengers, and then all down the countless steps of the throne were
guards, and at the base, enormous, various, indistinct, vanishing at
last into an absolute black, a vast swaying multitude of the minor
dignitaries of the moon. Their feet made a perpetual scraping whisper
on the rocky floor, their limbs moved with a rustling murmur.
“As I entered the penultimate hall the music rose and expanded into an
imperial magnificence of sound, and the shrieks of the newsbearers died
away....
[Illustration: THE GRAND LUNAR]
“I entered the last and greatest hall....
“My procession opened out like a fan. My ushers and guards went right
and left, and the three litters bearing myself and Phi-oo and Tsi-puff
marched across a shiny darkness of floor to the foot of the giant
stairs. Then began a vast throbbing hum, that mingled with the music.
The two Selenites dismounted, but I was bidden remain seated--I imagine
as a special honour. The music ceased, but not that humming, and by a
simultaneous movement of ten thousand respectful heads my attention was
directed to the enhaloed supreme intelligence that hovered above me.
“At first as I peered into the radiating glow this quintessential
brain looked very much like an opaque, featureless bladder with dim,
undulating ghosts of convolutions writhing visibly within. Then beneath
its enormity and just above the edge of the throne one saw with a start
minute elfin eyes peering out of the glow. No face, but eyes, as if
they peered through holes. At first I could see no more than these two
staring little eyes, and then below I distinguished the little dwarfed
body and its insect-jointed limbs shrivelled and white. The eyes stared
down at me with a strange intensity, and the lower part of the swollen
globe was wrinkled. Ineffectual-looking little hand-tentacles steadied
this shape on the throne....
“It was great. It was pitiful. One forgot the hall and the crowd.
“I ascended the staircase by jerks. It seemed to me that this darkly
glowing brain case above us spread over me, and took more and more of
the whole effect into itself as I drew nearer. The tiers of attendants
and helpers grouped about their master seemed to dwindle and fade
into the night. I saw that shadowy attendants were busy spraying that
great brain with a cooling spray, and patting and sustaining it. For
my own part, I sat gripping my swaying litter and staring at the Grand
Lunar, unable to turn my gaze aside. And at last, as I reached a little
landing that was separated only by ten steps or so from the supreme
seat, the woven splendour of the music reached a climax and ceased,
and I was left naked, as it were, in that vastness, beneath the still
scrutiny of the Grand Lunar’s eyes.
“He was scrutinising the first man he had ever seen....
“My eyes dropped at last from his greatness to the faint figures in the
blue mist about him, and then down the steps to the massed Selenites,
still and expectant in their thousands, packed on the floor below. Once
again an unreasonable horror reached out towards me.... And passed.
“After the pause came the salutation. I was assisted from my litter,
and stood awkwardly while a number of curious and no doubt deeply
symbolical gestures were vicariously performed for me by two slender
officials. The encyclopædic galaxy of the learned that had accompanied
me to the entrance of the last hall appeared two steps above me and
left and right of me, in readiness for the Grand Lunar’s need, and
Phi-oo’s pale brain placed itself about half-way up to the throne in
such a position as to communicate easily between us without turning his
back on either the Grand Lunar or myself. Tsi-puff took up a position
behind him. Dexterous ushers sidled sideways towards me, keeping a full
face to the Presence. I seated myself Turkish fashion, and Phi-oo and
Tsi-puff also knelt down above me. There came a pause. The eyes of the
nearer court went from me to the Grand Lunar and came back to me, and a
hissing and piping of expectation passed across the hidden multitudes
below and ceased.
“That humming ceased.
“For the first and last time in my experience the moon was silent.
“I became aware of a faint wheezy noise. The Grand Lunar was addressing
me. It was like the rubbing of a finger upon a pane of glass.
“I watched him attentively for a time, and then glanced at the alert
Phi-oo. I felt amidst these slender beings ridiculously thick and
fleshy and solid; my head all jaw and black hair. My eyes went back
to the Grand Lunar. He had ceased; his attendants were busy, and his
shining superficies was glistening and running with cooling spray.
“Phi-oo meditated through an interval. He consulted Tsi-puff. Then he
began piping his recognisable English--at first a little nervously, so
that he was not very clear.
“‘M’m--the Grand Lunar--wishes to say--wishes to say--he gathers you
are--m’m--men--that you are a man from the planet earth. He wishes to
say that he welcomes you--welcomes you--and wishes to learn--learn, if
I may use the word--the state of your world, and the reason why you
came to this.’
“He paused. I was about to reply when he resumed. He proceeded to
remarks of which the drift was not very clear, though I am inclined to
think they were intended to be complimentary. He told me that the earth
was to the moon what the sun is to the earth, and that the Selenites
desired very greatly to learn about the earth and men. He then told
me, no doubt in compliment also, the relative magnitude and diameter
of earth and moon, and the perpetual wonder and speculation with which
the Selenites had regarded our planet. I meditated with downcast eyes,
and decided to reply that men too had wondered what might lie in the
moon, and had judged it dead, little recking of such magnificence as I
had seen that day. The Grand Lunar, in token of recognition, caused his
long blue rays to rotate in a very confusing manner, and all about the
great hall ran the pipings and whisperings and rustlings of the report
of what I had said. He then proceeded to put to Phi-oo a number of
inquiries which were easier to answer.
“He understood, he explained, that we lived on the surface of the
earth, that our air and sea were outside the globe; the latter part,
indeed, he already knew from his astronomical specialists. He was
very anxious to have more detailed information of what he called this
extraordinary state of affairs, for from the solidity of the earth
there had always been a disposition to regard it as uninhabitable. He
endeavoured first to ascertain the extremes of temperature to which
we earth beings were exposed, and he was deeply interested by my
descriptive treatment of clouds and rain. His imagination was assisted
by the fact that the lunar atmosphere in the outer galleries of the
night side is not infrequently very foggy. He seemed inclined to marvel
that we did not find the sunlight too intense for our eyes, and was
interested in my attempt to explain that the sky was tempered to a
bluish colour through the refraction of the air, though I doubt if he
clearly understood that. I explained how the iris of the human eyes can
contract the pupil and save the delicate internal structure from the
excess of sunlight, and was allowed to approach within a few feet of
the Presence in order that this structure might be seen. This led to a
comparison of the lunar and terrestrial eyes. The former is not only
excessively sensitive to such light as men can see, but it can also
_see_ heat, and every difference in temperature within the moon renders
objects visible to it.
“The iris was quite a new organ to the Grand Lunar. For a time he
amused himself by flashing his rays into my face and watching my
pupils contract. As a consequence, I was dazzled and blinded for some
little time....
“But in spite of that discomfort I found something reassuring by
insensible degrees in the rationality of this business of question and
answer. I could shut my eyes, think of my answer, and almost forget
that the Grand Lunar has no face....
“When I had descended again to my proper place the Grand Lunar asked
how we sheltered ourselves from heat and storms, and I expounded
to him the arts of building and furnishing. Here we wandered into
misunderstandings and cross-purposes, due largely, I must admit, to the
looseness of my expressions. For a long time I had great difficulty in
making him understand the nature of a house. To him and his attendant
Selenites it seemed, no doubt, the most whimsical thing in the world
that men should build houses when they might descend into excavations,
and an additional complication was introduced by the attempt I made to
explain that men had originally begun their homes in caves, and that
they were now taking their railways and many establishments beneath the
surface. Here I think a desire for intellectual completeness betrayed
me. There was also a considerable tangle due to an equally unwise
attempt on my part to explain about mines. Dismissing this topic at
last in an incomplete state, the Grand Lunar inquired what we did with
the interior of our globe.
“A tide of twittering and piping swept into the remotest corners
of that great assembly when it was at last made clear that we men
know absolutely nothing of the contents of the world upon which the
immemorial generations of our ancestors had been evolved. Three times
had I to repeat that of all the 4000 miles of substance between the
earth and its centre men knew only to the depth of a mile, and that
very vaguely. I understood the Grand Lunar to ask why had I come to the
moon seeing we had scarcely touched our own planet yet, but he did not
trouble me at that time to proceed to an explanation, being too anxious
to pursue the details of this mad inversion of all his ideas.
“He reverted to the question of weather, and I tried to describe the
perpetually changing sky, and snow, and frost, and hurricanes. ‘But
when the night comes,’ he asked, ‘is it not cold?’
“I told him it was colder than by day.
“‘And does not your atmosphere freeze?’
“I told him not; that it was never cold enough for that, because our
nights were so short.
“‘Not even liquefy?’
“I was about to say ‘No,’ but then it occurred to me that one part at
least of our atmosphere, the water vapour of it, does sometimes liquefy
and form dew, and sometimes freeze and form frost--a process perfectly
analogous to the freezing of all the external atmosphere of the moon
during its longer night. I made myself clear on this point, and from
that the Grand Lunar went on to speak with me of sleep. For the need
of sleep that comes so regularly every twenty-four hours to all things
is part also of our earthly inheritance. On the moon they rest only
at rare intervals, and after exceptional exertions. Then I tried to
describe to him the soft splendours of a summer night, and from that I
passed to a description of those animals that prowl by night and sleep
by day. I told him of lions and tigers, and here it seemed as though
we had come to a deadlock. For, save in their waters, there are no
creatures in the moon not absolutely domestic and subject to his will,
and so it has been for immemorial years. They have monstrous water
creatures, but no evil beasts, and the idea of anything strong and
large existing ‘outside’ in the night is very difficult for them....
[The record is here too broken to transcribe for the space of perhaps
twenty words or more.]
“He talked with his attendants, as I suppose, upon the strange
superficiality and unreasonableness of (man), who lives on the mere
surface of a world, a creature of waves and winds, and all the chances
of space, who cannot even unite to overcome the beasts that prey upon
his kind, and yet who dares to invade another planet. During this aside
I sat thinking, and then at his desire I told him of the different
sorts of men. He searched me with questions. ‘And for all sorts of work
you have the same sort of men. But who thinks? Who governs?’
“I gave him an outline of the democratic method.
“When I had done he ordered cooling sprays upon his brow, and then
requested me to repeat my explanation, conceiving something had
miscarried.
“‘Do they not do different things, then?’ said Phi-oo.
“Some I admitted were thinkers and some officials; some hunted, some
were mechanics, some artists, some toilers. ‘But _all_ rule,’ I said.
“‘And have they not different shapes to fit them to their different
duties?’
“‘None that you can see,’ I said, ‘except, perhaps, for clothes. Their
minds perhaps differ a little,’ I reflected.
“‘Their minds must differ a great deal,’ said the Grand Lunar, ‘or they
would all want to do the same things.’
“In order to bring myself into a closer harmony with his preconceptions
I said that his surmise was right. ‘It was all hidden in the brain,’ I
said; ‘but the difference was there. Perhaps if one could see the minds
and souls of men they would be as varied and unequal as the Selenites.
There were great men and small men, men who could reach out far and
wide, and men who could go swiftly; noisy, trumpet-minded men, and men
who could remember without thinking.... [The record is indistinct for
three words.]
“He interrupted me to recall me to my previous statement. ‘But you said
all men rule?’ he pressed.
“‘To a certain extent,’ I said, and made, I fear, a denser fog with my
explanation.
“He reached out to a salient fact. ‘Do you mean,’ he asked, ‘that
there is no Grand Earthly?’
“I thought of several people, but assured him finally there was none. I
explained that such autocrats and emperors as we had tried upon earth
had usually ended in drink, or vice, or violence, and that the large
and influential section of the people of the earth to which I belonged,
the Anglo-Saxons, did not mean to try that sort of thing again. At
which the Grand Lunar was even more amazed.
“‘But how do you keep even such wisdom as you have?’ he asked; and I
explained to him the way we helped our limited [a word omitted here,
probably “brains”] with libraries of books. I explained to him how
our science was growing by the united labours of innumerable little
men, and on that he made no comment save that it was evident we had
mastered much in spite of our social savagery, or we could not have
come to the moon. Yet the contrast was very marked. With knowledge the
Selenites grew and changed; mankind stored their knowledge about them
and remained brutes--equipped. He said this ... [Here there is a short
piece of the record indistinct.]
“He then caused me to describe how we went about this earth of ours,
and I described to him our railways and ships. For a time he could not
understand that we had had the use of steam only one hundred years,
but when he did he was clearly amazed. (I may mention as a singular
thing that the Selenites use years to count by, just as we do on earth,
though I can make nothing of their numeral system. That, however,
does not matter, because Phi-oo understands ours.) From that I went
on to tell him that mankind had dwelt in cities only for nine or ten
thousand years, and that we were still not united in one brotherhood,
but under many different forms of government. This astonished the Grand
Lunar very much, when it was made clear to him. At first he thought we
referred merely to administrative areas.
“‘Our States and Empires are still the rawest sketches of what order
will some day be,’ I said, and so I came to tell him.... [At this point
a length of record that probably represents thirty or forty words is
totally illegible.]
“The Grand Lunar was greatly impressed by the folly of men in clinging
to the inconvenience of diverse tongues. ‘They want to communicate,
and yet not to communicate,’ he said, and then for a long time he
questioned me closely concerning war.
“He was at first perplexed and incredulous. ‘You mean to say,’ he
asked, seeking confirmation, ‘that you run about over the surface
of your world--this world, whose riches you have scarcely begun to
scrape--killing one another for beasts to eat?’
“I told him that was perfectly correct.
“He asked for particulars to assist his imagination. ‘But do not ships
and your poor little cities get injured?’ he asked, and I found the
waste of property and conveniences seemed to impress him almost as much
as the killing. ‘Tell me more,’ said the Grand Lunar; ‘make me see
pictures. I cannot conceive these things.’
“And so, for a space, though something loth, I told him the story of
earthly War.
“I told him of the first orders and ceremonies of war, of warnings and
ultimatums, and the marshalling and marching of troops. I gave him an
idea of manœuvres and positions and battle joined. I told him of sieges
and assaults, of starvation and hardship in trenches, and of sentinels
freezing in the snow. I told him of routs and surprises, and desperate
last stands and faint hopes, and the pitiless pursuit of fugitives and
the dead upon the field. I told, too, of the past, of invasions and
massacres, of the Huns and Tartars, and the wars of Mahomet and the
Caliphs, and of the Crusades. And as I went on, and Phi-oo translated,
the Selenites cooed and murmured in a steadily intensified emotion.
“I told them an ironclad could fire a shot of a ton twelve miles, and
go through 20 ft. of iron--and how we could steer torpedoes under
water. I went on to describe a Maxim gun in action, and what I could
imagine of the Battle of Colenso. The Grand Lunar was so incredulous
that he interrupted the translation of what I had said in order to have
my verification of my account. They particularly doubted my description
of the men cheering and rejoicing as they went into (? battle).
“‘But surely they do not like it!’ translated Phi-oo.
“I assured them men of my race considered battle the most glorious
experience of life, at which the whole assembly was stricken with
amazement.
“‘But what good is this war?’ asked the Grand Lunar, sticking to his
theme.
“‘Oh! as for _good_!’ said I; ‘it thins the population!’
“‘But why should there be a need----?’ ...
“There came a pause, the cooling sprays impinged upon his brow, and
then he spoke again.”
At this point a series of undulations that have been apparent as
a perplexing complication as far back as Cavor’s description of
the silence that fell before the first speaking of the Grand Lunar
become confusingly predominant in the record. These undulations are
evidently the result of radiations proceeding from a lunar source,
and their persistent approximation to the alternating signals of
Cavor is curiously suggestive of some operator deliberately seeking
to mix them in with his message and render it illegible. At first
they are small and regular, so that with a little care and the loss
of very few words we have been able to disentangle Cavor’s message;
then they become broad and larger, then suddenly they are irregular,
with an irregularity that gives the effect at last of some one
scribbling through a line of writing. For a long time nothing can
be made of this madly zigzagging trace; then quite abruptly the
interruption ceases, leaves a few words clear, and then resumes and
continues for all the rest of the message, completely obliterating
whatever Cavor was attempting to transmit. Why, if this is indeed a
deliberate intervention, the Selenites should have preferred to let
Cavor go on transmitting his message in happy ignorance of their
obliteration of its record, when it was clearly quite in their power
and much more easy and convenient for them to stop his proceedings at
any time, is a problem to which I can contribute nothing. The thing
seems to have happened so, and that is all I can say. This last rag
of his description of the Grand Lunar begins in mid-sentence:--
“interrogated me very closely upon my secret. I was able in a little
while to get to an understanding with them, and at last to elucidate
what has been a puzzle to me ever since I realised the vastness of
their science, namely, how it is they themselves have never discovered
‘Cavorite.’ I find they know of it as a theoretical substance, but they
have always regarded it as a practical impossibility, because for some
reason there is no helium in the moon, and helium----”
Across the last letters of helium slashes the resumption of that
obliterating trace. Note that word “secret,” for on that, and that
alone, I base my interpretation of the message that follows, the last
message, as both Mr. Wendigee and myself now believe it to be, that
he is ever likely to send us.