We started off, moving stealthily with the most exaggerated precautions
against noise. We went towards a thicket of scrub. A clangour like
hammers flung about a boiler hastened our steps. “We must crawl,”
whispered Cavor.
The lower leaves of the bayonet plants, already overshadowed by the
newer ones above, were beginning to wilt and shrivel so that we could
thrust our way in among the thickening stems without serious injury. A
stab in the face or arm we did not heed. At the heart of the thicket I
stopped, and stared panting into Cavor’s face.
“Subterranean,” he whispered. “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. See what they are like.”
“We will keep together,” said I.
He thought. “Which way shall we go?”
“We must take our chance.”
We peered this way and that. Then very circumspectly, we began to crawl
through the lower jungle, making, so far as we could judge, a circuit,
halting now at every waving fungus, at every sound, intent only on the
sphere from which we had so foolishly emerged. Ever and again from out
of the earth beneath us came concussions, beatings, strange,
inexplicable, mechanical sounds; and once, and then again, we thought
we heard something, a faint rattle and tumult, borne to us through the
air. But fearful as we were we dared essay no vantage-point to survey
the crater. For long we saw nothing of the beings whose sounds were so
abundant and insistent. But for the faintness of our hunger and the
drying of our throats that crawling would have had the quality of a
very vivid dream. It was so absolutely unreal. The only element with
any touch of reality was these sounds.
Picture it to yourself! About us the dream-like jungle, with the silent
bayonet leaves darting overhead, and the silent, vivid, sun-splashed
lichens under our hands and knees, waving with the vigour of their
growth as a carpet waves when the wind gets beneath it. Ever and again
one of the bladder fungi, bulging and distending under the sun, loomed
upon us. Ever and again some novel shape in vivid colour obtruded. The
very cells that built up these plants were as large as my thumb, like
beads of coloured glass. And all these things were saturated in the
unmitigated glare of the sun, were seen against a sky that was bluish
black and spangled still, in spite of the sunlight, with a few
surviving stars. Strange! the very forms and texture of the stones were
strange. It was all strange, the feeling of one’s body was
unprecedented, every other movement ended in a surprise. The breath
sucked thin in one’s throat, the blood flowed through one’s ears in a
throbbing tide—thud, thud, thud, thud....
And ever and again came gusts of turmoil, hammering, the clanging and
throb of machinery, and presently—the bellowing of great beasts!
XI.
The Mooncalf Pastures
So we two poor terrestrial castaways, lost in that wild-growing moon
jungle, crawled in terror before the sounds that had come upon us. We
crawled, as it seemed, a long time before we saw either Selenite or
mooncalf, though we heard the bellowing and gruntulous noises of these
latter continually drawing nearer to us. We crawled through stony
ravines, over snow slopes, amidst fungi that ripped like thin bladders
at our thrust, emitting a watery humour, over a perfect pavement of
things like puff-balls, and beneath interminable thickets of scrub. And
ever more helplessly our eyes sought for our abandoned sphere. The
noise of the mooncalves would at times be a vast flat calf-like sound,
at times it rose to an amazed and wrathy bellowing, and again it would
become a clogged bestial sound, as though these unseen creatures had
sought to eat and bellow at the same time.
Our first view was but an inadequate transitory glimpse, yet none the
less disturbing because it was incomplete. Cavor was crawling in front
at the time, and he first was aware of their proximity. He stopped
dead, arresting me with a single gesture.
A crackling and smashing of the scrub appeared to be advancing directly
upon us, and then, as we squatted close and endeavoured to judge of the
nearness and direction of this noise, there came a terrific bellow
behind us, so close and vehement that the tops of the bayonet scrub
bent before it, and one felt the breath of it hot and moist. And,
turning about, we saw indistinctly through a crowd of swaying stems the
mooncalf’s shining sides, and the long line of its back loomed out
against the sky.
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. First
of all impressions was its enormous size; the girth of its body was
some fourscore feet, its length perhaps two hundred. Its sides rose and
fell with its laboured breathing. I perceived that its gigantic, flabby
body lay along the ground, and that its skin was of a corrugated white,
dappling into blackness along the backbone. But of its feet we saw
nothing. I think also that we saw then the profile at least of the
almost brainless head, with its fat-encumbered neck, its slobbering
omnivorous mouth, its little nostrils, and tight shut eyes. (For the
mooncalf invariably shuts its eyes in the presence of the sun.) We had
a glimpse of a vast red pit as it opened its mouth to bleat and bellow
again; we had a breath from the pit, and then the monster heeled over
like a ship, dragged forward along the ground, creasing all its
leathery skin, rolled again, and so wallowed past us, smashing a path
amidst the scrub, and was speedily hidden from our eyes by the dense
interlacings beyond. Another appeared more distantly, and then another,
and then, as though he was guiding these animated lumps of provender to
their pasture, a Selenite came momentarily into ken. My grip upon
Cavor’s foot became convulsive at the sight of him, and we remained
motionless and peering long after he had passed out of our range.
By contrast with the mooncalves he seemed a trivial being, a mere ant,
scarcely five feet high. 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. He presented himself, therefore,
as a compact, bristling creature, having much of the quality of a
complicated insect, with whip-like tentacles and a clanging arm
projecting from his shining cylindrical body case. The form of his head
was hidden by his enormous many-spiked helmet—we discovered afterwards
that he used the spikes for prodding refractory mooncalves—and a pair
of goggles of darkened glass, set very much at the side, gave a
bird-like quality to the metallic apparatus that covered his face. His
arms did not project beyond his body case, and he carried himself upon
short legs that, wrapped though they were in warm coverings, seemed to
our terrestrial eyes inordinately flimsy. They had very short thighs,
very long shanks, and little feet.
In spite of his heavy-looking clothing, he was progressing with what
would be, from the terrestrial point of view, very considerable
strides, and his clanging arm was busy. The quality of his motion
during the instant of his passing suggested haste and a certain anger,
and soon after we had lost sight of him we heard the bellow of a
mooncalf change abruptly into a short, sharp squeal followed by the
scuffle of its acceleration. And gradually that bellowing receded, and
then came to an end, as if the pastures sought had been attained.
We listened. For a space the moon world was still. But it was some time
before we resumed our crawling search for the vanished sphere.
When next we saw mooncalves they were some little distance away from us
in a place of tumbled rocks. The less vertical surfaces of the rocks
were thick with a speckled green plant growing in dense mossy clumps,
upon which these creatures were browsing. We stopped at the edge of the
reeds amidst which we were crawling at the sight of them, peering out
at them and looking round for a second glimpse of a Selenite. They lay
against their food like stupendous slugs, huge, greasy hulls, eating
greedily and noisily, with a sort of sobbing avidity. They seemed
monsters of mere fatness, clumsy and overwhelmed to a degree that would
make a Smithfield ox seem a model of agility. Their busy, writhing,
chewing mouths, and eyes closed, together with the appetising sound of
their munching, made up an effect of animal enjoyment that was
singularly stimulating to our empty frames.
“Hogs!” said Cavor, with unusual passion. “Disgusting hogs!” and after
one glare of angry envy crawled off through the bushes to our right. I
stayed long enough to see that the speckled plant was quite hopeless
for human nourishment, then crawled after him, nibbling a quill of it
between my teeth.
Presently we were arrested again by the proximity of a Selenite, and
this time we were able to observe him more exactly. Now we could see
that the Selenite covering was indeed clothing, and not a sort of
crustacean integument. He was quite similar in his costume to the
former one we had glimpsed, except that ends of something like wadding
were protruding from his neck, and he stood on a promontory of rock and
moved his head this way and that, as though he was surveying the
crater. We lay quite still, fearing to attract his attention if we
moved, and after a time he turned about and disappeared.
We came upon another drove of mooncalves bellowing up a ravine, and
then we passed over a place of sounds, sounds of beating machinery as
if some huge hall of industry came near the surface there. 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. Save
for a few lichens that advanced from its margin this space was bare,
and presented a powdery surface of a dusty yellow colour. We were
afraid to strike out across this space, but as it presented less
obstruction to our crawling than the scrub, we went down upon it and
began very circumspectly to skirt its edge.
For a little while the noises from below ceased and everything, save
for the faint stir of the growing vegetation, was very still. Then
abruptly there began an uproar, louder, more vehement, and nearer than
any we had so far heard. Of a certainty it came from below.
Instinctively we crouched as flat as we could, ready for a prompt
plunge into the thicket beside us. Each knock and throb seemed to
vibrate through our bodies. Louder grew this throbbing and beating, and
that irregular vibration increased until the whole moon world seemed to
be jerking and pulsing.
“Cover,” whispered Cavor, and I turned towards the bushes.
At that instant came a thud like the thud of a gun, and then a thing
happened—it still haunts me in my dreams. I had turned my head to look
at Cavor’s face, and thrust out my hand in front of me as I did so. And
my hand met nothing! I plunged suddenly into a bottomless hole!
My chest hit something hard, and I found myself with my chin on the
edge of an unfathomable abyss that had suddenly opened beneath me, my
hand extended stiffly into the void. The whole of that flat circular
area was no more than a gigantic lid, that was now sliding sideways
from off the pit it had covered into a slot prepared for it.
Had it not been for Cavor I think I should have remained rigid, hanging
over this margin and staring into the enormous gulf below, until at
last the edges of the slot scraped me off and hurled me into its
depths. But Cavor had not received the shock that had paralysed me. 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. I came into a sitting position, crawled away from
the edge for a space on all fours, then staggered up and ran after him
across the thundering, quivering sheet of metal. It seemed to be
swinging open with a steadily accelerated velocity, and the bushes in
front of me shifted sideways as I ran.
I was none too soon. Cavor’s back vanished amidst the bristling
thicket, and as I scrambled up after him, the monstrous valve came into
its position with a clang. For a long time we lay panting, not daring
to approach the pit.
But at last very cautiously and bit by bit we crept into a position
from which we could peer down. The bushes about us creaked and waved
with the force of a breeze that was blowing down the shaft. We could
see nothing at first except smooth vertical walls descending at last
into an impenetrable black. And then very gradually we became aware of
a number of very faint and little lights going to and fro.
For a time that stupendous gulf of mystery held us so that we forgot
even our sphere. In time, as we grew more accustomed to the darkness,
we could make out very small, dim, elusive shapes moving about among
those needle-point illuminations. We peered amazed and incredulous,
understanding so little that we could find no words to say. We could
distinguish nothing that would give us a clue to the meaning of the
faint shapes we saw.
“What can it be?” I asked; “what can it be?”
“The engineering!... They must live in these caverns during the night,
and come out during the day.”
“Cavor!” I said. “Can they be—_that_—it was something like—men?”
“_That_ was not a man.”
“We dare risk nothing!”
“We dare do nothing until we find the sphere!”
“We _can_ do nothing until we find the sphere.”
He assented with a groan and stirred himself to move. He stared about
him for a space, sighed, and indicated a direction. We struck out
through the jungle. For a time we crawled resolutely, then with
diminishing vigour. Presently among great shapes of flabby purple there
came a noise of trampling and cries about us. We lay close, and for a
long time the sounds went to and fro and very near. But this time we
saw nothing. I tried to whisper to Cavor that I could hardly go without
food much longer, but my mouth had become too dry for whispering.
“Cavor,” I said, “I must have food.”
He turned a face full of dismay towards me. “It’s a case for holding
out,” he said.
“But I _must_,” I said, “and look at my lips!”
“I’ve been thirsty some time.”
“If only some of that snow had remained!”
“It’s clean gone! We’re driving from arctic to tropical at the rate of
a degree a minute....”