“It is clear,” meditated Cavor, “they are intelligent. One can
hypothecate certain things. As they have not killed us at once, they
must have ideas of mercy. Mercy! at any rate of restraint. Possibly of
intercourse. They may meet us. And this apartment and the glimpses we
had of its guardian. These fetters! A high degree of intelligence...”
“I wish to heaven,” cried I, “I’d thought even twice! Plunge after
plunge. First one fluky start and then another. It was my confidence in
you! _Why_ didn’t I stick to my play? That was what I was equal to.
That was my world and the life I was made for. I could have finished
that play. I’m certain ... it was a good play. I had the scenario as
good as done. Then.... Conceive it! leaping to the moon!
Practically—I’ve thrown my life away! That old woman in the inn near
Canterbury had better sense.”
I looked up, and stopped in mid-sentence. The darkness had given place
to that bluish light again. The door was opening, and several noiseless
Selenites were coming into the chamber. I became quite still, staring
at their grotesque faces.
Then suddenly my sense of disagreeable strangeness changed to interest.
I perceived that the foremost and second carried bowls. One elemental
need at least our minds could understand in common. They were bowls of
some metal that, like our fetters, looked dark in that bluish light;
and each contained a number of whitish fragments. All the cloudy pain
and misery that oppressed me rushed together and took the shape of
hunger. I eyed these bowls wolfishly, and, though it returned to me in
dreams, at that time it seemed a small matter that at the end of the
arms that lowered one towards me were not hands, but a sort of flap and
thumb, like the end of an elephant’s trunk. The stuff in the bowl was
loose in texture, and whitish brown in colour—rather like lumps of some
cold souffle, and it smelt faintly like mushrooms. From a partially
divided carcass of a mooncalf that we presently saw, I am inclined to
believe it must have been mooncalf flesh.
My hands were so tightly chained that I could barely contrive to reach
the bowl; but when they saw the effort I made, two of them dexterously
released one of the turns about my wrist. Their tentacle hands were
soft and cold to my skin. I immediately seized a mouthful of the food.
It had the same laxness in texture that all organic structures seem to
have upon the moon; it tasted rather like a gauffre or a damp meringue,
but in no way was it disagreeable. I took two other mouthfuls. “I
_wanted_—foo’!” said I, tearing off a still larger piece....
For a time we ate with an utter absence of self-consciousness. We ate
and presently drank like tramps in a soup kitchen. Never before nor
since have I been hungry to the ravenous pitch, and save that I have
had this very experience I could never have believed that, a quarter of
a million of miles out of our proper world, in utter perplexity of
soul, surrounded, watched, touched by beings more grotesque and inhuman
than the worst creations of a nightmare, it would be possible for me to
eat in utter forgetfulness of all these things. They stood about us
watching us, and ever and again making a slight elusive twittering that
stood, I suppose, in the stead of speech. I did not even shiver at
their touch. And when the first zeal of my feeding was over, I could
note that Cavor, too, had been eating with the same shameless abandon.
XIV.
Experiments in intercourse
When at last we had made an end of eating, the Selenites linked our
hands closely together again, and then untwisted the chains about our
feet and rebound them, so as to give us a limited freedom of movement.
Then they unfastened the chains about our waists. To do all this they
had to handle us freely, and ever and again one of their queer heads
came down close to my face, or a soft tentacle-hand touched my head or
neck. I don’t remember that I was afraid then or repelled by their
proximity. I think that our incurable anthropomorphism made us imagine
there were human heads inside their masks. The skin, like everything
else, looked bluish, but that was on account of the light; and it was
hard and shiny, quite in the beetle-wing fashion, not soft, or moist,
or hairy, as a vertebrated animal’s would be. Along the crest of the
head was a low ridge of whitish spines running from back to front, and
a much larger ridge curved on either side over the eyes. The Selenite
who untied me used his mouth to help his hands.
“They seem to be releasing us,” said Cavor. “Remember we are on the
moon! Make no sudden movements!”
“Are you going to try that geometry?”
“If I get a chance. But, of course, they may make an advance first.”
We remained passive, and the Selenites, having finished their
arrangements, stood back from us, and seemed to be looking at us. I say
seemed to be, because as their eyes were at the side and not in front,
one had the same difficulty in determining the direction in which they
were looking as one has in the case of a hen or a fish. They conversed
with one another in their reedy tones, that seemed to me impossible to
imitate or define. The door behind us opened wider, and, glancing over
my shoulder, I saw a vague large space beyond, in which quite a little
crowd of Selenites were standing. They seemed a curiously miscellaneous
rabble.
“Do they want us to imitate those sounds?” I asked Cavor.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
“It seems to me that they are trying to make us understand something.”
“I can’t make anything of their gestures. Do you notice this one, who
is worrying with his head like a man with an uncomfortable collar?”
“Let us shake our heads at him.”
We did that, and finding it ineffectual, attempted an imitation of the
Selenites’ movements. That seemed to interest them. At any rate they
all set up the same movement. But as that seemed to lead to nothing, we
desisted at last and so did they, and fell into a piping argument among
themselves. Then one of them, shorter and very much thicker than the
others, and with a particularly wide mouth, squatted down suddenly
beside Cavor, and put his hands and feet in the same posture as Cavor’s
were bound, and then by a dexterous movement stood up.
“Cavor,” I shouted, “they want us to get up!”
He stared open-mouthed. “That’s it!” he said.
And with much heaving and grunting, because our hands were tied
together, we contrived to struggle to our feet. The Selenites made way
for our elephantine heavings, and seemed to twitter more volubly. As
soon as we were on our feet the thick-set Selenite came and patted each
of our faces with his tentacles, and walked towards the open doorway.
That also was plain enough, and we followed him. We saw that four of
the Selenites standing in the doorway were much taller than the others,
and clothed in the same manner as those we had seen in the crater,
namely, with spiked round helmets and cylindrical body-cases, and that
each of the four carried a goad with spike and guard made of that same
dull-looking metal as the bowls. These four closed about us, one on
either side of each of us, as we emerged from our chamber into the
cavern from which the light had come.
We did not get our impression of that cavern all at once. Our attention
was taken up by the movements and attitudes of the Selenites
immediately about us, and by the necessity of controlling our motion,
lest we should startle and alarm them and ourselves by some excessive
stride. In front of us was the short, thick-set being who had solved
the problem of asking us to get up, moving with gestures that seemed,
almost all of them, intelligible to us, inviting us to follow him. His
spout-like face turned from one of us to the other with a quickness
that was clearly interrogative. For a time, I say, we were taken up
with these things.
But at last the great place that formed a background to our movements
asserted itself. It became apparent that the source of much, at least,
of the tumult of sounds which had filled our ears ever since we had
recovered from the stupefaction of the fungus was a vast mass of
machinery in active movement, whose flying and whirling parts were
visible indistinctly over the heads and between the bodies of the
Selenites who walked about us. And not only did the web of sounds that
filled the air proceed from this mechanism, but also the peculiar blue
light that irradiated the whole place. We had taken it as a natural
thing that a subterranean cavern should be artificially lit, and even
now, though the fact was patent to my eyes, I did not really grasp its
import until presently the darkness came. The meaning and structure of
this huge apparatus we saw I cannot explain, because we neither of us
learnt what it was for or how it worked. One after another, big shafts
of metal flung out and up from its centre, their heads travelling in
what seemed to me to be a parabolic path; each dropped a sort of
dangling arm as it rose towards the apex of its flight and plunged down
into a vertical cylinder, forcing this down before it. About it moved
the shapes of tenders, little figures that seemed vaguely different
from the beings about us. As each of the three dangling arms of the
machine plunged down, there was a clank and then a roaring, and out of
the top of the vertical cylinder came pouring this incandescent
substance that lit the place, and ran over as milk runs over a boiling
pot, and dripped luminously into a tank of light below. It was a cold
blue light, a sort of phosphorescent glow but infinitely brighter, and
from the tanks into which it fell it ran in conduits athwart the
cavern.
Thud, thud, thud, thud, came the sweeping arms of this unintelligible
apparatus, and the light substance hissed and poured. At first the
thing seemed only reasonably large and near to us, and then I saw how
exceedingly little the Selenites upon it seemed, and I realised the
full immensity of cavern and machine. I looked from this tremendous
affair to the faces of the Selenites with a new respect. I stopped, and
Cavor stopped, and stared at this thunderous engine.
“But this is stupendous!” I said. “What can it be for?”
Cavor’s blue-lit face was full of an intelligent respect. “I can’t
dream! Surely these beings— Men could not make a thing like that! Look
at those arms, are they on connecting rods?”
The thick-set Selenite had gone some paces unheeded. He came back and
stood between us and the great machine. I avoided seeing him, because I
guessed somehow that his idea was to beckon us onward. He walked away
in the direction he wished us to go, and turned and came back, and
flicked our faces to attract our attention.
Cavor and I looked at one another.
“Cannot we show him we are interested in the machine?” I said.
“Yes,” said Cavor. “We’ll try that.” He turned to our guide and smiled,
and pointed to the machine, and pointed again, and then to his head,
and then to the machine. By some defect of reasoning he seemed to
imagine that broken English might help these gestures. “Me look ‘im,”
he said, “me think ‘im very much. Yes.”
His behaviour seemed to check the Selenites in their desire for our
progress for a moment. They faced one another, their queer heads moved,
the twittering voices came quick and liquid. Then one of them, a lean,
tall creature, with a sort of mantle added to the puttee in which the
others were dressed, twisted his elephant trunk of a hand about Cavor’s
waist, and pulled him gently to follow our guide, who again went on
ahead. Cavor resisted. “We may just as well begin explaining ourselves
now. They may think we are new animals, a new sort of mooncalf perhaps!
It is most important that we should show an intelligent interest from
the outset.”
He began to shake his head violently. “No, no,” he said, “me not come
on one minute. Me look at ‘im.”
“Isn’t there some geometrical point you might bring in _apropos_ of
that affair?” I suggested, as the Selenites conferred again.
“Possibly a parabolic—” he began.
He yelled loudly, and leaped six feet or more!
One of the four armed moon-men had pricked him with a goad!
I turned on the goad-bearer behind me with a swift threatening gesture,
and he started back. This and Cavor’s sudden shout and leap clearly
astonished all the Selenites. They receded hastily, facing us. For one
of those moments that seem to last for ever, we stood in angry protest,
with a scattered semicircle of these inhuman beings about us.
“He pricked me!” said Cavor, with a catching of the voice.
“I saw him,” I answered.
“Confound it!” I said to the Selenites; “we’re not going to stand that!
What on earth do you take us for?”
I glanced quickly right and left. Far away across the blue wilderness
of cavern I saw a number of other Selenites running towards us; broad
and slender they were, and one with a larger head than the others. The
cavern spread wide and low, and receded in every direction into
darkness. Its roof, I remember, seemed to bulge down as if with the
weight of the vast thickness of rocks that prisoned us. There was no
way out of it—no way out of it. Above, below, in every direction, was
the unknown, and these inhuman creatures, with goads and gestures,
confronting us, and we two unsupported men!
XV.
The Giddy Bridge
Just for a moment that hostile pause endured. I suppose that both we
and the Selenites did some very rapid thinking. My clearest impression
was that there was nothing to put my back against, and that we were
bound to be surrounded and killed. The overwhelming folly of our
presence there loomed over me in black, enormous reproach. Why had I
ever launched myself on this mad, inhuman expedition?
Cavor came to my side and laid his hand on my arm. His pale and
terrified face was ghastly in the blue light.
“We can’t do anything,” he said. “It’s a mistake. They don’t
understand. We must go. As they want us to go.”
I looked down at him, and then at the fresh Selenites who were coming
to help their fellows. “If I had my hands free—”
“It’s no use,” he panted.
“No.”
“We’ll go.”
And he turned about and led the way in the direction that had been
indicated for us.
I followed, trying to look as subdued as possible, and feeling at the
chains about my wrists. My blood was boiling. I noted nothing more of
that cavern, though it seemed to take a long time before we had marched
across it, or if I noted anything I forgot it as I saw it. My thoughts
were concentrated, I think, upon my chains and the Selenites, and
particularly upon the helmeted ones with the goads. At first they
marched parallel with us, and at a respectful distance, but presently
they were overtaken by three others, and then they drew nearer, until
they were within arms length again. I winced like a beaten horse as
they came near to us. The shorter, thicker Selenite marched at first on
our right flank, but presently came in front of us again.
How well the picture of that grouping has bitten into my brain; the
back of Cavor’s downcast head just in front of me, and the dejected
droop of his shoulders, and our guide’s gaping visage, perpetually
jerking about him, and the goad-bearers on either side, watchful, yet
open-mouthed—a blue monochrome. And after all, I _do_ remember one
other thing besides the purely personal affair, which is, that a sort
of gutter came presently across the floor of the cavern, and then ran
along by the side of the path of rock we followed. And it was full of
that same bright blue luminous stuff that flowed out of the great
machine. I walked close beside it, and I can testify it radiated not a
particle of heat. It was brightly shining, and yet it was neither
warmer nor colder than anything else in the cavern.
Clang, clang, clang, we passed right under the thumping levers of
another vast machine, and so came at last to a wide tunnel, in which we
could even hear the pad, pad, of our shoeless feet, and which, save for
the trickling thread of blue to the right of us, was quite unlit. The
shadows made gigantic travesties of our shapes and those of the
Selenites on the irregular wall and roof of the tunnel. Ever and again
crystals in the walls of the tunnel scintillated like gems, ever and
again the tunnel expanded into a stalactitic cavern, or gave off
branches that vanished into darkness.
We seemed to be marching down that tunnel for a long time. “Trickle,
trickle,” went the flowing light very softly, and our footfalls and
their echoes made an irregular paddle, paddle. My mind settled down to
the question of my chains. If I were to slip off one turn _so_, and
then to twist it _so_ ...
If I tried to do it very gradually, would they see I was slipping my
wrist out of the looser turn? If they did, what would they do?
“Bedford,” said Cavor, “it goes down. It keeps on going down.”
His remark roused me from my sullen pre-occupation.
“If they wanted to kill us,” he said, dropping back to come level with
me, “there is no reason why they should not have done it.”
“No,” I admitted, “that’s true.”
“They don’t understand us,” he said, “they think we are merely strange
animals, some wild sort of mooncalf birth, perhaps. It will be only
when they have observed us better that they will begin to think we have
minds—”
“When you trace those geometrical problems,” said I.
“It may be that.”
We tramped on for a space.
“You see,” said Cavor, “these may be Selenites of a lower class.”
“The infernal fools!” said I viciously, glancing at their exasperating
faces.
“If we endure what they do to us—”
“We’ve got to endure it,” said I.
“There may be others less stupid. This is the mere outer fringe of
their world. It must go down and down, cavern, passage, tunnel, down at
last to the sea—hundreds of miles below.”
His words made me think of the mile or so of rock and tunnel that might
be over our heads already. It was like a weight dropping on my
shoulders. “Away from the sun and air,” I said. “Even a mine half a
mile deep is stuffy.”
“This is not, anyhow. It’s probable—Ventilation! The air would blow
from the dark side of the moon to the sunlit, and all the carbonic acid
would well out there and feed those plants. Up this tunnel, for
example, there is quite a breeze. And what a world it must be. The
earnest we have in that shaft, and those machines—”
“And the goad,” I said. “Don’t forget the goad!”
He walked a little in front of me for a time.
“Even that goad—” he said.
“Well?”
“I was angry at the time. But—it was perhaps necessary we should get
on. They have different skins, and probably different nerves. They may
not understand our objection—just as a being from Mars might not like
our earthly habit of nudging.”
“They’d better be careful how they nudge _me_.”
“And about that geometry. After all, their way is a way of
understanding, too. They begin with the elements of life and not of
thought. Food. Compulsion. Pain. They strike at fundamentals.”
“There’s no doubt about _that_,” I said.
He went on to talk of the enormous and wonderful world into which we
were being taken. I realised slowly from his tone, that even now he was
not absolutely in despair at the prospect of going ever deeper into
this inhuman planet-burrow. His mind ran on machines and invention, to
the exclusion of a thousand dark things that beset me. It wasn’t that
he intended to make any use of these things, he simply wanted to know
them.
“After all,” he said, “this is a tremendous occasion. It is the meeting
of two worlds! What are we going to see? Think of what is below us
here.”
“We shan’t see much if the light isn’t better,” I remarked.
“This is only the outer crust. Down below— On this scale— There will be
everything. Do you notice how different they seem one from another? The
story we shall take back!”
“Some rare sort of animal,” I said, “might comfort himself in that way
while they were bringing him to the Zoo.... It doesn’t follow that we
are going to be shown all these things.”
“When they find we have reasonable minds,” said Cavor, “they will want
to learn about the earth. Even if they have no generous emotions, they
will teach in order to learn.... And the things they must know! The
unanticipated things!”
He went on to speculate on the possibility of their knowing things he
had never hoped to learn on earth, speculating in that way, with a raw
wound from that goad already in his skin! Much that he said I forget,
for my attention was drawn to the fact that the tunnel along which we
had been marching was opening out wider and wider. We seemed, from the
feeling of the air, to be going out into a huge space. But how big the
space might really be we could not tell, because it was unlit. Our
little stream of light ran in a dwindling thread and vanished far
ahead. Presently the rocky walls had vanished altogether on either
hand. There was nothing to be seen but the path in front of us and the
trickling hurrying rivulet of blue phosphorescence. The figures of
Cavor and the guiding Selenite marched before me, the sides of their
legs and heads that were towards the rivulet were clear and bright
blue, their darkened sides, now that the reflection of the tunnel wall
no longer lit them, merged indistinguishably in the darkness beyond.
And soon I perceived that we were approaching a declivity of some sort,
because the little blue stream dipped suddenly out of sight.
In another moment, as it seemed, we had reached the edge. The shining
stream gave one meander of hesitation and then rushed over. It fell to
a depth at which the sound of its descent was absolutely lost to us.
Far below was a bluish glow, a sort of blue mist—at an infinite
distance below. And the darkness the stream dropped out of became
utterly void and black, save that a thing like a plank projected from
the edge of the cliff and stretched out and faded and vanished
altogether. There was a warm air blowing up out of the gulf.
For a moment I and Cavor stood as near the edge as we dared, peering
into a blue-tinged profundity. And then our guide was pulling at my
arm.
Then he left me, and walked to the end of that plank and stepped upon
it, looking back. Then when he perceived we watched him, he turned
about and went on along it, walking as surely as though he was on firm
earth. For a moment his form was distinct, then he became a blue blur,
and then vanished into the obscurity. I became aware of some vague
shape looming darkly out of the black.
There was a pause. “Surely!—” said Cavor.
One of the other Selenites walked a few paces out upon the plank, and
turned and looked back at us unconcernedly. The others stood ready to
follow after us. Our guide’s expectant figure reappeared. He was
returning to see why we had not advanced.
“What is that beyond there?” I asked.
“I can’t see.”
“We can’t cross this at any price,” said I.
“I could not go three steps on it,” said Cavor, “even with my hands
free.”
We looked at each other’s drawn faces in blank consternation.
“They can’t know what it is to be giddy!” said Cavor.
“It’s quite impossible for us to walk that plank.”
“I don’t believe they see as we do. I’ve been watching them. I wonder
if they know this is simply blackness for us. How can we make them
understand?”
“Anyhow, we must make them understand.”
I think we said these things with a vague half hope the Selenites might
somehow understand. I knew quite clearly that all that was needed was
an explanation. Then as I saw their faces, I realised that an
explanation was impossible. Just here it was that our resemblances were
not going to bridge our differences. Well, I wasn’t going to walk the
plank, anyhow. I slipped my wrist very quickly out of the coil of chain
that was loose, and then began to twist my wrists in opposite
directions. I was standing nearest to the bridge, and as I did this two
of the Selenites laid hold of me, and pulled me gently towards it.
I shook my head violently. “No go,” I said, “no use. You don’t
understand.”
Another Selenite added his compulsion. I was forced to step forward.
“I’ve got an idea,” said Cavor; but I knew his ideas.
“Look here!” I exclaimed to the Selenites. “Steady on! It’s all very
well for you—”
I sprang round upon my heel. I burst out into curses. For one of the
armed Selenites had stabbed me behind with his goad.
I wrenched my wrists free from the little tentacles that held them. I
turned on the goad-bearer. “Confound you!” I cried. “I’ve warned you of
that. What on earth do you think I’m made of, to stick that into me? If
you touch me again—”
By way of answer he pricked me forthwith.
I heard Cavor’s voice in alarm and entreaty. Even then I think he
wanted to compromise with these creatures. “I say, Bedford,” he cried,
“I know a way!” But the sting of that second stab seemed to set free
some pent-up reserve of energy in my being. Instantly the link of the
wrist-chain snapped, and with it snapped all considerations that had
held us unresisting in the hands of these moon creatures. For that
second, at least, I was mad with fear and anger. I took no thought of
consequences. I hit straight out at the face of the thing with the
goad. The chain was twisted round my fist.
There came another of these beastly surprises of which the moon world
is full.
My mailed hand seemed to go clean through him. He smashed like—like
some softish sort of sweet with liquid in it! He broke right in! He
squelched and splashed. It was like hitting a damp toadstool. The
flimsy body went spinning a dozen yards, and fell with a flabby impact.
I was astonished. I was incredulous that any living thing could be so
flimsy. For an instant I could have believed the whole thing a dream.
Then it had become real and imminent again. Neither Cavor nor the other
Selenites seemed to have done anything from the time when I had turned
about to the time when the dead Selenite hit the ground. Every one
stood back from us two, every one alert. That arrest seemed to last at
least a second after the Selenite was down. Every one must have been
taking the thing in. I seem to remember myself standing with my arm
half retracted, trying also to take it in. “What next?” clamoured my
brain; “what next?” Then in a moment every one was moving!
I perceived we must get our chains loose, and that before we could do
this these Selenites had to be beaten off. I faced towards the group of
the three goad-bearers. Instantly one threw his goad at me. It swished
over my head, and I suppose went flying into the abyss behind.
I leaped right at him with all my might as the goad flew over me. He
turned to run as I jumped, and I bore him to the ground, came down
right upon him, and slipped upon his smashed body and fell. He seemed
to wriggle under my foot.
I came into a sitting position, and on every hand the blue backs of the
Selenites were receding into the darkness. I bent a link by main force
and untwisted the chain that had hampered me about the ankles, and
sprang to my feet, with the chain in my hand. Another goad, flung
javelin-wise, whistled by me, and I made a rush towards the darkness
out of which it had come. Then I turned back towards Cavor, who was
still standing in the light of the rivulet near the gulf convulsively
busy with his wrists, and at the same time jabbering nonsense about his
idea.
“Come on!” I cried.
“My hands!” he answered.
Then, realising that I dared not run back to him, because my
ill-calculated steps might carry me over the edge, he came shuffling
towards me, with his hands held out before him.