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THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON......................................................................................................1

As I sit down to write here amidst the shadows of vineleaves under the blue sky of southern Italy,

it comes to me with a certain quality of astonishment that my participation in these amazing

adventures of Mr. Cavor was, after all, the outcome of the purest accident. It might have been any

one. I fell into these things at a time when I thought myself removed from the slightest possibility of

disturbing experiences. I had gone to Lympne because I had imagined it the most uneventful place

in the world. "Here, at any rate," said I, "I shall find peace and a chance to work!"

And this book is the sequel. So utterly at variance is destiny with all the little plans of men. I may

perhaps mention here that very recently I had come an ugly cropper in certain business

enterprises. Sitting now surrounded by all the circumstances of wealth, there is a luxury in admitting

my extremity. I can admit, even, that to a certain extent my disasters were conceivably of my own

making. It may be there are directions in which I have some capacity, but the conduct of business

operations is not among these. But in those days I was young, and my youth among other

objectionable forms took that of a pride in my capacity for affairs. I am young still in years, but the

things that have happened to me have rubbed something of the youth from my mind. Whether they

It is scarcely necessary to go into the details of the speculations that landed me at Lympne, in Kent.

Nowadays even about business transactions there is a strong spice of adventure. I took risks. In

these things there is invariably a certain amount of give and take, and it fell to me finally to do the

giving. Reluctantly enough. Even when I had got out of everything, one cantankerous creditor saw

fit to be malignant. Perhaps you have met that flaming sense of outraged virtue, or perhaps you

have only felt it. He ran me hard. It seemed to me, at last, that there was nothing for it but to write a

play, unless I wanted to drudge for my living as a clerk. I have a certain imagination, and luxurious

tastes, and I meant to make a vigorous fight for it before that fate overtook me. In addition to my

belief in my powers as a business man, I had always in those days had an idea that I was equal to

writing a very good play. It is not, I believe, a very uncommon persuasion. I knew there is nothing a

man can do outside legitimate business transactions that has such opulent possibilities, and very

probably that biased my opinion. I had, indeed, got into the habit of regarding this unwritten drama

as a convenient little reserve put by for a rainy day. That rainy day had come, and I set to work.

I soon discovered that writing a play was a longer business than I had supposed; at first I had

reckoned ten days for it, and it was to have a piedaterre while it was in hand that I came to

Lympne. I reckoned myself lucky in getting that little bungalow. I got it on a three years' agreement.

I put in a few sticks of furniture, and while the play was in hand I did my own cooking. My cooking

would have shocked Mrs. Bond. And yet, you know, it had flavour. I had a coffeepot, a saucepan

for eggs, and one for potatoes, and a fryingpan for sausages and bacon such was the simple

apparatus of my comfort. One cannot always be magnificent, but simplicity is always a possible

alternative. For the rest I laid in an eighteengallon cask of beer on credit, and a trustful baker

came each day. It was not, perhaps, in the style of Sybaris, but I have had worse times. I was a

little sorry for the baker, who was a very decent man indeed, but even for him I hoped.

Certainly if any one wants solitude, the place is Lympne. It is in the clay part of Kent, and my

bungalow stood on the edge of an old sea cliff and stared across the flats of Romney Marsh at the

sea. In very wet weather the place is almost inaccessible, and I have heard that at times the

postman used to traverse the more succulent portions of his route with boards upon his feet. I

never saw him doing so, but I can quite imagine it. Outside the doors of the few cottages and

houses that make up the present village big birch besoms are stuck, to wipe off the worst of the

clay, which will give some idea of the texture of the district. I doubt if the place would be there at all,

if it were not a fading memory of things gone for ever. It was the big port of England in Roman

times, Portus Lemanus, and now the sea is four miles away. All down the steep hill are boulders

and masses of Roman brickwork, and from it old Watling Street, still paved in places, starts like an

arrow to the north. I used to stand on the hill and think of it all, the galleys and legions, the captives

and officials, the women and traders, the speculators like myself, all the swarm and tumult that

came clanking in and out of the harbour. And now just a few lumps of rubble on a grassy slope, and

a sheep or two and me And where the port had been were the levels of the marsh, sweeping

round in a broad curve to distant Jungeness, and dotted here and there with tree clumps and the

church towers of old medical towns that are following Lemanus now towards extinction.

That outlook on the marsh was, indeed, one of the finest views I have ever seen. I suppose

Jungeness was fifteen miles away; it lay like a raft on the sea, and farther westward were the hills

by Hastings under the setting sun. Sometimes they hung close and clear, sometimes they were

faded and low, and often the drift of the weather took them clean out of sight. And all the nearer

The window at which I worked looked over the skyline of this crest, and it was from this window that

I first set eyes on Cavor. It was just as I was struggling with my scenario, holding down my mind to

The sun had set, the sky was a vivid tranquillity of green and yellow, and against that he came out

He was a short, roundbodied, thinlegged little man, with a jerky quality in his motions; he had

seen fit to clothe his extraordinary mind in a cricket cap, an overcoat, and cycling knickerbockers

and stockings. Why he did so I do not know, for he never cycled and he never played cricket. It was

a fortuitous concurrence of garments, arising I know not how. He gesticulated with his hands and

arms, and jerked his head about and buzzed. He buzzed like something electric. You never heard

such buzzing. And ever and again he cleared his throat with a most extraordinary noise.

There had been rain, and that spasmodic walk of his was enhanced by the extreme slipperiness of

the footpath. Exactly as he came against the sun he stopped, pulled out a watch, hesitated. Then

with a sort of convulsive gesture he turned and retreated with every manifestation of haste, no

longer gesticulating, but going with ample strides that showed the relatively large size of his feet

they were, I remember, grotesquely exaggerated in size by adhesive clay to the best possible

This occurred on the first day of my sojourn, when my playwriting energy was at its height and I

regarded the incident simply as an annoying distraction the waste of five minutes. I returned to

my scenario. But when next evening the apparition was repeated with remarkable precision, and

again the next evening, and indeed every evening when rain was not falling, concentration upon

the scenario became a considerable effort. "Confound the man," I said, "one would think he was

learning to be a marionette!" and for several evenings I cursed him pretty heartily. Then my

annoyance gave way to amazement and curiosity. Why on earth should a man do this thing? On

the fourteenth evening I could stand it no longer, and so soon as he appeared I opened the french

window, crossed the verandah, and directed myself to the point where he invariably stopped.

He had his watch out as I came up to him. He had a chubby, rubicund face with reddish brown

eyes previously I had seen him only against the light. "One moment, sir," said I as he turned. He

stared. "One moment," he said, "certainly. Or if you wish to speak to me for longer, and it is not

"No. I've watched you thirteen nights, and not once have you looked at the sunset not once."

"Well, I enjoy the sunlight the atmosphere I go along this path, through that gate " he jerked

"You don't. You never have been. It's all nonsense. There isn't a way. Tonight for instance"

"Oh! tonight! Let me see. Ah! I just glanced at my watch, saw that I had already been out just

three minutes over the precise halfhour, decided there was not time to go round, turned "

He looked at me reflected. "Perhaps I do, now I come to think of it. But what was it you wanted to

"Like this " I imitated his buzzing noise. He looked at me, and it was evident the buzzing

He stopped dead. He regarded me gravely. " Can it be," he said, " that I have formed a Habit ? "

He pulled down his lower lip between finger and thumb. He regarded a puddle at his feet.

"My mind is much occupied," he said. "And you want to know why! Well, sir, I can assure you that

not only do I not know why I do these things, but I did not even know I did them. Come to think, it is

just as you say; I never have been beyond that field. ... And these things annoy you? "

For some reason I was beginning to relent towards him. "Not annoy, I said. "But imagine yourself

"Ah!" he said, "of course," and meditated. His expression became so eloquent of distress, that I

relented still more. After all, there is a touch of aggression in demanding of a man you don't know

"But not if it puts you out. After all, I had no business it's something of a liberty."

"Not at all, sir," he said, "not at all. I am greatly indebted to you. I should guard myself against these

"I am greatly obliged to you. In fact, I know I am getting absurdly absentminded. You are quite

justified, sir perfectly justified. Indeed, I am indebted to you. The thing shall end. And now, sir, I

We regarded each other for a moment. I raised my hat and wished him a good evening. He

At the stile I looked back at his receding figure. His bearing had changed remarkably, he seemed

limp, shrunken. The contrast with his former gesticulating, zuzzoing self took me in some absurd

way as pathetic. I watched him out of sight. Then wishing very heartily I had kept to my own

The next evening I saw nothing of him, nor the next. But he was very much in my mind, and it had

occurred to me that as a sentimental comic character he might serve a useful purpose in the

For a time I was puzzled to think what had brought him. He made indifferent conversation in the

most formal way, then abruptly he came to business. He wanted to buy me out of my bungalow.

"You see," he said, "I don't blame you in the least, but you've destroyed a habit, and it disorganises

my day. I've walked past here for years years. No doubt I've hummed. ... You've made all that

" No. There is no other direction. This is the only one. I've inquired. And now every afternoon at

"It's vital. You see, I'm I'm an investigator I am engaged in a scientific research. I live " he

paused and seemed to think. "Just over there," he said, and pointed suddenly dangerously near my

eye. "The house with white chimneys you see just over the trees. And my circumstances are

abnormal abnormal. I am on the point of completing one of the most important demonstrations

I can assure you one of the most important demonstrations that have ever been made. It requires

constant thought, constant mental ease and activity. And the afternoon was my brightest time!

"It would be all different. I should be selfconscious. I should think of you at your play watching

I meditated. Naturally, I wanted to think the matter over thoroughly before anything decisive was

said. I was generally ready enough for business in those days, and selling always attracted me; but

in the first place it was not my bungalow, and even if I sold it to him at a good price I might get

inconvenienced in the delivery of goods if the current owner got wind of the transaction, and in the

second I was, well un discharged. It was clearly a business that required delicate handling.

Moreover, the possibility of his being in pursuit of some valuable invention also interested me. It

occurred to me that I would like to know more of this research, not with any dishonest intention, but

simply with an idea that to know what it was would be a relief from playwriting. I threw out feelers.

He was quite willing to supply information. Indeed, once he was fairly under way the conversation

became a monologue. He talked like a man long pent up, who has had it over with himself again

and again. He talked for nearly an hour, and I must confess I found it a pretty stiff bit of listening.

But through it all there was the undertone of satisfaction one feels when one is neglecting work one

has set oneself. During that first interview I gathered very little of the drift of his work. Half his words

were technicalities entirely strange to me, and he illustrated one or two points with what he was

pleased to call elementary mathematics, computing on an envelope with a copyingink pencil, in a

manner that made it hard even to seem to understand. "Yes," I said, "yes. Go on!" Nevertheless I

made out enough to convince me that he was no mere crank playing at discoveries. In spite of his

cranklike appearance there was a force about him that made that impossible. Whatever it was, it

was a thing with mechanical possibilities. He told me of a workshed he had, and of three

assistants originally jobbing carpenters whom he had trained. Now, from the workshed to the

patent office is clearly only one step. He invited me to see those things. I accepted readily, and took

care, by a remark or so, to underline that. The proposed transfer of the bungalow remained very

At last he rose to depart, with an apology for the length of his call. Talking over his work was, he

said, a pleasure enjoyed only too rarely. It was not often he found such an intelligent listener as

"So much pettiness," he explained; "so much intrigue! And really, when one has an idea a novel,

I am a man who believes in impulses. I made what was perhaps a rash proposition. But you must

remember, that I had been alone, playwriting in Lympne, for fourteen days, and my compunction

for his ruined walk still hung about me. "Why not," said I, "make this your new habit? In the place of

the one I spoilt? At least, until we can settle about the bungalow. What you want is to turn over your

work in your mind. That you have always done during your afternoon walk. Unfortunately that's over

you can't get things back as they were. But why not come and talk about your work to me; use

me as a sort of wall against which you may throw your thoughts and catch them again ? It's certain

I stopped. He was considering. Evidently the thing, attracted him. "But I'm afraid I should bore you,"

" Of course it would be a great help to me. Nothing clears up one's ideas so much as explaining

" There is no rest like change of occupation," I said, with profound conviction.

The affair was over. On my verandah steps he turned. "I am already greatly indebted to you," he

" You have completely cured me of that ridiculous habit of humming," he explained.

Immediately the train of thought that our conversation had suggested must have resumed its sway.

His arms began to wave in their former fashion. The faint echo of "zuzzoo" came back to me on the

He came the next day, and again the next day after that, and delivered two lectures on physics to

our mutual satisfaction. He talked with an air of being extremely lucid about the "ether" and "tubes

of force," and " gravitational potential," and things like that, and I sat in my other foldingchair and

said, " Yes," " Go on," " I follow you," to keep him going. It was tremendously difficult stuff, but I do

not thing he ever suspected how much I did not understand him. There were moments when I

doubted whether I was well employed, but at any rate I was resting from that confounded play. Now

and then things gleamed on me clearly for a space, only to vanish just when I thought I had hold of

them. Sometimes my attention failed altogether, and I would give it up and sit and stare at him,

wondering whether, after all, it would not be better to use him as a central figure in a good farce

and let all this other stuff slide. And then, perhaps, I would catch on again for a bit.

At the earliest opportunity I went to see his house It was large and carelessly furnished; there were

no servants other than his three assistants, and his dietary and private life were characterised by a

philosophical simplicity. He was a waterdrinker, a vegetarian, and all those logical disciplinary

things. But the sight of his equipment settled many doubts. It looked like business from cellar to

attic an amazing little place to find in an outoftheway village. The groundfloor rooms

contained benches and apparatus, the bakehouse and scullery boiler had developed into

respectable furnaces, dynamos occupied the cellar, and there was a gasometer in the garden. He

showed it to me with all the confiding zest of a man who has been living too much alone. His

seclusion was overflowing now in an excess of confidence, and I had the good luck to be the

The three assistants were creditable specimens of the class of" handymen " from which they

came. Conscientious if unintelligent, strong, civil, and willing. One, Spargus, who did the cooking

and all the metal work, had been a sailor; a second, Gibbs, was a joiner; and the third was an

exjobbing gardener, and now general assistant. They were the merest labourers. All the intelligent

work was done by Cavor. Theirs was the darkest ignorance compared even with my muddled

And now, as to the nature of these inquiries. Here, unhappily, comes a grave difficulty. I am no

scientific expert, and if I were to attempt to set forth in the highly scientific language of Mr. Cavor

the aim to which his experiments tended, I am afraid I should confuse not only the reader but

myself, and almost certainly I should make some blunder that would bring upon me the mockery of

every uptodate student of mathematical physics in the country. The best thing I can do therefore

is, I think to give my impressions in my own inexact language, without any attempt to wear a

The object of Mr. Cavor's search was a substance that should be "opaque " he used some other

word I have forgotten, but "opaque" conveys the idea to "all forms of radiant energy." "Radiant

energy," he made me understand, was anything like light or heat, or those Rontgen Rays there was

so much talk about a year or so ago, or the electric waves of Marconi, or gravitation. All these

things, he said, radiate out from centres, and act on bodies at a distance, whence comes the term

"radiant energy." Now almost all substances are opaque to some form or other of radiant energy.

Glass, for example, is transparent to light, but much less so to heat, so that it is useful as a

firescreen; and alum is transparent to light, but blocks heat completely. A solution of iodine in

carbon bisulphide, on the other hand, completely blocks light, but is quite transparent to heat. It will

hide a fire from you, but permit all its warmth to reach you. Metals are not only opaque to light and

heat, but also to electrical energy, which passes through both iodine solution and glass almost as

Now all known substances are "transparent" to gravitation. You can use screens of various sorts to

cut off the light or heat, or electrical influence of the sun, or the warmth of the earth from anything;

you can screen things by sheets of metal from Marconi's rays, but nothing will cut off the

gravitational attraction of the sun or the gravitational attraction of the earth. Yet why there should be

nothing is hard to say. Cavor did not see why such a substance should not exist, and certainly I

could not tell him. I had never thought of such a possibility before. He showed me by calculations

on paper, which Lord Kelvin, no doubt, or Professor Lodge, or Professor Karl Pearson, or any of

those great scientific people might have understood, but which simply reduced me to a hopeless

muddle, that not only was such a substance possible, but that it must satisfy certain conditions. It

was an amazing piece of reasoning. Much as it amazed and exercised me at the time, it would be

impossible to reproduce it here. "Yes," I said to it all, "yes; go on!" Suffice it for this story that he

believed he might be able to manufacture this possible substance opaque to gravitation out of a

complicated alloy of metals and something new a new element, I fancy called, I believe, helium,

which was sent to him from London in sealed stone jars. Doubt has been thrown upon this detail,

but I am almost certain it was helium he had sent him in sealed stone jars. It was certainly

Any one with the merest germ of an imagination will understand the extraordinary possibilities of

such a substance, and will sympathise a little with the emotion I felt as this understanding emerged

from the haze of abstruse phrases in which Cavor expressed himself. Comic relief in a play indeed!

It was some time before I would believe that I had interpreted him aright, and I was very careful not

to ask questions that would have enabled him to gauge the profundity of misunderstanding into

which he dropped his daily exposition. But no one reading the story of it here will sympathise fully,

because from my barren narrative it will be impossible to gather the strength of my conviction that

I do not recall that I gave my play an hour's consecutive work at any time after my visit to his house.

My imagination had other things to do. There seemed no limit to the possibilities of the stuff;

whichever way I tried I came on miracles and revolutions. For example, if one wanted to lift a

weight, however enormous, one had only to get a sheet of this substance beneath it, and one might

lift it with a straw My first natural impulse was to apply this principle to guns and ironclads, and all

the material and methods of war, and from that to shipping, locomotion, building, every conceivable

form of human industry. The chance that had brought me into the very birthchamber of this new

time it was an epoch, no less was one of those chances that come once in a thousand years.

The thing unrolled, it expanded and expanded. Among other things I saw in it my redemption as a

business man. I saw a parent company, and daughter companies, applications to right of us,

applications to left, rings and trusts, privileges, and concessions spreading and spreading, until one

I took my line straight away. I knew I was staking everything, but I jumped there and then.

"We're on absolutely the biggest thing that has ever been invented," I said, and put the accent on

"we." "If you want to keep me out of this, you'll have to do it with a gun. I'm coming down to be your

He seemed surprised at my enthusiasm, but not a bit suspicious or hostile. Rather, he was

selfdepreciatory. He looked at me doubtfully. "But do you really think ?" he said. "And your play!

" It's vanished!" I cried. "My dear sir, don't you see what you've got? Don't you see what you're

That was merely a rhetorical turn, but positively, he didn't. At first I could not believe it. He had not

had the beginning of the inkling of an idea. This astonishing little man had been working on purely

theoretical grounds the whole time; When he said it was "the most important" research the world

had ever seen, he simply meant it squared up so many theories, settled so much that was in doubt;

he had troubled no more about the application of the stuff he was going to turn out than if he had

been a machine that makes guns. This was a possible substance, and he was going to make it!

Beyond that, he was childish; If he made it, it would go down to posterity as Cavorite or Cavorine,

and he would be made an F.R.S., and his portrait given away as a scientific worthy with Nature,

and things like that. And that was all he saw! He would have dropped this bombshell into the world

as though he had discovered a new species of gnat, if it had not happened that I had come along.

And there it would have lain and fizzled, like one or two other little things these scientific people

When I realised this, it was I did the talking, and Cavor who said, "Go on!" I jumped up. I paced the

room, gesticulating like a boy of twenty. I tried to make him understand his duties and

responsibilities in the matter our duties and responsibilities in the matter. I assured him we might

make wealth enough to work any sort of social revolution we fancied, we might own and order the

whole world. I told him of companies and patents, and the case for secret processes. All these

things seemed to take him much as his mathematics had taken me. A look of perplexity came into

his ruddy little face. He stammered something about indifference to wealth, but I brushed all that

aside. He had got to be rich, and it was no good his stammering. I gave him to understand the sort

of man I was, and that I had had very considerable business experience. I did not tell him I was an

undischarged bankrupt at the time, because that was temporary, but I think I reconciled my evident

poverty with my financial claims. And quite insensibly, in the way such projects grow, the

understanding of a Cavorite monopoly grew up between us. He was to make the stuff, and I was to

His idea was that the profits I spoke of might go to endow research, but that, of course, was a

matter we had to settle later. "That's all right," I shouted, " that's all right." The great point, as I

"Here is a substance," I cried, "no home, no factory, no fortress, no ship can dare to be without

more universally applicable even than a patent medicine. There isn't a solitary aspect of it, not one

of its ten thousand possible uses that will not make us rich, Cavor, beyond the dreams of avarice! "

"No!" he said. "I begin to see. It's extraordinary how one gets new points of view by talking over

" I suppose no one," he said, "is absolutely averse to enormous wealth. Of course there is one thing

" It is just possible, you know, that we may not be able to make it after all! It may be one of those

things that are a theoretical possibility, but a practical absurdity. Or when we make it, there may be

But Cavor's fears were groundless, so far as the actual making was concerned. On the 14th of

Oddly enough, it was made at last by accident, when Mr. Cavor least expected it. He had fused

together a number of metals and certain other things I wish I knew the particulars now ! and he

intended to leave the mixture a week and then allow it to cool slowly. Unless he had miscalculated,

the last stage in the combination would occur when the stuff sank to a temperature of 60 Fahr. But

it chanced that, unknown to Cavor, dissension had arisen about the furnace tending. Gibbs, who

had previously seen to this, had suddenly attempted to shift it to the man who had been a

gardener, on the score that coal was soil, being dug, and therefore could not possibly fall within the

province of a joiner; the man who had been a jobbing gardener alleged, however, that coal was a

metallic or orelike substance, let alone that he was cook. But Spargus insisted on Gibbs doing the

coaling, seeing that he was a joiner and that coal is notoriously fossil wood. Consequently Gibbs

ceased to replenish the furnace, and no one else did so, and Cavor was too much immersed in

certain interesting problems concerning a Cavorite flying machine (neglecting the resistance of the

air and one or two other points) to perceive that anything was wrong. And the premature birth of his

invention took place just as he was coming across the field to my bungalow for our afternoon talk

I remember the occasion with extreme vividness. The water was boiling, and everything was

prepared, and the sound of his "zuzzoo" had brought me out upon the verandah. His active little

figure was black against the autumnal sunset, and to the right the chimneys of his house just rose

above a gloriously tinted group of trees. Remoter rose the Wealden Hills, faint and blue, while to

The chimneys jerked heavenward, smashing into a string of bricks as they rose, and the roof and a

miscellany of furniture followed. Then overtaking them came a huge white flame. The trees about

the building swayed and whirled and tore themselves to pieces, that sprang towards the flare. My

ears were smitten with a clap of thunder that left me deaf on one side for life, and all about me

I took three steps from the verandah towards Cavor's house, and even as I did so came the wind.

Instantly my coat tails were over my head, and I was progressing in great leaps and bounds, and

quite against my will, towards him. In the same moment the discoverer was seized, whirled about,

and flew through the screaming air. I saw one of my chimney pots hit the ground within six yards of

me, leap a score of feet, and so hurry in great strides towards the focus of the disturbance. Cavor,

kicking and flapping, came down again, rolled over and over on the ground for a space, struggled

up and was lifted and borne forward at an enormous velocity, vanishing at last among the

A mass of smoke and ashes, and a square of bluish shining substance rushed up towards the

zenith. A large fragment of fencing came sailing past me, dropped edgeways, hit the ground and

fell flat, and then the worst was over. The aerial commotion fell swiftly until it was a mere strong

gale, and 1 became once more aware that I had breath and feet. By leaning back against the wind I

In that instant the whole face of the world had changed. The tranquil sunset had vanished, the sky

was dark with scurrying clouds, everything was flattened and swaying with the gale. I glanced back

to see if my bungalow was still in a general way standing, then staggered forwards towards the

trees amongst which Cavor had vanished, and through whose tall and leafdenuded branches

I entered the copse, dashing from one tree to another and clinging to them, and for a space I

sought him in vain. Then amidst a heap of smashed branches and fencing that had banked itself

against a portion of his garden wall I perceived something stir. I made a run for this, but before I

reached it a brown object separated itself, rose on two muddy legs, and protruded two drooping,

bleeding hands. Some tattered ends of garment fluttered out from its middle portion and streamed

For a moment I did not recognise this earthy lump, and then I saw that it was Cavor, caked in the

mud in which he had rolled. He leant forward against the wind, rubbing the dirt from his eyes and

He extended a muddy lump of hand, and staggered a pace towards me. His face worked with

emotion, little lumps of mud kept falling from it. He looked as damaged and pitiful as any living

A gust of wind blew his words away. I understood him to say that it wasn't an explosion at all. The

"Try and get back to my bungalow," I bawled in his ear. He did not hear me, and shouted

something about "three martyrs science," and also something about "not much good." At the time

he laboured under the impression that his three attendants had perished in the whirlwind. Happily

this was incorrect. Directly he had left for my bungalow they had gone. Off to the publichouse in

I repeated my suggestion of getting back to my bungalow, and this time he understood. We clung

arminarm and started, and managed at last to reach the shelter of as much roof as was left to

me. For a space we sat in armchairs and panted. All the windows were broken, and the lighter

articles of furniture were in great disorder, but no irrevocable damage was done. Happily the

kitchen door had stood the pressure upon it, so that all my crockery and cooking materials had

survived. The oil stove was still burning, and I put on the water to boil again for tea. And that

"Quite correct," he insisted; "quite correct. I've done it, and it's all right."

"But", I protested. "All right! Why, there can't be a rick standing, or a fence or a thatched roof

"It's all right really. I didn't, of course, foresee this little upset. My mind was preoccupied with

another problem, and I'm apt to disregard these practical side issues. But it's all right "

"My dear sir," I cried, " don't you see you've done thousands of pounds' worth of damage?"

"There, I throw myself on your discretion. I'm not a practical man, of course, but don't you think they

"It was not an explosion. It's perfectly simple. Only, as I say, I'm apt to overlook these little things.

Its that zuzzoo business on a larger scale. Inadvertently I made this substance of mine, this

He paused. "You are quite clear that the stuff is opaque to gravitation, that it cuts off things from

"Well, so soon as it reached a temperature of 60 Fahr, and the process of its manufacture was

complete, the air above it, the portions of roof and ceiling and floor above it ceased to have weight.

I suppose you know everybody knows nowadays that, as a usual thing, the air has weight, that

it presses on everything at the surface of the earth, presses in all directions, with a pressure of

"I know that too," he remarked. " Only this shows you how useless knowledge is unless you apply

it. You see, over our Cavorite this ceased to be the case, the air there ceased to exert any

pressure, and the air round it and not over the Cavorite was execerting a pressure of fourteen

pounds and a half to the square in upon this suddenly weightless air. Ah! you begin to see! The air

all about the Cavorite crushed in upon the air above it with irresistible force. The air above th

Cavorite was forced upward violently, the air that rushed in to replace it immediately lost weight,

ceased to exert any pressure, followed suit, blew the ceiling through and the roof off. ...

"You perceive," he said, "it formed a sort of atmospheric fountain, a kind of chimney in the

atmosphere. And if the Cavorite itself hadn't been loose and so got sucked up the chimney, does it

I thought. "I suppose," I said, "the air would be rushing up and up over that infernal piece of stuff

"Spouting into space! Good heavens! Why, it would have squirted all the atmosphere of the earth

away! It would have robbed the world of air! It would have been the death of all mankind! That little

"Not exactly into space," said Cavor, "but as bad practically. It would have whipped the air off the

world as one peels a banana, and flung it thousands of miles. It would have dropped back again, of

course but on an asphyxiated world! From our point of view very little better than if it never came

I stared. As yet I was too amazed to realise how all my expectations had been upset. "What do you

"In the first place if I may borrow a garden trowel I will remove some of this earth with which I am

encased, and then if I may avail myself of your domestic conveniences I will have a bath. This

done, we will converse more at leisure. It will be wise, I think " he laid a muddy hand on my arm"

if nothing were said of this affair beyond ourselves. I know I have caused great damage probably

even dwellinghouses may be ruined here and there upon the countryside. But on the other hand,

I cannot possibly pay for the damage I have done, and if the real cause of this is published, it will

lead only to heartburning and the obstruction of my work. One cannot foresee everything, you

know, and I cannot consent for one moment to add the burthen of practical considerations to my

theorising. Later on, when you have come in with your practical mind, and Cavorite is floated

floated is the word, isn't it? and it has realised all you anticipate for it, we may set matters right

with these persons. But not now not now. If no other explanation is offered, people, in the present

unsatisfactory state of meteorological science, will ascribe all this to a cyclone; there might be a

public subscription, and as my house has collapsed and been burnt, I should in that case receive a

considerable share in the compensation, which would be extremely helpful to the prosecution of our

researches. But if it is known that I caused this, there will be no public subscription, and everybody

will be put out. Practically I should never get a chance of working in peace again. My three

assistants may or may not have perished. That is a detail. If they have, it is no great loss; they were

more zealous than able, and this premature event must be largely due to their joint neglect of the

furnace. If they have not perished, I doubt if they have the intelligence to explain the affair. They will

accept the cyclone story. And if during the temporary unfitness of my house for occupation, I may

"Perhaps," said I, rising to my feet, " we had better begin by looking for a trowel," and I led the way

And while he was having his bath I considered the entire question alone. It was clear there were

drawbacks to Mr. Cavor's society I had not foreseen. The absentmindedness that had just escaped

depopulating the terrestrial globe, might at any moment result in some other grave inconvenience.

On the other hand I was young, my affairs were in a mess, and I was in just the mood for reckless

adventure with a chance of something good at the end of it. I had quite settled in my mind that I

was to have half at least in that aspect of the affair. Fortunately I held my bungalow, as I have

already explained, on a threeyear agreement, without being responsible for repairs; and my

furniture, such as there was of it, had been hastily purchased, was unpaid for, insured, and

altogether devoid of associations. In the end I decided to keep on with him, and see the business

Certainly the aspect of things had changed very greatly. I no longer doubted at all the enormous

possibilities of the substance, but I began to have doubts about the guncarriage and the patent

boots. We set to work at once to reconstruct his laboratory and proceed with our experiments.

Cavor talked more on my level than he had ever done before, when it came to the question of how

"Of course we must make it again," he said, with a sort of glee I had not expected in him, "of course

we must make it again. We have caught a Tartar, perhaps, but we have left the theoretical behind

us for good and all. If we can possibly avoid wrecking this little planet of ours, we will. But there

must be risks! There must be. In experimental work there always are. And here, as a practical man,

you must come in. For my own part it seems to me we might make it edgeways, perhaps, and very

thin. Yet I don't know. I have a certain dim perception of another method. I can hardly explain it yet.

But curiously enough it came into my mind, while I was rolling over and over in the mud before the

wind, and very doubtful how I the whole adventure was to end, as being absolutely the thing I ought

Even with my aid we found some little difficulty, and meanwhile we kept at work restoring the

laboratory. There was plenty to do before it became absolutely necessary to decide upon the

precise form and method of our second attempt. Our only hitch was the strike of the three

labourers, who objected to my activity as a foreman. But that matter we compromised after two

I REMEMBER the occasion very distinctly when Cavor told me of his idea of the sphere. He had

had intimations of it before, but at the time it seemed to come to him in a rush. We were returning

to the bungalow for tea, and on the way he fell humming. Suddenly he shouted, "That's it! That

I saw I was out of it, and for a time I let him talk in his own fashion. I hadn't the ghost of an idea

"It's like this," he said. "Last time I ran this stuff that cuts things off from gravitation into a flat tank

with an overlap that held it down. And directly it had cooled and the manufacture was completed all

that uproar happened, nothing above it weighed anything, the air went squirting up, the house

squirted up, and if the stuff itself hadn't squirted up too, I don't Know what would have happened!

"Imagine a sphere," he explained, "large enough to hold two people and their luggage. It will be

made of steel lined with thick glass; it will contain a proper store of solidified air, concentrated food,

water distilling apparatus, and so forth. And enamelled, as it were, on the outer steel "

"That's perfectly easy. An airtight manhole is all that is needed. That, of course, will have to be a

little complicated; there will have to be a valve, so that things may be thrown out, if necessary,

"I begin to see," I said slowly. "And you could get in and screw yourself up while the Cavorite was

warm, and as soon as it cooled it would become impervious to gravitation, and off you would fly "

"You would go off in a straight line " I stopped abruptly. "What is to prevent the thing travelling in

a straight line into space for ever?" I asked. "You're not safe to get anywhere, and if you do how

"I've just thought of that," said Cavor. "That's what I meant when I said the thing is finished. The

inner glass sphere can be airtight, and, except for the manhole, continuous, and the steel sphere

can be made in sections, each section capable of rolling up after the fashion of a roller blind. These

can easily be worked by springs, and released and checked by electricity conveyed by platinum

wires fused through the glass. All that is merely a question of detail. So you see, that except for the

thickness of the blind rollers, the Cavorite exterior of the sphere will consist of windows or blinds,

whichever you like to call them. Well, when all these windows or blinds are shut, no light, no heat,

no gravitation, no radiant energy of any sort will get at the inside of the sphere, it will fly on through

space in a straight line, as you say. But open a window, imagine one of the windows open. Then at

"Practically we shall be able to tack about in space just as we wish. Get attracted by this and that."

"I don't quite see what we shall do it for! It's really only jumping off the world and back again."

"It's a fine idea," I said, "but it strikes me as a large order all the same. The moon! I'd much rather

"Why not apply that idea of spring blinds Cavorite blinds in strong steel cases to lifting

"It wouldn't work," he insisted. "After all, to go into outer space is not so much worse, if at all, than a

"Not business men. And besides, they get paid for polar expeditions. And if anything goes wrong

there are relief parties. But this it's just firing ourselves off the world for nothing."

"Cost of carriage," I said. "You know you're not a practical man. The moon's a quarter of a million

"It seems to me it wouldn't cost much to cart any weight anywhere if you packed it in a Cavorite

"There's Mars clear atmosphere, novel surroundings, exhilarating sense of lightness. It might be

"Seems as though you might run it as a sanatorium. By the way, how far is Mars? "

"Two hundred million miles at present," said Cavor airily; "and you go close by the sun."

My imagination was picking itself up again. "After all," I said, there's something in these things.

An extraordinary possibility came rushing into my mind. Suddenly I saw, as in a vision, the whole

solar system threaded with Cavorite liners and spheres deluxe. "Rights of preemption," came

floating into my head planetary rights of preemption. I recalled the old Spanish monopoly in

American gold. It wasn't as though it was just this planet or that it was all of them. I stared at

Cavor's rubicund face, and suddenly my imagination was leaping and dancing. I stood up, I walked

"I'm beginning to take it in," I said; "I'm beginning to take it in." The transition from doubt to

enthusiasm seemed to take scarcely any time at all. "But this is tremendous!" I cried. "This is

Once the chill of my opposition was removed, his own pentup excitement had play. He too got up

and paced. He too gesticulated and shouted. We behaved like men inspired. We were men

"We'll settle all that!" he said in answer to some incidental difficulty that had pulled me up. "We'll

"We'll start them now," I responded, and we hurried off to the laboratory to begin upon this work

I was like a child in Wonderland all that night. The dawn found us both still at work we kept our

electric light going heedless of the day. I remember now exactly how these drawings looked. I

shaded and tinted while Cavor drew smudged and hastemarked they were in every line, but

wonderfully correct. We got out the orders for the steel blinds and frames we needed from that

night's work, and the glass sphere was designed within a week. We gave up our afternoon

conversations and our old routine altogether. We worked, and we slept and ate when we could

work no longer for hunger and fatigue. Our enthusiasm infected even our three men, though they

had no idea what the sphere was for. Through those days the man Gibbs gave up walking, and

And it grew the sphere. December passed, January I spent a day with a broom sweeping a

path through the snow from bungalow to laboratory February, March. By the end of March the

completion was in sight. In January had come a team of horses, a huge packingcase; we had our

thick glass sphere now ready, and in position under the crane we had rigged to sling it into the steel

shell. All the bars and blinds of the steel shell it was not really a spherical shell, but polyhedral,

with a roller blind to each facet had arrived by February, and the lower half was bolted together.

The Cavorite was half made by March, the metallic paste had gone through two of the stages in its

manufacture, and we had plastered quite half of it on to the steel bars ad. blinds. It was astonishing

how closely we kept to the lines of Cavor's first inspiration in working out the scheme. When the

bolting together of the sphere was finished, he proposed to remove the rough roof of the temporary

laboratory in which the work was done, and build a furnace about it. So the last stage of Cavorite

making, in which the paste is heated to a dull red glow in a stream of helium, would be

And then we had to discuss and decide what provisions we were to take compressed foods,

concentrated essences, steel cylinders containing reserve oxygen, an arrangement for removing

carbonic acid and waste from the air and restoring oxygen by means of sodium peroxide, water

condensers, and so forth. I remember the little heap they made in the corner tins, and rolls, and

It was a strenuous time, with little chance of thinking. But one day, when we were drawing near the

end, an odd mood came over me. I had been bricking up the furnace all the morning, and I sat

"The moon," I reflected. But what do you expect? I thought the moon was a dead world."

And I did, and insured myself a night of insomnia. I don't think I have ever had such a night. I had

some bad times before my business collapse, but the very worst of those was sweet slumber

compared to this infinity of aching wakefulness. I was suddenly in the most enormous funk at the

I do not remember before that night thinking at all of the risks we were running. Now they came like

that array of spectres that once beleaguered Prague, and camped around me. The strangeness of

what we were about to do, the unearthliness of it, overwhelmed me. I was like a man awakened out

of pleasant dreams to the most horrible surroundings. I lay, eyes wide open, and the sphere

seemed to get more flimsy and feeble, and Cavor more unreal and fantastic, and the whole

I got out of bed and wandered about. I sat at the window and stared at the immensity of space.

Between the stars was the void, the unfathomable darkness! I tried to recall the fragmentary

knowledge of astronomy I had gained in my irregular reading, but it was all too vague to furnish any

idea of the things we might expect. At last I got back to bed and snatched some moments of sleep

moments of nightmare rather in which I fell and fell and fell for evermore into the abyss of the

I astonished Cavor at breakfast. I told him shortly, "I'm not coming with you in the sphere."

I met all his protests with a sullen persistence. "The thing's too mad," I said, "and I won't come. The

I would not go with him to the laboratory. I fretted bout my bungalow for a time, and then took hat

and stick and set out alone, I knew not whither. It chanced to be a glorious morning: a warm wind

and deep blue sky, the first green of spring abroad, and multitudes of birds singing. I lunched on

beef and beer in a little publichouse near Elham, and startled the landlord by remarking apropos

of the weather, "A man who leaves the world when days of this sort are about is a fool!"

"That's what I says when I heerd on it!" said the landlord, and I found that for one poor soul at least

this world had proved excessive, and there had been a throatcutting. I went on with a new twist to

In the afternoon I had a pleasant sleep in a sunny place, and went on my way refreshed. I came to

a comfortable looking inn near Canterbury. It was bright with creepers, and the landlady was a

clean old woman and took my eye. I found I had just enough money to pay for my lodging with her.

I decided to stop the night there. She was a talkative body, and among many other particulars

learnt she had never been to London. "Canterbury's as far as ever I been," she said. "I'm not one of

"I never did hold with them ballooneys," she said evidently under the impression that this was a

This struck me as being funny. After I had supped I sat on a bench by the door of the inn and

gossiped with two labourers about brickmaking, and motor cars, and the cricket of last year. And in

the sky a faint new crescent, blue and vague as a distant Alp, sank westward over the sun.

The next day I returned to Cavor. "I am coming," I said. "I've been a little out of order, that's all."

That was the only time I felt any serious doubt our enterprise. Nerves purely! Alter that I worked a

little more carefully, and took a trudge for an hour every day. And at last, save for the heating in the

"GO ON," said Cavor, as I sat across the edge of the manhole, and looked down into the black

interior of the sphere. We two were alone. It was evening, the sun had set, and the stillness of the

I drew my other leg inside and slid down the smooth glass to the bottom of the sphere, then turned

to take the cans of food and other impedimenta from Cavor. The interior was warm, the

thermometer stood at eighty, and as we should lose little or none of this by radiation, we were

dressed in shoes and thin flannels. We had, however, a bundle of thick woollen clothing and

By Cavor's direction I placed the packages, the cylinders of oxygen, and so forth, loosely about my

feet, and soon we had everything in. He walked about the roofless shed for a time seeking anything

"I forgot to tell you. There are uncertainties The voyage may last We may be weeks! "

I looked out. It was an old number of TitBits that one of the men must have brought. Farther away

in the corner I saw a torn Lloyd's News. I scrambled back into the sphere with these things. "What

He coloured slightly. "My education has been so purely scientific " he said apologetically.

I assisted him to screw in the glass cover of the manhole, and then he pressed a stud to close the

corresponding blind in the outer case. The little oblong of twilight vanished. We were in darkness.

For a time neither of us spoke. Although our case would not be impervious to sound, everything

was very still. I perceived there was nothing to grip when the shock of our start should come, and I

I became silent. Suddenly it had come to me clear and vivid that I was a fool to be inside that

sphere. Even now, I asked myself, is to too late to withdraw? The world outside the sphere, I knew,

would be cold and inhospitable enough for me for weeks I had been living on subsidies from

Cavor but after all, would it be as cold as the infinite zero, as inhospitable as empty space? If it

had not been for the appearance of cowardice, I believe that even then I should have made him let

me out. But I hesitated on that score, and hesitated, and grew fretful and angry, and the time

There came a little jerk, a noise like champagne being uncorked in another room, and a faint

whistling sound. For just one instant I had a sense of enormous tension, a transient conviction that

my feet were pressing downward with a force of countless tons. It lasted for an infinitesimal time.

But it stirred me to action. "Cavor!" I said into the darkness, "my nerve's in rags. I don't think "

"Confound it!" I cried; "I'm a fool! What business have I here? I'm not coming, Cavor. The thing's

He made no answer for ten seconds. "It's too late for us to quarrel now, Bedford," he said. "That

little jerk was the start. Already we are flying as swiftly as a bullet up into the gulf of space."

"I " I said, and then it didn't seem to matter what happened. For a time I was, as it were, stunned; I

had nothing to say. It was just as if I had never heard of this idea of leaving the world before. Then I

perceived an unaccountable change in my bodily sensations. It was a feeling of lightness, of

unreality. Coupled with that was a queer sensation in the head, an apoplectic effect almost, and a

thumping of blood vessels at the ears. Neither of these feelings diminished as time went on, but at

I saw Cavor's face, as white as I felt my own to be. We regarded one another in silence. The

transparent blackness of the glass behind him made him seem as though he floated in a void.

"Don't move," he exclaimed, at some suggestion of a gesture. "Let your muscles keep quite lax

as if you were in bed. We are in a little universe of our own. Look at those things!"

He pointed to the loose cases and bundles that had been lying on the blankets in the bottom of the

sphere. I was astonished to see that they were floating now nearly a foot from the spherical wall.

Then I saw from his shadow that Cavor was no longer leaning against the glass. I thrust out my

hand behind me, and found that I too was suspended in space, clear of the glass.

I did not cry out nor gesticulate, but fear came upon me. It was like being held and lilted by

something you know not what. The mere touch of my hand against the glass moved me rapidly. I

understood what had happened, but that did not prevent my being afraid. We were cut off from all

exterior gravitation, only the attraction of objects within our sphere had effect. Consequently

everything that was not fixed to the glass was falling slowly because of the slightness of our

masses towards the centre of gravity of our little world, which seemed to be somewhere about

the middle of the sphere, but rather nearer to myself than Cavor, on account of my greater weight.

"We must turn round," said Cavor, "and float back to back, with the things between us."

It was the strangest sensation conceivable, floating thus loosely in space, at first indeed horribly

strange, and when the horror passed, not disagreeable at all, exceeding restful; indeed, the nearest

thing in earthly experience to it that I know is lying on a very thick, soft feather bed. But the quality

of utter detachment and independence! I had not reckoned on things like this. I had expected a

violent jerk at starting, a giddy sense of speed. Instead I felt as if I were disembodied. It was not

PRESENTLY Cavor extinguished the light. He said we had not overmuch energy stored, and that

what we had we must economise for reading. For a time, whether it was long or short I do not

A question floated up out of the void. "How are we pointing?" I said. "What is our direction?"

"We are flying away from the earth at a tangent, and as the moon is near her third quarter we are

Came a click, and then a window in the outer case yawned open. The sky outside was as black as

the darkness within the sphere, but the shape of the open window was marked by an infinite

Those who have only seen the starry sky from the earth cannot imagine its appearance when the

vague, half luminous veil of our air has been withdrawn. The stars we see on earth are the mere

scattered survivors that penetrate our misty atmosphere. But now at last I could realise the

Stranger things we were presently to see, but that airless, stardusted sky! Of all things, I think that

The little window vanished with a click, another beside it snapped open and instantly closed, and

then a third, and for a moment I had to close my eyes because of the blinding splendour of the

For a space I had to stare at Cavor and the whitelit things about me to season my eyes to light

Four windows were open in order that the gravitation of the moon might act upon all the substances

in our sphere. I found I was no longer floating freely in space, but that my feet were resting on the

glass in the direction of the moon. The blankets and cases of provisions were also creeping slowly

down the glass, and presently came to rest so as to block out a portion of the view. It seemed to

me, of course, that I looked "down" when I looked at the moon. On earth "down" means earthward,

the way things fall, and "up" the reverse direction. Now the pull of gravitation was towards the

moon, and for all I knew to the contrary our earth was overhead. And, of course, when all the

Cavorite blinds were closed, "down" was towards the centre of our sphere, and " up " towards its

It was curiously unlike earthly experience, too, to have the light coming up to one. On earth light

falls from above, or comes slanting down sideways, but here it came from beneath our feet, and to

At first it gave me a sort of vertigo to stand only on thick glass and look down upon the moon

through hundreds of thousands of miles of vacant space; but this sickness passed very speedily.

The reader may imagine it best if he will lie on the ground some warm summer's night and look

between his upraised feet at the moon, but for some reason, probably because the absence of air

made it so much more luminous, the moon seemed already considerably larger than it does from

earth. The minutest details of it's surface were acutely clear. And since we did not see it through

air, its outline was bright and sharp, there was no glow or halo about it, and the stardust that

covered the sky came right to its very margin, and marked the outline of its unilluminated part. And

as I stood and stared at the moon between my feet, that perception of the impossible that had been

with me off and on ever since our start, returned again with tenfold conviction.

"Cavor," I said, "this takes me queerly. Those companies we were going to run, and all that about

"I suppose I'm made to turn right side up again. Still, this For a moment I could half believe there

I stared at the paper for a moment, then held it above the level of my face, and found I could read it

quite easily. I struck a column of mean little advertisements. " A gentleman of private means is

willing to lend money," I read. I knew that gentleman. Then somebody eccentric wanted to sell a

Cutaway bicycle, "quite new and cost 15 pounds," for five pounds; and a lady in distress wished to

dispose of some fish knives and forks, "a wedding present," at a great sacrifice. No doubt some

simple soul was sagely examining these knives and forks, and another triumphantly riding off on

that bicycle, and a third trustfully consulting that benevolent gentleman of means even as I read. I

"I knew some one who was rather interested in astronomy. It occurred to me that it would be rather

"It would need the most powerful telescope on earth even now to see us as the minutest speck."

"It's a world," I said; "one feels that infinitely more than one ever did on earth. People perhaps "

"People!" he exclaimed. "No! Banish all that! Think yourself a sort of ultraarctic voyager exploring

He waved his hand at the shining whiteness below. "It's dead dead! Vast extinct volcanoes, lava

wildernesses, tumbled wastes of snow, or frozen carbonic acid, or frozen air, and everywhere

landslip seams and cracks and gulfs. Nothing happens. Men have watched this planet

systematically with telescopes for over two hundred years. How much change do you think they

"They have traced two indisputable landslips, a doubtful crack, and one slight periodic change of

"By the way," I asked, how small a thing will the biggest telescopes show upon the moon?"

"One could see a fairsized church. One could certainly see any towns or buildings, or anything like

the handiwork of men. There might perhaps be insects, something in the way of ants, for example,

so that they could hide in deep burrows from the lunar light, or some new sort of creatures having

no earthly parallel. That is the most probable thing, if we are to find life there at all. Think of the

difference in conditions! Life must fit itself to a day as long as fourteen earthly days, a cloudless

sunblaze of fourteen days, and then a night of equal length, growing ever colder and colder under

these, cold, sharp stars. In that night there must be cold, the ultimate cold, absolute zero, 273 C.

below the earthly freezing point. Whatever life there is must hibernate through that, and rise again

He mused. "One can imagine something worm like," he said, "taking its air solid as an

He did not answer that question. "No," he concluded, "we just have to go. We shall see when we

I remembered something. "Of course, there's my minerals, anyhow," I said; "whatever the

Presently he told me he wished to alter our course a little by letting the earth tug at us for a

moment. He was going to open one earthward blind for thirty seconds. He warned me that it would

make my head swim, and advised me to extend my hands against the glass to break my fall. I did

as he directed, and thrust my feet against the bales of food cases and air cylinders to prevent their

falling upon me. Then with a click the window flew open. I fell clumsily upon hands and face, and

saw for a moment between my black extended fingers our mother earth a planet in a downward

We were still very near Cavor told me the distance was perhaps eight hundred miles and the

huge terrestrial disc filled all heaven. But already it was plain to see that the world was a globe. The

land below us was in twilight and vague, but westward the vast gray stretches of the Atlantic shone

like molten silver under the receding day. I think I recognised the clouddimmed coastlines of

France and Spain and the south of England, and then, with a click, the shutter closed again, and I

found myself in a state of extraordinary confusion sliding slowly over the smooth glass.

When at last things settled themselves in my mind again, it seemed quite beyond question that the

moon was "down" and under my feet, and that the earth was somewhere away on the level of the

horizon the earth that had been "down" to me and my kindred since the beginning of things.

So slight were the exertions required of us, so easy did the practical annihilation of our weight

make all we had to do, that the necessity for taking refreshment did not occur to us for nearly six

hours (by Cavor's chronometer) after our start. I was amazed at that lapse of time. Even then I was

satisfied with very little. Cavor examined the apparatus for absorbing carbonic acid and water, and

pronounced it to be in satisfactory order, our consumption of oxygen having been extraordinarily

slight. And our talk 'being exhausted for the time, and there being nothing further for us to do, we

gave way to a curious drowsiness that had come upon us, and spreading our blankets on the

bottom of the sphere in such a manner as to shut out most of the moonlight, wished each other

And so, sleeping, and sometimes talking and reading a little, and at times eating, although without

any keenness of appetite,3 but for the most part in a sort of quiescence that was neither waking nor

slumber, we fell through a space of time that had neither night nor day in it, silently, softly, and

It is a curious thing, that while we were in the sphere we felt not the slightest desire for food, nor did

we feel the want of it when we abstained. At first we forced our appetites, but afterwards we fasted

completely. Altogether we did not consume onehundredth part of the compressed provisions we

had brought with us. The amount of carbonic acid we breathed was also unnaturally low, but why

I REMEBER how one day Cavor suddenly opened six of our shutters and blinded me so that I cried

aloud at him. The whole area was moon, a stupendous scimitar of white dawn with its edge hacked

out by notches of darkness, the crescent shore of an ebbing tide of darkness, out of which peaks

and pinnacles came glittering into the blaze of the sun. I take it reader has seen pictures or

photographs of the moon and that I need not describe the broader features of that landscape, those

spacious ringlike ranges vaster than any terrestrial mountains, their summits shining in the day,

their shadows harsh and deep, the gray disordered plains, the ridges, hills, and craterlets, all

passing at last from a blazing illumination into a common mystery of black. Athwart this world we

were flying scarcely a hundred miles above its crests and pinnacles. And now we could see, what

no eye on earth will ever see, that under the blaze of the day the harsh outlines of the rocks and

ravines of the plains and crater floor grew gray and indistinct under a thickening haze, that the

white of their lit surfaces broke into lumps and patches, and broke again and shrank and vanished,

But little time we had for watching then. For now we had come to the real danger of our journey.

We had to drop ever closer to the moon as we spun about it, to slacken our pace and watch our

For Cavor that was a time of intense exertion; for me it was an anxious inactivity. I seemed

perpetually to be getting out of his way. He leapt about the sphere from point to point with an agility

that would have been impossible on earth. He was perpetually opening and closing the Cavorite

windows, making calculations, consulting his chronometer by means of the glow lamp during those

last eventful hours. For a long time we had all our windows closed and hung silently in darkness

Then he was feeling for the shutter studs, and suddenly four windows were open. I staggered and

covered my eyes, drenched and scorched and blinded by the unaccustomed splendour of the sun

beneath my feet. Then again the shutters snapped, leaving my brain spinning in a darkness that

pressed against the eyes. And after that I floated in another vast, black silence.

Then Cavor switched on the electric light, and told me he proposed to bind all our luggage together

with the blankets about it, against the concussion of our descent. We did this with our windows

closed, because in that way our goods arranged themselves naturally at the centre of the sphere.

That too was a strange business; we two men floating loose in that spherical space, and packing

and pulling ropes. Imagine it if you can! No up nor down, and every effort resulting in unexpected

movements. Now I would be pressed against the glass with the full force of Cavor's thrust, now I

would be kicking helplessly in a void. Now the star of the electric light would be overhead, now

under foot. Now Cavor's feet would float up before my eyes, and now we would be crossways to

each other. But at last our goods were safely bound together in a big soft bale, all except two

Then for a flash Cavor opened a window moonward, and we saw that we were dropping towards a

huge central crater with a number of minor craters grouped in a sort of cross about it. And then

again Cavor flung our little sphere open to the scorching, blinding sun. I think he was using the

sun's attraction as a brake. "Cover yourself with a blanket," he cried, thrusting himself from me,

Then I hauled the blanket from beneath my feet and got it about me and over my head and eyes.

Abruptly he closed the shutters again, snapped one open again and closed it, then suddenly began

snapping them all open, each safely into its steel roller. There came a jar, and then we were rolling

over and over, bumping against the glass and against the big bale of our luggage, and clutching at

each other, and outside some white substance splashed as if we were rolling down a slope of

Came a thud, and I was half buried under the bale of our possessions, and for a space everything

was still. Then I could hear Cavor puffing and grunting, and the snapping of a shutter in its sash. I

made an effort, thrust back our blanketwrapped luggage, and emerged from beneath it. Our open

We were still alive, and we were lying in the darkness of the shadow of the wall of the great crater

We sat getting our breath again, and feeling the bruises on our limbs. I don't think either of us had

had a very clear expectation of such rough handling as we had received. I struggled painfully to my

feet. "And now," said I, "to look at the landscape of the moon But It's tremendously dark, Cavor!"

The glass was dewy, and as I spoke I wiped at it with my blanket. "We're half an hour or so beyond

It was impossible to distinguish anything. We might have been in a sphere of steel for all that we

could see. My rubbing with the blanket simply smeared the glass, and as fast as I wiped it, it

became opaque again with freshly condensed moisture mixed with an increasing quantity of

blanket hairs. Of course I ought not to have used the blanket. In my efforts to clear the glass I

slipped upon the damp surface, and hurt my shin against one of the oxygen cylinders that

The thing was exasperating it was absurd. Here we were just arrived upon the moon, amidst we

knew not what wonders, and all we could see was the gray and streaming wall of the bubble in

"Confound it!" I said, "but at this rate we might have stopped at home;" and I squatted on the bale

Abruptly the moisture turned to spangles and fronds of frost. "Can you reach the electric heater,"

"Of course. We shall have to wait until our air gets warm again, and then this glass will clear. We

can't do anything till then. It's night here yet; we must wait for the day to overtake us. Meanwhile,

For a space I did not answer him, but sat fretting. I turned reluctantly from the smeared puzzle of

the glass and stared at his face. " Yes,"I said, "I am hungry. I feel somehow enormously

I summoned my philosophy, and rearranging my blanket about me sat down on the bale again and

began my first meal on the moon. I don't think I finished it I forget. Presently, first in patches, then

running rapidly together into wider spaces, came the clearing of the glass, came the drawing of the

As we saw it first it was the wildest and most desolate of scenes. We were in an enormous

amphitheatre, a vast circular plain. the floor of the giant crater. Its clifflike walls closed us in on

every side. From the westward the light of the unseen sun fell upon them, reaching to the very foot

of the cliff, and showed a disordered escarpment of drab and grayish rock, lined here and there

with banks and crevices of snow. This was perhaps a dozen miles away, but at first no intervening

atmosphere diminished in the slightest the minutely detailed brilliancy with which these things

glared at us. They stood out clear and dazzling against a background of starry blackness that

seemed to our earthly eyes rather a gloriously spangled velvet curtain than the spaciousness of the

The eastward cliff was at first merely a starless selvedge to the starry dome. No rosy flush, no

creeping pallor, announced the commencing day. Only the Corona, the Zodiacal light, a huge

coneshaped, luminous haze, pointing up towards the splendour of the morning star, warned us of

Whatever light was about us was reflected by the westward cliffs. It showed a huge undulating

plain, cold and gray, a gray that deepened eastward into the absolute raven darkness of the cliff

shadow. Innumerable rounded gray summits, ghostly hummocks, billows of snowy substance,

stretching crest beyond crest into the remote obscurity, gave us our first inkling of the distance of

the crater wall. These hummocks looked like snow. At the time I thought they were snow. But they

The sunlight had crept down the cliff, it touched the drifted masses at its base and incontinently

came striding with sevenleagued boots towards us. The distant cliff seemed to shift and quiver,

and at the touch of the dawn a reek of gray vapour poured upward from the crater floor, whirls and

puffs and drifting wraiths of gray, thicker and broader and denser, until at last the whole westward

plain was steaming like a wet handkerchief held before the fire, and the westward cliffs were no

"It is air," said Cavor. "It must be air or it would not rise like this at the mere touch of a

"In the sky. Already. On the blackness a little touch of blue. See! The stars seem larger. And the

little ones and all those dim nebulosities we saw in empty space they are hidden! "

Swiftly, steadily, the day approached us. Gray summit after gray summit was overtaken by the

blaze, and turned to a smoking white intensity. At last there was nothing to the west of us but a

bank of surging fog, the tumultuous advance and ascent of cloudy haze. The distant cliff had

receded farther and farther, had loomed and changed through the whirl, and foundered and

Nearer came that steaming advance, nearer and nearer, coming as fast as the shadow of a cloud

He turned me about and pointed to the brow of the eastward cliff, looming above the haze about

us, scarce lighter than the darkness of the sky. But now its line was marked by strange reddish

shapes, tongues of vermilion flame that writhed and danced. I fancied It must be spirals of vapour

that had caught the light and made this crest of fiery tongues against the sky, but indeed it was the

solar prominences I Saw, a crown of fire about the sun that is forever hidden from earthly eyes by

Steadily, inevitably came a brilliant line, came a thin edge of intolerable effulgence that took a

circular shape, became a bow, became a blazing sceptre, and hurled a shaft of heat at us as

It seemed verily to stab my eyes! I cried aloud and turned about blinded, groping for my blanket

And with that incandescence came a sound, the first sound that had reached us from without since

we left the earth, a hissing and rustling, the stormy trailing of the aerial garment of the advancing

day. And with the coming of the sound and the light the sphere lurched, and blinded and dazzled

we staggered helplessly against each other. It lurched again, and the hissing grew louder. I had

shut my eyes perforce, I was making clumsy efforts to cover my head with my blanket, and this

second lurch sent me helplessly off my feet. I fell against the bale, and opening my eyes had a

momentary glimpse of the air just outside our glass. It was running it was boiling like snow into

which a whitehot rod is thrust. What had been solid air had suddenly at the touch of the 'sun

There came a still more violent whirl of the sphere and we had clutched one another. In another

moment we were spun about again. Pound we went and over, and then I was on all fours. The

lunar dawn had hold of us. It meant to show us little men what the moon could do with us.

I caught a second glimpse of things without, puffs of vapour, half liquid slush, excavated, sliding,

falling, sliding. We dropped into darkness. I went down with Cavor's knees in my chest. Then he

seemed to fly away from me, and for a moment I lay with all the breath out of my body staring

upward. A toppling crag of the melting stuff had splashed over us, buried us, and now it thinned

and boiled off us. I saw the bubbles dancing on the glass above. I heard Cavor exclaiming feebly.

Then some huge landslip in the thawing air had caught us, and spluttering expostulation, we began

to roll down a slope, rolling faster and faster, leaping crevasses and rebounding from banks, faster

Clutching at one another we spun about, pitched this way and that, our bale of packages leaping at

us, pounding at us. We collided, we gripped, we were torn asunder our heads met, and the whole

universe burst into fiery darts and stars! On the earth we should have smashed one another a

dozen times, but on the moon, luckily for us, our weight was only onesixth of what it is terrestrially,

and we fell very mercifully. I recall a sensation of utter sickness, a feeling as if my brain were

Something was at work upon my face, some thin feelers worried my ears. Then I discovered the

brilliance of the landscape around was mitigated by blue spectacles. Cavor bent over me, and I

saw his face upside down, his eyes also protected by tinted goggles. His breath came irregularly,

and his lip was bleeding from a bruise. "Better?" he said, wiping the blood with the back of his

Everything seemed swaying for a space, but that was simply my giddiness. I perceived that he had

closed some of the shutters in the outer sphere to save me from the direct blaze of the sun. I was

I craned my neck to see. I perceived there was a blinding glare outside, an utter change from the

gloomy darkness of our first impressions. "Have I been insensible long? " I asked.

"I don't know the chronometer is broken. Some little time. ... My dear chap! I have been afraid..."

I lay for a space taking this in. I saw his face still bore evidences of emotion. For a while I said

nothing. I passed an inquisitive hand over my contusions, and surveyed ['is face for similar

damages. The back of my right hand had suffered most, and was skinless and raw. My forehead

was bruised and had bled. He handed me a little measure with some of the restorative I forget the

name of it he had brought with us. After a time I felt a little better. I began to stretch my limbs

He thought, his hands hanging over his knees. He peered through the glass and then stared at me.

"It was as I expected. This air has evaporated if it is air. At any rate, it has evaporated, and the

surface of the moon is showing. We are lying on a bank of earthy rock. Here and there bare soil is

It occurred to him that it was unnecessary to explain. He assisted me into a sitting position, and I

The harsh emphasis, the pitiless black and white of scenery had altogether disappeared. The glare

of the sun had taken upon itself a faint tinge of amber; the shadows upon the cliff of the crater wall

were deeply purple. To the eastward a dark bank of fog still crouched and sheltered from the

sunrise, but to the westward the sky was blue and clear. I began to realise the length of my

We were no longer in a void. An atmosphere had arisen about us. The outline of things had gained

in character, had grown acute and varied; save for a shadowed space of white substance here and

there, white substance that was no longer air but snow, the arctic appearance had gone altogether.

Everywhere broad rusty brown spaces of bare and tumbled earth spread to the blaze of the sun.

Here and there at the edge of the snowdrifts were transient little pools and eddies of water, the only

things stirring in that expanse of barrenness. The sunlight inundated the upper two blinds of our

sphere and turned our climate to high summer, but our feet were still in shadow, and the sphere

And scattered here and there upon the slope, and emphasised by little white threads of unthawed

snow upon their shady sides, were shapes like sticks, dry twisted sticks of the same rusty hue as

the rock upon which they lay. That caught one's thoughts sharply. Sticks! On a lifeless world? Then

as my eye grew more accustomed to the texture of their substance, I perceived that almost all this

surface had a fibrous texture, like the carpet of brown needles one finds beneath the shade of pine

Something arrested my attention. I had discovered among these needles a number of little round

But I did not answer at once. I stared incredulous. For an instant I could not believe my eyes. I gave

an inarticulate cry. I gripped his arm. I pointed. "Look!" I cried, finding my tongue. "There! Yes! And

How can I describe the thing I saw? It is so petty a thing to state, and yet it seemed so wonderful,

so pregnant with emotion. I have said that amidst the sticklike litter were these rounded bodies,

these little oval bodies that might have passed as very small pebbles. And now first one and then

another had stirred, had rolled over and cracked, and down the crack of each of them showed a

minute line of yellowish green, thrusting outward to meet the hot encouragement of the newlyrisen

"Life!" And immediately it poured upon us that our vast journey had not been made in vain, that we

had come to no arid waste of minerals, but to a world that lived and moved! We watched intensely.

I remember I kept rubbing the glass before me with my sleeve, jealous of the faintest suspicion of

The picture was clear and vivid only in the middle of the field. All about that centre the dead fibres

and seeds were magnified and distorted b~ the curvature of the glass. But we could see enough!

One after another all down the sunlit slope these miraculous little brown bodies burst and gaped

apart, like seedpods, like the husks of fruits; opened eager mouths. that drank in the heat and

Every moment more of these seed coats ruptured, and even as they did so the swelling pioneers

overflowed their rentdistended seedcases, and passed into the second stage of growth. With a

steady assurance, a swift deliberation, these amazing seeds thrust a rootlet downward to the earth

and a queer little bundlelike bud into the air. In a little while the whole slope was dotted with

They did not stand for long. The bundlelike buds swelled and strained and opened with a jerk,

thrusting out a coronet of little sharp tips, spreading a whorl of tiny, spiky, brownish leaves, that

lengthened rapidly, lengthened visibly even as we watched. The movement was slower than any

animal's, swifter than any plant's I have ever seen before. How can I suggest it to you the way

that growth went on? The leaf tips grew so that they moved onward even while we looked at them.

The brown seedcase shrivelled and was absorbed with an equal rapidity. Have you ever on a cold

day taken a thermometer into your warm hand and watched the little thread of mercury creep up

In a few minutes, as it seemed, the buds of the more forward of these plants had lengthened into a

stem and were even putting forth a second whorl of leaves, and all the slope that had seemed so

recently a lifeless stretch of litter was now dark with the stunted olivegreen herbage of bristling

I turned about, and behold! along the upper edge of a rock to the eastward a similar fringe in a

scarcely less forward condition swayed and bent, dark against the blinding glare of the sun. And

beyond this fringe was the silhouette of a plant mass, branching clumsily like a cactus, and swelling

Then to the westward also I discovered that another such distended form was rising over the scrub.

But here the light fell upon its sleek sides, and I could see that its colour was a vivid orange hue It

rose as one watched it; if one looked away from it for a minute and then back, its outline had

changed; it thrust out blunt congested branches until in a little time it rose a coralline shape of many

feet in height. Compared with such a growth the terrestrial puffball, which will sometimes swell a

foot in diameter in a single night, would be a hopeless laggard. But then the puffball grows against

a gravitational pull six times that of the moon. Beyond, out of gullies and flats that had been hidden

from us, but not from the quickening sun, over reefs and banks of shining rock, a bristling beard of

spiky and fleshy vegetation was straining into view, hurrying tumultuously to tale advantage of the

brief day in which it must flower and fruit and seed again and die. It was like a miracle, that growth.

So, one must imagine, the trees and plants arose at the Creation and covered the desolation of the

Imagine it; Imagine that dawn! The resurrection of the frozen air, the stirring and quickening of the

soil, and then this silent uprising of vegetation, this unearthly ascent of fleshiness and spikes.

Conceive it all lit by a blaze that would make the intensest sunlight of earth seem watery and weak.

And still around this stirring jungle, wherever there was shadow, lingered banks of bluish snow. And

to have the picture of our impression complete, you must bear in mind that we saw it all through a

thick bent glass, distorting it as things are distorted by a lens, acute only in the centre of the picture,

WE ceased to gaze. We turned to each other, the same thought, the same question in our eyes.

For these plants to grow, there must be some air, however attenuated, air that we also should be

"In a little while," I said, "these plants will be as high as we are. Suppose suppose after all Is it

certain? How do you know that stuff is air? It may be nitrogen it may be carbonic acid even!"

"That's easy," he said, and set about proving it. He produced a big piece of crumpled paper from

the bale, lit it, and thrust it hastily through the manhole valve. I bent forward and peered down

through the thick glass for its appearance outside, that little flame on whose evidence depended so

I saw the paper drop out and lie lightly upon the snow. The pink flame of its burning vanished. For

an instant it seemed to be extinguished. And then I saw a little blue tongue upon the edge of it that

Quietly the whole sheet, save where it lay in Immediate contact with the snow, charred and

shrivelled and sent up a quivering thread of smoke. There was no doubt left to me; the atmosphere

of the moon was either pure oxygen or air, and capable therefore unless its tenuity was excessive

I sat down with my legs on either side of the manhole and prepared to unscrew it, but Cavor

stopped me. "There is first a little precaution," he said. He pointed out that although it was certainly

an oxygenated atmosphere outside, it might still be so rarefied as to cause us grave injury. He

reminded me of mountain sickness, and of the bleeding that often afflicts aeronauts who have

ascended too swiftly, and he spent some time in the preparation of a sicklytasting drink which he

insisted on my sharing. It made me feel a little numb, but otherwise had no effect on me. Then he

Presently the glass stopper of the manhole was so far undone that the denser air within our sphere

began to escape along the thread of the screw, singing as a kettle sings before it boils. Thereupon

he made me desist. It speedily became evident that the pressure outside was very much less than

I sat grasping the stopper with both hands, ready to close it again if, in spite of our intense hope,

the lunar atmosphere should after all prove too rarefied for us, and Cavor sat with a cylinder of

compressed oxygen at hand to restore our pressure. We looked at one another in silence, and then

at the fantastic vegetation that swayed and grew visibly and noiselessly without. And ever that shrill

My bloodvessels began to throb in my ears, and the sound of Cavor's movements diminished. I

As our air sizzled out from the screw the moisture of it condensed in little puffs.

Presently I experienced a peculiar shortness of breath that lasted indeed during the whole of the

time of our exposure to the moon's exterior atmosphere, and a rather unpleasant sensation about

the ears and fingernails and the back of the throat grew upon my attention, and presently passed

But then came vertigo and nausea that abruptly changed the quality of my courage. I gave the lid of

the manhole half a turn and made a hasty explanation to Cavor; but now he was the more

sanguine. He answered me in a voice that seemed extraordinarily small and remote, because of

the thinness of the air that carried the sound. He recommended a nip of brandy, and set me the

example, and presently I felt better. I turned the manhole stopper back again. The throbbing in my

ears grew louder, and then I remarked that the piping note of the outrush had ceased. For a time I

By way of answer I went on unscrewing. I lifted the circular operculum from its place and laid it

carefully on the bale. A flake or so of snow whirled and vanished as that thin and unfamiliar air took

possession of our sphere. I knelt, and then seated myself at the edge of the manhole, peering over

He stretched out his hand for his blanket, thrust his head through its central hole, and wrapped it

about him. He sat down on the edge of the manhole, he let his feet drop until they were within six

inches of the lunar ground. He hesitated for a moment, then thrust himself forward, dropped these

As he stepped forward lie was refracted grotesquely by the edge of the glass. He stood for a

The glass distorted everything, but it seemed to me even then to be an extremely big leap. He had

at one bound become remote. He seemed twenty or thirty feet off. He was standing high upon a

rocky mass and gesticulating back to me. Perhaps he was shouting but the sound did not reach

me. But how the deuce had he done this? I felt like a man who has just seen a new conjuring trick.

In a puzzled state of mind I too dropped through the manhole. I stood up. Just in front of me the

I found myself flying through the air, saw the rock on which he stood coming to meet me, clutched it

I gasped a painful laugh. I was tremendously confused. Cavor bent down arid shouted in piping

I had forgotten that on the moon, with only an eighth part of the earth's mass and a quarter of its

diameter, my weight was barely a sixth what it was on earth. But now that fact insisted on being

With a guarded effort I raised myself to the top, and moving as cautiously as a rheumatic patient,

stood up beside him under the blaze of the sun. The sphere lay behind us on its dwindling snowdrift

As far as the eye could see over the enormous disorder of rocks that formed the crater floor, the

same bristling scrub that surrounded us was starting into life, diversified here and there by bulging

masses of a cactus form, and scarlet and purple lichens that grew so fast they seemed to crawl

over the rocks. The whole area of the crater seemed to me then to be one similar wilderness up to

This cliff was apparently bare of vegetation save at its base, and with buttresses and terraces and

platforms that did not very greatly attract our attention at the time. It was many miles away from us

in every direction, we seemed to be almost at the centre of the crater, and we saw it through a

certain haziness that drove before the wind. For there was even a wind now in the thin air, a swift

yet weak wind that chilled exceedingly but exerted little pressure. It was blowing I round the crater,

as it seemed, to the hot illuminated side from the foggy darkness under the sunward wall. It was

difficult to look into this eastward fog; we had to peer with halfclosed eyes beneath the shade of

I looked about me again. I retained even then a clinging hope of some quasihuman evidence,

some pinnacle of building, some house or engine, but everywhere one looked spread the tumbled

rocks in peaks and crests, and the darting scrub and those bulging cacti that swelled and swelled, a

"It looks as though these plants had it to themselves," I said. " I see no trace of any other creature."

"No insects no birds, no! Not a trace, not a scrap nor particle of animal life. If there was what

I shaded my eyes with my hand. "It's like the landscape of a dream. These things are less like

earthly land plants than the things one imagines among the rocks at the bottom of the sea. Look at

that yonder! One might imagine it a lizard changed into a plant. And the glare! "

He sighed and looked about him. "This is no world for men," he said. "And yet in a way it

I started at a gentle touch, and found a thin sheet of livid lichen lapping over my shoe. I kicked at it

I heard Cavor exclaim sharply, and perceived that one of the fixed bayonets of the scrub had

pricked him. He hesitated, his eyes sought among the rocks about us. A sudden blaze of pink had

crept up a ragged pillar of crag. It was a most extraordinary pink, a livid magenta.

For an instant I stood transfixed. Then I made a hasty step to look over the verge of the rock. But in

my surprise at his disappearance I forgot once more that we were on the moon. The thrust of my

foot that I made in striding would have carried me a yard on earth; on the moon it carried me six a

good five yards over the edge. For the moment the thing had something of the effect of those

nightmares when one falls and falls. For while one falls sixteen feet in the first second of a fall on

earth, on the moon one falls two, and with only a sixth of one's weight. I fell, or rather I jumped

down, about ten yards I suppose. It seemed to take quite a long time, five or six seconds, I should

think. I floated through the air and fell like a feather, kneedeep in a snowdrift in the bottom of a

I turned fiercely to the rocks and clambered to the summit of them. "Cavor!" I cried. My voice

The sphere, too, was not in sight, and for a moment a horrible feeling of desolation pinched my

Then I saw him. He was laughing and gesticulating to attract my attention. He was on a bare patch

of rock twenty or thirty yards away. I could not hear his voice, but "jump" said his gestures. I

hesitated, the distance seemed enormous. Yet I reflected that surely I must be able to clear a

I made a step back, gathered myself together, and leapt with all my might. I seemed to shoot right

It was horrible and delightful, and as wild as a nightmare, to go flying off in this fashion. I realised

my leap had been altogether too violent. I flew clean over Cavor's head and beheld a spiky

confusion in a gully spreading to meet my fall. I gave a yelp of alarm. I put out my hands and

I hit a huge fungoid bulk that burst all about me, scattering a mass of orange spores in every

direction, and covering me with orange powder. I rolled over spluttering, and came to rest

I became aware of Cavor's little round face peering over a bristling hedge. He shouted some faded

inquiry. "Eh?" I tried to shout, but could not do so for want of breath. He made his way towards me,

"We've got to be careful," he said. "This moon has no discipline. She'll let us smash ourselves."

He helped me to my feet. "You exerted yourself too much," he said, dabbing at the yellow stuff with

I stood passive and panting, allowing him to beat off the jelly from my knees and elbows and

lecture me upon my misfortunes. " We don't quite allow for the gravitation. Our muscles are

scarcely educated yet. We must practise a little, when you have got your breath."

I pulled two or three little thorns out of my hand, and sat for a time on a boulder of rock. My

muscles were quivering, and I had that feeling of personal disillusionment that comes at the first fall

It suddenly occurred to Cavor that the cold air in the gully, after the brightness of the sun, might

give me a fever. So we clambered back into the sunlight. We found that beyond a few abrasions I

had received no serious injuries from my tumble, and at Cavor's suggestion we were presently

looking round for some safe and easy landingplace for my next leap. We chose a rocky slab some

"Imagine it there!" said Cavor, who was assuming the airs of a trainer, and he pointed to a spot

about four feet from my toes. This leap I managed without difficulty, and I must confess I found a

certain satisfaction in Cavor's falling short by a foot or so and tasting the spikes of the scrub. "One

has to be careful you see," he said, pulling out his thorns, and with that he ceased to be my Mentor

We chose a still easier jump and did it without difficulty, and then leapt back again, and to and fro

several times, accustoming our muscles to the new standard. I could never have believed had I not

experienced it, how rapid that adaptation would be. In a very little time indeed, certainly after fewer

than thirty leaps, we could judge the effort necessary for a distance with almost terrestrial

And all this time the lunar plants were growing around us, higher and denser and more entangled,

every moment thicker and taller, spiked plants, green cactus masses, fungi, fleshy and lichenous

things, strangest radiate and sinuous shapes. But we were so intent upon our leaping, that for a

An extraordinary elation had taken possession of us. Partly, I think, it was our sense of release

from the confinement of the sphere. Mainly, however, the thin sweetness of the air, which I am

certain contained a much larger proportion of oxygen than our terrestrial atmosphere. In spite of the

strange quality of all about us, I felt as adventurous and experimental as a cockney would do

placed for the first time among mountains and I do not think it occurred to either of us, face to face

We were bitten by a spirit of enterprise. We selected a lichenous kopje perhaps fifteen yards away,

and landed neatly on its summit one after the other. "Good!" we cried to each other; "good!" and

Cavor made three steps and went off to a tempting slope of snow a good twenty yards and more

beyond. I stood for a moment struck by the grotesque effect of his soaring figure his dirty cricket

cap, and spiky hair, his little round body, his arms and his knickerbockered legs tucked up tightly

against the weird spaciousness of the lunar scene. A gust of laughter seized me, and then I

We made a few gargantuan strides, leapt three or four times more, and sat down at last in a

lichenous hollow. Our lungs were painful. We sat holding our sides and recovering our breath,

looking appreciation to one another. Cavor panted something about "amazing sensations." And

then came a thought into my head. For the moment it did not seem a particularly appalling thought,

HIS face caught something of my dismay. He stood up and stared about him at the scrub that

fenced us in and rose about us, straining upward in a passion of growth. He put a dubious hand to

his lips. He spoke with a sudden lack of assurance. "I think," he said slowly, "we left it ...

"I'm not sure." His look of consternation deepened. "Anyhow," he said, with his eyes on me, "it can't

We had both stood up. We made unmeaning ejaculations, our eyes sought in the twining,

All about us on the sunlit slopes frothed and swayed the darting shrubs, the swelling cactus, the

creeping lichens, and wherever the shade remained the snowdrifts lingered. North, south, east,

and west spread an identical monotony of unfamiliar forms. And somewhere, buried already among

this tangled confusion, was our sphere, our home, our only provision, our only hope of escape from

"No," I said. "We have turned in a curve. See! here is the mark of my heels. It's clear the thing must

We stared into one another's eyes. The area of the crater had become enormously vast to our

"It's evident that we must find it again," said Cavor, "and that soon. The sun grows stronger. We

should be fainting with the heat already if it wasn't so dry. And ... I'm hungry."

I stared at him. I had not suspected this aspect of the matter before. But it came to me at once a

He stood up with a look of active resolution. "Certainly we must find the sphere."

As calmly as possible we surveyed the interminable reefs and thickets that formed the floor of the

crater, each of us weighing in silence the chances of our finding the sphere before we were

"It can't be fifty yards from here," said Cavor, with indecisive gestures. "The only thing is to beat

"That is all we can do," I said, without any alacrity to begin our hunt. "I wish this confounded spike

I stared about me in the vain hope of recognising some knoll or shrub that had been near the

sphere. But everywhere was a confusing sameness, everywhere the aspiring bushes, the

distending fungi, the dwindling snow banks, steadily and inevitably changed. The sun scorched and

stung, the faintness of an unaccountable hunger mingled with our infinite perplexity. And even as

we stood there, confused and lost amidst unprecedented things, we became aware for the first time

of a sound upon the moon other than the air of the growing plants, the faint sighing of the wind, or

It came from beneath our feet, a sound in the earth. We seemed to hear it with our feet as much as

with our ears. Its dull resonance was muffled by distance, thick with the quality of intervening

substance. No sound that I can imagine could have astonished us more, or have changed more

completely the quality of things about us. For this sound, rich, slow, and deliberate, seemed to us

Sound suggestive of still cloisters, of sleepless nights in crowded cities, of vigils and the awaited

hour, cf all that is orderly and methodical in life, booming out pregnant and mysterious in this

fantastic desert! To the eye everything was unchanged: the desolation of bushes and cacti waving

silently in the wind, stretched unbroken to the distant cliffs, the still dark sky was empty overhead,

and the hot sun hung and burned. And through it all, a warning, a threat, throbbed this enigma of

The silence, the rhythmic disappointment of the silence, came as a fresh shock. For a moment one

could doubt whether one had ever heard a sound. Or whether it might not still be going on. Had I

I felt the pressure of Cavor's hand upon my arm. He spoke in an undertone, as though he feared to

wake some sleeping thing. "Let us keep together," he whispered, "and look for the sphere. We

He hesitated. An intense persuasion of presences, of unseen things about us and near us,

dominated our minds. What could they be? Where could they be? Was this arid desolation,

alternately frozen and scorched, only the outer rind and mask of some subterranean world? And if

so, what sort of world? What sort of inhabitants might it not presently disgorge upon us?

And then, stabbing the aching stillness as vivid and sudden as an unexpected thunderclap, came a

"I do not understand!" he whispered close to my face. He waved his hand vaguely skyward, the

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

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

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 vantagepoint 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

Figure it to yourself! About us the dreamlike jungle, with the silent bayonet leaves darting

overhead, and the silent, vivid, sunsplashed 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

And ever and again came gusts of turmoil, hammering, the clanging and throb of machinery, and

SO we two poor terrestrial castaways, lost in that wildgrowing 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 puffballs, 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

calflike 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

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

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

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

fatencumbered 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 whiplike tentacles and a

clanging arm projecting from his shining cylindrical body case. The form of his head was hidden by

his enormous manyspiked 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 birdlike 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

In spite of his heavylooking 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,

We listened. For a space the moon world was still. But it was some time before we resumed our

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 then 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

"Hogs!" said Cavor, with unusual passion. "Dis gusting 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

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 front 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 needlepoint illuminations. We peered amazed and incredulous,

understanding so little that we could find no words to say. We could distinguish nothing that would

"The engineering!... They must live in these caverns during the night, and come out during the

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

He turned a face full of dismay towards me. "It's a case for holding out," he said.

"It's clean gone! We're driving from arctic to tropical at the rate of a degree a minute. ..."

We roused ourselves to another spurt of crawling. My mind ran entirely on edible things, on the

hissing profundity of summer drinks, more particularly I craved for beer. I was haunted by the

memory of a sixteen gallon cask that had swaggered in my Lympne cellar. I thought of the adjacent

larder, and especially of steak and kidney pie tender steak and plenty of kidney, and rich, thick

gravy between. Ever and again I was seized with fits of hungry yawning. We came to flat places

overgrown with fleshy red things, monstrous coralline growths; as we pushed against them they

snapped and broke. I noted the quality of the broken surfaces. The confounded stuff certainly

he said. I put down the fragment, and we crawled on through this tempting fleshiness for a space.

He made a belated gesture to prevent me. I stuffed my mouth full. He crouched watching my face,

He watched me munch, his face wrinkled between desire and disapproval, then suddenly

succumbed to appetite and began to tear off huge mouthfuls. For a time we did nothing but eat.

The stuff was not unlike a terrestrial mushroom, only it was much laxer in texture, and, as one

swallowed it, it warmed the throat. At first we experienced a mere mechanical satisfaction in eating;

then our blood began to run warmer, and we tingled at the lips and fingers, and then new and

"Its good," said I. "Infernally good! What a home for our surplus population! Our poor surplus

population," and I broke off another large portion. It filled me with a curiously benevolent

satisfaction that there was such good food in the moon. The depression of my hunger gave way to

an irrational exhilaration. The dread and discomfort in which I had been living vanished entirely. I

perceived the moon no longer as a planet from which I most earnestly desired the means of

escape, but as a possible refuge from human destitution. I think I forgot the Selenites, the

mooncalves, the lid, and the noises completely so soon as I had eaten that fungus.

Cavor replied to my third repetition of my "surplus population" remark with similar words of

approval. I felt that my head swam, but I put this down to the stimulating effect cf food after a long

I looked at him, shocked at his suddenly hoarse voice, and by the badness of his articulation. It

occurred to me in a flash that he was intoxicated, possibly by the fungus. It also occurred to me that

he erred in imaging that he had discovered the moon; he had not discovered it, he had only

reached it. I tried to lay my hand on his arm and explain this to him, but the issue was too subtle for

his brain. It was also unexpectedly difficult to express. After a momentary attempt to understand me

I remember wondering if the fungus had made my eyes as fishy as his he set off upon some

"We are," he announced with a solemn hiccup, "the creashurs o' Mat we eat and drink."

He repeated this, and as I was now in one of my subtle moods, I determined to dispute it. Possibly I

wandered a little from the point. But Cavor certainly did not attend at all properly. He stood up as

well as he could, putting a hand on my head to steady I himself, which was disrespectful, and stood

I tried to point out that this was dangerous for some reason that was not perfectly clear to me, but

the word "dangerous" had somehow got mixed with "indiscreet," and came out rather more like

"injurious" than either; and after an attempt to disentangle them, I resumed my argument,

addressing myself principally to the unfamiliar but attentive coralline growths on either side. I felt

that it was necessary to clear up this confusion between the moon and a potato at once I

wandered into a long parenthesis on the importance of precision of definition in argument. I did my

In some way that I have now forgotten, my mind was led back to projects of colonisation. "We must

annex this moon," I said. " There must be no shillyshally. This is part of the White Man's Burthen.

newspapers. Cavorecia. Bedfordecia. Bedfordecia hic Limited. Mean unlimited! Practically."

I embarked upon an argument to show the infinite benefits our arrival would confer on the moon. I

involved myself in a rather difficult proof that the arrival of Columbus was, on the whole, beneficial

to America. I found I had forgotten the line of argument I had intended to pursue, and continued to

From that joint my memory of the action of that abominable fungus becomes confused. I remember

vaguely that we declared our intention of standing no nonsense from any confounded insects, that

we decided it ill became men to hide shamefully upon a mere satellite, that we equipped ourselves

with huge armfuls of the fungus whether for missile purposes or not I do not know and,

Almost immediately we must have come upon the Selenites. There were six of them, and they were

marching in single file over a rocky place, making the most remarkable piping and whining sounds.

They all seemed to become aware of us at once, all instantly became silent and motionless, like

"Insects," murmured Cavor, "insects! And they think I'm going to crawl about on my stomach on

Then suddenly, with a shout of fury, he made three vast strides and leapt towards them. He leapt

badly; he made a series of somersaults in the air, whirled right over them, and vanished with an

enormous splash amidst the cactus bladders. What the Selenites made of this amazing, and to my

mind undignified irruption from another planet, I have no means of guessing. I seem to remember

the sight of their backs as they ran in all directions, but I am not sure. All these last incidents before

oblivion came are vague and faint in my mind. I know I made a step to follow Cavor, and tripped

and fell headlong among the rocks. I was, I am certain, suddenly and vehemently ill. I seem to

My next clear recollection is that we were prisoners at we knew not what depths beneath the

moon's surface; we were in darkness amidst strange distracting noises; our bodies were covered

I FOUND myself sitting crouched together in a tumultuous darkness. For a long time I could not

understand where I was, nor how I had come to this perplexity. I thought of the cupboard into which

I had been thrust at times when I was a child, and then of a very dark and noisy bedroom in which I

had slept during an illness. But these sounds about me were not the noises I had known, and there

was a thin flavour in the air like the wind of a stable. Then I supposed we must still be at work upon

the sphere, and that somehow I had got into the cellar of Cavor's house. I remembered we had

finished the sphere, and fancied I must still be in it and travelling through space.

I attempted to press my hands to my brow, which ached, and discovered they were tied together.

This startled me very much. I brought them up to my mouth and felt the cold smoothness of metal.

They were chained together. I tried to separate my legs and made out they were similarly fastened,

and also that I was fastened to the ground by a much thicker chain about the middle of my body.

I was more frightened that I had yet been by anything in all our strange experiences. For a time I

tugged silently at my bonds. " Cavor! " I cried out sharply. "Why am I tied? Why have you tied me

The Selenites! My mind hung on that for a space. Then my memories came back to me: the snowy

desolation, the thawing of the air, the growth of" the plants, our strange hopping and crawling

among the rocks and vegetation of the crater. All the distress of our frantic search for the sphere

Then as I strained to trace our later movements down to our present plight, the pain in my head

He made no answer but a grunt. The lingering traces of the poison seemed to make him oddly

"Oh, very well!" said I, and became silent. Presently, I was roused from a stupor. "O Lord!" I cried;

We lapsed into silence again, listening to the dull confusion of noises like the muffled sounds of a

street or factory that filled our ears. I could make nothing of it, my mind pursued first one rhythm

and then another, and questioned it in vain. But after a long time I became aware of a new and

sharper element, not mingling with the rest but standing out, as it were, against that cloudy

background of sound. It was a series of relatively very little definite sounds, tappings and rubbings,

like a loose spray of ivy against a window or a bird moving about upon a box. We listened and

peered about us, but the darkness was a velvet pall. There followed a noise like the subtle

movement of the wards of a welloiled lock. And then there appeared before me, hanging as it

The thin bright line became a band, and broader and paler. It took upon itself the quality of a bluish

light falling upon a whitewashed wall. It ceased to be parallelsided; it developed a deep

indentation on one side. I turned to remark this to Cavor, and was amazed to see his ear in a

brilliant illumination all the rest of him in shadow. I twisted my head round as well as my bonds

Suddenly the crack that had been admitting the light broadened out, and revealed itself as the

space of an opening door. Beyond was a sapphire vista, and in the doorway stood a grotesque

We both made convulsive efforts to turn, and failing, sat staring over our shoulders at this. My first

impression was of some clumsy quadruped with lowered head. Then I perceived it was the slender

pinched body and short and extremely attenuated bandy legs of a Selenite, with his head

depressed between his shoulders. He was without the helmet and body covering they wear upon

He was a blank, black figure to us, but instictively our imaginations supplied features to his very

human outline. I, at least, took it instantly that he was somewhat hunchbacked, with a high

He came forward three steps and paused for a time. His movements seemed absolutely noiseless.

Then he came forward again. He walked like a bird, his feet fell one in front of the other. He

stepped out of the ray of light that came through the doorway, and it seemed as though he

For a moment my eyes sought him in the wrong place, and then I perceived him standing facing us

both in the full light. Only the human features I had attributed to him were not there at all!

Of course I ought to have expected that, only I didn't. It came to me as an absolute, for a moment

an overwhelming shock. It seemed as though it wasn't a face, as though it must needs be a mask,

a horror, a deformity, that would presently be disavowed or explained. There was no nose, and the

thing had dull bulging eyes at the side in the silhouette I had supposed they were ears. There

were no ears. ... I have tried to draw one of these heads, but I cannot. There was a mouth,

The neck on which the head was poised was jointed in three places, almost like the short joints in

the leg of a crab. The joints of the limbs I could not see, because of the putteelike straps in which

At the time my mind was taken up by the mad impossibility of the creature. I suppose he also was

amazed, and with more reason, perhaps, for amazement than we. Only, confound him! he did not

show it. We did at least know what had brought about this meeting of incompatible creatures. But

conceive how it would seem to decent Londoners, for example, to come upon a couple of living

things, as big as men and absolutely unlike any other earthly animals, careering about among the

Figure us! We were bound hand and foot, fagged and filthy; our beards two inches long, our faces

scratched and bloody. Cavor you must imagine in his knickerbockers (torn in several places by the

bayonet scrub) his Jaegar shirt and old cricket cap, his wiry hair wildly disordered, a tail to every

quarter of the heavens. In that blue light his face did not look red but very dark, his lips and the

drying blood upon my hands seemed black. If possible I was in a worse plight than he, on account

of the yellow fungus into which I had jumped. Our jackets were unbuttoned, and our shoes had

been taken off and lay at our feet. And we were sitting with our backs to this queer bluish light,

Cavor broke the silence; started to speak, went hoarse, and cleared his throat. Outside began a

terrific bellowing, as if a mooncalf were in trouble. It ended in a shriek, and everything was still

Presently the Selenite turned about, flickered into the shadow, stood for a moment retrospective at

the door, and then closed it on us; and once more we were in that murmurous mystery of darkness

FOR a time neither of us spoke. To focus together all the things we had brought upon ourselves,

I lost my temper at his persistence, and swore to myself. For a time we hated one another in

silence. I drummed with my fingers on the floor between my knees, and gritted the links of my

"They are reasonable creatures they can make things and do things. Those lights we saw..."

When he spoke again it was to confess, "After all, they are more human than we had a right to

"I suppose, anyhow on any planet where there is an intelligent animal it will carry its brain case

"We are some way in," he said. "I mean perhaps a couple of thousand feet or more."

"It's cooler. And our voices are so much louder. That faded quality it has altogether gone. And the

"The air is denser. We must be some depths a mile even, we may be inside the moon."

"Of course! The moon must be enormously cavernous, with an atmosphere within, and at the

"One knew that the moon had a lower specific gravity than the earth, one knew that it had little air

or water outside, one knew, too, that it was sister planet to the earth, and that it was unaccountable

that it should be different in composition. The inference that it was hollowed out was as clear as

His voice had the interest now of a man who has discerned a pretty sequence of reasoning.

He answered nothing, buzzing to himself softly, as he pursued his thoughts. My temper was going.

"Cavor," I said, with a sort of hysterical bitterness, "things look bright for my Company..."

"Good Lord!" I exclaimed. "Just think of all the trouble we took to get into this pickle! What did we

come for? What are we after? What was the moon to us or we to the moon? We wanted too much,

we tried too much. We ought to have started the little things first. It was you proposed the moon!

Those Cavorite spring blinds! I am certain we could have worked them for terrestrial purposes.

"If they find it," he began, "if they find it ... what will they do with it? Well, that's a question. It may be

that's the question. They won't understand it, anyhow. If they understood that sort of thing they

would have come long since to the earth. Would they? Why shouldn't they? But they would have

sent something they couldn't keep their hands off such a possibility. No! But they will examine it.

Clearly they are intelligent and inquisitive. They will examine it get inside it trifle with the studs.

Off! .. That would mean the moon for us for all the rest of our lives. Strange creatures, strange

"Look here, Bedford," said Cavor, "you came on this expedition of your own free will."

"I was so taken up with the sphere. The thing rushed on us, and carried us away."

"Rushed on me just as much. How was I to know when I set to work on molecular physics that the

"It's this accursed science," I cried. "It's the very Devil. The medieval priests and persecutors were

right and the Moderns are all wrong. You tamper with it and it offers you gifts. And directly you

take them it knocks you to pieces in some unexpected way. Old passions and new weapons now

it upsets your religion, now it upsets your social ideas, now it whirls you off to desolation and

"Anyhow, it's no use your quarrelling with me now. These creatures these Selenites, or whatever

we choose to call them have got us tied hand and foot. Whatever temper you choose to go

through with it in, you will have to go through with it. ... We have experiences before us that will

He paused as if he required my assent. But I sat sulking. "Confound your science!" I said.

"The problem is communication. Gestures, I fear, will be different. Pointing, for example. No

That was too obviously wrong for me. "Pretty nearly every animal," I cried, "points with its eyes or

Cavor meditated over that. "Yes," he said at last, "and we don't. There's such differences such

"One might. ... But how can I tell? There is speech. The sounds they make, a sort of fluting and

piping. I don't see how we are to imitate that. Is it their speech, that sort of thing? They may have

different senses, different means of communication. Of course they are minds and we are minds;

there must be something in common. Who knows how far we may not get to an understanding?"

"The things are outside us," I said. "They're more different from us than the strangest animals on

Cavor thought. "I don't see that. Where there are minds they will have something similar even

though they have been evolved on different planets. Of course if it was a question of instincts, if we

"Well, are they? They're much more like ants on their hind legs than human beings, and who ever

"But these machines and clothing! No, I don't hold with you, Bedford. The difference is wide "

"The resemblance must bridge it. I remember reading once a paper by the late Professor Galton on

the possibility of communication between the planets. Unhappily, at that time it did not seem

probable that that would be of any material benefit to me, and I fear I did not give it the attention I

"His idea was to begin with those broad truths that must underlie all conceivable mental existences

and establish a basis on those. The great principles of geometry, to begin with. He proposed to

take some leading proposition of Euclid's, and show by construction that its truth was known to us,

to demonstrate, for example, that the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal, and that

if the equal sides be produced the angles on the other side of the base are equal also, or that the

square on the hypotenuse of a rightangled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the two

other sides. By demonstrating our knowledge of these things we should demonstrate our

possession of a reasonable intelligence... Now, suppose I ... I might draw the geometrical figure

He fell silent. I sat meditating his words. For a time his wild hope of communication, of

interpretation, with these weird beings held me. Then that angry despair that was a part of my

exhaustion and physical misery resumed its sway. I perceived with a sudden novel vividness the

extraordinary folly of everything I had ever done. "Ass!" I said; "oh, ass, unutterable ass. ... I seem

to exist only to go about doing preposterous things. Why did we ever leave the thing? ... Hopping

about looking for patents and concessions in the craters of the moon!... If only we had had the

"It is clear," meditated Cavor, "they are intelligent. One can hypotheticate 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.

"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 midsentence. 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

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

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

For a time we ate with an utter absence of selfconsciousness. 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 the 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,

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

tentaclehand 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 beetlewing 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

"They seem to be releasing us," said Cavor. "Remember we are on the moon! Make no sudden

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

"I can't make anything of their gestures. Do you notice this one, who is worrying with his head like a

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

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 thickset 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 bodycases, and that each of the four carried a goad with

spike and guard made of that same dulllooking 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

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, thickset 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

spoutlike face turned from one of us to the other with a quickness that was clearly interrogative.

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

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

Cavor's bluelit 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 thickset 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

"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

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

He began to shake his head violently. "No, no," he said, "me not come on one minute. Me look at

" Isn't there some geometrical point you might bring in apropos of that affair? " I suggested, as the

I turned on the goadbearer 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

"Confound it!" I said to the Selenites; "We're not going to stand that! What on earth do you take us

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

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 my self on this mad,

Cavor came to my side and laid his hand on my arm. His pale and terrified face was ghastly in the

"We can't do anything," he said. "It's a mistake. They don't understand. We must go. As they want

I looked down at him, and then at the fresh Selenites who were coming to help their fellows. "If I

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

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 goadbearers on either side, watchful, yet openmouthed

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

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

"If they wanted to kill us," he said, dropping back to come level with me, " there is no reason why

"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

"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

"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,

"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

"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."

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 planetburrow. 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,

"After all," he said, " this is a tremendous occasion. It is the meeting of two worlds! What are we

"This is only the outer crust. Down below On this scale There will be everything. Do you notice

"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

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

And soon I perceived that we were approaching a declivity of some sort, because the little blue

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.

For a moment I and Cavor stood as near the edge as we dared, peering into a bluetinged

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.

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

"I don't believe they see as we do. I've been watching them. I wonder if they know this is simply

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

"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

I wrenched my wrists free from the little tentacles that held them. I turned on the goadbearer.

"Confound you! " I cried. "I've warned you of that. What on earth do you think I'm made of, to stick

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 pentup reserve of energy in my being. Instantly the link of the wristchain 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 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

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?"

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 goadbearers. Instantly one threw his goad at

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.

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 javelinwise,

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

Then, realising that I dared not run back to him, because my illcalculated steps might carry me

over the edge, he came shuffling towards me, with his hands held out before him.

I dropped on my knees and fell to work on his ankle bonds. Whack came something I know not

what and splashed the livid streamlet into drops about us. Far away on our right a piping and

I whipped the chain off his feet, and put it in his hand. "Hit with that! " I said, and without waiting for

an answer, set off in big bounds along the path by which we had come. I had a nasty sort of feeling

that these things could jump out of the darkness on to my back. I heard the impact of his leaps

We ran in vast strides. But that running, you must understand, was an altogether different thing

from any running on earth. On earth one leaps and almost instantly hits the ground again, but on

the moon, because of its weaker pull, one shot through the air for several seconds before one

came to earth. In spite of our violent hurry this gave an effect of long pauses, pauses in which one

might have counted seven or eight. "Step," and one soared off! All sorts of questions ran through

my mind: "Where are the Selenites? What will they do? Shall we ever get to that tunnel? Is Cavor

far behind? Are they likely to cut him off?" Then whack, stride, and off again for another step.

I saw a Selenite running in front of me, his legs going exactly as a man's would go on earth, saw

him glance over his shoulder, and heard him shriek as he ran aside out of my way into the

darkness. He was, I I think, our guide, but I am not sure. Then in another vast stride the walls of

rock had come into view on either hand, and in two more strides I was in the tunnel, and tempering

my pace to its low roof. I went on to a bend, then stopped and turned back, and plug, plug, plug,

Cavor came into view, splashing into the stream of blue light at every stride, and grew larger and

blundered into me. We stood clutching each other. For a moment, at least, we had shaken off our

"You've spoilt it all!" panted Cavor. "Nonsense," I cried. "It was that or death!"

We strode on, and presently came to a radiating dark cavern. Cavor was in front. He hesitated, and

chose a black mouth that seemed to promise good hiding. He went towards it and turned.

A tumult of sounds, and in particular a sound like a clanging gong, advancing up the main tunnel,

became audible. It was horribly suggestive of a tumultuous pursuit. We made a bolt for the unlit

side cavern forthwith. As we ran along it our way was lit by the irradiation of Cavor's legs. "It's

lucky," I panted, "they took off our boots, or we should fill this place with clatter." On we rushed,

taking as small steps as we could to avoid striking the roof of the cavern. After a time we seemed to

I stopped and looked back, and I heard the pad, pad of Cavor's feet receding. Then he stopped

I looked, and at first could see nothing. Then I perceived his head and shoulders dimly outlined

against a fainter darkness. I saw, also, that this mitigation of the darkness was not blue, as all the

other light within the moon had been, but a pallid gray, a very vague, faint white, the daylight

colour. Cavor noted this difference as soon, or sooner, than I did, and I think, too, that it filled him

He did not dare to say the thing he hoped. Then came a pause. Suddenly I knew by the sound of

his feet that he was striding towards that pallor. I followed him with a beating heart.

THE light grew stronger as we advanced. In a little time it was nearly as strong as the

phosphorescence on Cavor's legs. Our tunnel was expanding into a cavern, and this new light was

at the farther end of it. I perceived something that set my hopes leaping and bounding.

In another moment we were beneath it. It filtered down through a chink in the walls of the cavern,

and as I stared up, drip, came a drop of water upon my face. I started and stood aside drip, fell

I thrust an arm into the crack, and just at my finger tips found a little ledge by which I could hold. I

could see the white light was very much brighter now. I pulled myself up by two fingers with

scarcely an effort, though on earth I weigh twelve stone, reached to a still higher corner of rock, and

so got my feet on the narrow ledge. I stood up and searched up the rocks with my fingers; the cleft

broadened out upwardly. "It's climbable," I said to Cavor. "Can you jump up to my hand if I hold it

I wedged myself between the sides of the cleft, rested knee and foot on the ledge, and extended a

hand. I could not see Cavor, but I could hear the rustle of his movements as he crouched to spring.

Then whack and he was hanging to my arm and no heavier than a kitten! I lugged him up until he

"Confound it!" I said, "any one could be a mountaineer on the moon;" and so set myself in earnest

to the climbing. For a few minutes I clambered steadily, and then I looked up again. The cleft

In another moment I could see what it was, and at the sight I could have beaten my head against

the rocks with disappointment. For I beheld simply an irregularly sloping open space, and all over

its slanting floor stood a forest of little clubshaped fungi, each shining gloriously with that pinkish

silvery light. For a moment I stared at their soft radiance, then sprang forward and upward among

them. I plucked up half a dozen and flung them against the rocks, and then sat down, laughing

"It's phosphorescence again!" I said. "No need to hurry. Sit down and make yourself at home." And

as he spluttered over our disappointment, I began to lob more of these growths into the cleft.

"Daylight!" cried I. "Daybreak, sunset, clouds, and windy skies! Shall we ever see such things

As I spoke, a little picture of our world seemed to rise before me, bright and little and clear, like the

background of some old Italian picture. "The sky that changes, and the sea that changes, and the

hills and the green trees and the towns and cities shining in the sun. Think of a wet roof at sunset,

"Here we are burrowing in this beastly world that isn't a world, with its inky ocean hidden in some

abominable blackness below, and outside that torrid day and that death stillness of night. And all

these things that are chasing us now, beastly men of leather insect men, that come out of a

nightmare! After all, they're right! What business have we here smashing them and disturbing their

world! For all we know the whole planet is up and after us already. In a minute we may hear them

whimpering, and their gongs going. What are we to do? Where are we to go? Here we are as

I resumed my destruction of the fungi. Then suddenly I saw something that struck me even then.

He was thinking intently, with his hands gripping his cheeks. He turned his head slowly and stared

at me, and when I had repeated my words, at the twisted chain about his right hand. " So they are,"

he said, "so they are." His face lost its transitory interest even as he looked. He hesitated for a

moment, then went on with his interrupted meditation. I sat for a space puzzling over the fact that I

had only just observed this, until I considered the blue light in which we had been, and which had

taken all the colour out of tlie metal. And from that discovery I also started upon a train of thought

that carried me wide and far. I forgot that I had just been asking what business we had in the moon.

It was Cavor who spoke first. "It seems to me that there are two courses open to us."

"Either we can attempt to make our way fight our way if necessary out to the exterior again, and

then hunt for our sphere until we find it, or the cold of the night comes to kill us, or else "

"We might attempt once more to establish some sort of understanding with the minds of the people

"You see," said Cavor, "I do not think we can judge the Selenites by what we have seen of them.

Their central world, their civilised world will be far below in the profounder caverns about their sea.

This region of the crust in which we are is an outlying district, a pastoral region. At any rate, that is

my interpretation. These Selenites we have seen may be only the equivalent of cowboys and

enginetenders. Their use of goads in all probability mooncalf goads the lack of imagination

they show in expecting us to be able to do just what they can do, their indisputable brutality, all

"Neither of us could endure a sixinch plank across the bottomless pit for very long."

He discovered a new line of possibilities. "Well, suppose we got ourselves into some corner, where

we could defend ourselves against these hinds and labourers. If, for example, we could hold out for

a week or so, it is probable that the news of our appearance would filter down to the more

I took up a new thread of thought. "After all," I said, " I suppose you don't think these Selenites so

"You think so. That's just it. You think every other mind wants to know. I remember once, when I

asked you why you conducted all these researches, you said you wanted your F.R.S., and to have

the stuff called Cavorite, and things like that. You know perfectly well you didn't do it for that; but at

the time my question took you by surprise, and you felt you ought to have something to look like a

"It isn't one man in a million has that twist. Most men want well, various things, but very few want

knowledge for its own sake. I don't, I know perfectly well. Now, these Selenites seem to be a

driving, busy sort of being, but how do you know that even the most intelligent will take an interest

in us or our world? I don't believe they'll even know we have a world. They never come out at night

they'd freeze if they did. They've probably never seen any heavenly body at all except the blazing

sun. How are they to know there is another world? What does it matter to them if they do? Well,

even if they have had a glimpse of a few stars, or even of the earth crescent, what of that? Why

should people living inside a planet trouble to observe that sort of thing? Men wouldn't have done it

"Well, suppose there are a few philosophers like yourself. They are just the very Selenites who'll

never have heard of our existence. Suppose a Selenite had I dropped on the earth when you were

at Lympne, you'd have been the last man in the world to hear he had come. You never read a

newspaper! You see the chances against you. Well, it's for these chances we're sitting here doing

nothing while precious time is flying. I tell you we've got into a fix. We've come unarmed, we've lost

our sphere, we've got no food, we've shown ourselves to the Selenites, and made them think we're

strange, strong, dangerous animals; and unless these Selenites are perfect fools, they'll set about

now and hunt us till they find us, and when they find us they'll try to take us if they can, and kill us if

they can't, and that's the end of the matter. If they take us, they'll probably kill us, through some

misunderstanding. After we're done for, they may discuss us perhaps, but we shan't get much fun

"On the other hand, here's gold knocking about like cast iron at home. If only we can get some of it

"We might put the thing on a sounder footing. Come back in a bigger sphere with guns."

"Look here, Cavor," I said, "I've half the voting power anyhow in this affair, and this is a case for a

practical man. I'm a practical man, and you are not. I'm not going to trust to Selenites and

geometrical diagrams if I can help it. That's all. Get back. Drop all this secrecy or most of it. And

For a time we nursed our knees in silence. Then he seemed to decide for my reasons.

"I think," he said, "one can get data. It is clear that while the sun is on this side of the moon the air

will be blowing through this planet sponge from the dark side hither. On this side, at any rate, the

air will be expanding and flowing out of the moon caverns into the craters. ... Very well, there's a

"And that means that this is not a dead end; somewhere behind us this cleft goes on and up. The

draught is blowing up, and that is the way we have to go. If we try to get up any sort of chimney or

gully there is, we shall not only get out of these passages where they are hunting for us "

We listened. At first it was an indistinct murmur, and then one picked out the clang of a gong. "They

I listened again for a space. "This time," I whispered, "they're likely to have some sort of weapon."

Then suddenly I sprang to my feet. "Good heavens, Cavor! " I cried. "But they will! They'll see the

I didn't finish my sentence. I turned about and made a leap over the fungus tops towards the upper

end of the cavity. I saw that the space turned upward and became a draughty cleft again,

ascending to impenetrable darkness. I was about to clamber up into this, and then with a happy

"Go on! said I, and went back and got two of the shining fungi, and putting one into the breast

pocket of my flannel jacket, so that it stuck out to light our climbing, went back with the other for

Cavor. The noise of the Selenites was now so loud that it seemed they must be already beneath

the cleft. But it might be they would have difficulty in clambering in to it, or might hesitate to ascend

it against our possible resistance. At any rate, we had now the comforting knowledge of the

enormous muscular superiority our birth in another planet gave us. In other minute I was

I DO not know how far we clambered before we came to the grating. It may be we ascended only a

few hundred feet, but at the time it seemed to me we might have hauled and jammed and hopped

and wedged ourselves through a mile or more of vertical ascent. Whenever I recall that time,,there

comes into my head the heavy clank of our golden chains that followed every movement. Very

soon my knuckles and knees were raw, and I had a bruise on one cheek. After a time the first

violence of our efforts diminished, and our movements became more deliberate and less painful.

The noise of the pursuing Selenites had died away altogether. It seemed almost as though they

had not traced us up the crack after all, in spite of the telltale heap of broken fungi that must have

lain beneath it. At times the cleft narrowed so much that we could scarce squeeze up it; at others it

expanded into great drusy cavities, studded with prickly crystals or thickly beset with dull, shining

fungoid pimples. Sometimes it twisted spirally, and at other times slanted down nearly to the

horizontal direction. Ever and again there was the intermittent drip and trickle of water by us. Once

or twice it seemed to us that small living things had rustled out of our reach, but what they were we

never saw. They may have been venomous beasts for all I know, but they did us no harm, and we

were now tuned to a pitch when a weird creeping thing more or less mattered little. And at last, far

above, came the familiar bluish light again, and then we saw that it filtered through a grating that

We whispered as we pointed this out to one another, and became more and more cautious in our

ascent. Presently we were close under the grating, and by pressing my face against its bars I could

see a limited portion of the cavern beyond. It was clearly a large space, and lit no doubt by some

rivulet of the same blue light that we had seen flow from the beating machinery. An intermittent

My first endeavour was naturally to see what might be upon the floor of the cavern, but our grating

lay in a depression whose rim hid all this from our eyes. Our foiled attention then fell back upon the

suggestion of the various sounds we heard, and presently my eye caught a number of faint

Indisputably there were several Selenites, perhaps a considerable number, in this space, for we

could hear the noises of their intercourse, and faint sounds that I identified as their footfalls. There

was also a succession of regularly repeated sounds chid, chid, chid which began and ceased,

suggestive of a knife or spade hacking at some soft substance. Then came a clank as if of chains,

a whistle and a rumble as of a truck running over a hollowed place, and then again that chid, chid,

chid resumed. The shadows told of shapes that moved quickly and rhythmically, in agreement with

We put our heads close together, and began to discuss these things in noiseless whispers.

I looked at the grating. "It's flimsy," I said. "We might bend two of the bars and crawl through."

We wasted a little time in vague discussion. Then I took one of the bars in both hands, and got my

feet up against the rock until they were almost on a level with my head, and so thrust against the

bar. It bent so suddenly that I almost slipped. I clambered about and bent the adjacent bar in the

opposite direction, and then took the luminous fungus from my pocket and dropped it down the

"Don't do anything hastily," whispered Cavor, as I twisted myself up through the opening I had

enlarged. I had a glimpse of busy figures as I came through the grating, and immediately bent

down, so that the rim of the depression in which the grating lay hid me from their eyes, and so lay

flat, signalling advice to Cavor as he also prepared to come through. Presently we were side by

It was a much larger cavern than we had supposed from our first glimpse of it, and we looked up

from the lowest portion of its sloping floor. It widened out as it receded from us, and its roof came

down and hid the remoter portion altogether. And lying in a line along its length, vanishing at last far

away in that tremendous perspective, were a number of huge shapes, huge pallid hulls, upon which

the Selenites were busy. At first they seemed big white cylinders of vague import. Then I noted the

heads upon them lying towards us, eyeless and skinless like the heads of sheep at a butcher's, and

perceived they were the carcasses of mooncalves being cut up, much as the crew of a whaler

might cut up a moored whale. They were cutting off the flesh in strips, and on some of the farther

trunks the white ribs were showing. It was the sound of their hatchets that made that chid, chid.

Some way away a thing like a trolley cable, drawn and loaded with chunks of lax meat, was running

up the slope of the cavern floor. This enormous long avenue of hulls that were destined to be food,

gave us a sense of the vast populousness of the moon world second only to the effect of our first

It seemed to me at first that the Selenites must be standing on trestlesupported planks, and then I

saw that the planks and supports and their hatchets were really of the same leaden hue as my

fetters had seemed before white light came to bear on them. A number of very thicklooking

crowbars lay about the floor, and had apparently assisted to turn the dead mooncalf over on its

side. They were perhaps six feet long, with shaped handles, very temptinglooking weapons. The

[I do not remember seeing any wooden things on the moon; doors tables, everything corresponding

to our terrestrial joinery was made of metal, and I believe for the most part of gold, which as a metal

would, of course, naturally recommend itself other things being equal on account of the ease in

We lay for a long time noting all these things in silence. "Well?" said Cavor at last.

I crouched over and turned to him. I had come upon a brilliant idea. "Unless they lowered those

He peered over the edge of the hollow again. "I wonder now ..." he began. "After all, we have never

I stopped him by a grip on his arm. I had heard a noise from the cleft below us!

We twisted ourselves about, and lay as still as death, with every sense alert. In a little while I did

not doubt that something was quietly ascending the cleft. Very slowly and quite noiselessly I

assured myself of a good grip on my chain, and waited for that something to appear.

I took a sort of provisional aim at the gap in the grating. I could hear now quite distinctly the soft

twittering of the ascending Selenites, the dab of their hands against the rock, and the falling of dust

Then I could see that there was something moving dimly in the blackness below the grating, but

what it might be I could not distinguish. The whole thing I seemed to hang fire just for a moment

then smash! I had sprung to my feet, struck savagely at something that had flashed out at me. It

was the keen point of a spear. I have thought since that its length in the narrowness of the cleft

must have prevented its being sloped to reach me. Anyhow, it shot out from the grating like the

tongue of a snake, and missed and flew back and flashed again. But the second time I snatched

and caught it, and wrenched it away, but not before another had darted ineffectually at me.

I shouted with triumph as I felt the hold of the Selenite resist my pull for a moment and give, and

then I was jabbing down through the bars, amidst squeals from the darkness, and Cavor had

snapped off the other spear, and was leaping and flourishing it beside me, and making inefficient

jabs. Clang, clang, came up through the grating, and then an axe hurtled through the air and

whacked against the rocks beyond, to remind me of the fleshers at the carcasses up the cavern.

I turned, and they were all coming towards us in open order waving their axes. They were short,

thick, little beggars, with long arms, strikingly different from the ones we had seen before. If they

had not heard of us before, they must have realised the situation with incredible swiftness. I stared

at them for a moment, spear in hand. "Guard that grating, Cavor," I cried, howled to intimidate

them, and rushed to meet them. Two of them missed with their hatchets, and the rest fled

incontinently. Then the two also were sprinting away up the cavern, with hands clenched and

I knew the spear I had was no good for me. It was thin and flimsy, only effectual for a thrust, and

too long for a quick recover. So I only chased the Selenites as far as the first carcass, and stopped

there and picked up one of the crowbars that were lying about. It felt comfortingly heavy, and equal

to smashing any number of Selenites. I threw away my spear, and picked up a second crowbar for

the other hand. I felt five times better than I had with the spear. I shook the two threateningly at the

Selenites, who had come to a halt in a little crowd far away up the cavern, and then turned about to

He was leaping from side to side of the grating, making threatening jabs with his broken spear.

That was all right. It would keep the Selenites down for a time at any rate. I looked up the cavern

We were cornered in a sort of way already. But these butchers up the cavern had been surprised,

they were probably scared, and they had no special weapons, only those little hatchets of theirs.

And that way lay escape. Their sturdy little forms ever so much shorter and thicker than the

mooncalf herds were scattered up the slope in a way that was eloquent of indecision. I had the

moral advantage of a mad bull in a street. But for all that, there seemed a tremendous crowd of

them. Very probably there was. Those Selenites down the cleft had certainly some infernally long

spears. It might be they had other surprises for us. ... But, confound it! if we charged up the cave

we should let them up behind us, and if we didn't those little brutes up the cave would probably get

reinforced. Heaven alone knew what tremendous engines of warfare guns, bombs, terrestrial

torpedoes this unknown world below our feet, this vaster world of which we had only pricked the

outer cuticle, might not presently send up to our destruction. It became clear the only thing to do

was to charge! It became clearer as the legs of a number of fresh Selenites appeared running

And struggling in the grating between those defensive spears appeared the head and shoulders of

I realised Cavor's utter incapacity for the fight we had in hand. For a moment I hesitated. Then I

rushed past him whirling my crowbars, and shouting to confound the aim of the Selenite. He was

aiming in the queerest way with the thing against his stomach. "Chuzz!" The thing wasn't a gun; it

I didn't fall down, I simply came down a little shorter than I should have done if I hadn't been hit,

and from the feel of my shoulder the thing might have tapped me and glanced off. Then my left

hand hit again the shaft, and I perceived there was a sort of spear sticking half through my

shoulder. The moment after I got home with the crowbar in my right hand, and hit the Selenite fair

I dropped a crowbar, pulled the spear out of my shoulder, and began to jab it down the grating into

the darkness. At each jab came a shriek and twitter. Finally I hurled the spear down upon them with

all my strength, leapt up, picked up the crowbar again, and started for the multitude up the cavern.

Step, leap ... whack, step, leap. ... Each leap seemed to last ages. With each, the cave opened out

and the number of Selenites visible increased. At first they seemed all running about like ants in a

disturbed anthill, one or two waving hatchets and coming to meet me, more running away, some

bolting sideways into the avenue of carcasses, then presently others came in sight carrying spears,

and then others. I saw a most extraordinary thing, all hands and feet, bolting for cover. The cavern

Flick! something flew over my head. Flick! As I soared in midstride I saw a spear hit and quiver in

one of the carcasses to my left. Then, as I came down, one hit the ground before me, and I heard

the remote chuzz! with which their things were fired. Flick, flick! for a moment it was a shower. They

I don't think I thought clearly then. I seem to remember a kind of stereotyped phrase running

through my mind: "Zone of fire, seek cover!" I know I made a dash for the space between two ~ the

I looked round for Cavor, and for a moment it seemed as if he had vanished from the world. Then

he came out of the darkness between the row of the carcasses and the rocky wall of the cavern. I

He was saying something, but what it was I did not heed. I had realised that we might work from

mooncalf to mooncalf up the cave until we were near enough to charge home. It was charge or

My mind was busy as we went up that narrow alley between the dead bodies and the wall of the

cavern. The rocks curved about they could not enfilade us. Though in that narrow space we could

not leap, yet with our earthborn strength we were still able to go very much faster than the

Selenites. I reckoned we should presently come right among them. Once we were on them, they

would be nearly as formidable as black beetles. Only there would first of all be a volley. I thought

He was pointing upward over the carcasses. "White light!" he said. "White light again!"

I looked, and it was even so, a faint white ghost of light in the remoter cavern roof. That seemed to

"Keep close," I said. A flat, long Selenite dashed out of the darkness, and squealed and fled. I

halted, and stopped Cavor with my hand. I hung my jacket over my crowbar, ducked round the next

"Chuzzflick," just one arrow came. We were close on the Selenites, and they were standing in a

crowd, broad, short, and tall together, with a little battery of their shooting implements pointing

down the cave. Three or four other arrows followed the first, then their fire ceased.

I stuck out my head, and escaped by a hair'sbreadth. This time I drew a dozen shots or more, and

heard the Selenites shouting and twittering as if with excitement as they shot. I picked up jacket

"Chuzzzzzzzz! Chuzz!" In an instant my jacket had grown a thick beard of arrows, and they

were quivering all over the carcass behind us. Instantly I slipped the crowbar out of the jacket,

dropped the jacket for all I know to the contrary it is lying up there in the moon now and rushed

For a minute perhaps it was massacre. I was too fierce to discriminate, and the Selenites were

probably too scared to fight. At any rate they made no sort of fight against me. I saw scarlet, as the

saying is. I remember I seemed to be wading among those leathery, thin things as a man wades

through tall grass, mowing and hitting, first right, then left; smash. Little drops of moisture flew

about. I trod on things that crushed and piped and went slippery. The crowd seemed to open and

close and flow like water. They seemed to have no combined plan whatever. There were spears

flew about me, I was grazed over the ear by one. I was stabbed once in the arm and once in the

cheek, but I only found that out afterwards, when the blood had had time to run and cool and feel

What Cavor did I do not know. For a space it seemed that this fighting had lasted for an age, and

must needs go on for ever. Then suddenly it was all over, and there was nothing to be seen but the

backs of heads bobbing up and down as their owners ran in all directions. ... I seemed altogether

I had come right through them in vast flying strides, they were all behind me, and running hither

I felt an enormous astonishment at the evaporation of the great fight into which I had hurled myself,

and not a little exultation. It did not seem to me that I had discovered the Selenites were

unexpectedly flimsy, but that I was unexpectedly strong. I laughed stupidly. This fantastic moon!

I glanced for a moment at the smashed and writhing bodies that were scattered over the cavern

PRESENTLY we saw that the cavern before us opened upon a hazy void. In another moment we

had emerged upon a sort of slanting gallery, that projected into a vast circular space, a huge

cylindrical pit running vertically up and down. Round this pit the slanting gallery ran without any

parapet or protection for a turn and a half, and then plunged high above into the rock again.

Somehow it reminded me then one of those spiral turns of the railway through the Saint Gothard. It

was all tremendously huge. I can scarcely hope to convey to you the Titanic proportion of all that

place, the Titanic effect of it. Our eyes followed up the vast declivity of the pit wall, and overhead

and far above we beheld a round opening set with faint stars, and half of the lip about it well nigh

blinding with the white light of the sun. At that we cried aloud simultaneously.

"But there?" said Cavor, and very carefully stepped nearer the edge of the gallery. I followed his

example, and craned forward and looked down, but I was dazzled by that gleam of light above, and

I could see only a bottomless darkness with spectral patches of crimson and purple floating therein.

Yet if I could not see, I could hear. Out of this darkness came a sound, a sound like the angry hum

one can hear if one puts one's ear outside a hive of bees, a sound out of that enormous hollow, it

For a moment I listened, then tightened my grip on my crowbar, and led the way up the gallery.

"The lights!" said he. " Yes the lights of the world that now we shall never see."

"We'll come back," I said, for now we had escaped so much I was rashly sanguine that we should

I suppose that slanting lateral way was four or five miles long, allowing for its curvature, and it

ascended at a slope that would have made it almost impossibly steep on earth, but which one

strode up easily under lunar conditions. We saw only two Selenites during all that portion of our

flight, and directly they became aware of us they ran headlong. It was clear that the knowledge of

our strength and violence had reached them. Our way to the exterior was unexpectedly plain. The

spiral gallery straightened into a steeply ascendent tunnel, its floor bearing abundant traces of the

mooncalves, and so straight and short in proportion to its vast arch, that no part of it was absolutely

dark. Almost immediately it began to lighten, and then far off and high up, and quite blindingly

brilliant, appeared its opening on the exterior, a slope of Alpine steepness surmounted by a crest of

bayonet shrub, tall and broken down now, and dry and dead, in spiky silhouette against the sun.

And it is strange that we men, to whom this very vegetation had seemed so weird and horrible a

little time ago, should now behold it with the emotion a homecoming exile might feel at sight of his

native land. We welcomed even the rareness of the air that made us pant as we ran, and which

rendered speaking no longer the easy thing that it had been, but an effort to make oneself heard.

Larger grew the sunlit circle above us, and larger, and all the nearer tunnel sank into a rim of

indistinguishable black. We saw the dead bayonet shrub no longer with any touch of green in it, but

brown and dry and thick, arid the M shadow of its upper branches high out of sight made a densely

interlaced pattern upon the tumbled rocks. And at the immediate mouth of the tunnel was a wide

We came out upon this space at last into a light and heat that hit and pressed upon us. We

traversed the exposed area painfully, and clambered up a slope among the scrub stems, and sat

down at last panting in a high place beneath the shadow of a mass of twisted lava. Even in the

The air was intensely hot, and we were in great physical discomfort, but for all that we were no

longer in a nightmare. We seemed to have come to our own province again, beneath the stars. All

the fear and stress of our flight through the dim passages and fissures below had fallen from us.

That last fight bad filled us with an enormous confidence in ourselves so far as the Selenites were

concerned. We looked back almost incredulously at the black opening from which we had just

emerged. Down there it was, in a blue glow that now in our memories seemed the next thing to

absolute darkness, we had met with things like mad mockeries of men, helmetheaded creatures,

and had walked in fear before them, and had submitted to them until we could submit no longer.

And behold, they had smashed like wax and scattered like chaff, and fled and vanished like the

I rubbed my eyes, doubting whether we had not slept and dreamt these things by reason of the

fungus we had eaten, and suddenly discovered the blood upon my face, and then that my shirt was

"Confound it!" I said, gauging my injuries with an investigatory hand, and suddenly that distant

He shook his head, with his eyes fixed upon the tunnel. "How can one tell what they will do?"

"It depends on what they think of us, and I don't see how we can begin to guess that. And it

depends upon what they have in reserve. It's as you say, Cavor, we have touched the merest

outside of this world. They may have all sorts of things inside here. Even with those shooting things

"Yet after all," I said, "even if we don't find the sphere at once, there is a chance for us. We might

hold out. Even through the night. We might go down there again and make a fight for it."

I stared about me with speculative eyes. The character of the scenery had altered altogether by

reason of the enormous growth and subsequent drying of the scrub. The crest on which we sat was

high, and commanded a wide prospect of the crater landscape, and we saw it now all sere and dry

in the late autumn of the lunar afternoon. Rising one behind the other were long slopes and fields of

trampled brown where the mooncalves had pastured, and far away in the full blaze of the sun a

drove of them basked slumberously, scattered shapes, each with a blot of shadow against it like

sheep on the side of a down. But never a sign of a Selenite was to be seen. Whether they had fled

on our emergence from the interior passages, or whether they were accustomed to retire after

driving out the mooncalves, I cannot guess. At the time I believed the former was the case.

"If we were to set fire to all this stuff, I said, "we might find the sphere among the ashes."

Cavor did not seem to hear me. He was peering under his hand at the stars, that still, in spite of the

intense sunlight, were abundantly visible in the sky. "How long do you think we've have been

"More nearly ten. Do you know, the sun is past its zenith, and sinking in the west. In four days' time

"Hunger fatigue all those things are different. Everything is different everything. To me it

seems that since first we came out of the sphere has been only a question of hours long hours

"Ten days," I said; "that leaves " I looked up at the sun for a moment, and then saw that it was

halfway from the zenith to the western edge of things. "Four days! ... Cavor, we musn't sit here and

I stood up. "We must get a fixed point we can recognise we might hoist a flag, or a handkerchief,

"Yes," he said, "there is nothing for it but to hunt the sphere. Nothing. We may find it certainly we

He look this way and that, glanced up at the sky and down at the tunnel, and astonished me by a

sudden gesture of impatience. "Oh! but we have done foolishly! To have come to this pass! Think

"Never the thing we might have done. here below out feet is a world. Think of what that world must

be! Think of that machine we saw, and the lid and the shaft! They were just remote outlying things,

and those creatures we have seen and fought with no more than ignorant peasants, dwellers in the

outskirts, yokels and labourers half akin to brutes. Down below! Caverns beneath caverns, tunnels,

structures, ways... It must open out, and be greater and wider and more populous as one

descends. Assuredly. Right down at the last the central sea that washes round the core of the

moon. Think of its inky waters under the spare lights if, indeed, their eyes need lights! Think of

the cascading tributaries pouring down their channels to feed it! Think of the tides upon its surface,

and the rush and swirl of its ebb and flow! perhaps they have ships that go upon it, perhaps down

there are mighty cities and swarming ways, and wisdom and order passing the wit of man. And we

may die here upon it, and never see the masters who must be ruling over these things! We may

freeze and die here, and the air will freeze and thaw upon us, and then ! Then they will come

upon us, come on our stiff and silent bodies, and find the sphere we cannot find, and they will

understand at last too late all the thought and effort that ended here in vain!"

His voice for all that speech sounded like the voice of someone heard in a telephone, weak and far

"I don't know. How am I to know? One might carry a torch, one might have a lamp The others

He stood for a moment with his hands held down and a rueful face, staring out over the waste that

defied him. Then with a gesture of renunciation he turned towards me with proposals for the

"We could bring back lamps to carry and climbing irons, and a hundred necessary things."

He looked at my golden crowbars, and said nothing for a space. He stood with his hands clasped

behind his back, staring across the crater. At last he signed and spoke. "It was I found the way

here, but to find a way isn't always to be master of a way. If I take my secret back to earth, what will

happen? I do not see how I can keep my secret for a year, for even a part of a year. Sooner or later

it must come out, even if other men rediscover it. And then ... Governments and powers will

struggle to get hither, they will fight against one another, and against these moon people; it will only

spread warfare and multiply the occasions of war. In a little while, in a very little while, if I tell my

secret, this planet to its deepest galleries will be strewn with human dead. Other things are

doubtful, but that is certain. It is not as though man had any use for the moon. What good would the

moon be to men? Even of their own planet what have they made but a battleground and theatre of

infinite folly? Small as his world is, and short as his time, he has still in his little life down there far

more than he can do. No! Science has toiled too long forging weapons for fools to use. It is time

she held her hand. Let him find it out for himself again in a thousand years' time."

He looked up at me and smiled. "After all," he said, "why should one worry? There is little chance of

our finding the sphere, and down below things are brewing. It's simply the human habit of hoping till

we die that makes us think of return. Our troubles are only beginning. We have shown these moon

folk violence, we have given them a taste of our quality, and our chances are about as good as a

tiger's that has got loose and killed a man in Hyde Park. The news of us must be running down

from gallery to gallery, down towards the central parts. ... No sane beings will ever let us take that

"After all," he said, we must separate. We must stick up a handkerchief on these tall spikes here

and fasten it firmly, and from this as a centre we must work over the crater. You must go westward,

moving out in semicircles to and fro towards the setting sun. You must move first with your shadow

on your right until it is at right angles with the direction of your handkerchief, and then with your

shadow on your left. And I will do the same to the east. We will look into every gully, examine every

skerry of rocks; we will do all we can to find my sphere. If we see the Selenites we will hide from

them as well as we can. For drink we must take snow, and if we feel the need of food, we must kill

a mooncalf if we can, and eat such flesh as it has raw and so each will go his own way."

"He must come back to the white handkerchief, and stand by it and signal to the other."

Cavor glanced up at the sun. "We go on seeking until the night and cold overtake us."

But for a moment he did not start. He looked round at me shyly, hesitated. "Au revoir," he said.

I felt an odd stab of emotion. A sense of how we had galled each other, and particularly how I must

have galled him, came to me. "Confound it," thought I, "we might have done better!" I was on the

point of asking him to shake hands for that, somehow, was how I felt just then when he put his

feet together and leapt away from me towards the north. He seemed to drift through the air as a

dead leaf would do, fell lightly, and leapt again. I stood for a moment watching him, then faced

westward reluctantly, pulled myself together, and with something of the feeling of a man who leaps

into icy water, selected a leaping point, and plunged forward to explore my solitary half of the moon

world. I dropped rather clumsily among rocks, stood up and looked about me, clambered on to a

When presently I looked for Cavor he was hidden from my eyes, but the handkerchief showed out

IN a little while it seemed to me as though I had always been alone on the moon. I hunted for a

time with a certain intentness, but the heat was still very great, and the thinness of the air felt like a

hoop about one's chest. I came presently into a hollow basin bristling with tall, brown, dry fronds

about its edge, and I sat down under these to rest and cool. I intended to rest for only a little while. I

put down my clubs beside me, and sat resting my chin on my hands. I saw with a sort of colourless

interest that the rocks of the basin, where here and there the crackling dry lichens had shrunk away

to show them, were all veined and splattered with gold, that here and there bosses of rounded and

wrinkled gold projected from among the litter. What did that matter now? A sort of languor had

possession of my limbs and mind, I did not belive for a moment that we should ever find the sphere

in that vast desiccated wilderness. I seemed to lack a motive for effort until the Selenites should

come. Then I supposed I should exert myself, obeying that unreasonable imperative that urges a

man before all things to preserve and defend his life, albeit he may preserve it only to die more

The thing presented itself to me as a perplexing problem. What is this spirit in man that urges him

for ever to depart from happiness and security, to toil, to place himself in danger, to risk even a

reasonable certainty of death? It dawned upon me up there in the moon as a thing I ought always

to have known, that man is not made simply to go about being safe and comfortable and well fed

and amused. Almost any man, if you put the thing to him, not in words, but in the shape of

opportunities, will show that he knob as much. Against his interest, against his happiness, he is

constantly being driven to do unreasonable things. Some force not himself impels him, and go he

must. But why? Why? Sitting there in the midst of that useless moon gold, amidst the things of

another world, I took count of all my life. Assuming I was to die a castaway upon the moon, I failed

altogether to see what purpose I had served. I got no light on that point, but at any rate it was

clearer to me than it had ever been in my life before that I was not serving my own purpose, that all

my life I had in truth never served the purposes of my private life. Whose purposes, what purposes,

was I serving? ... I ceased to speculate on why we had come to the moon, and took a wider sweep.

Why had I come to the earth? Why had I a private life at all? ... I lost myself at last in bottomless

My thoughts became vague and cloudy, no longer leading in definite directions. I had not felt heavy

or weary I cannot imagine one doing so upon the moon but I suppose I was greatly fatigued. At

Slumbering there rested me greatly, I think, and the sun was setting and the violence of the heat

abating, through all the time I slumbered. When at last I was roused from my slumbers by a remote

clamour, I felt active and capable again. I rubbed my eyes and stretched my arms. I rose to my feet

I was a little stiff and at once prepared to resume my search. I shouldered my golden clubs, one

The sun was certainly lower, much lower than it had been; the air was very much cooler. I

perceived I must have slept some time. It seemed to me that a faint touch of misty blueness hung

about the western cliff I leapt to a little boss of rock and surveyed the crater. I could see no signs of

mooncalves or Selenites, nor could I see Cavor, but I could see my handkerchief far off, spread out

on its thicket of thorns. I looked bout me, and then leapt forward to the next convenient viewpoint.

I beat my round in a semicircle, and back again in a still remoter crescent. It was very fatiguing and

hopeless. The air was really very much cooler, and it seemed to me that the shadow under the

westward cliff was growing broad. Ever and again I stopped and reconnoitred, but there was no

sign of Cavor, no sign of Selenites; and it seemed to me the mooncalves must have been driven

into the interior again I could see none of them. I became more and more desirous of being

Cavor. The winged outline of the sun had sunk now, until it was scarcely the distance of its

diameter from the rim of the sky. I was oppressed by the idea that the Selenites would presently

close their lids and valves, and shut us out under the inexorable onrush of the lunar night. It

seemed to me high time that he abandoned his search, and that we took counsel together. I felt

how urgent it was that we should decide soon upon our course. We had failed to find the sphere,

we no longer had time to seek it, and once these valves were closed with us outside, we were lost

men. The great night of space would descend upon us that blackness of the void which is the

only absolute death. All my being shrank from that approach. We must get into the moon again,

though we were slain in doing it. I was haunted by a vision of our freezing to death, of our

I took no thought any more of the sphere. I thought only of finding Cavor again I was half inclined to

go back into the moon without him, rather than seek him until it was too late. I was already

I did not find it so much as it found me. It was lying much farther to the westward than I had gone,

and the sloping rays of the sinking sun reflected from its glass had suddenly proclaimed its

presence in a dazzling beam. For an instant I thought this was some new device of the Selenites

I threw up my arms, shouted a ghostly shout, and set off in vast leaps towards it. I missed one of

my leaps and dropped into a deep ravine and twisted my ankle, and after that I stumbled at almost

every leap. I was in a state of hysterical agitation, trembling violently, and quite breathless long

before I got to it. Three times at least I had to stop with my hands resting on my side and spite of

I thought of nothing but the sphere until I reached it, I forgot even my trouble of Cavor's

whereabouts. My last leap flung me with my hands hard against its glass; then I lay against it

panting, and trying vainly to shout, "Cavor! here is the sphere!" When I had recovered a little I

peered through the thick glass, and the things inside seemed tumbled. I stooped to peer closer.

Then I attempted to get in. I had to hoist it over a little to get my head through the manhole. The

screw stopper was inside, and I could see now that nothing had been touched, nothing had

suffered. It lay there as we had left it when we had dropped out amidst the snow. For a time I was

wholly occupied in making and remaking this inventory. I found I was trembling violently. It was

good to see that familiar dark interior again! I cannot tell you how good. Presently I crept inside and

sat down among the things. I looked through the glass at the moon world and shivered. I placed my

gold clubs upon the table, and sought out and took a little food; not so much because I wanted it,

but because it was there. Then it occurred to me that it was time to go out and signal for Cavor. But

I did not go out and signal for Cavor forthwith. Something held me to the sphere.

After all, everything was coming right. There would be still time for us to get more of the magic

stone that gives one mastery over men. Away there, close handy, was gold for the picking up; and

the sphere would travel as well half full of gold as though it were empty. We could go back now,

I roused myself at last, and with an effort got myself out of the sphere. I shivered as I emerged, for

the evening air was growing very cold. I stood in the hollow staring about me. I scrutinised the

bushes round me very carefully before I leapt to the rocky shelf hard by, and took once more what

The growth and decay of the vegetation had gone on apace, and the whole aspect of the rocks had

changed, but still it was possible to make out the slope on which the seeds had germinated, and

the rocky mass from which we had taken our first view of the crater. But the spiky shrub on the

slope stood brown and sere now, and thirty feet high, and cast long shadows that stretched out of

sight, and the little seeds that clustered in its upper branches were brown and ripe. Its work was

done, and it was brittle and ready to fall and crumple under the freezing air, so soon as the nightfall

came. And the huge cacti, that had swollen as we watched them, had long since burst and

scattered their spores to the four quarters of the moon. Amazing little corner in the universe the

Some day, thought I, I will have an inscription standing there right in the midst of the hollow. It

came to me, if only this teeming world within knew of the full import of the moment, how furious its

But as yet it could scarcely be dreaming of the significance of our coming. For if it did, the crater

would surely be an uproar of pursuit, instead of as still as death! I looked about for some place from

which I might signal Cavor, and saw that same patch of rock to which he had leapt from my present

standpoint, still bare and barren in the sun. For a moment I hesitated at going so far from the

From this vantage point I surveyed the crater again. Far away at the top of the enormous shadow I

cast was the little white handkerchief fluttering on the bushes. It was very little and very far, and

Cavor was not in sight. It seemed to me that by this time he ought to be looking for me. That was

I stood waiting and watching, hands shading my eyes, expecting every moment to distinguish him.

Very probably I stood there for quite a long time. I tried to shout, and was reminded of the thinness

of the air. I made an undecided step back towards the sphere. But a lurking dread of the Selenites

made me hesitate to signal my whereabouts by hoisting one of our sleepingblankets on to the

It had an effect of emptiness that chilled me. And it was still; Any sound from the Selenites in the

world beneath, even had died away. It was as still as death. Save for the faint stir of the shrub

about me in the little breeze that was rising, there was no sound nor shadow of a sound. And the

I took a deep breath. I put my hands to the sides of my mouth. "Cavor!" I bawled, and the sound

I looked at the handkerchief, I looked behind me at the broadening shadow of the westward cliff I

looked under my hand at the sun. It seemed to me that almost visibly it was creeping down the sky.

I felt I must act instantly if I was to save Cavor. I whipped off my vest and flung it as a mark on the

sere bayonets of the shrubs behind me, and then set off in a straight line towards the handkerchief.

Perhaps it was a couple of miles away a matter of a few hundred leaps and strides. I have

already told how one seemed to hang through those lunar leaps. In each suspense I sought Cavor,

and marvelled why he should be hidden. In each leap I could feel the sun setting behind me. Each

A last leap and I was in the depression below our handkerchief, a stride, and I stood on our former

vantage point within arms' reach of it. I stood up straight and scanned the world about me, between

its lengthening bars of shadow. Far away, down a long declivity, was the opening of the tunnel up

which we had fled, and my shadow reached towards it, stretched towards it, and touched it, like a

Not a sign of Cavor, not a sound in all the stillness, only the stir and waving of the scrub and of the

shadows increased. And suddenly and violently I shivered. "Cav" I began, and realised once more

the uselessness of the human voice in that thin air. Silence. The silence of death.

Then it was my eye caught something a little thing lying, perhaps fifty yards away down the slope,

amidst a litter of bent and broken branches. What was it? I knew, and yet for some reason I would

not know. I went nearer to it. It was the little cricketcap Cavor had worn. I did not touch it, I stood

I saw then that the scattered branches about it had been forcibly smashed and trampled. I

I stood with Cavor's cap in my hand, staring at the trampled reeds and thorns about me. On some,

of them were little smears of something dark, something that I dared not touch. A dozen yards

away, perhaps, the rising breeze dragged something into view, something small and vividly white.

It was a little piece of paper crumpled tightly, as though it had been clutched tightly. I picked it up,

and on it were smears of red. My eye caught faint pencil marks. I smoothed it out, and saw uneven

"I have been injured about the knee, I think my kneecap is hurt, and I cannot run or crawl," it began

Then less legibly: "They have been chasing me for some time, and it is only a question of" the

word "time" seemed to have been written here and erased in favour of something illegible "before

Then the writing became convulsive. "I can hear them," I guessed the tracing meant, and then it

was quite unreadable for a space. Then came a little string of words that were quite distinct: "a

different sort of Selenite altogether, who appears to be directing the" The writing became a mere

"They have larger brain cases much larger, and slenderer bodies, and very short legs. They

"And though I am wounded and helpless here, their appearance still gives me hope " That was like

Then came the sudden streak of the pencil across the paper, and on the back and edges blood!

And as I stood there stupid, and perplexed, with this dumbfounding relic in my hand, something

very soft and light and chill touched my hand for a moment and ceased to be, and then a thing, a

little white speck, drifted athwart a shadow. It was a tiny snowflake, the first snowflake, the herald of

I looked up with a start, and the sky had darkened almost to blackness, and was thick with a

gathering multitude of coldly watchful stars. I looked eastward, and the light of that shrivelled world

was touched with sombre bronze; westward, and the sun robbed now by a thickening white mist of

half its heat and splendour, was touching the crater rim, was sinking out of sight, and all the shrubs

and jagged and tumbled rocks stood out against it in a bristling disorder of black shapes. Into the

great lake of darkness westward, a vast wreath of mist was sinking. A cold wind set all the crater

shivering. Suddenly, for a moment, I was in a puff of falling snow, and all the world about me gray

And then it was I heard, not loud and penetrating as at first, but faint and dim like a dying voice, that

tolling, that same tolling that had welcomed the coming of the day: Boom!... Boom!... Boom!...

It echoed about the crater, it seemed to throb with the throbbing of the greater stars, the bloodred

What had happened to Cavor? All through that tolling I stood there stupidly, and at last the tolling

And suddenly the open mouth of the tunnel down below there, shut like an eye and vanished out of

Over me, around me, closing in on me, embracing me ever nearer, was the Eternal; that which was

before the beginning, and that which triumphs over the end; that enormous void in which all light

and life and being is but the thin and vanishing splendour of a falling star, the cold, the stillness, the

The sense of solitude and desolation became the sense of an overwhelming presence that stooped

"No," I cried. "No! Not yet! not yet! Wait! Wait! Oh, wait!" My voice went up to a shriek. I flung the

crumpled paper from me, scrambled back to the crest to take my bearings, and then, with all the

will that was in me, leapt out towards the mark I had left, dim and distant now in the very margin of

Before me the pale serpentgirdled section of the sun sank and sank, and the advancing shadow

swept to seize the sphere before I could reach it. I was two miles away, a hundred leaps or more,

and the air about me was thinning out as it thins under an airpump, and the cold was gripping at

my joints. But had I died, I should have died leaping. Once, and then again my foot slipped on the

gathering snow as I leapt and shortened my leap; once I fell short into bushes that crashed and

smashed into dusty chips and nothingness, and once I stumbled as I dropped and rolled head over

heels into a gully, and rose bruised and bleeding and confused as to my direction.

But such incidents were as nothing to the intervals, those awful pauses when one drifted through

the air towards that pouring tide of night. My breathing made a piping noise, and it was as though

knives were whirling in my lungs. My heart seemed to beat against the top of my brain. "Shall I

The near I struggled, the more awfully remote it seemed. I was numb, I stumbled, I bruised and cut

I crawled. The frost gathered on my lips, icicles hung from my moustache, I was white with the

I was a dozen yards from it. My eyes had become dim. "Lie down!" screamed despair; "lie down!"

I fought stiffly with it. I was on the manhole lip, a stupefied, halfdead being. The snow was all

The snowflakes the airflakes danced in about me, as I tried with chilling hands to thrust the

valve in and spun it tight and hard. I sobbed. "I will," I chattered in my teeth. And then, with fingers

As I fumbled with the switches for I had never controlled them before I could see dimly through

the steaming glass the blazing red streamers of the sinking sun, dancing and flickering through the

snowstorm, and the black forms of the scrub thickening and bending and breaking beneath the

accumulating snow. Thicker whirled the snow and thicker, black against the light. What if even now

the switches overcame me? Then something clicked under my hands, and in an instant that last

vision of the moon world was hidden from my eyes. I was in the silence and darkness the

IT was almost as though I had been killed. Indeed, I could imagine a man suddenly and violently

killed would feel very much as I did. One moment, a passion of agonising existence and fear; the

next darkness and stillness, neither light nor life nor sun, moon nor stars, the blank infinite.

Although the thing was done by my own act, although I had already tasted this very of effect in

Cavor's company, I felt astonished, dumbfounded, and overwhelmed. I seemed to be borne upward

into an enormous darkness. My fingers floated off the studs, I hung as if I were annihilated, and at

last very softly and gently I came against the bale and the golden chain, and the crowbars that had

I do not know how long that drifting took. In the sphere of course, even more than on the moon,

one's earthly time sense was ineffectual. At the touch of the bale it was as if I had awakened from a

dreamless sleep. I immediately perceived that if I wanted to keep awake and alive I must get a light

or open a window, so as to get a grip of something with my eyes. And besides, I was cold. I kicked

off from the bale, therefore, clawed on to the thin cords within the glass, crawled along until I got to

the manhole rim, and so got my bearings for the light and blind studs, took a shove off, and flying

once round the bale, and getting a scare from something big and flimsy that was drifting loose, I got

my hand on the cord quite close to the studs, and reached them. I lit the little lamp first of all to see

what it was I had collided with, and discovered that old copy of Lloyd's News had slipped its

moorings, and was adrift in the void. That brought me out of the infinite to my own proper

dimensions again. It made me laugh and pant for a time, and suggested the idea of a little oxygen

from one of the cylinders. After that I lit the heater until I felt warm, and then I took food. Then I set

to work in a very gingerly fashion on the Cavorite blinds, to see if I could guess by any means how

The first blind I opened I shut at once, and hung for a time flattened and blinded by the sunlight that

had hit me. After thinking a little I started upon the windows at right angles to this one, and got the

huge crescent moon and the little crescent earth behind it, the second time. I was amazed to find

how far I was from the moon. I had reckoned that not only should I have little or none of the

"kickoff" that the earth's atmosphere had given us at our start, but that the tangential "fly off" of the

moon's spin would be at least twentyeight times less than the earth's. I had expected to discover

myself hanging over our crater, and on the edge of the night, but all that was now only a part of the

I tried to imagine what could have happened to him. But at that time I could think of nothing but

death. I seemed to see him, bent and smashed at the foot of some interminably high cascade of

Under the inspiring touch of the drifting newspaper I became practical again for a while. It was quite

clear to me that what I had to do was to get back to earth, but as far as I could see I was drifting

away from it. Whatever had happened to Cavor, even if he was still alive, which seemed to me

incredible after that bloodstained scrap, I was powerless to help him. There he was, living or dead

behind the mantle of that rayless night, and there he must remain at least until I could summon our

fellow men to his assistance. Should I do that? Something of the sort I had in my mind; to come

back to earth if it were possible, and then as maturer consideration might determine, either to show

and explain the sphere to a few discreet persons, and act with them, or else to keep my secret, sell

my gold,, obtain weapons, provisions, and an assistant, and return with these advantages to deal

on equal terms with the flimsy people of the moon, to rescue Cavor, if that were still possible, and

at any rate to procure a sufficient supply of gold to place my subsequent proceedings on a firmer

I set myself to decide just exactly how the return to earth could be contrived. As I struggled with

that problem I ceased to worry about what I should do when I got there. At last my only care was to

I puzzled out at last that my best chance would be to drop back towards the moon as near as I

dared in order to gather velocity, then to shut my windows, and fly behind it, and when I was past to

open my earthward windows, and so get off at a good pace homeward. But whether I should ever

reach the earth by that device, or whether I might not simply find myself spinning about it in some

hyperbolic or parabolic curve or other, I could not tell. Later I had a happy inspiration, and by

opening certain windows to the moon, which had appeared in the sky in front of the earth, I turned

my course aside so as to head off the earth, which it had become evident to me I must pass behind

without some such expedient. I did a very great deal of complicated thinking over these, problems

for I am no mathematician and in the end I am certain it was much more my good luck than my

reasoning that enabled me to hit the earth. Had I known then, as I know now, the mathematical

chances there were against me, I doubt if I should have troubled even to touch the studs to make

any attempt. And having puzzled out what I considered to be the thing to do, I opened all my

moonward windows, and squatted down the effort lifted me for a time some feet or so into the air,

and I hung there in the oddest way and waited for the crescent to get bigger and bigger until I felt

I was near enough for safety. Then I would shut the windows, fly past the moon with the velocity I

At last I felt my moonward start was sufficient. I shut out the sight of the moon from my eyes, and in

a state of mind that was, I now recall, incredibly free from anxiety or any distressful quality, I sat

down to begin a vigil in that little speck of matter in infinite space that would last until I should strike

the earth. The heater had made the sphere tolerably warm, the air had been refreshed by the

oxygen, and except for that faint congestion of the head that was always with me while I was away

from earth, I felt entire physical comfort. I had extinguished the light again, lest it should fail me in

the end; I was in darkness, save for the earthshine and the glitter of the stars below me. Everything

was so absolutely silent and still that I might indeed have been the only being in the universe, and

yet, strangely enough, I had no more feeling of loneliness or fear than if I had been lying in bed on

earth. Now, this seems all the stranger to me, since during my last hours in that crater of the moon,

Incredible as it will seem, this interval of time that I spent in space has no sort of proportion to any

other interval of time in my life. Sometimes it seemed as though I sat through immeasurable

eternities like some god upon a lotus leaf, and again as though there was a momentary pause as I

leapt from moon to earth. In truth, it was altogether some weeks of earthly time. But I had done with

care and anxiety, hunger or fear, for that space. I floated, thinking with a strange breadth and

freedom of all that we had undergone, and of all my life and motives, and the secret issues of my

being. I seemed to myself to have grown greater and greater, to have lost all sense of movement;

to be floating amidst the stars, and always the sense of earth's littleness and the infinite littleness of

I can't profess to explain the things that happened in my mind. No doubt they could all be traced

directly or indirectly to the curious physical conditions under which I was living. I set them down

here just for what they are worth, and without any comment. The most prominent quality of it was a

pervading doubt of my own identity. I became, if I may so express it, dissociate from Bedford; I

looked down on Bedford as a trivial, incidental thing with which I chanced to be connected. I saw

Bedford in many relations as an ass or as a poor beast, where I had hitherto been inclined to

regard him with a quiet pride as a very spirited or rather forcible person. I saw him not only as an

ass, but as the son of many generations of asses. I reviewed his schooldays and his early

manhood, and his first encounter with love, very much as one might review the proceedings of an

ant in the sand. Something of that period of lucidity I regret still hangs about me, and I doubt if I

shall ever recover the fullbodied self satisfaction of my early days. But at the time the thing was

not in the least painful, because I had that extraordinary persuasion that, as a matter of fact, I was

no more Bedford than I was any one else, but only a mind floating in the still serenity of space. Who

should I be disturbed about this Bedford's shortcomings? I was not responsible for him or them.

For a time I struggled against this really very grotesque delusion. I tried to summon the memory of

vivid moments, of tender or intense emotions to my assistance; I felt that if I could recall one

genuine twinge of feeling the growing severance would be stopped. But I could not do it. I saw

Bedford rushing down Chancery Lane, hat on the back of his head, coat tails flying out, en route for

his public examination. I saw him dodging and bumping against, and even saluting, other similar

little creatures in that swarming gutter of people. Me? I saw Bedford that same evening in the

sittingroom of a certain lady, and his hat was on the table beside him, and it wanted brushing

badly, and he was in tears. Me? I saw him with that lady in various attitudes and emotions I never

felt so detached before. ... I saw him hurrying off to Lympne to write a play, and accosting Cavor,

and in his shirt sleeves working at the sphere, and walking out to Canterbury because he was

I still reasoned that all this was hallucination due to my solitude, and the fact that I had lost all

weight and sense of resistance. I endeavoured to recover that sense by banging myself about the

sphere, by pinching my hands and clasping them together. Among other things, I lit the light,

captured that torn copy of Lloyd's, and read those convincingly realistic advertisements about the

Cutaway bicycle, and the gentleman of private means, and the lady in distress who was selling

those "forks and spoons." There was no doubt they existed surely enough, and, said I, "This is your

world, and you are Bedford, and you are going back to live among things like that for all the rest of

your life." But the doubts within me could still argue: "It is not you that is reading, it is Bedford, but

But in that direction no light was forthcoming, though the strangest fancies came drifting into my

brain, queer remote suspicions, like shadows seen from away. Do you know, I had a sort of idea

that really I was something quite outside not only the world, but all worlds, and out of space and

time, and that this poor Bedford was just a peephole through which I looked at life? ...

Bedford! However I disavowed him, there I was most certainly bound up with him, and I knew that

wherever or whatever I might be, I must needs feel the stress of his desires, and sympathise with

all his joys and sorrows until his life should end. And with the dying of Bedford what then? ...

Enough of this remarkable phase of my experiences! I tell it here simply to show how one's

isolation and departure from this planet touched not only the functions and feeling of every organ of

the body, but indeed also the very fabric of the mind, with strange and unanticipated disturbances.

All through the major portion of that vast space journey I hung thinking of such immaterial things as

these, hung dissociated and apathetic, a cloudy megalomaniac, as it were, amidst the stars and

planets in the void of space; and not only the world to which I was returning, but the bluelit

caverns of the Selenites, their helmet faces, their gigantic and wonderful machines, and the fate of

Cavor, dragged helpless into that world, seemed infinitely minute and altogether trivial things to me.

Until at last I began to feel the pull of the earth upon my being, drawing me back again to the life

that is real for men. And then, indeed, it grew clearer and clearer to me that I was quite certainly

Bedford after all, and returning after amazing adventures to this world of ours, and with a life that I

was very likely to lose in this return. I set myself to puzzle out the conditions under which I must fall

My line of flight was about parallel with the surface as I came into the upper air. The temperature of

sphere began to rise forthwith. I knew it behoved me to drop at once. Far below me, in a darkling

twilight, stretched a great expanse of sea. I opened every window I could, and fell out of sunshine

into evening, and out of evening into night. Vaster grew the earth and vaster, swallowing up the

stars, and the silvery translucent starlit veil of cloud it wore spread out to catch me. At last the world

seemed no longer a sphere but flat, and then concave. It was no longer a planet in the sky, but the

world of Man. I shut all but an inch or so of earthward window, and dropped with a slackening

velocity. The broadening water, now so near that I could see the dark glitter of the waves, rushed

up to meet me. The sphere became very hot. I snapped the last strip of window, and sat scowling

The sphere hit the water with a huge splash: it must have sent it fathoms high. At the splash I flung

the Cavorite shutters open. Down I went, but slower and slower, and then I felt the sphere pressing

against my feet, and so drove up again as a bubble drives. And at the last I was floating and

The night was dark and overcast. Two yellow pinpoints far away showed the passing of a ship, and

nearer was a red glare that came and went. Had not the electricity of my glowlamp exhausted

itself, I could have got picked up that night. In spite of the inordinate fatigue I was beginning to feel,

I was excited now, and for a time hopeful, in a feverish, impatient way, that so my travelling might

But at last I ceased to move about, and sat, wrists on knees, staring at a distant red light. It swayed

up and down, rocking, rocking. My excitement passed. I realised I had yet to spend another night at

least in the sphere. I perceived myself infinitely heavy and fatigued. And so I fell asleep.

A change in my rhythmic motion awakened me. I peered through the refracting glass, and saw that

I had come aground upon a huge shallow of sand. Far away I seemed to see houses and trees,

I stood up and staggered. My one desire was to emerge. The manhole was upward, and I wrestled

with the screw. Slowly I opened the manhole. At last the air was singing in again as once it had

sung out. But this time I did not wait until the pressure was adjusted. In another moment I had the

weight of the window on my hands, and I was open, wide open, to the old familiar sky of earth.

The air hit me on the chest so that I gasped. I dropped the glass screw. I cried out, put my hands to

my chest, and sat down. For a time I was in pain. Then I took deep breaths. At last I could rise and

I tried to thrust my head through the manhole, and the sphere rolled over. It was as though

something had lugged my head down directly it emerged. I ducked back sharply, or I should have

been pinned face under water. Alter some wriggling and shoving I managed to crawl out upon

I did not attempt to stand up. It seemed to me that my body must be suddenly changed to lead.

Mother Earth had her grip on me now no Cavorite intervening. I sat down heedless of the water

It was dawn, a gray dawn, rather overcast but showing here and there a long patch of greenish

gray. Some way out a ship was lying at anchor, a pale silhouette of a ship with one yellow light. The

water came rippling in in long shallow waves. Away to the right curved the land, a shingle bank with

little hovels, and at last a lighthouse, a sailing mark and a point. Inland stretched a space of level

sand, broken here and there by pools of water, and ending a mile away perhaps in a low shore of

scrub. To the northeast some isolated wateringplace was visible, a row of gaunt lodginghouses,

the tallest things that I could see on earth, dull dabs against the brightening sky. What strange men

can have reared these vertical piles in such an amplitude of space I do not know. There they are,

For a long time I sat there, yawning and rubbing my face. At last I struggled to rise. It made me feel

I stared at the distant houses. For the first time since our starvation in the crater I thought of earthly

food. "Bacon," I whispered, "eggs. Good toast and good coffee. ... And how the devil am I going to

all this stuff to Lympne?" I wondered where I was. It was an east shore anyhow, and I had seen

I heard footsteps scrunching in the sand, and a little roundfaced, friendlylooking man in flannels,

with a bathing towel wrapped about his shoulders, and his bathing dress over his arm, appeared up

the beach. I knew instantly that I must be in England. He was staring most intently at the sphere

and me. He advanced staring. I dare say I looked a ferocious savage enough dirty, unkempt, to

an indescribable degree; but it did not occur to me at the time. He stopped at a distance of twenty

"That's Littlestone," he said, pointing to the houses; "and that's Dungeness! Have you just landed?

I meditated swiftly. I made an estimate of the little man's appearance as he drew nearer. "By Jove!

" he said, "you've had a time of it! I thought you Well Where were you cast away? Is that thing a

I decided to take that line for the present. I made a few vague affirmatives. "I want help," I said

hoarsely. " I want to get some stuff up the beach stuff I can't very well leave about." I became

aware of three other pleasantlooking young men with towels, blazers, and straw hats, coming

down the sands towards me. Evidently the early bathing section of this Littlestone.

"Help!" said the young man: "rather!" He became vaguely active. "What particularly do you want

done? " He turned round and gesticulated. The three young men accelerated their pace. In a

minute they there about me, plying me with questions I was indisposed to answer. "I'll tell all that

"Come up to the hotel," said the foremost little man. "We'll look after that thing there."

They looked incredulously at one another, then at me with a new inquiry. I went to the sphere,

stooped, crept in, and presently they had the Selenites' crowbars and the broken chain before

them. If I had not been so horribly fagged I could have laughed at them. It was like kittens round a

beetle. They didn't know what to do with the stuff. The fat little man stooped and lifted the end of

Then they all stared at me, and then they all stared at the ship lying at anchor.

"Look here!" said I, "I'm not going to argue now. Help me carry these lumps of gold up to the hotel

I guess, with rests, two of you can manage one, and I'll trail this chain thing and I'll tell you more

"It won't hurt there," I said. "Anyhow confound it! it must stop there now. If the tide comes up, it

And in a state of enormous wonderment, these young men most obediently hoisted my treasures

on their shoulders, and with limbs that felt like lead I headed a sort of procession towards that

distant fragment of "seafront." Halfway there we were reinforced by two awestricken little girls

with spades, and later a lean little boy, with a penetrating sniff, appeared. He was, I remember,

wheeling a bicycle, and he accompanied us at a distance of about a hundred yards on our right

flank, and then I suppose, gave us up as uninteresting, mounted his bicycle and rode off over the

"He won't touch it," said the stout young man reassuringly, and I was only too willing to be

At first something of the gray of the morning was in my mind, but presently the sun disengaged

itself from the level clouds of the horizon and lit the world, and turned the leaden sea to glittering

waters. My spirits rose. A sense of the vast importance of the things I had done and had yet to do

came with the sunlight into my mind. I laughed aloud as the foremost man staggered under my

If it had not been for my inordinate fatigue, the landlord of the Littlestone hotel would have been

amusing, as he hesitated between my gold and my respectable company on the one and my filthy

appearance on the other. But at last I found myself in a terrestrial bathroom once more with warm

water to wash myself with, and a change of raiment, preposterously small indeed, but anyhow

clean, that the genial little man had lent me. He lent me a razor too, but I could not screw up my

resolution to attack even the outposts of the bristling beard that covered my face.

I sat down to an English breakfast and ate with a sort of languid appetite an appetite many weeks

old and very decrepit and stirred myself to answer the questions of the four young men. And I told

"Exactly! through space in that ball." And I took a delicious mouthful of egg. I made a private note

I could see clearly that they did not believe one word what I told them, but evidently they

considered me the most respectable liar they had ever met. They glanced at one another, and then

concentrated the fire of their eyes on me. I fancy they expected a clue to me in the way I helped

myself to salt. They seemed to find something significant in my peppering my egg. These strangely

shaped masses of gold they had staggered under held their minds. There the lumps lay in front of

me, each worth thousands of pounds, and as impossible for any one to steal as a house or a piece

of land. As I looked at their curious faces over my coffeecup, I realised something of the

enormous wilderness of explanations into which I should have to wander to render myself

"You don't really mean " began the youngest young man, in the tone of one who speaks to an

"But look here, I say," began one of the others. "We're not going to believe that, you know."

"He doesn't want to tell us," said the youngest young man in a stage aside; and then, with an

I waved him a cordial assent, and proceeded with my breakfast. Two of the others went and looked

out of the farther window and talked inaudibly. I was struck by a thought. "The tide," I said, "is

I decapitated my third egg, and began a little speech. "Look here," I said. " Please don't imagine I'm

surly or telling you uncivil lies, or anything of that sort. I'm forced almost, to be a little short and

mysterious. I can quite understand this is as queer as it can be, and that your imaginations must be

going it. I can assure you, you're in at a memorable time. But I can't make it clear to you now it's

impossible. I give you my word of honour I've come from the moon, and that's all I can tell you. ...

All the same, I'm tremendously obliged to you, you know, tremendously. I hope that my manner

"Oh, not in the least!" said the youngest young man affably. "We can quite understand," and staring

hard at me all the time, he heeled his chair back until it very nearly upset, and recovered with some

"Don't you imagine that!" and they all got up and dispersed, and walked about and lit cigarettes,

and generally tried to show they were perfectly amiable and disengaged, and entirely free from the

slightest curiosity about me and the sphere. "I'm going to keep an eye on that ship out there all the

same," I heard one of them remarking in an undertone. If only they could have forced themselves to

it, they would, I believe, even have gone out and left me. I went on with my third egg.

"The weather," the fat little man remarked presently, "has been immense, has it not? I don't know

Suddenly I leapt up, knocked over my third egg, rushed for the window also. I had just thought of

something. "Nothing to be seen there," cried the little man, rushing for the door.

"It's that boy!" I cried, bawling in hoarse fury; "it's that accursed boy!" and turning about I pushed

the waiter aside he was just bring me some more toast and rushed violently out of the room

The sea, which had been smooth, was rough now with hurrying cat'spaws, and all about where

the sphere had been was tumbled water like the wake of a ship. Above, a little puff of cloud whirled

like dispersing smoke, and the three or four people on the beach were bring up with interrogative

faces towards the point of that unexpected report. And that was all! Boots and waiter and the four

young men in blazers came rushing out behind me. Shouts came from windows and doors, and all

For a time I stood there, too overwhelmed by this new development to think of the people.

At first I was too stunned to see the thing as any definite disaster I was just stunned, as a man is

by some accidental violent blow. It is only afterwards he begins to appreciate his specific injury.

I felt as though somebody was pouring funk out of a can down the back of my neck. My legs

became feeble. I had got the first intimation of what the disaster meant for me. There was that

confounded boy sky high! I was utterly left. There was the gold in the coffeeroom my only

possession on earth. How would it all work out? The general effect was of a gigantic

I wheeled about, and there were twenty or thirty people, a sort of irregular investment of people, all

bombarding me with dumb interrogation, with infinite doubt and suspicion. I felt the compulsion of

"I can't! " I shouted. "I tell you I can't! I'm not equal to it! You must puzzle and and be damned to

I gesticulated convulsively. He receded a step as though I had threatened him. I made a bolt

through them into the hotel. I charged back into the coffeeroom, rang the bell furiously. I gripped

the waiter as he entered. "D'ye hear?" I shouted. "Get help and carry these bars up to my room

He failed to understand me, and I shouted and raved at him. A scaredlooking little old man in a

green apron appeared, and further two of the young men in flannels. I made a dash at them and

commandeered their services. As soon as the gold was in my room I felt free to quarrel. "Now get

out," I shouted; "all of you get out if you don't want to see a man go mad before your eyes!" And I

helped the waiter by the shoulder as he hesitated in the doorway. And then, as soon as I had the

door locked on them all, I tore off the little man's clothes again, shied them right and left, and got

into bed forthwith. And there I lay swearing and panting and cooling for a very long time.

At last I was calm enough to get out of bed and ring up the roundeyed waiter for a flannel

nightshirt, a soda and whisky, and some good cigars. And these things being procured me, after an

exasperating delay that drove me several times to the bell, I locked the door again and proceeded

The net result of the great experiment presented itself as an absolute failure. It was a rout, and I

was the sole survivor. It was an absolute collapse, and this was the final disaster. There was

nothing for it but to save myself, and as much as I could in the way of prospects from our debacle.

At one fatal crowning blow all my vague resolutions of return and recovery had vanished. My

intention of going back to the moon, of getting a sphereful of gold, and afterwards of having a

fragment of Cavorite analysed and so recovering the great secret perhaps, finally, even of

I think that going to bed was one of the luckiest ideas I have ever had in an emergency. I really

believe I should either have got looseheaded or done some indiscreet thing. But there, locked in

and secure from all interruptions, I could think out the position in all its bearings and make my

Of course, it was quite clear to me what had happened to the boy. He had crawled into the sphere,

meddled with the studs, shut the Cavorite windows, and gone up. It was highly improbable he had

screwed the manhole stopper, and, even if he had, the chances were a thousand to one against his

getting back. It was fairly evident that he would gravitate with my bales to somewhere near the

middle of the sphere and remain there, and so cease to be a legitimate terrestrial interest, however

remarkable he might seem to the inhabitants of some remote quarter of space. I very speedily

convinced myself on that point. And as for any responsibility I might have in the matter, the more I

reflected upon that, the clearer it became that if only I kept quiet about things, I need not trouble

myself about that. If I was faced by sorrowing parents demanding their lost boy, I had merely to

demand my lost sphere or ask them what they meant. At first I had had a vision of weeping

parents and guardians, and all sorts of complications; but now I saw that I simply had to keep my

mouth shut, and nothing in that way could arise. And, indeed, the more I lay and smoked and

It is within the right of every British citizen, provided he does not commit damage nor indecorum, to

appear suddenly wherever he pleases, and as ragged and filthy as he pleases, and with whatever

amount of virgin gold he sees fit to encumber himself, and no one has any right at all to hinder and

detain him in this procedure. I formulated that at last to myself, and repeated it over as a sort of

Once I had put that issue on one side, I could take up and consider in an equable manner certain

considerations I had scarcely dared to think of before, namely, those arising out of the

circumstances of my bankruptcy. But now, looking at this matter calmly and at leisure, I could see

that if only I suppressed my identity by a temporary assumption of some less wellknown name,

and if I retained the two months' beard that had grown upon me, the risks of any annoyance from

the spiteful creditor to whom I have already alluded became very small indeed. From that to a

definite course of rational worldly action was plain sailing. It was all amazingly petty, no doubt, but

I ordered up writing materials, and addressed a letter to the New Romney Bank the nearest, the

waiter informed me telling the manager I wished to open an account with him, and requesting him

to send two trustworthy persons properly authenticated in a cab with a good horse to fetch some

hundredweight of gold with which I happened to be encumbered. I signed the letter "Blake," which

seemed to me to be a thoroughly respectable sort of name. This done, I got a Folkstone Blue Book,

picked out an outfitter, and asked him to send a cutter to measure me for a dark tweed suit,

ordering at the same time a valise, dressing bag, brown boots, shirts, hat (to fit), and so forth; and

from a watchmaker I also ordered a watch. And these letters being despatched, I had up as good a

lunch as the hotel could give, and then lay smoking a cigar, as calm and ordinary as possible, until

in accordance with my instructions two duly authenticated clerks came from the bank and weighed

and took away my gold. After which I pulled the clothes over my ears in order to drown any

I went to sleep. No doubt it was a prosaic thing for the first man back from the moon to do, and I

can imagine that the young and imaginative reader will find my behaviour disappointing. But I was

horribly fatigued and bothered, and, confound it! what else was there to do? There certainly was

not the remotest chance of my being believed, if I had told my story then, and it would certainly

have subjected me to intolerable annoyances. I went to sleep. When at last I woke up again I was

ready to face the world as I have always been accustomed to face it since I came to years of

discretion. And so I got away to Italy, and there it is I am writing this story. If the world will not have

And now that the account is finished, I am amazed to think how completely this adventure is gone

and done with. Everybody believes that Cavor was a not very brilliant scientific experimenter who

blew up his house and himself at Lympne, and they explain the bang that followed my arrival at

Littlestone by a reference to the experiments with explosives that are going on continually at the

government establishment of Lydd, two miles away. I must confess that hitherto I have not

acknowledged my share in the disappearance of Master Tommy Simmons, which was that little

boy's name. That, perhaps, may prove a difficult item of corroboration to explain away. They

account for my appearance in rags with two bars of indisputable gold upon the Littlestone beach in

various ingenious ways it doesn't worry me what they think of me. They say I have strung all

these things together to avoid being questioned too closely as to the source of my wealth. I would

like to see the man who could invent a story that would hold together like this one. Well, they must

I have told my story and now, I suppose, I have to take up the worries of this terrestrial life again.

Even if one has been to the moon, one has still to earn a living. So I am working here at Amalfi, on

the scenario of that play I sketched before Cavor came walking into my world, and I am trying to

piece my life together as it was before ever I saw him. I must confess that I find it hard to keep my

mind on the play when the moonshine comes into my room. It is full moon here, and last night I was

out on the pergola for hours, staring away at the shining blankness that hides so much. Imagine it!

tables and chairs, and trestles and bars of gold! Confound it! if only one could hit on that Cavorite

again! But a thing like that doesn't come twice in a life. Here I am, a little better off than I was at

Lympne, and that is all. And Cavor has committed suicide in a more elaborate way than any human

being ever did before. So the story closes as, finally and completely as a dream. It fits in so little

with all the other things of life, so much of it is so utterly remote from all human experience, the

leaping, the eating, the breathing, and these weightless times, that indeed there are moments

when, in spite of my moon gold, I do more than half believe myself that the whole thing was a

WHEN I had finished my account of my return to the earth at Littlestone, I wrote, "The End," made

a flourish, and threw my pen aside, fully believing that the whole story of the First Men in the Moon

was done. Not only had I done this, but I had placed my manuscript in the hands of a literary agent,

had permitted it to be sold, had seen the greater portion of it appear in the Strand Magazine, and

was setting to work again upon the scenario of the play I had commenced at Lympne before I

realised that the end was not yet. And then, following me from Amalfi to Algiers, there reached me

(it is now about six months ago) one of the most astounding communications I have ever been

fated to receive. Briefly, it informed me that Mr. Julius Wendigee, a Dutch electrician, who has been

experimenting with certain apparatus akin to the apparatus used by Mr. Tesla in America, in the

hope of discovering some method of communication with Mars, was receiving day by day a

curiously fragmentary message in English, which was indisputably emanating from Mr. Cavor in the

At first I thought the thing was an elaborate practical by some one who had seen the manuscript of

my narrative. I answered Mr. Wendigee jestingly, but he replied in a manner that put such suspicion

altogether aside, and in a state of inconceivable excitement I hurried from Algiers to the little

observatory upon the St. Gothard in which he was working. In the presence of his record and his

appliances and above all of the messages from Cavor that were coming to hand my lingering

doubts vanished. I decided at once to accept a proposal he made to me to remain with him,

assisting him to take down the record from day to day, and endeavouring with him to send a

message back to the moon. Cavor, we learnt, was not only alive, but free, in the midst of an almost

inconceivable community of these antlike beings, these antmen, in the blue darkness of the lunar

caves. He was lamed, it seemed, but otherwise in quite good health in better health, he distinctly

said, than he usually enjoyed on earth. He had had a fever, but it had left no bad effects. But

curiously enough he seemed to be labouring under a conviction that I was either dead in the moon

His message began to be received by Mr. Wendigee when that gentleman was engaged in quite a

different investigation. The reader will no doubt recall the little excitement that began the century,

arising out an announcement by Mr. Nikola Tesla, the American electrical celebrity, that he had

received a message from Mars. His announcement renewed attention to fact that had long been

familiar to scientific people, namely: that from some unknown source in space, waves of

electromagnetic disturbance, entirely similar those used by Signor Marconi for his wireless

telegraphy, are constantly reaching the earth. Besides Tesla quite a number of other observers

have been engaged in perfecting apparatus for receiving and recording these vibrations, though

few would go so far to consider them actual messages from some extraterrestrial sender. Among

that few, however, we must certainly count Mr. Wendigee. Ever since 1898 he had devoted himself

almost entirely to this subject, and being a man of ample means he had erected an observatory on

the flanks of Monte Rosa, in a position singularly adapted in every way for such observations.

My scientific attainments, I must admit, are not great, but so far as they enable me to judge, Mr.

Wendigee's contrivances for detecting and recording any disturbances in the electromagnetic

conditions of space are singularly original and ingenious. And by a happy combination of

circumstances they were set up and in operation about two months before Cavor made his first

attempt to call up the earth. Consequently we have fragments of his communication even from the

beginning. Unhappily, they are only fragments, and the most momentous of all the things that he

had to tell humanity the instructions, that is, for the making of Cavorite, if, indeed, he ever

transmitted them have throbbed themselves away unrecorded into space. We never succeeded

in getting a response back to Cavor. He was unable to tell, therefore, what we had received or what

we had missed; nor, indeed, did he certainly know that any one on earth was really aware of his

efforts to reach us. And the persistence he displayed in sending eighteen long descriptions of lunar

affairs as they would be if we had them complete shows how much his mind must have turned

You can imagine how amazed Mr. Wendigee must have been when he discovered his record of

electromagnetic disturbances interlaced by Cavor's straightforward English. Mr. Wendigee knew

nothing of our wild journey moonward, and suddenly this English out of the void!

It is well the reader should understand the conditions under which it would seem these messages

were sent. Somewhere within the moon Cavor certainly had access for a time to a considerable

amount of electrical apparatus, and it would seem he rigged up perhaps furtively a transmitting

arrangement of the Marconi type. This he was able to operate at irregular intervals: sometimes for

only half an hour or so, sometimes for three or four hours at a stretch. At these times he transmitted

his earthward message, regardless of the fact that the relative position of the moon and points

upon the earth's surface is constantly altering. As a consequence of this and of the necessary

imperfections of our recording instruments his communication comes and goes in our records in an

extremely fitful manner; it becomes blurred; it "fades out" in a mysterious and altogether

exasperating way. And added to this is the fact that he was not an expert operator; he had partly

forgotten, or never completely mastered, the code in general use, and as he became fatigued he

Altogether we have probably lost quite half of the communications he made, and much we have is

damaged, broken, and partly effaced. In the abstract that follows the reader must be prepared

therefore for a considerable amount of break, hiatus, and change of topic. Mr. Wendigee and I are

collaborating in a complete and annotated edition of the Cavor record, which we hope to publish,

together with a detailed account of the instruments employed, beginning with the first volume in

January next. That will be the full and scientific report, of which this is only the popular transcript.

But here we give at least sufficient to complete the story I have told, and to give the broad outlines

of the state of that other world so near, so akin, and yet so dissimilar to our own.

THE two earlier messages of Mr. Cavor may very well be reserved for that larger volume. They

simply tell, with greater brevity and with a difference in several details that is interesting, but not of

any vital importance, the bare facts of the making of the sphere and our departure from the world.

Throughout, Cavor speaks of me as a man who is dead, but with a curious change of temper as he

approaches our landing on the moon. "Poor Bedford," he says of me, and "this poor young man ";

and he blames himself for inducing a young man, "by no means well equipped for such

adventures," to leave a planet "on which he was indisputably fitted to succeed" on so precarious a

mission. I think he underrates the part my energy and practical capacity played in bringing about

the realisation of his theoretical sphere. "We arrived," he says, with no more account of our

passage through space than if we had made a journey of common occurrence in a railway train.

And then he becomes increasingly unfair to me. Unfair, indeed, to an extent I should not have

expected in a man trained in the search for truth. Looking back over my previously written account

of these things, I must insist that I have been altogether juster to Cavor than he has been to me. I

"It speedily became apparent that the entire strangeness of our circumstances and surroundings

great loss of weight, attenuated but highly oxygenated air, consequent exaggeration of the results

of muscular effort, rapid development of weird plants from obscure spores, lurid sky was exciting

my companion unduly. On the moon his character seemed to deteriorate. He became impulsive,

rash, and quarrelsome. In a little while his folly in devouring some gigantic vesicles and his

consequent intoxication led to our capture by the Selenites before we had had the slightest

And he goes on from that point to say that "We came to a difficult passage with them, and Bedford

mistaking certain gestures of theirs" pretty gestures they were! "gave way to a panic violence.

He ran amuck, killed three, and perforce I had to flee with him after the outrage. Subsequently we

fought with a number who endeavoured to bar our way, and slew seven or eight more. It says much

for the tolerance of these beings that on my recapture I was not instantly slain. We made our way

to the exterior and separated in the crater of our arrival, to increase our chances of recovering our

sphere. But presently I came upon a body of Selenites, led by two who were curiously different,

even in form, from any of these we had seen hitherto, with larger heads and smaller bodies, and

much more elaborately wrapped about. And after evading them for some time I fell into a crevasse,

cut my head rather badly, and displaced my patella, and, finding crawling very painful, decided to

surrender if they would still permit me to do so. This they did, and, perceiving my helpless

condition, carried me with them again into the moon. And of Bedford I have heard or seen nothing

more, nor, so far as I can gather, any Selenite. Either the night overtook him in the crater, or else,

which is more probable, he found the sphere, and, desiring to steal a march upon me, made off

with it only, I fear, to find it uncontrollable, and to meet a more lingering fate in outer space."

And with that Cavor dismisses me and goes on to more interesting topics. I dislike the idea of

seeming to use my position as his editor to deflect his story in my own interest, but I am obliged to

protest here against the turn he gives these occurrences. He said nothing about that gasping

message on the bloodstained paper in which he told, or attempted to tell, a very different story.

The dignified selfsurrender is an altogether new view of the affair that has come to him, I must

insist, since he began to feel secure among the lunar people; and as for the "stealing a march"

conception, I am quite willing to let the reader decide between us on what he has before him. I

However, that is the sum of my wrongs. From this point I can edit Cavor with an untroubled mind,

It would seem the Selenites who had come upon him carried him to some point in the interior down

"a great shaft" by means of what he describes as "a sort of balloon." We gather from the rather

confused passage in which he describes this, and from a number of chance allusions and hints in

other and subsequent messages, that this "great shaft" is one of an enormous system of artificial

shafts that run, each from what is called a lunar "crater," downwards for very nearly a hundred

miles towards the central portion of our satellite. These shafts communicate by transverse tunnels,

they throw out abysmal caverns and expand into great globular places; the whole of the moon's

substance for a hundred miles inward, indeed, is a mere sponge of rock. "Partly," says Cavor, "this

sponginess is natural, but very largely it is due to the enormous industry of the Selenites in the

past. The enormous circular mounds of the excavated rock and earth it is that form these great

circles about the tunnels known to earthly astronomers (misled by a false analogy) as volcanoes."

It was down this shaft they took him, in this "sort of balloon" he speaks of, at first into an inky

blackness and then into a region of continually increasing phosphorescence. Cavor's despatches

show him to be curiously regardless of detail for a scientific man, but we gather that this light was

due to the streams and cascades of water "no doubt containing some phosphorescent organism"

that flowed ever more abundantly downward towards the Central Sea. And as he descended, he

says, "The Selenites also became luminous." And at last far below him he saw, as it were, a lake of

heatless fire, the waters of the Central Sea, glowing and eddying in strange perturbation, "like

"This Lunar Sea," says Cavor, in a later passage "is not a stagnant ocean; a solar tide sends it in a

perpetual flow around the lunar axis, and strange storms and boilings and rushings of its waters

occur, and at times cold winds and thunderings that ascend out of it into the busy ways of the great

anthill above. It is only when the water is in motion that it gives out light; in its rare seasons of

calm it is black. Commonly, when one sees it, its waters rise and fall in an oily swell, and flakes and

big rafts of shining, bubbly foam drift with the sluggish, faintly glowing current. The Selenites

navigate its cavernous straits and lagoons in little shallow boats of a canoelike shape; and even

before my journey to the galleries about the Grand Lunar, who is Master of the Moon, I was

"The caverns and passages are naturally very tortuous. A large proportion of these ways are known

only to expert pilots among the fishermen, and not infrequently Selenites are lost for ever in their

labyrinths. In their remoter recesses, I am told, strange creatures lurk, some of them terrible and

dangerous creatures that all the science of the moon has been unable to exterminate. There is

particularly the Rapha, an inextricable mass of clutching tentacles that one hacks to pieces only to

multiply; and the Tzee, a darting creature that is never seen, so subtly and suddenly does it slay..."

"I was reminded on this excursion of what I have read of the Mammoth Caves; if only I had had a

yellow flambeau instead of the pervading blue light, and a solidlooking boatman with an oar

instead of a scuttlefaced Selenite working an engine at the back of the canoe, I could have

imagined I had suddenly got back to earth. The rocks about us were very various, sometimes

black, sometimes pale blue and veined, and once they flashed and glittered as though we had

come into a mine of sapphires. And below one saw the ghostly phosphorescent fishes flash and

vanish in the hardly less phosphorescent deep. Then, presently, a long ultramarine vista down the

turgid stream of one of the channels of traffic, and a landing stage, and then, perhaps, a glimpse up

"In one great place heavy with glistening stalactites a number of boats were fishing. We went

alongside one of these and watched the longarmed Selenites winding in a net. They were little,

hunchbacked insects, with very strong arms, short, bandy legs, and crinkled facemasks. As they

pulled at it that net seemed the heaviest thing I had come upon in the moon; it was loaded with

weights no doubt of gold and it took a long time to draw, for in those waters the larger and more

edible fish lurk deep. The fish in the net came up like a blue moonrise a blaze of darting, tossing

"Among their catch was a manytentaculate, evileyed black thing, ferociously active, whose

appearance they greeted with shrieks and twitters, and which with quick, nervous movements they

hacked to pieces by means of little hatchets. All its dissevered limbs continued to lash and writhe in

a vicious manner. Afterwards, when fever had hold of me, I dreamt again and again of that bitter,

furious creature rising so vigorous and active out of the unknown sea. It was the most active and

malignant thing of all the living creatures I have yet seen in this world inside the moon. ...

"The surface of this sea must be very nearly two hundred miles (if not more) below the level of the

moon's exterior; all the cities of the moon lie, I learnt, immediately above this Central Sea, in such

cavernous spaces and artificial galleries as I have described, and they communicate with the

exterior by enormous vertical shafts which open invariably in what are called by earthly

astronomers the 'craters' of the moon. The lid covering one such aperture I had already seen

"Upon the condition of the less central portion of the moon I have not yet arrived at very precise

knowledge. There is an enormous system of caverns in which the mooncalves shelter during the

night; and there are abattoirs and the like in one of these it was that I and Bedford fought with the

Selenite butchers and I have since seen balloons laden with meat descending out of the upper

dark. I have as yet scarcely learnt as much of these things as a Zulu in London would learn about

the British corn supplies in the same time. It is clear, however, that these vertical shafts and the

vegetation of the surface must play an essential role in ventilating and keeping fresh the

atmosphere of the moon. At one time, and particularly on my first emergence from my prison, there

was certainly a cold wind blowing down the shaft, and later there was a kind of sirocco upward that

corresponded with my fever. For at the end of about three weeks I fell ill of an indefinable sort of

fever, and in spite of sleep and the quinine tabloids that very fortunately I had brought in my pocket,

I remained ill and fretting miserably, almost to the time when I was taken into the presence of the

"I will not dilate on the wretchedness of my condition," he remarks, " during those days of

illhealth." And he goes on with great amplitude with details I omit here. "My temperature," he

concludes, "kept abnormally high for a long time, and I lost all desire for food. I had stagnant

waking intervals, and sleep tormented by dreams, and at one phase I was, I remember, so weak as

to be earthsick and almost hysterical. I longed almost intolerably for colour to break the

He reverts again presently to the topic of this sponge caught lunar atmosphere. I am told by

astronomers and physicists that all he tells is in absolute accordance with what was already known

of the moon's condition. Had earthly astronomers had the courage and imagination to push home a

bold induction, says Mr. Wendigee, they might have foretold almost everything that Cavor has to

say of the general structure of the moon. They know now pretty certainly that moon and earth are

not so much satellite and primary as smaller and greater sisters, made out of one mass, and

consequently made of the same material. And since the density of the moon is only threefifths that

of the earth, there can be nothing for it but that she is hollowed out by a great system of caverns.

There was no necessity, said Sir Jabez Flap, F.R.S., that most entertaining exponent of the

facetious side of the stars, that we should ever have gone to the moon to find out such easy

inferences, and points the pun with an allusion to Gruyere, but he certainly might have announced

his knowledge of the hollowness of the moon before. And if the moon is hollow, then the apparent

absence of air and water is, of course, quite easily explained. The sea lies within at the bottom of

the caverns, and the air travels through the great sponge of galleries, in accordance with simple

physical laws. The caverns of the moon, on the whole, are very windy places. As the sunlight

comes round the moon the air in the outer galleries on that side is heated, its pressure increases,

some flows out on the exterior and mingles with the evaporating air of the craters (where the plants

remove its carbonic acid), while the greater portion flows round through the galleries to replace the

shrinking air of the cooling side that the sunlight has left. There is, therefore, a constant eastward

breeze in the air of the outer galleries, and an upflow during the lunar day up the shafts,

complicated, of course, very greatly by the varying shape of the galleries, and the ingenious

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

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

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 had 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 anthill, 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 these 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, planklike 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 plankwalking 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

"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 liftshaft 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

"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 luminous beings, regarding our appearance or busied on unknown

"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 maninsect, clinging to a parachute, drove down very swiftly

"The bigheaded Selenite sitting beside me, seeing me move my head with the gesture of one who

saw, pointed with his trunklike 'hand' and indicated a sort of jetty coming into sight very far below:

a little landingstage, 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

mooringrope was flung and grasped, and I found myself pulled down to a level with a great crowd

"It was an incredible crowd. Suddenly and violently there was forced upon my attention the vast

"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 forelimb, 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 noselike 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 insectlike head of the mooncalfminders 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,

trumpetlike 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 strongarmed 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 cricketlike twittering of

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 other world, were

Cavor speaks of them as Phioo and Tsipuff. Phioo, 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, manyjointed arms ending

in a tentacled grip, and his neck was manyjointed 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 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 in is a creature, indeed, with a tremendously hypertrophied brain, and with the

In another passage Cavor compares the back view of him to Atlas supporting the world. Tsipuff 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 pearshaped, with the

stalk downward. There were also littercarriers, lopsided beings, with enormous shoulders, very

The manner in which Phioo and Tsipuff 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. Phioo would attend to Cavor for a space, then point also and say the

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 Phioo was

assured of the meaning of a word he repeated it to Tsipuff, who remembered it infallibly. They

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

"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 corkjackets. Indeed, these difficulties were insurmountable until to the sixth lesson came

a fourth assistant, a being with a huge footballshaped 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 pentetration was

amazing. Whenever there came a need of thinking beyond Phioo's by no means limited scope,

this prolateheaded person was in request, but he invariably told the conclusion to Tsipuff, in

order that it might be remembered; Tsipuff was ever the arsenal for facts. And so we advanced

"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,

Phioo it is who does all the talking. He does it with a vast amount of meditative provisional

'M'mM'm' and has caught up one or two phrases, 'If I may say,' 'If you understand,' and beads all

"'M'mM'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

"'He' turning to Tsipuff '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

"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 fablehearing period of

childhood again, when the ant and the grasshopper talked together and the bee judged between

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 storecave, 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 Phioo that

Cavor was continually making corrections in his previous accounts of the Selenites as fresh facts

flowed 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

"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?'

Phioo 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 facility, his one interest in its application, his sole society with other specialists in

his own line. His brain glows 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 formula; 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

"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

"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 body 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 administrators, of whom Phioo is one, Selenites of

considerable initiative and versatility, responsible each for a certain cubic content of the moon's

bulk; the experts like the footballheaded thinker, who are trained to perform certain special

operations; and the erudite, who are the repositories of all knowledge. To the latter class belongs

Tsipuff, 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 honeyants 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 Phioo will reply. I see them going hither and thither with a retinue of bearers, attendants,

shouters, parachutecarriers, 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 activelooking

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 thinskinned, carried on his grotesque stretcher. In front

and behind came his bearers, and curious, almost trumpetfaced, news disseminators shrieked his

"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 spiderlike 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

"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 not 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 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 glassblowers seem mere lungbellows. 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 fineddown 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 apply

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

"The making of these various sorts of operative must be a very curious and interesting process. I

am 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 forelimbs protruded, who were being compressed to become

machineminders 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. Phioo, 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 flexibleminded

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

wretchedlooking handtentacle 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

"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 to 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

"My eye had just caught the figure of an exceptionally big and ungainly Selenite lying motionless

"'Dead?' I asked. (For as yet I have seen no dead the moon, and I have grown curious.)

"'No! ' exclaimed Phioo. 'Him worker no work to do. Get little drink then make sleep till we

"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 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 the light and of his attitude

was strongly suggestive a drawnup human figure. His forelimbs 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 a mistake for to interpret his expression in that way, but I did. And as

Phioo rolled him over into the darkness among the livid fleshiness again I felt a distinctly

"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,

"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, 01 selecting the toys and amulets made to please them by the

daintytentacled jewellers who work in kennels below, the mothers of the moon world the queen

bees, as it were, of the hive. They are noblelooking 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

Phioo 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 eplacement as is necessary falls upon this special and by no means

numerous class of matrons, the mothers of the moonworld, large and stately beings beautifully

fitted to bear the larval Selenite. Unless I misunderstand an explanation of Phioo'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,

traditions, an overwhelming avalanche of new ideas, a strange race with whom we must inevitably

THE penultimate message describes, with occasionally 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

The first message begins: "At last I am able to resume this" it then becomes illegible for a space,

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; and

undergrowth of smaller creatures dodged and yelped, and helmet faces poised on sinuous,

longjointed necks appeared craning over shoulders and beneath armpits. Keeping a welcome

space about me marched a cordon of stolid, scuttleheaded guards, who had joined us on our

leaving the boat in which we had come along the channels of the Central Sea. The quickeyed

artist with the little brain joined us also, and a thick bunch of lean porterinsects 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

"In front, after the manner of heralds, marched four trumpetfaced creatures making a devastating

bray; and then came squat, resolutemoving ushers before and behind, and on either hand a

galaxy of learned heads, a sort of animated encyclopedia, who were, Phioo 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 Phioo's shivering brain borne also on a litter. Then came Tsipuff 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

epochmaking 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

"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 willpower that I

succeeded in avoiding an outcry or some such manifestation. It lasted perhaps three I minutes;

"We ascended the spiral of a vertical way for some time, and then passed through a series of huge

halls domeroofed 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

"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

"Imagine the largest hall you have ever been in, imperfectly lit with blue light and obscured by a

grayblue fog, surging with metallic or lividgray 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 Coeli 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

" 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 blueblack void. He seemed a small, selfluminous 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 searchlights 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 bodyservants 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, as their limbs moved with a rustling murmur.

"As I entered the penultimate hall the music rose and expanded into an imperial magnificence of

"My procession opened out like a fan. My ushers and guards went right and left, and the three

litters bearing myself and Phioo and Tsipuff 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, arid 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 insectjointed limbs shrivelled and white. The eyes stared down at me with a strange

intensity, and the lower part of the swollen globe was wrinkled. Ineffectuallooking little

"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

"My eyes dropped at last from his greatness to the ant 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 encyclopaedic 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 Phioo's pale brain placed itself about halfway 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. Tsipuff took up position behind him. Dexterous ushers sidled sideways towards me,

keeping a full face to the Presence. I seated myself Turkish fashion, and Phioo and Tsipuff 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

"I became aware of a faint wheezy noise. The Grand Lunar was addressing me. It was like the

"I watched him attentively for a time, and then glanced at the alert Phioo. 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 superfices was

"Phioo meditated through an interval. He consulted Tsipuff. 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

"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 Phioo a

"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 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

"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

"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 crosspurposes, 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

"A tide of twittering and piping swept into the remotest corners of that great assembly then it was

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 distance 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 ed, 'is it not cold?'

"I told him not; that it was never cold enough for that, because our nights were so short.

"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 twentyfour 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

"When I had done he ordered cooling sprays upon his brow, and then requested me to repeat my

"Some, I admitted, were thinkers and some officials; some hunted, some were mechanics, some

"'None that you can see,' I said, 'except perhaps, for clothes. Their minds perhaps differ a little,' I

"'Their minds must differ a great deal,' said the Grand Lunar, 'or they would all want to do the same

"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, men who could go swiftly; noisy,

trumpetminded men, and men who could remember without thinking. ... The record is indistinct for

He interrupted me to recall me to my previous statements. '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," 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 AngloSaxons,

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 Phioo 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

"'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

"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

"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

"'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,'

"And so, for a space, though something loath, 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 manoeuvres 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 Phioo translated, and the Selenites cooed and murmured in a

"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).

"I assured them men of my race considered battle the most glorious experience of life, at which the

"There came a pause, the cooling sprays impigned 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 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

"...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 there 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 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.]

ON this unsatisfactory manner the penultimate message of Cavor dies out. One seems to see him

away there in the blue obscurity amidst his apparatus intently signalling us to the last, all unaware

of the curtain of confusion that drops between us; all unaware, too, of the final dangers that even

then must have been creeping upon him. His disastrous want of vulgar common sense had utterly

betrayed him. He had talked of war, he had talked of all the strength and irrational violence of men,

of their insatiable aggressions, their tireless futility of conflict. He had filled the whole moon world

with this impression of our race, and then I think it is plain that he made the most fatal admission

that upon himself alone hung the possibility at least for a long time of any further men reaching

the moon. The line the cold, inhuman reason of the moon would take seems plain enough to me,

and a suspicion of it, and then perhaps some sudden sharp realisation of it, must have come to

him. One imagines him about the moon with the remorse of this fatal indiscretion growing in his

mind. During a certain time I am inclined to guess the Grand Lunar was deliberating the new

situation, and for all that time Cavor may have gone as free as ever he had gone. But obstacles of

some sort prevented his getting to his electromagnetic apparatus again after that message I have

just given. For some days we received nothing. Perhaps he was having fresh audiences, and trying

And then suddenly, like a cry in the night, like a cry that is followed by a stillness, came the last

There was an interval of perhaps a minute. One imagines some interruption from without. A

departure from the instrument a dreadful hesitation among the looming masses of apparatus in

that dim, bluelit cavern a sudden rush back to it, full of a resolve that came too late. Then, as if it

It may be he made a hasty attempt to spell "useless" when his fate was close upon him. Whatever

it was that was happening about that apparatus we cannot tell. Whatever it was we shall never, I

know, receive another message from the moon. For my own part a vivid dream has come to my

help, and I see, almost as plainly as though I had seen it in actual fact, a bluelit shadowy

dishevelled Cavor struggling in the grip of these insect Selenites, struggling ever more desperately

and hopelessly as they press upon him, shouting, expostulating, perhaps even at last fighting, and

being forced backwards step by step out of all speech or sign of his fellows, for evermore into the