Chapter Chapter 6 · The Landing on the Moon

. The Landing on the Moon

I remember 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 the reader has seen pictures or photographs of the moon and

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

spacious ring-like ranges vaster than any terrestrial mountains, their

summits shining in the day, their shadows harsh and deep, the grey

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 grey 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, and that here and there strange tints of brown and olive grew

and spread.

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 chance, until at

last we could dare to drop upon its surface.

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

hurling through space.

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 blankets with head holes

that we were to wrap about ourselves.

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, and for a moment I did not

understand.

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 snow....

Over, clutch, bump, clutch, bump, over....

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 blanket-wrapped luggage, and emerged from

beneath it. Our open windows were just visible as a deeper black set

with stars.

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

the wall of the great crater into which we had fallen.

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 the day,” he said. “We must wait.”

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 protruded from our bale.

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 grey and streaming wall of the bubble in which we had come.

“Confound it!” I said, “but at this rate we might have stopped at

home;” and I squatted on the bale and shivered, and drew my blanket

closer about me.

Abruptly the moisture turned to spangles and fronds of frost. “Can you

reach the electric heater,” said Cavor. “Yes—that black knob. Or we

shall freeze.”

I did not wait to be told twice. “And now,” said I, “what are we to

do?”

“Wait,” he said.

“Wait?”

“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, don’t you

feel hungry?”

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

disappointed. I had expected—I don’t know what I had expected, but not

this.”

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 misty veil that hid the moon world from our eyes.

We peered out upon the landscape of the moon.