Bab Bab 4 · Inside the Sphere

. Inside the Sphere

“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 twilight was

upon everything.

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 several thick blankets to guard against

mischance.

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 we had

overlooked, and then crawled in after me. I noted something in his

hand.

“What have you got there?” I asked.

“Haven’t you brought anything to read?”

“Good Lord! No.”

“I forgot to tell you. There are uncertainties— The voyage may last— We

may be weeks!”

“But—”

“We shall be floating in this sphere with absolutely no occupation.”

“I wish I’d known—”

He peered out of the manhole. “Look!” he said. “There’s something

there!”

“Is there time?”

“We shall be an hour.”

I looked out. It was an old number of _Tit-Bits_ 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 have

you got?” I said.

I took the book from his hand and read, “The Works of William

Shakespeare”.

He coloured slightly. “My education has been so purely scientific—” he

said apologetically.

“Never read him?”

“Never.”

“He knew a little, you know—in an irregular sort of way.”

“Precisely what I am told,” said Cavor.

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 realised that I should

be uncomfortable for want of a chair.

“Why have we no chairs?” I asked.

“I’ve settled all that,” said Cavor. “We won’t need them.”

“Why not?”

“You will see,” he said, in the tone of a man who refuses to talk.

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 passed.

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—”

I stopped. He made no answer.

“Confound it!” I cried; “I’m a fool! What business have I here? I’m not

coming, Cavor. The thing’s too risky. I’m getting out.”

“You can’t,” he said.

“Can’t! We’ll soon see about that!”

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 last I got so used to them that I experienced no

inconvenience.

I heard a click, and a little glow lamp came into being.

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.

“Well, we’re committed,” I said at last.

“Yes,” he said, “we’re committed.”

“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 lifted 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 like the beginning of a journey; it was like

the beginning of a dream.