บทที่ บทที่ 5 · The Journey to the Moon

. The Journey to the Moon

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 know, there was nothing

but blank darkness.

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 going somewhere towards her. I will open

a blind—”

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 number of stars.

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withdrawn.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 meaning of the hosts of heaven!

Stranger things we were presently to see, but that airless, star-dusted

sky! Of all things, I think that will be one of the last I shall

forget.

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 waning moon.

For a space I had to stare at Cavor and the white-lit things about me

to season my eyes to light again, before I could turn them towards that

pallid glare.

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 outer wall.

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 see our

shadows we had to look up.

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. And then—the

splendour of the sight!

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 its 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 star-dust 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 minerals?”

“Well?”

“I don’t see ‘em here.”

“No,” said Cavor; “but you’ll get over all that.”

“I suppose I’m made to turn right side up again. Still, _this_— For a

moment I could half believe there never was a world.”

“That copy of _Lloyd’s News_ might help you.”

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,” 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 laughed, and let the

paper drift from my hand.

“Are we visible from the earth?” I asked.

“Why?”

“I knew some one who was rather interested in astronomy. It occurred to

me that it would be rather odd if—my friend—chanced to be looking

through some telescope.”

“It would need the most powerful telescope on earth even now to see us

as the minutest speck.”

For a time I stared in silence at the moon.

“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 ultra-arctic voyager exploring the desolate places of space. Look at

it!”

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 have seen?”

“None.”

“They have traced two indisputable landslips, a doubtful crack, and one

slight periodic change of colour, and that’s all.”

“I didn’t know they’d traced even that.”

“Oh, yes. But as for people—!”

“By the way,” I asked, “how small a thing will the biggest telescopes

show upon the moon?”

“One could see a fair-sized 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 sun-blaze 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 each day.”

He mused. “One can imagine something worm-like,” he said, “taking its

air solid as an earth-worm swallows earth, or thick-skinned monsters—”

“By the bye,” I said, “why didn’t we bring a gun?”

He did not answer that question. “No,” he concluded, “we just have to

go. We shall see when we get there.”

I remembered something. “Of course, there’s my minerals, anyhow,” I

said; “whatever the conditions may be.”

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 sky.

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 grey stretches of

the Atlantic shone like molten silver under the receding day. I think I

recognised the cloud-dimmed coast-lines 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 good-night, and almost immediately fell

asleep.

And so, sleeping, and sometimes talking and reading a little, and at

times eating, although without any keenness of appetite,[1] 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 swiftly down towards the moon.

[1] 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 one-hundredth part of

the compressed provisions we had brought with us. The amount of

carbonic acid we breathed was also unnaturally low, but why this was,

I am quite unable to explain.