第 十四 章 · Experiments in intercourse

. Experiments in intercourse

When at last we had made an end of eating, the Selenites linked our

hands closely together again, and then untwisted the chains about our

feet and rebound them, so as to give us a limited freedom of movement.

Then they unfastened the chains about our waists. To do all this they

had to handle us freely, and ever and again one of their queer heads

came down close to my face, or a soft tentacle-hand touched my head or

neck. I don’t remember that I was afraid then or repelled by their

proximity. I think that our incurable anthropomorphism made us imagine

there were human heads inside their masks. The skin, like everything

else, looked bluish, but that was on account of the light; and it was

hard and shiny, quite in the beetle-wing fashion, not soft, or moist,

or hairy, as a vertebrated animal’s would be. Along the crest of the

head was a low ridge of whitish spines running from back to front, and

a much larger ridge curved on either side over the eyes. The Selenite

who untied me used his mouth to help his hands.

“They seem to be releasing us,” said Cavor. “Remember we are on the

moon! Make no sudden movements!”

“Are you going to try that geometry?”

“If I get a chance. But, of course, they may make an advance first.”

We remained passive, and the Selenites, having finished their

arrangements, stood back from us, and seemed to be looking at us. I say

seemed to be, because as their eyes were at the side and not in front,

one had the same difficulty in determining the direction in which they

were looking as one has in the case of a hen or a fish. They conversed

with one another in their reedy tones, that seemed to me impossible to

imitate or define. The door behind us opened wider, and, glancing over

my shoulder, I saw a vague large space beyond, in which quite a little

crowd of Selenites were standing. They seemed a curiously miscellaneous

rabble.

“Do they want us to imitate those sounds?” I asked Cavor.

“I don’t think so,” he said.

“It seems to me that they are trying to make us understand something.”

“I can’t make anything of their gestures. Do you notice this one, who

is worrying with his head like a man with an uncomfortable collar?”

“Let us shake our heads at him.”

We did that, and finding it ineffectual, attempted an imitation of the

Selenites’ movements. That seemed to interest them. At any rate they

all set up the same movement. But as that seemed to lead to nothing, we

desisted at last and so did they, and fell into a piping argument among

themselves. Then one of them, shorter and very much thicker than the

others, and with a particularly wide mouth, squatted down suddenly

beside Cavor, and put his hands and feet in the same posture as Cavor’s

were bound, and then by a dexterous movement stood up.

“Cavor,” I shouted, “they want us to get up!”

He stared open-mouthed. “That’s it!” he said.

And with much heaving and grunting, because our hands were tied

together, we contrived to struggle to our feet. The Selenites made way

for our elephantine heavings, and seemed to twitter more volubly. As

soon as we were on our feet the thick-set Selenite came and patted each

of our faces with his tentacles, and walked towards the open doorway.

That also was plain enough, and we followed him. We saw that four of

the Selenites standing in the doorway were much taller than the others,

and clothed in the same manner as those we had seen in the crater,

namely, with spiked round helmets and cylindrical body-cases, and that

each of the four carried a goad with spike and guard made of that same

dull-looking metal as the bowls. These four closed about us, one on

either side of each of us, as we emerged from our chamber into the

cavern from which the light had come.

We did not get our impression of that cavern all at once. Our attention

was taken up by the movements and attitudes of the Selenites

immediately about us, and by the necessity of controlling our motion,

lest we should startle and alarm them and ourselves by some excessive

stride. In front of us was the short, thick-set being who had solved

the problem of asking us to get up, moving with gestures that seemed,

almost all of them, intelligible to us, inviting us to follow him. His

spout-like face turned from one of us to the other with a quickness

that was clearly interrogative. For a time, I say, we were taken up

with these things.

But at last the great place that formed a background to our movements

asserted itself. It became apparent that the source of much, at least,

of the tumult of sounds which had filled our ears ever since we had

recovered from the stupefaction of the fungus was a vast mass of

machinery in active movement, whose flying and whirling parts were

visible indistinctly over the heads and between the bodies of the

Selenites who walked about us. And not only did the web of sounds that

filled the air proceed from this mechanism, but also the peculiar blue

light that irradiated the whole place. We had taken it as a natural

thing that a subterranean cavern should be artificially lit, and even

now, though the fact was patent to my eyes, I did not really grasp its

import until presently the darkness came. The meaning and structure of

this huge apparatus we saw I cannot explain, because we neither of us

learnt what it was for or how it worked. One after another, big shafts

of metal flung out and up from its centre, their heads travelling in

what seemed to me to be a parabolic path; each dropped a sort of

dangling arm as it rose towards the apex of its flight and plunged down

into a vertical cylinder, forcing this down before it. About it moved

the shapes of tenders, little figures that seemed vaguely different

from the beings about us. As each of the three dangling arms of the

machine plunged down, there was a clank and then a roaring, and out of

the top of the vertical cylinder came pouring this incandescent

substance that lit the place, and ran over as milk runs over a boiling

pot, and dripped luminously into a tank of light below. It was a cold

blue light, a sort of phosphorescent glow but infinitely brighter, and

from the tanks into which it fell it ran in conduits athwart the

cavern.

Thud, thud, thud, thud, came the sweeping arms of this unintelligible

apparatus, and the light substance hissed and poured. At first the

thing seemed only reasonably large and near to us, and then I saw how

exceedingly little the Selenites upon it seemed, and I realised the

full immensity of cavern and machine. I looked from this tremendous

affair to the faces of the Selenites with a new respect. I stopped, and

Cavor stopped, and stared at this thunderous engine.

“But this is stupendous!” I said. “What can it be for?”

Cavor’s blue-lit face was full of an intelligent respect. “I can’t

dream! Surely these beings— Men could not make a thing like that! Look

at those arms, are they on connecting rods?”

The thick-set Selenite had gone some paces unheeded. He came back and

stood between us and the great machine. I avoided seeing him, because I

guessed somehow that his idea was to beckon us onward. He walked away

in the direction he wished us to go, and turned and came back, and

flicked our faces to attract our attention.

Cavor and I looked at one another.

“Cannot we show him we are interested in the machine?” I said.

“Yes,” said Cavor. “We’ll try that.” He turned to our guide and smiled,

and pointed to the machine, and pointed again, and then to his head,

and then to the machine. By some defect of reasoning he seemed to

imagine that broken English might help these gestures. “Me look ‘im,”

he said, “me think ‘im very much. Yes.”

His behaviour seemed to check the Selenites in their desire for our

progress for a moment. They faced one another, their queer heads moved,

the twittering voices came quick and liquid. Then one of them, a lean,

tall creature, with a sort of mantle added to the puttee in which the

others were dressed, twisted his elephant trunk of a hand about Cavor’s

waist, and pulled him gently to follow our guide, who again went on

ahead. Cavor resisted. “We may just as well begin explaining ourselves

now. They may think we are new animals, a new sort of mooncalf perhaps!

It is most important that we should show an intelligent interest from

the outset.”

He began to shake his head violently. “No, no,” he said, “me not come

on one minute. Me look at ‘im.”

“Isn’t there some geometrical point you might bring in _apropos_ of

that affair?” I suggested, as the Selenites conferred again.

“Possibly a parabolic—” he began.

He yelled loudly, and leaped six feet or more!

One of the four armed moon-men had pricked him with a goad!

I turned on the goad-bearer behind me with a swift threatening gesture,

and he started back. This and Cavor’s sudden shout and leap clearly

astonished all the Selenites. They receded hastily, facing us. For one

of those moments that seem to last for ever, we stood in angry protest,

with a scattered semicircle of these inhuman beings about us.

“He pricked me!” said Cavor, with a catching of the voice.

“I saw him,” I answered.

“Confound it!” I said to the Selenites; “we’re not going to stand that!

What on earth do you take us for?”

I glanced quickly right and left. Far away across the blue wilderness

of cavern I saw a number of other Selenites running towards us; broad

and slender they were, and one with a larger head than the others. The

cavern spread wide and low, and receded in every direction into

darkness. Its roof, I remember, seemed to bulge down as if with the

weight of the vast thickness of rocks that prisoned us. There was no

way out of it—no way out of it. Above, below, in every direction, was

the unknown, and these inhuman creatures, with goads and gestures,

confronting us, and we two unsupported men!