第 十九 章 · Mr. Bedford Alone

. Mr. Bedford Alone

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

believe 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 painfully in a little while.

Why had we come to the moon?

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 knows 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 speculations....

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 any rate I

slept.

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 on each shoulder, and went on

out of the ravine of the gold-veined rocks.

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 about me, and then leapt forward to the next convenient

view-point.

I beat my way 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 seeing 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 hammering with our last strength on the valve of the

great pit.

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 half-way back

towards our handkerchief, when suddenly—

I saw the sphere!

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 against us, and then I understood.

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 in spite of the thin dryness of

the air, the perspiration was wet upon my face.

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, masters of ourselves and our world, and then—

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 had been my first leap in the moon. But now I made

it with no effort whatever.

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 landing place of men!

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 tumult

would become!

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 sphere. Then with a pang

of shame at that hesitation, I leapt....

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 the agreement. But he was nowhere to be seen.

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 sleeping-blankets on to the adjacent scrub. I searched the

crater again.

It had an effect of emptiness that chilled me. And it was still. Any

sound from the Selenites in the world beneath 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 breeze blew chill.

Confound Cavor!

I took a deep breath. I put my hands to the sides of my mouth. “Cavor!”

I bawled, and the sound was like some manikin shouting far away.

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 time I touched the ground I was tempted to go back.

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 finger of the

night.

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 cricket-cap Cavor had worn. I did not

touch it, I stood looking at it.

I saw then that the scattered branches about it had been forcibly

smashed and trampled. I hesitated, stepped forward, and picked it up.

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 and broken

writing ending at last in a crooked streak upon the paper.

I set myself to decipher this.

“I have been injured about the knee, I think my kneecap is hurt, and I

cannot run or crawl,” it began—pretty distinctly written.

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 they get me. They

are beating all about me.”

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 hasty confusion again.

“They have larger brain cases—much larger, and slenderer bodies, and

very short legs. They make gentle noises, and move with organized

deliberation...

“And though I am wounded and helpless here, their appearance still

gives me hope.” That was like Cavor. “They have not shot at me or

attempted... injury. I intend—”

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 the night.

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

grey and dim.

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 blood-red crescent of the sun’s disc sank as it

tolled out: Boom!... Boom!... Boom!...

What had happened to Cavor? All through that tolling I stood there

stupidly, and at last the tolling ceased.

And suddenly the open mouth of the tunnel down below there, shut like

an eye and vanished out of sight.

Then indeed was I alone.

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 silence—the infinite and final Night of space.

The sense of solitude and desolation became the sense of an

overwhelming presence that stooped towards me, that almost touched me.

“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 the shadow.

Leap, leap, leap, and each leap was seven ages.

Before me the pale serpent-girdled 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 air-pump, 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 reach it? O Heaven! Shall I reach it?”

My whole being became anguish.

“Lie down!” screamed my pain and despair; “lie down!”

The nearer I struggled, the more awfully remote it seemed. I was numb,

I stumbled, I bruised and cut myself and did not bleed.

It was in sight.

I fell on all fours, and my lungs whooped.

I crawled. The frost gathered on my lips, icicles hung from my

moustache, I was white with the freezing atmosphere.

I was a dozen yards from it. My eyes had become dim. “Lie down!”

screamed despair; “lie down!”

I touched it, and halted. “Too late!” screamed despair; “lie down!”

I fought stiffly with it. I was on the manhole lip, a stupefied,

half-dead being. The snow was all about me. I pulled myself in. There

lurked within a little warmer air.

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 that

quivered and felt brittle, I turned to the shutter studs.

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 of the inter-planetary sphere.