Chapter 19 - 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 belive 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 knob 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 bout
me, and then leapt forward to the next convenient view-point.

I beat my 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 being 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 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, even 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 up on 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 gray 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 near 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 the
inter-planetary sphere.