Chapter 5 - 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withdrawn.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 it's 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 pounds," 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
come 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 gray 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,3 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.

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.