For a time neither of us spoke1. To focus together all the things we had brought upon ourselves seemed beyond my mental powers.
"They've got us," I said at last.
"Well--if I hadn't taken it we should have fainted and starved."
"We might have found the sphere."
I lost my temper at his persistence3, and swore to myself. For a time we hated one another in silence. I drummed with my fingers on the floor between my knees, and gritted4 the links of my fetters5 together. Presently I was forced to talk again.
"What do you make of it, anyhow?" I asked humbly6.
"They are reasonable creatures--they can make things and do things. Those lights we saw..."
He stopped. It was clear he could make nothing of it.
When he spoke again it was to confess, "After all, they are more human than we had a right to expect. I suppose--"
He stopped irritatingly.
"Yes?"
"I suppose, anyhow--on any planet where there is an intelligent animal--it will carry its brain case upward, and have hands, and walk erect7."
Presently he broke away in another direction.
"We are some way in," he said. "I mean--perhaps a couple of thousand feet or more."
"Why?"
"It's cooler. And our voices are so much louder. That faded quality--it has altogether gone. And the feeling in one's ears and throat."
I had not noted8 that, but I did now.
"The air is denser9. We must be some depths--a mile even, we may be--inside the moon."
"We never thought of a world inside the moon."
"No."
"How could we?"
"We might have done. Only one gets into habits of mind."
He thought for a time.
"Now," he said, "it seems such an obvious thing."
"Of course! The moon must be enormously cavernous, with an atmosphere within, and at the centre of its caverns10 a sea.
"One knew that the moon had a lower specific gravity than the earth, one knew that it had little air or water outside, one knew, too, that it was sister planet to the earth, and that it was unaccountable that it should be different in composition. The inference that it was hollowed out was as clear as day. And yet one never saw it as a fact. Kepler, of course--"
His voice had the interest now of a man who has discerned a pretty sequence of reasoning.
"Yes," he said, "Kepler with his sub-volvani was right after all."
"I wish you had taken the trouble to find that out before we came," I said.
He answered nothing, buzzing to himself softly, as he pursued his thoughts. My temper was going.
"What do you think has become of the sphere, anyhow?" I asked.
"Lost," he said, like a man who answers an uninteresting question.
"Among those plants?"
"Unless they find it."
"And then?"
"How can I tell?"
"Cavor," I said, with a sort of hysterical11 bitterness, "things look bright for my Company..."
He made no answer.
"Good Lord!" I exclaimed. "Just think of all the trouble we took to get into this pickle12! What did we come for? What are we after? What was the moon to us or we to the moon? We wanted too much, we tried too much. We ought to have started the little things first. It was you proposed the moon! Those Cavorite spring blinds! I am certain we could have worked them for terrestrial purposes. Certain! Did you really understand what I proposed? A steel cylinder--"
"Rubbish!" said Cavor.
For a time Cavor kept up a broken monologue14 without much help from me.
"If they find it," he began, "if they find it ... what will they do with it? Well, that's a question. It may be that's _the_ question. They won't understand it, anyhow. If they understood that sort of thing they would have come long since to the earth. Would they? Why shouldn't they? But they would have sent something--they couldn't keep their hands off such a possibility. No! But they will examine it. Clearly they are intelligent and inquisitive15. They will examine it--get inside it--trifle with the studs. Off! ... That would mean the moon for us for all the rest of our lives. Strange creatures, strange knowledge...."
"As for strange knowledge--" said I, and language failed me.
"Look here, Bedford," said Cavor, "you came on this expedition of your own free will."
"You said to me, 'Call it prospecting16'."
"There's always risks in prospecting."
"Especially when you do it unarmed and without thinking out every possibility."
"I was so taken up with the sphere. The thing rushed on us, and carried us away."
"Rushed on _me_, you mean."
"Rushed on me just as much. How was I to know when I set to work on molecular17 physics that the business would bring me here--of all places?"
"It's this accursed science," I cried. "It's the very Devil. The medieval priests and persecutors were right and the Moderns are all wrong. You tamper18 with it--and it offers you gifts. And directly you take them it knocks you to pieces in some unexpected way. Old passions and new weapons--now it upsets your religion, now it upsets your social ideas, now it whirls you off to desolation and misery20!"
"Anyhow, it's no use your quarrelling with me now. These creatures--these Selenites, or whatever we choose to call them--have got us tied hand and foot. Whatever temper you choose to go through with it in, you will have to go through with it.... We have experiences before us that will need all our coolness."
He paused as if he required my assent21. But I sat sulking. "Confound your science!" I said.
"The problem is communication. Gestures, I fear, will be different. Pointing, for example. No creatures but men and monkeys point."
That was too obviously wrong for me. "Pretty nearly every animal," I cried, "points with its eyes or nose."
Cavor meditated22 over that. "Yes," he said at last, "and we don't. There's such differences--such differences!"
"One might.... But how can I tell? There is speech. The sounds they make, a sort of fluting23 and piping. I don't see how we are to imitate that. Is it their speech, that sort of thing? They may have different senses, different means of communication. Of course they are minds and we are minds; there must be something in common. Who knows how far we may not get to an understanding?"
"The things are outside us," I said. "They're more different from us than the strangest animals on earth. They are a different clay. What is the good of talking like this?"
Cavor thought. "I don't see that. Where there are minds they will have something similar--even though they have been evolved on different planets. Of course if it was a question of instincts, if we or they are no more than animals--"
"Well, are they? They're much more like ants on their hind24 legs than human beings, and who ever got to any sort of understanding with ants?"
"But these machines and clothing! No, I don't hold with you, Bedford. The difference is wide--"
"It's insurmountable."
"The resemblance must bridge it. I remember reading once a paper by the late Professor Galton on the possibility of communication between the planets. Unhappily, at that time it did not seem probable that that would be of any material benefit to me, and I fear I did not give it the attention I should have done--in view of this state of affairs. Yet.... Now, let me see!
"His idea was to begin with those broad truths that must underlie25 all conceivable mental existences and establish a basis on those. The great principles of geometry, to begin with. He proposed to take some leading proposition of Euclid's, and show by construction that its truth was known to us, to demonstrate, for example, that the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal, and that if the equal sides be produced the angles on the other side of the base are equal also, or that the square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the two other sides. By demonstrating our knowledge of these things we should demonstrate our possession of a reasonable intelligence.... Now, suppose I ... I might draw the geometrical figure with a wet finger, or even trace it in the air...."
He fell silent. I sat meditating26 his words. For a time his wild hope of communication, of interpretation27, with these weird28 beings held me. Then that angry despair that was a part of my exhaustion29 and physical misery resumed its sway. I perceived with a sudden novel vividness the extraordinary folly30 of everything I had ever done. "Ass19!" I said; "oh, ass, unutterable ass.... I seem to exist only to go about doing preposterous31 things. Why did we ever leave the thing? ... Hopping32 about looking for patents and concessions33 in the craters34 of the moon!... If only we had had the sense to fasten a handkerchief to a stick to show where we had left the sphere!"
"It is clear," meditated Cavor, "they are intelligent. One can hypothecate certain things. As they have not killed us at once, they must have ideas of mercy. Mercy! at any rate of restraint. Possibly of intercourse37. They may meet us. And this apartment and the glimpses we had of its guardian38. These fetters! A high degree of intelligence..."
"I wish to heaven," cried I, "I'd thought even twice! Plunge39 after plunge. First one fluky start and then another. It was my confidence in you! Why didn't I stick to my play? That was what I was equal to. That was my world and the life I was made for. I could have finished that play. I'm certain ... it was a good play. I had the scenario40 as good as done. Then.... Conceive it! leaping to the moon! Practically--I've thrown my life away! That old woman in the inn near Canterbury had better sense."
I looked up, and stopped in mid-sentence. The darkness had given place to that bluish light again. The door was opening, and several noiseless Selenites were coming into the chamber41. I became quite still, staring at their grotesque42 faces.
Then suddenly my sense of disagreeable strangeness changed to interest. I perceived that the foremost and second carried bowls. One elemental need at least our minds could understand in common. They were bowls of some metal that, like our fetters, looked dark in that bluish light; and each contained a number of whitish fragments. All the cloudy pain and misery that oppressed me rushed together and took the shape of hunger. I eyed these bowls wolfishly, and, though it returned to me in dreams, at that time it seemed a small matter that at the end of the arms that lowered one towards me were not hands, but a sort of flap and thumb, like the end of an elephant's trunk. The stuff in the bowl was loose in texture43, and whitish brown in colour--rather like lumps of some cold souffle, and it smelt44 faintly like mushrooms. From a partially45 divided carcass of a mooncalf that we presently saw, I am inclined to believe it must have been mooncalf flesh.
My hands were so tightly chained that I could barely contrive46 to reach the bowl; but when they saw the effort I made, two of them dexterously47 released one of the turns about my wrist. Their tentacle48 hands were soft and cold to my skin. I immediately seized a mouthful of the food. It had the same laxness in texture that all organic structures seem to have upon the moon; it tasted rather like a gauffre or a damp meringue, but in no way was it disagreeable. I took two other mouthfuls. "I wanted--foo'!" said I, tearing off a still larger piece....
For a time we ate with an utter absence of self-consciousness. We ate and presently drank like tramps in a soup kitchen. Never before nor since have I been hungry to the ravenous49 pitch, and save that I have had this very experience I could never have believed that, a quarter of a million of miles out of our proper world, in utter perplexity of soul, surrounded, watched, touched by beings more grotesque and inhuman50 than the worst creations of a nightmare, it would be possible for me to eat in utter forgetfulness of all these things. They stood about us watching us, and ever and again making a slight elusive51 twittering that stood the suppose, in the stead of speech. I did not even shiver at their touch. And when the first zeal52 of my feeding was over, I could note that Cavor, too, had been eating with the same shameless abandon.
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1
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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fungus
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| n.真菌，真菌类植物 | |
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persistence
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| n.坚持，持续，存留 | |
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gritted
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| v.以沙砾覆盖（某物），撒沙砾于( grit的过去式和过去分词 )；咬紧牙关 | |
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fetters
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| n.脚镣( fetter的名词复数 )；束缚v.给…上脚镣，束缚( fetter的第三人称单数 ) | |
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humbly
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| adv. 恭顺地，谦卑地 | |
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erect
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| n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的 | |
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noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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denser
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| adj. 不易看透的, 密集的, 浓厚的, 愚钝的 | |
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caverns
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| 大山洞，大洞穴( cavern的名词复数 ) | |
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hysterical
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| adj.情绪异常激动的，歇斯底里般的 | |
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pickle
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| n.腌汁，泡菜；v.腌，泡 | |
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converse
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| vi.谈话，谈天，闲聊；adv.相反的，相反 | |
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monologue
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| n.长篇大论，（戏剧等中的）独白 | |
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inquisitive
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| adj.求知欲强的，好奇的，好寻根究底的 | |
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prospecting
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| n.探矿 | |
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molecular
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| adj.分子的；克分子的 | |
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tamper
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| v.干预，玩弄，贿赂，窜改，削弱，损害 | |
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ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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assent
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| v.批准，认可；n.批准，认可 | |
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meditated
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| 深思，沉思，冥想( meditate的过去式和过去分词 )； 内心策划，考虑 | |
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fluting
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| 有沟槽的衣料； 吹笛子； 笛声； 刻凹槽 | |
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hind
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| adj.后面的，后部的 | |
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underlie
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| v.位于...之下，成为...的基础 | |
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meditating
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| a.沉思的，冥想的 | |
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interpretation
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| n.解释，说明，描述；艺术处理 | |
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weird
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| adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的 | |
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exhaustion
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| n.耗尽枯竭，疲惫，筋疲力尽，竭尽，详尽无遗的论述 | |
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folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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preposterous
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| adj.荒谬的，可笑的 | |
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32
hopping
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| n. 跳跃 动词hop的现在分词形式 | |
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concessions
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| n.（尤指由政府或雇主给予的）特许权( concession的名词复数 )；承认；减价；（在某地的）特许经营权 | |
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craters
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| n.火山口( crater的名词复数 )；弹坑等 | |
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35
subsided
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| v.（土地）下陷（因在地下采矿）( subside的过去式和过去分词 )；减弱；下降至较低或正常水平；一下子坐在椅子等上 | |
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36
fuming
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| 愤怒( fume的现在分词 )； 大怒； 发怒； 冒烟 | |
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intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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guardian
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| n.监护人；守卫者，保护者 | |
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plunge
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| v.跳入，(使)投入，(使)陷入；猛冲 | |
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scenario
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| n.剧本，脚本；概要 | |
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chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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43
texture
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| n.(织物)质地；(材料)构造；结构；肌理 | |
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44
smelt
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| v.熔解，熔炼；n.银白鱼，胡瓜鱼 | |
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45
partially
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| adv.部分地，从某些方面讲 | |
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46
contrive
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| vt.谋划，策划；设法做到；设计，想出 | |
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47
dexterously
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| adv.巧妙地，敏捷地 | |
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48
tentacle
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| n.触角，触须，触手 | |
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49
ravenous
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| adj.极饿的，贪婪的 | |
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50
inhuman
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| adj.残忍的，不人道的，无人性的 | |
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51
elusive
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| adj.难以表达(捉摸)的；令人困惑的；逃避的 | |
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52
zeal
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| n.热心，热情，热忱 | |
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