The First Men in the Moon Read online

  VI THE LANDING ON THE MOON

  I remember how one day Cavor suddenly opened six of our shutters andblinded me so that I cried aloud at him. The whole area was moon, astupendous scimitar of white dawn with its edge hacked out by notchesof darkness, the crescent shore of an ebbing tide of darkness, out ofwhich peaks and pinnacles came climbing into the blaze of the sun.I take it the reader has seen pictures or photographs of the moon,so that I need not describe the broader features of that landscape,those spacious ringlike ranges vaster than any terrestrial mountains,their summits shining in the day, their shadows harsh and deep, thegrey disordered plains, the ridges, hills, and craterlets, all passingat last from a blazing illumination into a common mystery of black.Athwart this world we were flying scarcely a hundred miles above itscrests and pinnacles. And now we could see, what no eye on earthwill ever see, that under the blaze of the day the harsh outlinesof the rocks and ravines of the plains and crater floor grew greyand indistinct under a thickening haze, that the white of their litsurfaces broke into lumps and patches, and broke again and shrank andvanished, and that here and there strange tints of brown and olive grewand spread.

  But little time we had for watching then. For now we had come to thereal danger of our journey. We had to drop ever closer to the moon aswe spun about it, to slacken our pace and watch our chance, until atlast we could dare to drop upon its surface.

  For Cavor that was a time of intense exertion; for me it was an anxiousinactivity. I seemed perpetually to be getting out of his way. He leaptabout the sphere from point to point with an agility that would havebeen impossible on earth. He was perpetually opening and closing theCavorite windows, making calculations, consulting his chronometer bymeans of the glow lamp during those last eventful hours. For a longtime we had all our windows closed and hung silently in darkness,hurling through space.

  Then he was feeling for the shutter studs, and suddenly four windowswere open. I staggered and covered my eyes, drenched and scorched andblinded by the unaccustomed splendour of the sun beneath my feet. Thenagain the shutters snapped, leaving my brain spinning in a darknessthat pressed against the eyes. And after that I floated in anothervast, black silence.

  Then Cavor switched on the electric light, and told me he proposedto bind all our luggage together with the blankets about it, againstthe concussion of our descent. We did this with our windows closed,because in that way our goods arranged themselves naturally at thecentre of the sphere. That too was a strange business; we two menfloating loose in that spherical space, and packing and pulling ropes.Imagine it if you can! No up nor down, and every effort resulting inunexpected movements. Now I would be pressed against the glass with thefull force of Cavor’s thrust, now I would be kicking helplessly in avoid. Now the star of the electric light would be overhead, now underfoot. Now Cavor’s feet would float up before my eyes, and now we wouldbe crossways to each other. But at last our goods were safely boundtogether in a big soft bale, all except two blankets with head holesthat we were to wrap about ourselves.

  Then for a flash Cavor opened a window moonward, and we saw that wewere dropping towards a huge central crater with a number of minorcraters grouped in a sort of cross about it. And then again Cavorflung our little sphere open to the scorching, blinding sun. I thinkhe was using the sun’s attraction as a brake. “Cover yourself with ablanket,” he cried, thrusting himself from me, and for a moment I didnot understand.

  Then I hauled the blanket from beneath my feet and got it about me andover my head and eyes. Abruptly he closed the shutters again, snappedone open again and closed it, then suddenly began snapping them allopen, each safely into its steel roller. There came a jar, and then wewere rolling over and over, bumping against the glass and against thebig bale of our luggage, and clutching at each other, and outside somewhite substance splashed as if we were rolling down a slope of snow....

  Over, clutch, bump, clutch, bump, over....

  Came a thud, and I was half buried under the bale of our possessions,and for a space everything was still. Then I could hear Cavor puffingand grunting, and the snapping of a shutter in its sash. I made aneffort, thrust back our blanket-wrapped luggage, and emerged frombeneath it. Our open windows were just visible as a deeper black setwith stars.

  We were still alive, and we were lying in the darkness of the shadow ofthe wall of the great crater into which we had fallen.

  We sat getting our breath again, and feeling the bruises on our limbs.I don’t think either of us had had a very clear expectation of suchrough handling as we had received. I struggled painfully to my feet.“And now,” said I, “to look at the landscape of the moon! But--! It’stremendously dark, Cavor!”

  The glass was dewy, and as I spoke I wiped at it with my blanket.“We’re half-an-hour or so beyond the day,” he said. “We must wait.”

  It was impossible to distinguish anything. We might have been in asphere of steel for all that we could see. My rubbing with the blanketsimply smeared the glass, and as fast as I wiped it, it became opaqueagain with freshly condensed moisture mixed with an increasing quantityof blanket hairs. Of course I ought not to have used the blanket. In myefforts to clear the glass I slipped upon the damp surface, and hurt myshin against one of the oxygen cylinders that protruded from our bale.

  The thing was exasperating--it was absurd. Here we were just arrivedupon the moon, amidst we knew not what wonders, and all we could seewas the grey and streaming wall of the bubble in which we had come.

  “Confound it!” I said, “but at this rate we might have stopped athome;” and I squatted on the bale and shivered, and drew my blanketcloser about me.

  Abruptly the moisture turned to spangles and fronds of frost. “Can youreach the electric heater,” said Cavor. “Yes--that black knob. Or weshall freeze.”

  I did not wait to be told twice. “And now,” said I, “what are we to do?”

  “Wait,” he said.

  “Wait?”

  “Of course. We shall have to wait until our air gets warm again, andthen this glass will clear. We can’t do anything till then. It’s nighthere yet; we must wait for the day to overtake us. Meanwhile, don’t youfeel hungry?”

  For a space I did not answer him, but sat fretting. I turnedreluctantly from the smeared puzzle of the glass and stared athis face. “Yes,” I said, “I am hungry. I feel somehow enormouslydisappointed. I had expected--I don’t know what I had expected, but notthis.”

  I summoned my philosophy, and rearranging my blanket about me sat downon the bale again and began my first meal on the moon. I don’t thinkI finished it--I forget. Presently, first in patches, then runningrapidly together into wider spaces, came the clearing of the glass,came the drawing of the misty veil that hid the moon world from oureyes.

  We peered out upon the landscape of the moon.