XIX MR. BEDFORD ALONE
In a little while it seemed to me as though I had always been alone onthe moon. I hunted for a time with a certain intentness, but the heatwas still very great, and the thinness of the air felt like a hoopabout one’s chest. I came presently into a hollow basin bristling withtall, brown, dry fronds about its edge, and I sat down under these torest and cool. I intended to rest for only a little while. I put downmy clubs beside me, and sat resting my chin on my hands. I saw with asort of colourless interest that the rocks of the basin, where here andthere the crackling dry lichens had shrunk away to show them, were allveined and splattered with gold, that here and there bosses of roundedand wrinkled gold projected from among the litter. What did that matternow? A sort of languor had possession of my limbs and mind, I did notbelieve for a moment that we should ever find the sphere in that vastdesiccated wilderness. I seemed to lack a motive for effort until theSelenites should come. Then I supposed I should exert myself, obeyingthat unreasonable imperative that urges a man before all things topreserve and defend his life, albeit he may preserve it only to diemore painfully in a little while.
Why had we come to the moon?
The thing presented itself to me as a perplexing problem. What isthis spirit in man that urges him for ever to depart from happinessand security, to toil, to place himself in danger, to risk even areasonable certainty of death? It dawned upon me up there in the moonas a thing I ought always to have known, that man is not made simplyto go about being safe and comfortable and well fed and amused. Almostany man, if you put the thing to him, not in words, but in the shape ofopportunities, will show that he knows as much. Against his interest,against his happiness, he is constantly being driven to do unreasonablethings. Some force not himself impels him, and go he must. But why?Why? Sitting there in the midst of that useless moon gold, amidst thethings of another world, I took count of all my life. Assuming I was todie a castaway upon the moon, I failed altogether to see what purposeI had served. I got no light on that point, but at any rate it wasclearer to me than it had ever been in my life before that I was notserving my own purpose, that all my life I had in truth never servedthe purposes of my private life. Whose purposes, what purposes, was Iserving?... I ceased to speculate on why we had come to the moon, andtook a wider sweep. Why had I come to the earth? Why had I a privatelife at all?... I lost myself at last in bottomless speculations....
My thoughts became vague and cloudy, no longer leading in definitedirections. I had not felt heavy or weary--I cannot imagine one doingso upon the moon--but I suppose I was greatly fatigued. At any rate Islept.
Slumbering there rested me greatly, I think, and the sun was settingand 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 feltactive and capable again. I rubbed my eyes and stretched my arms. Irose to my feet--I was a little stiff--and at once prepared to resumemy search. I shouldered my golden clubs, one on each shoulder, and wenton out of the ravine of the gold-veined rocks.
The sun was certainly lower, much lower than it had been; the air wasvery much cooler. I perceived I must have slept some time. It seemed tome 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 seeno signs of mooncalves or Selenites, nor could I see Cavor, but I couldsee my handkerchief afar off, spread out on its thicket of thorns.I looked about me, and then leapt forward to the next convenientview-point.
I beat my way round in a semicircle, and back again in a still remotercrescent. It was very fatiguing and hopeless. The air was really verymuch cooler, and it seemed to me that the shadow under the westwardcliff was growing broad. Ever and again I stopped and reconnoitred, butthere was no sign of Cavor, no sign of Selenites; and it seemed to methe mooncalves must have been driven into the interior again--I couldsee 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 thedistance of its diameter from the rim of the sky. I was oppressedby the idea that the Selenites would presently close their lids andvalves, 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 wetook counsel together. I felt how urgent it was that we should decidesoon upon our course. We had failed to find the sphere, we no longerhad 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--thatblackness of the void which is the only absolute death. All my beingshrank from that approach. We must get into the moon again, though wewere slain in doing it. I was haunted by a vision of our freezing todeath, of our hammering with our last strength on the valve of thegreat pit.
I took no thought any more of the sphere. I thought only of findingCavor 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 backtowards our handkerchief, when suddenly--
I saw the sphere!
I did not find it so much as it found me. It was lying much furtherto the westward than I had gone, and the sloping rays of the sinkingsun reflected from its glass had suddenly proclaimed its presence in adazzling beam. For an instant I thought this was some new device ofthe Selenites against us, and then I understood.
I threw up my arms, shouted a ghostly shout, and set off in vast leapstowards it. I missed one of my leaps and dropped into a deep ravine andtwisted my ankle, and after that I stumbled at almost every leap. Iwas in a state of hysterical agitation, trembling violently, and quitebreathless long before I got to it. Three times at least I had to stopwith my hands resting on my side, and spite of the thin dryness of theair, the perspiration was wet upon my face.
I thought of nothing but the sphere until I reached it, I forgot evenmy trouble of Cavor’s whereabouts. My last leap flung me with my handshard against its glass; then I lay against it panting, and tryingvainly to shout, “Cavor! here is the sphere!” When I had recovered alittle I peered through the thick glass, and the things inside seemedtumbled. I stooped to peer closer. Then I attempted to get in. I hadto hoist it over a little to get my head through the manhole. Thescrew stopper was inside, and I could see now that nothing had beentouched, nothing had suffered. It lay there as we had left it when wehad dropped out amidst the snow. For a time I was wholly occupied inmaking and remaking this inventory. I found I was trembling violently.It was good to see that familiar dark interior again! I cannot tellyou 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 mygold clubs upon the bale, and sought out and took a little food; not somuch because I wanted it, but because it was there. Then it occurred tome that it was time to go out and signal for Cavor. But I did not goout and signal for Cavor forthwith. Something held me to the sphere.
After all, everything was coming right. There would be still time forus to get more of the magic stone that gives one mastery over men. Awaythere, close handy, was gold for the picking up; and the sphere wouldtravel as well half full of gold as though it were empty. We could goback now, masters of ourselves and our world, and then----
I roused myself at last, and with an effort got myself out of thesphere. I shivered as I emerged, for the evening air was growing verycold. I stood in the hollow staring about me. I scrutinised the bushesround me very carefully before I leapt to the rocky shelf hard by, andtook once more what had been my first leap in the moon. But now I madeit with no effort whatever.
The growth and decay of the vegetation had gone on apace, and the wholeaspect of the rocks had changed, but still it was possible to make outthe slope on which the seeds had germinated, and the rocky mass fromwhich we had taken our first view of the crater. But the spiky shrubon the slope stood brown and sere now, and thirty feet high, and castlong shadows that stretched out of sight, and the little seeds thatclustered in its upper branches were brown and ripe. Its work was done,and it was brittle and ready to fall an
d crumple under the freezingair, so soon as the nightfall came. And the huge cacti, that hadswollen as we watched them, had long since burst and scattered theirspores to the four quarters of the moon. Amazing little corner in theuniverse--the landing-place of men!
Some day, thought I, I will have an inscription standing there rightin the midst of the hollow. It came to me, if only this teeming worldwithin knew of the full import of the moment, how furious its tumultwould become!
But as yet it could scarcely be dreaming of the significance of ourcoming. For if it did, the crater would surely be an uproar ofpursuit, instead of as still as death! I looked about for some placefrom which I might signal to Cavor, and saw that same patch of rock towhich he had leapt from my present standpoint, still bare and barren inthe sun. For a moment I hesitated at going so far from the sphere. Thenwith a pang of shame at that hesitation, I leapt....
From this vantage point I surveyed the crater again. Far away at thetop of the enormous shadow I cast was the little white handkerchieffluttering on the bushes. It was very little and very far, and Cavorwas not in sight. It seemed to me that by this time he ought to belooking for me. That was the agreement. But he was nowhere to be seen.
I stood waiting and watching, hands shading my eyes, expecting everymoment to distinguish him. Very probably I stood there for quite a longtime. 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 dreadof the Selenites made me hesitate to signal my whereabouts by hoistingone of our sleeping-blankets on to the adjacent scrub. I searched thecrater again.
It had an effect of emptiness that chilled me. And it was still! Anysound from the Selenites in the world beneath, even had died away. Itwas as still as death. Save for the faint stir of the shrub about me inthe little breeze that was rising, there was no sound nor shadow of asound. 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 broadeningshadow of the westward cliff, I looked under my hand at the sun. Itseemed 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 myvest and flung it as a mark on the sere bayonets of the shrubs behindme, 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 leapsand strides. I have already told how one seemed to hang through thoselunar leaps. In each suspense I sought Cavor, and marvelled why heshould 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, astride, and I stood on our former vantage point within arm’s reachof it. I stood up straight and scanned the world about me, betweenits lengthening bars of shadow. Far away, down a long declivity, wasthe opening of the tunnel up which we had fled, and my shadow reachedtowards it, stretched towards it, and touched it, like a finger of thenight.
Not a sign of Cavor, not a sound in all the stillness, only that thestir and waving of the scrub and of the shadows increased. And suddenlyand violently I shivered. “Cav--” I began, and realised once more theuselessness of the human voice in that thin air.
Silence. The silence of death.
Then it was my eye caught something--a little thing, lying perhapsfifty yards away down the slope, amidst a litter of bent and brokenbranches. 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. Idid not touch it, I stood looking at it.
I saw then that the scattered branches about it had been forciblysmashed and trampled. I hesitated, stepped forward and picked it up.
I stood with Cavor’s cap in my hand, staring at the trampled reeds andthorns about me. On some of them were little smears of something dark,something that I dared not touch. A dozen yards away, perhaps, therising breeze dragged something into view, something small and vividlywhite.
It was a little piece of paper crumpled tightly, as though it had beenclutched tightly. I picked it up, and on it were smears of red. My eyecaught faint pencil marks. I smoothed it out, and saw uneven and brokenwriting 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 Icannot run or crawl,” it began--pretty distinctly written.
Then less legibly: “They have been chasing me for some time, and it isonly a question of”--the word “time” seemed to have been written hereand erased in favour of something illegible--“before they get me. Theyare beating all about me.”
Then the writing became convulsive. “I can hear them,” I guessed thetracing meant, and then it was quite unreadable for a space. Then camea little string of words that were quite distinct: “a different sortof Selenite altogether, who appears to be directing the--” The writingbecame a mere hasty confusion again.
“They have larger brain cases--much larger, and slenderer bodies, andvery short legs. They make gentle noises, and move with organiseddeliberation....
“And though I am wounded and helpless here, their appearance stillgives me hope--” That was like Cavor. “They have not shot at me orattempted ... injury. I intend----”
Then came the sudden streak of the pencil across the paper, and on theback and edges--blood!
And as I stood there stupid and perplexed, with this dumbfounding relicin my hand, something very soft and light and chill touched my handfor 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 now almost toblackness, and was thick with a gathering multitude of coldly watchfulstars. I looked eastward, and the light of that shrivelled world wastouched with a sombre bronze; westward, and the sun, robbed now by athickening white mist of half its heat and splendour, was touching thecrater rim, was sinking out of sight, and all the shrubs and jagged andtumbled rocks stood out against it in a bristling disorder of blackshapes. Into the great lake of darkness westward, a vast wreath of mistwas sinking. A cold wind set all the crater shivering. Suddenly, fora moment, I was in a puff of falling snow, and all the world about megrey and dim.
And then it was I heard, not loud and penetrating as at first, butfaint and dim like a dying voice, that tolling, that same tolling thathad welcomed the coming of the day: Boom!... Boom!... Boom!...
It echoed about the crater, it seemed to throb with the throbbing ofthe greater stars, the blood-red crescent of the sun’s disk sank as ittolled out: Boom!... Boom!... Boom!
What had happened to Cavor? All through that tolling I stood therestupidly, and at last the tolling ceased.
And suddenly the open mouth of the tunnel down below there, shut likean eye and vanished out of sight.
Then indeed was I alone.
Over me, around me, closing in on me, embracing me ever nearer, was theEternal; that which was before the beginning, and that which triumphsover the end; that enormous void in which all light and life and beingis 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 anoverwhelming presence that stooped towards me, that almost touched me.
“No,” I cried. “_No!_ Not yet! not yet! Wait! Wait! Oh wait!” My voicewent up to a shriek. I flung the crumpled paper from me, scrambled backto the crest to take my bearings, and then, with all the will that wasin me, leapt out towards the mark I had left, dim and distant now inthe 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 advancin
g shadow swept to seize the sphere before I could reachit. I was two miles away, a hundred leaps or more, and the air aboutme was thinning out as it thins under an air-pump, and the cold wasgripping 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 leaptand shortened my leap; once I fell short into bushes that crashed andsmashed into dusty chips and nothingness, and once I stumbled as Idropped, and rolled head over heels into a gully, and rose bruised andbleeding and confused as to my direction.
But such incidents were as nothing to the intervals, those awful pauseswhen one drifted through the air towards that pouring tide of night.My breathing made a piping noise, and it was as though knives werewhirling in my lungs. My heart seemed to beat against the top of mybrain. “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.
“The nearer I struggled, the more awfully remote itseemed”]
It was in sight.
I fell on all fours, and my lungs whooped.
I crawled. The frost gathered on my lips, icicles hung from mymoustache, 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. Therelurked within a little warmer air.
The snowflakes--the airflakes--danced in about me, as I tried withchilling hands to thrust the valve in and spun it tight and hard. Isobbed. “I will,” I chattered in my teeth. And then, with fingers thatquivered and felt brittle, I turned to the shutter studs.
As I fumbled with the switches--for I had never controlled thembefore--I could see dimly through the steaming glass the blazing redstreamers of the sinking sun, dancing and flickering through thesnowstorm, and the black forms of the scrub thickening and bendingand breaking beneath the accumulating snow. Thicker whirled the snowand thicker, black against the light. What if even now the switchesovercame me?
Then something clicked under my hands, and in an instant that lastvision of the moon world was hidden from my eyes. I was in the silenceand darkness of the inter-planetary sphere.