IV INSIDE THE SPHERE
“Go on,” said Cavor, as I sat across the edge of the manhole and lookeddown into the black interior of the sphere. We two were alone. It wasevening, the sun had set, and the stillness of the twilight was uponeverything.
I drew my other leg inside and slid down the smooth glass to thebottom of the sphere, then turned to take the cans of food and otherimpedimenta from Cavor. The interior was warm, the thermometer stoodat eighty, and as we should lose little or none of this by radiation,we were dressed in shoes and thin flannels. We had, however, a bundleof thick woollen clothing and several thick blankets to guard againstmischance. By Cavor’s direction I placed the packages, the cylinders ofoxygen, and so forth, loosely about my feet, and soon we had everythingin. He walked about the roofless shed for a time seeking anything wehad overlooked, and then crawled in after me. I noted something in hishand.
“I sat across the edge of the manhole and looked downinto the black interior”]
“What have you got there?” I asked.
“Haven’t you brought anything to read?”
“Good Lord! No.”
“I forgot to tell you. There are uncertainties--The voyage may last--Wemay be weeks!”
“But----”
“We shall be floating in this sphere with absolutely no occupation.”
“I wish I’d known----”
He peered out of the manhole. “Look!” he said. “There’s somethingthere!”
“Is there time?”
“We shall be an hour.”
I looked out. It was an old number of _Tit-Bits_ that one of the menmust have brought. Further away in the corner I saw a torn _Lloyds’News_. I scrambled back into the sphere with these things. “What haveyou got?” I said.
I took the book from his hand and read, “The Works of WilliamShakespeare.”
He coloured slightly. “My education has been so purely scientific--” hesaid apologetically.
“Never read him?”
“Never.”
“He knew a little you know--in an irregular sort of way.”
“Precisely what I am told,” said Cavor.
I assisted him to screw in the glass cover of the manhole, and then hepressed a stud to close the corresponding blind in the outer case. Thelittle oblong of twilight vanished. We were in darkness.
For a time neither of us spoke. Although our case would not beimpervious to sound, everything was very still. I perceived there wasnothing to grip when the shock of our start should come, and I realisedthat I should be uncomfortable for want of a chair.
“Why have we no chairs?” I asked.
“I’ve settled all that,” said Cavor. “We shan’t need them.”
“Why not?”
“You will see,” he said, in the tone of a man who refuses to talk.
I became silent. Suddenly it had come to me clear and vivid that Iwas a fool to be inside that sphere. Even now, I asked myself, is ittoo late to withdraw? The world outside the sphere, I knew, wouldbe cold and inhospitable enough to me--for weeks I had been livingon subsidies from Cavor--but after all, would it be as cold as theinfinite zero, as inhospitable as empty space? If it had not been forthe appearance of cowardice, I believe that even then I should havemade him let me out. But I hesitated on that score, and hesitated, andgrew fretful and angry, and the time passed.
There came a little jerk, a noise like champagne being uncorked inanother room, and a faint whistling sound. For just one instant I hada sense of enormous tension, a transient conviction that my feet werepressing downward with a force of countless tons. It lasted for aninfinitesimal time.
But it stirred me to action. “Cavor!” I said into the darkness, “mynerve’s in rags.... I don’t think----”
I stopped. He made no answer.
“Confound it!” I cried; “I’m a fool! What business have I here? I’m notcoming, Cavor. The thing’s too risky. I’m getting out.”
“You can’t,” he said.
“Can’t! We’ll soon see about that!”
He made no answer for ten seconds. “It’s too late for us to quarrelnow, Bedford,” he said. “That little jerk was the start. Already we areflying as swiftly as a bullet up into the gulf of space.”
“I--” I said, and then it didn’t seem to matter what happened. For atime I was, as it were, stunned; I had nothing to say. It was just asif I had never heard of this idea of leaving the world before. ThenI perceived an unaccountable change in my bodily sensations. It wasa feeling of lightness, of unreality. Coupled with that was a queersensation in the head, an apoplectic effect almost, and a thumping ofblood-vessels at the ears. Neither of these feelings diminished astime went on, but at last I got so used to them that I experienced noinconvenience.
I heard a click, and a little glow lamp came into being.
I saw Cavor’s face, as white as I felt my own to be. We regarded oneanother in silence. The transparent blackness of the glass behind himmade him seem as though he floated in a void.
“Well, we’re committed,” I said at last.
“Yes,” he said, “we’re committed.”
“Don’t move,” he exclaimed, at some suggestion of a gesture. “Let yourmuscles keep quite lax--as if you were in bed. We are in a littleuniverse of our own. Look at those things!”
He pointed to the loose cases and bundles that had been lying on theblankets in the bottom of the sphere. I was astonished to see that theywere floating now nearly a foot from the spherical wall. Then I sawfrom his shadow that Cavor was no longer leaning against the glass. Ithrust out my hand behind me, and found that I too was suspended inspace, clear of the glass.
I did not cry out nor gesticulate, but fear came upon me. It was likebeing held and lifted by something--you know not what. The mere touchof my hand against the glass moved me rapidly. I understood what hadhappened, but that did not prevent my being afraid. We were cut offfrom all exterior gravitation, only the attraction of objects withinour sphere had effect. Consequently everything that was not fixedto the glass was falling--slowly because of the slightness of ourmasses--towards the centre of gravity of our little world, which seemedto be somewhere about the middle of the sphere, but rather nearer tomyself than Cavor, on account of my greater weight.
“We must turn round,” said Cavor, “and float back to back, with thethings between us.”
It was the strangest sensation conceivable, floating thus loosely inspace, at first indeed horribly strange, and when the horror passed,not disagreeable at all, exceeding restful; indeed, the nearest thingin earthly experience to it that I know is lying on a very thick, softfeather bed. But the quality of utter detachment and independence! Ihad not reckoned on things like this. I had expected a violent jerkat starting, a giddy sense of speed. Instead I felt--as if I weredisembodied. It was not like the beginning of a journey; it was likethe beginning of a dream.