CHAPTER 3

The Journey to the Moon

"Go on," said Cavor, as I sat across the edge of the manhole and looked down into the black interior of the sphere. We two were alone. The sun had set, and the stillness of the twilight was upon everything.

I drew my other leg inside and slid down the smooth glass to the bottom of the sphere, then turned to take the cans of food and other equipment from Cavor. The interior was warm, the thermometer stood at eighty, and as we should lose little or none of this by radiation, we were dressed in thin flannels. We had, however, a bundle of thick woollen clothing and several thick blankets as a precaution. By Cavor's direction, I placed the bundles and cylinders loosely about my feet, and soon we had everything in; then he crawled in after me.

I assisted him to screw in the glass cover of the manhole, and then he pressed a button to close the corresponding blind in the outer case. The light vanished; we were in darkness.

For a time neither of us spoke. I noticed that there was nothing to hold on to when the shock of our start should come, and I realized that 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 the idea occurred to me that I was a fool to be inside that sphere. Even now, I asked myself, is it too late to withdraw? If it had not been for the appearance of cowardice, I believe that even then I should have made Cavor let me out. But I hesitated, and grew angry, and the time passed.

There came a little jerk, a noise like champagne being uncorked in another room, and a faint whistling sound.

"Cavor!" I said into the darkness, "I'm afraid! I'm a fool! What business have I here? I'm not coming, Cavor. I'm getting out."

"You can't," he said.

"Can't! We'll soon see about that!"

"It's too late for us to quarrel now, Bedford," he said. "That little jerk was the start. Already we are flying as swiftly as a bullet into space."

"I—" I said, and then it did not seem to matter what happened. For a time I felt as if I were stunned; I had nothing to say. Then I perceived a change in my bodily sensations. It was a feeling of lightness, of unreality, together with a strange sensation in the head, and a beating of blood-vessels at the ears. Neither of these feelings decreased as time went on, but at last I got so used to them that they did not trouble me at all.

I heard a click, and a little lamp was lit. I saw Cavor's face, as white as I felt my own to be. We regarded one another in silence. It seemed as though he was floating in space.

"Don't move," he exclaimed, when he saw me about to do so. "Let your muscles relax—as if you were in bed. We are in a little world of our own. Look at those things!"

He pointed to the loose cases and bundles that had been lying in the bottom of the sphere. I was astonished to see that they were floating now a foot from the wall of the sphere. Then I saw that Cavor was no longer leaning against the glass. I thrust out my hand behind me, and found that I too was hanging in space, clear of the glass.

I did not cry out, but fear came upon me. It was like being held and lifted by something—you know not what. I understood what had happened, but that did not prevent my being afraid. We were cut off from all exterior gravitation, only the attraction of objects within our sphere had effect. Consequently everything that was not fixed to the glass was falling towards the centre of gravity of our little world, which seemed to be somewhere about the middle of the sphere.

"We must turn round," said Cavor, "and float back to back, with the things between us."

It was the strangest thing imaginable, floating thus loosely in space, at first indeed horribly strange, and when the horror passed, not disagreeable at all, exceedingly restful, like lying on a very thick, soft feather bed. It was not like the beginning of a journey; it was like the beginning of a dream.

Presently Cavor turned off the light, saying we must save our stored energy for reading; and for a time there was nothing but blank darkness.

"In which direction are we travelling?" I asked him.

"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—"

There was a click, and then a window in the outer case opened. The sky outside was as black as the darkness within the sphere, but there was an endless number of bright stars.

The little window vanished with a click, another beside it opened and instantly closed, and then a third, and for a moment I had to close my eyes because of the blinding splendour of the moon.

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. It seemed to me, of course, that I looked "down" when I looked at the moon, because the pull of gravitation was towards it, and its light was coming up to me. It was a splendid view. The smallest details of its surface were wonderfully clear. And since we did not see it through air, its outline was bright and sharp.

"Are we visible from the earth?" I asked Cavor.

"It would need the most powerful telescope on earth even now to see us as the smallest particle."

For a time I stared in silence at the moon.

"It's a world," I said; "one feels that far more than one ever did on earth. People perhaps—"

"People!" he exclaimed. "No! Look at it! It's dead—dead! Vast extinct volcanoes, lava wildernesses, wastes of snow, or frozen air, cracks and deep hollows. Nothing happens."

"By the way," I asked, "how small a thing will the biggest telescopes show upon the moon?"

"One could see any towns or buildings. There might perhaps be insects that could hide in deep holes from the lunar night, or some new sort of creatures resembling nothing on earth. 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 colder and colder until it reaches 273 degrees Centigrade below the earthly freezing point."

Presently Cavor opened one earthward blind for thirty seconds. I fell clumsily upon my hands and face, and saw for a moment our mother earth—a planet in the sky. We were still very near—Cavor told me the distance was perhaps eight hundred miles, and the huge earthly 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 grey waters of the Atlantic shone like silver under the sunset. The window closed again, and I found myself sliding slowly over the smooth glass.

We did not feel the need for food for a long time after our start, since the efforts required of us were very slight owing to our reduced weight. Cavor examined the apparatus for removing carbonic acid and declared it to be in good order. There being nothing further for us to do or talk about, we gave way to a curious sleepiness 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, we 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 much appetite, we travelled through a space of time that had neither night nor day in it, silently, softly and swiftly down towards the moon.