CHAPTER 4

The Landing on the Moon

I remember how one day Cavor opened six of our Cavorite windows and blinded me so that I cried aloud at him. The whole area was moon, a huge crescent out of which peaks 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 the landscape, with its circular mountain ranges, its craters and plains. Across this world we were flying scarcely a hundred miles above its peaks. And now we could see that the white lighted surfaces broke into masses which shrank and vanished, and here and there brown and olive surfaces were revealed.

But little time had we for watching the sights of the moon. For now we had come to the real danger of our journey. We had to slow down and watch our chance, until at last we could dare to drop upon its surface.

Cavor was now very busy. He leapt about the sphere from point to point, opening and closing the blinds, making calculations, consulting his chronometer. FJjr a long time we had all our blinds closed, and hung silently in darkness, travelling through space.

Then he suddenly opened four blinds. I staggered and covered my eyes, scorched and blinded by the blaze of the sun under my feet Then again the windows closed and we floated in another vast, black silence.

Cavor turned on the electric light, and we bound all our luggage together with the blankets about it. We did this with our windows closed, because in that way our goods arranged themselves naturally at the centre of the sphere. That too was a strange business; we two men floating loosely in the sphere, and packing and pulling ropes. Imagine it if you can! No up nor down, and every effort resulting in unexpected movements. Now Cavor's feet would float up before my eyes, and now we would be cross-ways to each other. But at last our goods were safely bound together in a big bundle, all except two blankets with head holes that we were to wrap about ourselves.

Then for a few seconds Cavor opened a blind moonward, and we saw that we were dropping towards a huge crater. And then again he flung our little sphere open to the scorching, blinding sun. I think he was using the sun's attraction as a brake. "Cover yourself with a blanket," he cried. I obeyed. Suddenly he closed the shutters again, then began opening them all. There came a harsh sound, and we were rolling over and over, bumping against the glass and against the bundle of our luggage, and clutching at each other. Outside, some white substance splashed as if we were rolling down a slope of snow.

There came a dull noise, and I was half buried under the bundle, then everything was still. We were still alive, and we were lying in the shadow of the wall of the crater into which we had fallen.

We sat getting our breath again, and feeling the bruises on our limbs. I struggled painfully to my feet. "And now," said I, "to look at the landscape of the moon! But—! It's tremendously dark, Cavor!"

"We have arrived half an hour or so before sunrise," he said. "We must wait."

It was impossible to distinguish anything. The glass was dewy, and I wiped at it with my blanket, but as fast as I wiped it, it became covered again with dew. I sat on the bundle and shivered, and drew my blanket closer about me.

Suddenly the moisture turned to frost. "Can you reach the electric heater?" said Cavor. "Yes—that black knob. Or we shall 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, and then this glass will clear. We can't do anything till then. It's night here yet; we must wait for the day. Meanwhile, don't you feel hungry?"

For some time I did not answer him, but sat fretting. I was disappointed. I had expected—I don't know what I expected, but not this.

I rearranged my blanket about me and sat down again on the bundle and began my first meal on the moon. Presently the glass began to clear, and the misty veil that hid the moon world from our eyes began to lift.

We peered out upon the landscape of the moon.