Latest / The H. G. Wells Library / The First Men in the Moon Chapter 5 - The Journey to the Moon

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The First Men in the Moon Chapter 5 - The Journey to the Moon · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter five of the First Men in the Moon. This
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  Speaker 1: is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the
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  Speaker 1: public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox dot org. This recording is by Mark Smith of Simpsonville,
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  Speaker 1: South Carolina. The First Men in the Moon by H. G. Wells,
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  Speaker 1: Chapter five, The Journey to the Moon. Presently Kavor extinguished
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  Speaker 1: the light. He said, we had not over much energy stored,
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  Speaker 1: and that what we had we must economize for reading.
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  Speaker 1: For a time, whether it was long or short, I
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  Speaker 1: do not know. There was nothing but blank darkness. A
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  Speaker 1: question floated up out of the void. How are we pointing?
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  Speaker 1: I said, what is our direction? We are flying away
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  Speaker 1: from the Earth at a tangent, and as the Moon
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  Speaker 1: is near her third quarter, we are going somewhere towards her.
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  Speaker 1: I will open a blind. Came a click, and then
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  Speaker 1: a window in the outer case yawned open. The sky
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  Speaker 1: outside was as black as the darkness within the sphere,
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  Speaker 1: but the shape of the open window was marked by
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  Speaker 1: an infinite number of stars. Those who have only seen
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  Speaker 1: the starry sky from the earth cannot imagine its appearance.
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  Speaker 1: When the vague half luminous veil of our air has
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  Speaker 1: been withdrawn. The stars we see on Earth are the
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  Speaker 1: mere scattered survivors that penetrate our misty atmosphere. But now,
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  Speaker 1: at last I could realize the meaning of the hosts
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  Speaker 1: of heaven, stranger things we were presently to see. But
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  Speaker 1: that airless, star dusted sky, Of all things, I think
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  Speaker 1: that will be one of the last I shall forget.
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  Speaker 1: The little window vanished with a click. Another beside it
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  Speaker 1: snapped open and instantly closed, And then a third word.
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  Speaker 1: And for a moment I had to close my eyes
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  Speaker 1: because of the blinding splendor of the waning moon. For
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  Speaker 1: a space I had to stare at cavore and the
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  Speaker 1: white lit things about me, to seizon my eyes to
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  Speaker 1: light again before I could turn them towards that pallid glare.
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  Speaker 1: Four windows were open, in order that the gravitation of
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  Speaker 1: the moon might act upon all the substances in our sphere.
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  Speaker 1: I found I was no longer floating freely in space,
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  Speaker 1: but that my feet were resting on the glass in
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  Speaker 1: the direction of the moon. The blankets and cases of
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  Speaker 1: provision were also creeping slowly down the glass, and presently
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  Speaker 1: came to rest so as to block out a portion
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  Speaker 1: of the view. It seemed to me, of course, that
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  Speaker 1: I looked down when I looked at the Moon on Earth.
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  Speaker 1: Down means earthward, the way things fall, and up the
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  Speaker 1: reverse direction. Now the pull of gravitation was towards the Moon,
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  Speaker 1: and for all I knew to the contrary, our Earth
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  Speaker 1: was overhead, and of course, when all the cavaite blinds
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  Speaker 1: were closed, down was towards the center of our sphere,
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  Speaker 1: and up towards its outer wall. It was curiously unlike
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  Speaker 1: earthly experience, too, to have the light coming up to one.
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  Speaker 1: On Earth, light falls from above or come slanting down sideways.
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  Speaker 1: But here it came from beneath our feet, and to
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  Speaker 1: see our shadows we had to look up. At first,
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  Speaker 1: it gave me a sort of vertigo to stand only
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  Speaker 1: on thick glass and look down upon the Moon through
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  Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of miles of vacant space. But the
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  Speaker 1: sickness passed very speedily, and then the splendor of the sight.
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  Speaker 1: The reader may imagine it best if he will lie
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  Speaker 1: on the ground some warm summer's night and look between
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  Speaker 1: his upraised feet at the moon. But for some reason,
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  Speaker 1: probably because the absence of air made it so much
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  Speaker 1: more loose uminous. The Moon seemed already considerably larger than
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  Speaker 1: it does from Earth. The minutest details of its surface
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  Speaker 1: were acutely clear, and since we did not see it
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  Speaker 1: through air, its outline was bright and sharp. There was
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  Speaker 1: no glow or halo about it, and the stardust that
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  Speaker 1: covered the sky came right to its very margin and
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  Speaker 1: marked the outline of its unilluminated part. And as I
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  Speaker 1: stood and stared at the moon between my feet, that
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  Speaker 1: perception of the impossible that had been with me off
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  Speaker 1: and on ever since our start, returned again with tenfold conviction. Cavore,
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  Speaker 1: I said, this takes me queerly. Those companies we were
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  Speaker 1: going to run, and all that about minerals, well, I
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  Speaker 1: don't see him here, no, said Cavor. But you'll get
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  Speaker 1: over all that, I suppose. I made to turn right
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  Speaker 1: side up again. Still this, for a moment I could
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  Speaker 1: half believe there never was a world that copy of
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  Speaker 1: Lloyd's News might help you. I stared at the paper
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  Speaker 1: for a moment, then held it above the level of
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  Speaker 1: my face, and found I could read it quite easily.
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  Speaker 1: I struck a column of mean little advertisements, a gentleman
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  Speaker 1: of private means is willing to lend money. I read,
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  Speaker 1: I knew that gentleman. Then somebody eccentric wanted to sell
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  Speaker 1: a cutaway bicycle, quite new and cost fifteen pounds for
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  Speaker 1: five pounds. And a lady in distress wished to dispose
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  Speaker 1: of some fish knives and forks, a wedding present at
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  Speaker 1: a great sacrifice. No doubt, some simple soul was sagely
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  Speaker 1: examining these knives and forks, and another triumphantly riding off
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  Speaker 1: on that bicycle, and a third trustfully concer that benevolent
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  Speaker 1: gentleman of means. Even as I read, I laughed and
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  Speaker 1: let the paper drift from my hand. Are we visible
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  Speaker 1: from the earth? I asked? Why I knew someone who
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  Speaker 1: was rather interested in astronomy. It occurred to me that
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  Speaker 1: it would be rather odd if my friend chanced to
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  Speaker 1: be looking through some telescope. It would need the most
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  Speaker 1: powerful telescope on Earth even now, to see us as
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  Speaker 1: the minutest spec For a time, I stared in silence
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  Speaker 1: at the moon. It's a world, I said, one feels
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  Speaker 1: that infinitely more than one ever did on Earth. People
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  Speaker 1: perhaps people, he exclaimed, No banish all that. Think yourself
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  Speaker 1: a sort of ultra arctic voyager exploring the desolate places
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  Speaker 1: of space. Look at it, he waved his hand at
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  Speaker 1: the shining white, and it's below it's dead, dead, vast
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  Speaker 1: extinct volcanoes, lava, wildernesses, tumbled wastes of snow or frozen
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  Speaker 1: carbonic acid or frozen air. And everywhere landslip seems in
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  Speaker 1: craps and gulfs, nothing happens. Men have watched this planet
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  Speaker 1: systematically with telescopes for over two hundred years. How much
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  Speaker 1: change do you think they have seen? None? They have
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  Speaker 1: traced two indisputable landslips, a doubtful crack, and one slight
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  Speaker 1: periodic change of color. And that's all. I didn't know
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  Speaker 1: they'd traced even that. Oh yes. But as for people,
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  Speaker 1: by the way, I asked, how small a thing will
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  Speaker 1: the biggest telescopes show upon the Moon. One could see
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  Speaker 1: a fair sized church. One could certainly see any towns
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  Speaker 1: or buildings or anything like the handiwork of men. There
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  Speaker 1: might perhaps be insects, something in the way of ants,
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  Speaker 1: for example, so that they could hide in deep burrows
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  Speaker 1: from the lunar light, or some new sort of creatures
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  Speaker 1: having no earthly parallel. That is the most probable thing,
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  Speaker 1: if we are to find life there at all. Think
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  Speaker 1: of the difference in conditions. Life must fit itself to
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  Speaker 1: a day as long as fourteen earthly days, a cloudless
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  Speaker 1: sun blaze of fourteen days, and then a night of
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  Speaker 1: equal length, growing ever colder and colder under these cold,
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  Speaker 1: sharp stars. In that night there must be cold, the
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  Speaker 1: ultimate cold, absolute zero, two hundred and seventy three degrees
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  Speaker 1: centigrade below the earthly freezing point. Whatever life there is
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  Speaker 1: must hibernate through that and rise again each day, he mused.
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  Speaker 1: One can imagine something wormlike, he said, taking its air
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  Speaker 1: solid as an earthworm swallows earth, or thick skinned monsters
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  Speaker 1: by the bye. I said, why didn't we bring a gun?
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  Speaker 1: He did not answer that question. No, he concluded, we
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  Speaker 1: just have to go. We shall see when we get there.
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  Speaker 1: I remembered something. Of course, there's my minerals. Anyhow, I said,
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  Speaker 1: whatever the conditions may be, presently, he told me he
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  Speaker 1: wished to alter our course a little by letting the
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  Speaker 1: earth tug at us for a moment. He was going
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  Speaker 1: to open one earthward blind for thirty seconds. He wore
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  Speaker 1: me that it would make my head swim, and advise
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  Speaker 1: me to extend my hands against the glass to break
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  Speaker 1: my fall. I did as he directed, and thrust my
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  Speaker 1: feet against the bales of food cases and air cylinders
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  Speaker 1: to prevent their falling upon me. Then with a click,
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  Speaker 1: the window flew open. I fell clumsily upon hands and face,
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  Speaker 1: and saw for a moment between my black extended fingers
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  Speaker 1: our mother Earth, a planet in a downward sky. We
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  Speaker 1: were still very near, Cavor told me the distance was
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  Speaker 1: perhaps eight hundred miles, and the huge terrestrial disk filled
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  Speaker 1: all heaven. But already it was plain to see that
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  Speaker 1: the world was a globe. The lamb below us was
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  Speaker 1: in twilight and vague, but westward, the vast gray stretches
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  Speaker 1: of the Atlantic shone like molten silver. Under the receding day,
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  Speaker 1: I think I recognized the cloud dimmed coastlines of France
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  Speaker 1: and Spain, and the south of England. And then with
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  Speaker 1: a click, the shutter closed again, and I found myself
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  Speaker 1: in a state of extraordinary confusion, sliding slowly over the
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  Speaker 1: smooth glass. When at last things settled themselves in my
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  Speaker 1: mind again, it seemed quite beyond questioned that the moon
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  Speaker 1: was down and under my feet and that the Earth
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  Speaker 1: was somewhere away on the level of the horizon, the
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  Speaker 1: earth that had been down to me and my kindred
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  Speaker 1: since the beginning of things. So slight were the exertions
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  Speaker 1: required of us, so easy did the practical annihilation of
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  Speaker 1: our weight make all we had to do, that the
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  Speaker 1: necessity for taking refreshment did not occur to us for
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  Speaker 1: nearly six hours by Cavor's chronometer after our start. I
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  Speaker 1: was amazed at that lapse of time. Even then I
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  Speaker 1: was satisfied with very little. Kvor examined the apparatus for
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  Speaker 1: absorbing carbonic acid and water and pronounced it to be
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  Speaker 1: in satisfactory order. Our consumption of oxygen having been extraordinarily slight,
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  Speaker 1: and our talk being exhausted for the time, and there
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  Speaker 1: being nothing further for us to do, we gave way
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  Speaker 1: to a curious drowsiness that had come upon us, and,
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  Speaker 1: spreading our blankets on the bottom of the sphere in
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  Speaker 1: such a manner as to shut out most of the moonlight,
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  Speaker 1: wished each other good night, and almost immediately fell asleep,
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  Speaker 1: and so sleeping, and sometimes talking and reading a little,
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  Speaker 1: and at times eating, although without any keenness of appetite,
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  Speaker 1: but for the most part, in a sort of quiescence
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  Speaker 1: that was neither waking nor slumber. We fell through a
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  Speaker 1: space of time that had neither night nor day in it, silently,
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  Speaker 1: softly and swiftly down towards the moon. Footnote. It is
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  Speaker 1: a curious thing that while we were in the sphere,
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  Speaker 1: we felt not the slightest desire for food, nor did
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  Speaker 1: we feel the want of it when we abstained. At
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  Speaker 1: first we forced our appetites, but afterwards we fasted completely. Altogether,
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  Speaker 1: we did not consume one hundredth part of the compressed
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  Speaker 1: provisions we had brought with us. The amount of carbonic
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  Speaker 1: acid we breathe was also unnaturally low. But why this was,
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  Speaker 1: I am quite unable to explain. And a footnote end
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  Speaker 1: of chapter