United States or Guam ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
We found that beyond a few abrasions I had received no serious injuries from my tumble, and at Cavor's suggestion we were presently looking round for some safe and easy landing-place for my next leap. We chose a rocky slab some ten yards off, separated from us by a little thicket of olive-green spikes.
Subsequently it seems they brought an artist with them to assist the work of explanation with sketches and diagrams Cavor's drawings being rather crude. "He was," says Cavor, "a being with an active arm and an arresting eye," and he seemed to draw with incredible swiftness. The eleventh message is undoubtedly only a fragment of a longer communication.
I stopped and looked back, and I heard the pad, pad of Cavor's feet receding. Then he stopped also. "Bedford," he whispered; "there's a sort of light in front of us." I looked, and at first could see nothing. Then I perceived his head and shoulders dimly outlined against a fainter darkness.
I became aware of Cavor's little round face peering over a bristling hedge. He shouted some faded inquiry. "Eh?" I tried to shout, but could not do so for want of breath. He made his way towards me, coming gingerly among the bushes. "We've got to be careful," he said. "This moon has no discipline. She'll let us smash ourselves." He helped me to my feet.
Then one of them, a lean, tall creature, with a sort of mantle added to the puttee in which the others were dressed, twisted his elephant trunk of a hand about Cavor's waist, and pulled him gently to follow our guide, who again went on ahead. Cavor resisted. "We may just as well begin explaining ourselves now. They may think we are new animals, a new sort of mooncalf perhaps!
For these Selenites, also, have a great variety of forms. Of course, they are not only colossally greater in size than ants, but also, in Cavor's opinion at least, in intelligence, morality, and social wisdom are they colossally greater than men. And instead of the four or five different forms of ant that are found, there are almost innumerably different forms of Selenite.
Cavor's blue-lit face was full of an intelligent respect. "I can't dream! Surely these beings Men could not make a thing like that! Look at those arms, are they on connecting rods?" The thick-set Selenite had gone some paces unheeded. He came back and stood between us and the great machine. I avoided seeing him, because I guessed somehow that his idea was to beckon us onward.
The best thing I can do therefore is, I think to give my impressions in my own inexact language, without any attempt to wear a garment of knowledge to which I have no claim. The object of Mr. Cavor's search was a substance that should be "opaque" he used some other word I have forgotten, but "opaque" conveys the idea to "all forms of radiant energy."
My intention of going back to the moon, of getting a sphereful of gold, and afterwards of having a fragment of Cavorite analysed and so recovering the great secret perhaps, finally, even of recovering Cavor's body all these ideas vanished altogether. I was the sole survivor, and that was all. I think that going to bed was one of the luckiest ideas I have ever had in an emergency.
My grip upon Cavor's foot became convulsive at the sight of him, and we remained motionless and peering long after he had passed out of our range. By contrast with the mooncalves he seemed a trivial being, a mere ant, scarcely five feet high. He was wearing garments of some leathery substance, so that no portion of his actual body appeared, but of this, of course, we were entirely ignorant.
Word Of The Day