Experiments In Intercourse

: The First Men In The Moon

When at last we had made an end of eating, the Selenites linked our hands

closely together again, and then untwisted the chains about our feet and

rebound them, so as to give us a limited freedom of movement. Then they

unfastened the chains about our waists. To do all this they had to handle

us freely, and ever and again one of their queer heads came down close to

my face, or a soft tentacle-hand touched my head or neck. I don't re
ember

that I was afraid then or repelled by their proximity. I think that our

incurable anthropomorphism made us imagine there were human heads inside

their masks. The skin, like everything else, looked bluish, but that was

on account of the light; and it was hard and shiny, quite in the

beetle-wing fashion, not soft, or moist, or hairy, as a vertebrated

animal's would be. Along the crest of the head was a low ridge of whitish

spines running from back to front, and a much larger ridge curved on

either side over the eyes. The Selenite who untied me used his mouth to

help his hands.



"They seem to be releasing us," said Cavor. "Remember we are on the moon!

Make no sudden movements!"



"Are you going to try that geometry?"



"If I get a chance. But, of course, they may make an advance first."



We remained passive, and the Selenites, having finished their

arrangements, stood back from us, and seemed to be looking at us. I say

seemed to be, because as their eyes were at the side and not in front, one

had the same difficulty in determining the direction in which they were

looking as one has in the case of a hen or a fish. They conversed with one

another in their reedy tones, that seemed to me impossible to imitate or

define. The door behind us opened wider, and, glancing over my shoulder, I

saw a vague large space beyond, in which quite a little crowd of Selenites

were standing. They seemed a curiously miscellaneous rabble.



"Do they want us to imitate those sounds?" I asked Cavor.



"I don't think so," he said.



"It seems to me that they are trying to make us understand something."



"I can't make anything of their gestures. Do you notice this one, who is

worrying with his head like a man with an uncomfortable collar?"



"Let us shake our heads at him."



We did that, and finding it ineffectual, attempted an imitation of the

Selenites' movements. That seemed to interest them. At any rate they all

set up the same movement. But as that seemed to lead to nothing, we

desisted at last and so did they, and fell into a piping argument among

themselves. Then one of them, shorter and very much thicker than the

others, and with a particularly wide mouth, squatted down suddenly beside

Cavor, and put his hands and feet in the same posture as Cavor's were

bound, and then by a dexterous movement stood up.



"Cavor," I shouted, "they want us to get up!"



He stared open-mouthed. "That's it!" he said.



And with much heaving and grunting, because our hands were tied together,

we contrived to struggle to our feet. The Selenites made way for our

elephantine heavings, and seemed to twitter more volubly. As soon as we

were on our feet the thick-set Selenite came and patted each of our faces

with his tentacles, and walked towards the open doorway. That also was

plain enough, and we followed him. We saw that four of the Selenites

standing in the doorway were much taller than the others, and clothed in

the same manner as those we had seen in the crater, namely, with spiked

round helmets and cylindrical body-cases, and that each of the four

carried a goad with spike and guard made of that same dull-looking metal

as the bowls. These four closed about us, one on either side of each of

us, as we emerged from our chamber into the cavern from which the light

had come.



We did not get our impression of that cavern all at once. Our attention

was taken up by the movements and attitudes of the Selenites immediately

about us, and by the necessity of controlling our motion, lest we should

startle and alarm them and ourselves by some excessive stride. In front of

us was the short, thick-set being who had solved the problem of asking us

to get up, moving with gestures that seemed, almost all of them,

intelligible to us, inviting us to follow him. His spout-like face turned

from one of us to the other with a quickness that was clearly

interrogative. For a time, I say, we were taken up with these things.



But at last the great place that formed a background to our movements

asserted itself. It became apparent that the source of much, at least, of

the tumult of sounds which had filled our ears ever since we had recovered

from the stupefaction of the fungus was a vast mass of machinery in active

movement, whose flying and whirling parts were visible indistinctly over

the heads and between the bodies of the Selenites who walked about us. And

not only did the web of sounds that filled the air proceed from this

mechanism, but also the peculiar blue light that irradiated the whole

place. We had taken it as a natural thing that a subterranean cavern

should be artificially lit, and even now, though the fact was patent to my

eyes, I did not really grasp its import until presently the darkness came.

The meaning and structure of this huge apparatus we saw I cannot explain,

because we neither of us learnt what it was for or how it worked. One

after another, big shafts of metal flung out and up from its centre, their

heads travelling in what seemed to me to be a parabolic path; each dropped

a sort of dangling arm as it rose towards the apex of its flight and

plunged down into a vertical cylinder, forcing this down before it. About

it moved the shapes of tenders, little figures that seemed vaguely

different from the beings about us. As each of the three dangling arms of

the machine plunged down, there was a clank and then a roaring, and out of

the top of the vertical cylinder came pouring this incandescent substance

that lit the place, and ran over as milk runs over a boiling pot, and

dripped luminously into a tank of light below. It was a cold blue light, a

sort of phosphorescent glow but infinitely brighter, and from the tanks

into which it fell it ran in conduits athwart the cavern.



Thud, thud, thud, thud, came the sweeping arms of this unintelligible

apparatus, and the light substance hissed and poured. At first the thing

seemed only reasonably large and near to us, and then I saw how

exceedingly little the Selenites upon it seemed, and I realised the full

immensity of cavern and machine. I looked from this tremendous affair to

the faces of the Selenites with a new respect. I stopped, and Cavor

stopped, and stared at this thunderous engine.



"But this is stupendous!" I said. "What can it be for?"



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. He walked away in

the direction he wished us to go, and turned and came back, and flicked

our faces to attract our attention.



Cavor and I looked at one another.



"Cannot we show him we are interested in the machine?" I said.



"Yes," said Cavor. "We'll try that." He turned to our guide and smiled,

and pointed to the machine, and pointed again, and then to his head, and

then to the machine. By some defect of reasoning he seemed to imagine that

broken English might help these gestures. "Me look 'im," he said, "me

think 'im very much. Yes."



His behaviour seemed to check the Selenites in their desire for our

progress for a moment. They faced one another, their queer heads moved,

the twittering voices came quick and liquid. 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! It is most

important that we should show an intelligent interest from the outset."



He began to shake his head violently. "No, no," he said, "me not come on

one minute. Me look at 'im."



"Isn't there some geometrical point you might bring in apropos of that

affair?" I suggested, as the Selenites conferred again.



"Possibly a parabolic--" he began.



He yelled loudly, and leaped six feet or more!



One of the four armed moon-men had pricked him with a goad!



I turned on the goad-bearer behind me with a swift threatening gesture,

and he started back. This and Cavor's sudden shout and leap clearly

astonished all the Selenites. They receded hastily, facing us. For one of

those moments that seem to last for ever, we stood in angry protest, with

a scattered semicircle of these inhuman beings about us.



"He pricked me!" said Cavor, with a catching of the voice.



"I saw him," I answered.



"Confound it!" I said to the Selenites; "we're not going to stand that!

What on earth do you take us for?"



I glanced quickly right and left. Far away across the blue wilderness of

cavern I saw a number of other Selenites running towards us; broad and

slender they were, and one with a larger head than the others. The cavern

spread wide and low, and receded in every direction into darkness. Its

roof, I remember, seemed to bulge down as if with the weight of the vast

thickness of rocks that prisoned us. There was no way out of it--no way

out of it. Above, below, in every direction, was the unknown, and these

inhuman creatures, with goads and gestures, confronting us, and we two

unsupported men!



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