The Landing On The Moon

: The First Men In The Moon

I remember how one day Cavor suddenly opened six of our shutters and

blinded me so that I cried aloud at him. The whole area was moon, a

stupendous scimitar of white dawn with its edge hacked out by notches of

darkness, the crescent shore of an ebbing tide of darkness, out of which

peaks and pinnacles came glittering into the blaze of the sun. I take it

the reader has seen pictures or photographs of the moon and that I need
< r /> not describe the broader features of that landscape, those spacious

ring-like ranges vaster than any terrestrial mountains, their summits

shining in the day, their shadows harsh and deep, the gray disordered

plains, the ridges, hills, and craterlets, all passing at last from a

blazing illumination into a common mystery of black. Athwart this world

we were flying scarcely a hundred miles above its crests and pinnacles.

And now we could see, what no eye on earth will ever see, that under the

blaze of the day the harsh outlines of the rocks and ravines of the

plains and crater floor grew gray and indistinct under a thickening

haze, that the white of their lit surfaces broke into lumps and patches,

and broke again and shrank and vanished, and that here and there strange

tints of brown and olive grew and spread.



But little time we had for watching then. For now we had come to the real

danger of our journey. We had to drop ever closer to the moon as we spun

about it, to slacken our pace and watch our chance, until at last we could

dare to drop upon its surface.



For Cavor that was a time of intense exertion; for me it was an anxious

inactivity. I seemed perpetually to be getting out of his way. He leapt

about the sphere from point to point with an agility that would have been

impossible on earth. He was perpetually opening and closing the Cavorite

windows, making calculations, consulting his chronometer by means of the

glow lamp during those last eventful hours. For a long time we had all our

windows closed and hung silently in darkness hurling through space.



Then he was feeling for the shutter studs, and suddenly four windows were

open. I staggered and covered my eyes, drenched and scorched and blinded

by the unaccustomed splendour of the sun beneath my feet. Then again the

shutters snapped, leaving my brain spinning in a darkness that pressed

against the eyes. And after that I floated in another vast, black silence.



Then Cavor switched on the electric light, and told me he proposed to bind

all our luggage together with the blankets about it, against the

concussion of our descent. 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 loose in that

spherical space, and packing and pulling ropes. Imagine it if you can! No

up nor down, and every effort resulting in unexpected movements. Now I

would be pressed against the glass with the full force of Cavor's thrust,

now I would be kicking helplessly in a void. Now the star of the electric

light would be overhead, now under foot. Now Cavor's feet would float up

before my eyes, and now we would be crossways to each other. But at last

our goods were safely bound together in a big soft bale, all except two

blankets with head holes that we were to wrap about ourselves.



Then for a flash Cavor opened a window moonward, and we saw that we were

dropping towards a huge central crater with a number of minor craters

grouped in a sort of cross about it. And then again Cavor 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,

thrusting himself from me, and for a moment I did not understand.



Then I hauled the blanket from beneath my feet and got it about me and

over my head and eyes. Abruptly he closed the shutters again, snapped one

open again and closed it, then suddenly began snapping them all open, each

safely into its steel roller. There came a jar, and then we were rolling

over and over, bumping against the glass and against the big bale of our

luggage, and clutching at each other, and outside some white substance

splashed as if we were rolling down a slope of snow....



Over, clutch, bump, clutch, bump, over....



Came a thud, and I was half buried under the bale of our possessions, and

for a space everything was still. Then I could hear Cavor puffing and

grunting, and the snapping of a shutter in its sash. I made an effort,

thrust back our blanket-wrapped luggage, and emerged from beneath it. Our

open windows were just visible as a deeper black set with stars.



We were still alive, and we were lying in the darkness of the shadow of

the wall of the great crater into which we had fallen.



We sat getting our breath again, and feeling the bruises on our limbs. I

don't think either of us had had a very clear expectation of such rough

handling as we had received. I struggled painfully to my feet. "And now,"

said I, "to look at the landscape of the moon! But--! It's tremendously

dark, Cavor!"



The glass was dewy, and as I spoke I wiped at it with my blanket. "We're

half an hour or so beyond the day," he said. "We must wait."



It was impossible to distinguish anything. We might have been in a sphere

of steel for all that we could see. My rubbing with the blanket simply

smeared the glass, and as fast as I wiped it, it became opaque again with

freshly condensed moisture mixed with an increasing quantity of blanket

hairs. Of course I ought not to have used the blanket. In my efforts to

clear the glass I slipped upon the damp surface, and hurt my shin against

one of the oxygen cylinders that protruded from our bale.



The thing was exasperating--it was absurd. Here we were just arrived upon

the moon, amidst we knew not what wonders, and all we could see was the

gray and streaming wall of the bubble in which we had come.



"Confound it!" I said, "but at this rate we might have stopped at home;"

and I squatted on the bale and shivered, and drew my blanket closer about

me.



Abruptly the moisture turned to spangles and fronds of 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 to overtake us. Meanwhile, don't you feel

hungry?"



For a space I did not answer him, but sat fretting. I turned reluctantly

from the smeared puzzle of the glass and stared at his face. "Yes,"

I said, "I am hungry. I feel somehow enormously disappointed. I had

expected--I don't know what I had expected, but not this."



I summoned my philosophy, and rearranging my blanket about me sat down on

the bale again and began my first meal on the moon. I don't think I

finished it--I forget. Presently, first in patches, then running rapidly

together into wider spaces, came the clearing of the glass, came the

drawing of the misty veil that hid the moon world from our eyes.



We peered out upon the landscape of the moon.