/>
near her third quarter we are going somewhere towards her. I will open

a blind--"



Came a click, and then a window in the outer case yawned open. The sky

outside was as black as the darkness within the sphere, but the shape of

the open window was marked by an infinite number of stars.



Those who have only seen the starry sky from the earth cannot imagine its

appearance when the vague, half luminous veil of our air has been

withdrawn. The stars we see on earth are the mere scattered survivors that

penetrate our misty atmosphere. But now at last I could realise the

meaning of the hosts of heaven!



Stranger things we were presently to see, but that airless, star-dusted

sky! Of all things, I think that will be one of the last I shall forget.



The little window vanished with a click, another beside it snapped open

and instantly closed, and then a third, and for a moment I had to close my

eyes because of the blinding splendour of the waning moon.



For a space I had to stare at Cavor and the white-lit things about me to

season my eyes to light again, before I could turn them towards that

pallid glare.



Four windows were open in order that the gravitation of the moon might act

upon all the substances in our sphere. I found I was no longer floating

freely in space, but that my feet were resting on the glass in the

direction of the moon. The blankets and cases of provisions were also

creeping slowly down the glass, and presently came to rest so as to block

out a portion of the view. It seemed to me, of course, that I looked

"down" when I looked at the moon. On earth "down" means earthward, the way

things fall, and "up" the reverse direction. Now the pull of gravitation

was towards the moon, and for all I knew to the contrary our earth was

overhead. And, of course, when all the Cavorite blinds were closed, "down"

was towards the centre of our sphere, and "up" towards its outer wall.



It was curiously unlike earthly experience, too, to have the light coming

up to one. On earth light falls from above, or comes slanting down

sideways, but here it came from beneath our feet, and to see our shadows

we had to look up.



At first it gave me a sort of vertigo to stand only on thick glass and

look down upon the moon through hundreds of thousands of miles of vacant

space; but this sickness passed very speedily. And then--the splendour of

the sight!



The reader may imagine it best if he will lie on the ground some warm

summer's night and look between his upraised feet at the moon, but for

some reason, probably because the absence of air made it so much more

luminous, the moon seemed already considerably larger than it does from

earth. The minutest details of its surface were acutely clear. And since

we did not see it through air, its outline was bright and sharp, there was

no glow or halo about it, and the star-dust that covered the sky came

right to its very margin, and marked the outline of its unilluminated

part. And as I stood and stared at the moon between my feet, that

perception of the impossible that had been with me off and on ever since

our start, returned again with tenfold conviction.



"Cavor," I said, "this takes me queerly. Those companies we were going to

run, and all that about minerals?"



"Well?"



"I don't see 'em here."



"No," said Cavor; "but you'll get over all that."



"I suppose I'm made to turn right side up again. Still, this--

For a moment I could half believe there never was a world."



"That copy of Lloyd's News might help you."



I stared at the paper for a moment, then held it above the level of my

face, and found I could read it quite easily. I struck a column of mean

little advertisements. "A gentleman of private means is willing to lend

money," I read. I knew that gentleman. Then somebody eccentric wanted to

sell a Cutaway bicycle, "quite new and cost 15 pounds," for five pounds;

and a lady in distress wished to dispose of some fish knives and forks, "a

wedding present," at a great sacrifice. No doubt some simple soul was

sagely examining these knives and forks, and another triumphantly riding

off on that bicycle, and a third trustfully consulting that benevolent

gentleman of means even as I read. I laughed, and let the paper drift from

my hand.



"Are we visible from the earth?" I asked.



"Why?"



"I knew some one who was rather interested in astronomy. It occurred to me

that it would be rather odd if--my friend--chanced to be looking through

come telescope."



"It would need the most powerful telescope on earth even now to see us as

the minutest speck."



For a time I stared in silence at the moon.



"It's a world," I said; "one feels that infinitely more than one ever did

on earth. People perhaps--"



"People!" he exclaimed. "No! Banish all that! Think yourself a sort of

ultra-arctic voyager exploring the desolate places of space. Look at it!"



He waved his hand at the shining whiteness below. "It's dead--dead! Vast

extinct volcanoes, lava wildernesses, tumbled wastes of snow, or frozen

carbonic acid, or frozen air, and everywhere landslip seams and cracks and

gulfs. Nothing happens. Men have watched this planet systematically with

telescopes for over two hundred years. How much change do you think they

have seen?"



"None."



"They have traced two indisputable landslips, a doubtful crack, and one

slight periodic change of colour, and that's all."



"I didn't know they'd traced even that."



"Oh, yes. But as for people--!"



"By the way," I asked, "how small a thing will the biggest telescopes show

upon the moon?"



"One could see a fair-sized church. One could certainly see any towns or

buildings, or anything like the handiwork of men. There might perhaps be

insects, something in the way of ants, for example, so that they could

hide in deep burrows from the lunar light, or some new sort of creatures

having no earthly parallel. That is the most probable thing, if we are to

find life there at all. Think of the difference in conditions! Life must

fit itself to a day as long as fourteen earthly days, a cloudless

sun-blaze of fourteen days, and then a night of equal length, growing

ever colder and colder under these, cold, sharp stars. In that night

there must be cold, the ultimate cold, absolute zero, 273 degrees

Centigrade, below the earthly freezing point. Whatever life there is

must hibernate through that, and rise again each day."



He mused. "One can imagine something worm-like," he said, "taking its

air solid as an earth-worm swallows earth, or thick-skinned monsters--"



"By the bye," I said, "why didn't we bring a gun?"



He did not answer that question. "No," he concluded, "we just have to go.

We shall see when we get there."



I remembered something. "Of course, there's my minerals, anyhow," I said;

"whatever the conditions may be."



Presently he told me he wished to alter our course a little by letting the

earth tug at us for a moment. He was going to open one earthward blind

for thirty seconds. He warned me that it would make my head swim, and

advised me to extend my hands against the glass to break my fall. I did as

he directed, and thrust my feet against the bales of food cases and air

cylinders to prevent their falling upon me. Then with a click the window

flew open. I fell clumsily upon hands and face, and saw for a moment

between my black extended fingers our mother earth--a planet in a

downward sky.



We were still very near--Cavor told me the distance was perhaps eight

hundred miles and the huge terrestrial disc filled all heaven. But already

it was plain to see that the world was a globe. The land below us was in

twilight and vague, but westward the vast gray stretches of the Atlantic

shone like molten silver under the receding day. I think I recognised the

cloud-dimmed coast-lines of France and Spain and the south of England, and

then, with a click, the shutter closed again, and I found myself in a

state of extraordinary confusion sliding slowly over the smooth glass.



When at last things settled themselves in my mind again, it seemed quite

beyond question that the moon was "down" and under my feet, and that the

earth was somewhere away on the level of the horizon--the earth that had

been "down" to me and my kindred since the beginning of things.



So slight were the exertions required of us, so easy did the practical

annihilation of our weight make all we had to do, that the necessity for

taking refreshment did not occur to us for nearly six hours (by Cavor's

chronometer) after our start. I was amazed at that lapse of time. Even

then I was satisfied with very little. Cavor examined the apparatus for

absorbing carbonic acid and water, and pronounced it to be in satisfactory

order, our consumption of oxygen having been extraordinarily slight. And

our talk being exhausted for the time, and there being nothing further

for us to do, we gave way to a curious drowsiness that had come upon us,

and spreading our blankets on the bottom of the sphere in such a manner as

to shut out most of the moonlight, wished each other good-night, and

almost immediately fell asleep.



And so, sleeping, and sometimes talking and reading a little, and at times

eating, although without any keenness of appetite,[*] but for the most part

in a sort of quiescence that was neither waking nor slumber, we fell

through a space of time that had neither night nor day in it, silently,

softly, and swiftly down towards the moon.



[* Footnote: It is a curious thing, that while we were in the sphere we

felt not the slightest desire for food, nor did we feel the want of it when

we abstained. At first we forced our appetites, but afterwards we fasted

completely. Altogether we did not consume one-hundredth part of the

compressed provisions we had brought with us. The amount of carbonic acid

we breathed was also unnaturally low, but why this was, I am quite unable

to explain.]