I stopped. He made no answer.
“Confound it!” I cried; “I’m a fool! What business have I here? I’m not coming, Cavor. The thing’s too risky. I’m getting out.”
“You can’t,” he said.
“Can’t! We’ll soon see about that!”
He made no answer for ten seconds. “It’s too late for us to quarrel now, Bedford,” he said. “That little jerk was the start. Already we are flying as swiftly as a bullet up into the gulf of space.”
“I — ” I said, and then it didn’t seem to matter what happened. For a time I was, as it were, stunned; I had nothing to say. It was just as if I had never heard of this idea of leaving the world before. Then I perceived an unaccountable change in my bodily sensations. It was a feeling of lightness, of unreality. Coupled with that was a queer sensation in the head, an apoplectic effect almost, and a thumping of blood vessels at the ears. Neither of these feelings diminished as time went on, but at last I got so used to them that I experienced no inconvenience.
I heard a click, and a little glow lamp came into being.
I saw Cavor’s face, as white as I felt my own to be. We regarded one another in silence. The transparent blackness of the glass behind him made him seem as though he floated in a void.
“Well, we’re committed,” I said at last.
“Yes,” he said, “we’re committed.”
“Don’t move,” he exclaimed, at some suggestion of a gesture. “Let your muscles keep quite lax — as if you were in bed. We are in a little universe of our own. Look at those things!”
He pointed to the loose cases and bundles that had been lying on the blankets in the bottom of the sphere. I was astonished to see that they were floating now nearly a foot from the spherical wall. Then I saw from his shadow that Cavor was no longer leaning against the glass. I thrust out my hand behind me, and found that I too was suspended in space, clear of the glass.
I did not cry out nor gesticulate, but fear came upon me. It was like being held and lifted by something — you know not what. The mere touch of my hand against the glass moved me rapidly. I understood what had happened, but that did not prevent my being afraid. We were cut off from all exterior gravitation, only the attraction of objects within our sphere had effect. Consequently everything that was not fixed to the glass was falling — slowly because of the slightness of our masses — towards the centre of gravity of our little world, which seemed to be somewhere about the middle of the sphere, but rather nearer to myself than Cavor, on account of my greater weight.
“We must turn round,” said Cavor, “and float back to back, with the things between us.”
It was the strangest sensation conceivable, floating thus loosely in space, at first indeed horribly strange, and when the horror passed, not disagreeable at all, exceeding restful; indeed, the nearest thing in earthly experience to it that I know is lying on a very thick, soft feather bed. But the quality of utter detachment and independence! I had not reckoned on things like this. I had expected a violent jerk at starting, a giddy sense of speed. Instead I felt — as if I were disembodied. It was not like the beginning of a journey; it was like the beginning of a dream.
CHAPTER 5
The Journey to the Moon
Presently Cavor extinguished the light. He said we had not overmuch energy stored, and that what we had we must economise for reading. For a time, whether it was long or short I do not know, there was nothing but blank darkness.
A question floated up out of the void. “How are we pointing?” I said. “What is our direction?”
“We are flying away from the earth at a tangent, and as the moon is 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, stardusted 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 stardust 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