The First Men in the Moon

Meets Mr. Ca

adventures of Mr. Cavor was, after all, the outcome of the purest accident. It might have been any one. I fell into these things at a time when I thought myself removed from the slightest pos

in admitting my extremity. I can admit, even, that to a certain extent my disasters were conceivably of my own making. It may be there are directions in which I have some capacity, but the conduct of business operations is not among these. But in those days I was young, and my yo

have met that flaming sense of outraged virtue, or perhaps you have only felt it. He ran me hard. It seemed to me, at last, that there was nothing for it but to write a play, unless I wanted to drudge for my living as a clerk. I have a certain imagination, and luxurious tastes, and I meant to make a vigorous fight for it before that fate overtook me. In addition to my belief in my powers as a business man, I had always in those d

urniture, and while the play was in hand I did my own cooking. My cooking would have shocked Mrs. Bond. And yet, you know, it had flavour. I had a coffee-pot, a sauce-pan for eggs, and one for potatoes, and a frying-pan for sausages and bacon-such was the simple apparatus of my comfort. One cannot always be magnificent,

e big birch besoms are stuck, to wipe off the worst of the clay, which will give some idea of the texture of the district. I doubt if the place would be there at all, if it were not a fading memory of things gone for ever. It was the big port of England in Roman times, Portus Lemanis, and now the sea is four miles away. All down the steep hill are boulders and masses of Roman brickwork, and from it old Watling Street, still paved in places, starts like an arrow to the north. I used to stand on the hill and thin

the sea, and farther westward were the hills by Hastings under the setting sun. Sometimes they hung close and clear, sometimes they were faded and

ndow that I first set eyes on Cavor. It was just as I was struggling with my scenario, hold

illity of green and yellow, and against tha

ckers and stockings. Why he did so I do not know, for he never cycled and he never played cricket. It was a fortuitous concurrence of garments, arising I know not how. He gesticulated with his

out a watch, hesitated. Then with a sort of convulsive gesture he turned and retreated with every manifestation of haste, no longer gesticulating, but going with am

and again the next evening, and indeed every evening when rain was not falling, concentration upon the scenario became a considerable effort. "Confound the man," I said, "one would think he was learning to be a marionette!" and for several evenings I cursed him pretty heartily. Then

im only against the light. "One moment, sir," said I as he turned. He stared. "One moment," he said, "certainly. Or if y

" said I, placing

lar. My time for in

e, is your time

e here to enj

don

ir

ver loo

look

nights, and not once have you

ws like one who en

go along this path, through that gate"-he j

ave been. It's all nons

t for i

that I had already been out just three minutes over the preci

alway

o, now I come to think of it. But what

, th

hi

it? Every night you

ng a

looked at me, and it was evident the buzzing

lessed e

d no

e gravely. "Can it be," he sai

oks like it.

between finger and thumb. He

d," he said. "And you wa

t only do I not know why

d them. Come to think,

nd that field.... And

beginning to relent to

agine yourself

ould

g that needs c

of distress, that I relented still more. After all, there is a touch of agg

said weakly, "

recogni

st st

After all, I had no business-

ted to you. I should guard myself against these things. In

I said. "Zuzzoo, zuzzoo

are quite justified, sir-perfectly justified. Indeed, I am indebted to you. The thing

e my impe

l, sir, no

my hat and wished him a good evening. He res

. The contrast with his former gesticulating, zuzzoing self took me in some absurd way as pathetic. I watched h

ind, and it had occurred to me that as a sentimental comic character he might ser

e indifferent conversation in the most formal way, then abrupt

oyed a habit, and it disorganises my day. I've walked past here for y

might try some

direction. This is the

rnoon at four-I co

if the thing is s

house with white chimneys you see just over the trees. And my circumstances are abnormal-abnormal. I am on the point of completing one of the most important-demonstrations-I can assure you one of the most

not come

should think of you at your play-watching me irritated-ins

him at a good price I might get inconvenienced in the delivery of goods if the current owner got wind of the transaction, and in the second I was, well-undischarged. It was clearly a business that required delicate handling. Moreover, the possibility of his being

f the drift of his work. Half his words were technicalities entirely strange to me, and he illustrated one or two points with what he was pleased to call elementary mathematics, computing on an envelope with a copying-ink pencil, in a manner that made it hard even to seem to understand. "Yes," I said, "yes. Go on!" Nevertheless I made out enough to convince me that he was no mere crank playing at discoveries. In spite of his crank-like appearance there was a for

work was, he said, a pleasure enjoyed only too rarely. It was not often he found such an

ue! And really, when one has an idea-a novel, fert

this your new habit? In the place of the one I spoilt? At least, until we can settle about the bungalow. What you want is to turn over your work in your mind. That you have always done during your afternoon walk. Unfortunately that's over-you can't get

dering. Evidently the t

should bore y

nk I'm t

but techn

terested me immens

o me. Nothing clears up one's ideas s

sir, say

can you spar

nge of occupation," I said

ah steps he turned. "I am already

interrogat

me of that ridiculous habit

d to be of any service t

must have resumed its sway. His arms began to wave in their former

l, that was no

I follow you," to keep him going. It was tremendously difficult stuff, but I do not think he ever suspected how much I did not understand him. There were moments when I doubted whether I was well employed, but at any rate I was resting from that confounded play. Now and then things gleamed on me clearly for a space, only to

disciplinary things. But the sight of his equipment settled many doubts. It looked like business from cellar to attic-an amazing little place to find in an out-of-the-way village. The ground-floor rooms contained benches and apparatus, the bakehouse and scullery boiler had developed into

Spargus, who did the cooking and all the metal work, had been a sailor; a second, Gibbs, was a joiner; and the third was an ex-jobbing gardener, and now general

to which his experiments tended, I am afraid I should confuse not only the reader but myself, and almost certainly I should make some blunder that would bring upon me the mockery of every up-to-date student of

ll these things, he said, radiate out from centres, and act on bodies at a distance, whence comes the term "radiant energy." Now almost all substances are opaque to some form or other of radiant energy. Glass, for example, is transparent to light, but much less so to heat, so that it is useful as a fire-screen; and alum is transparent to light, but blocks heat completely

ll him. I had never thought of such a possibility before. He showed me by calculations on paper, which Lord Kelvin, no doubt, or Professor Lodge, or Professor Karl Pearson, or any of those great scientific people might have understood, but which simply reduced me to a hopeless muddle, that not only was such a substance possible, but that it must satisfy certain conditions. It was an amazing piece of reasoning. Much as it amazed and exercised me at the time, it would be impossible to reproduce it here. "Ye

to foresee the neces

ressed himself. Comic relief in a play indeed! It was some time before I would believe that I had interpreted him aright, and I was very careful not to ask questions that would have enabled him to gauge the profundity of misunderstanding into which he

, and one might lift it with a straw. My first natural impulse was to apply this principle to guns and ironclads, and all the material and methods of war, and from that to shipping, locomotion, building, every conceivable form of human industry. The chance that had brought me into the very birth-chamber of this new time-it was an epoch, no less-was one of those chances that

was

I knew I was staking everythin

and put the accent on "we." "If you want to keep me out of this, you'll hav

ile. Rather, he was self-depreciatory. He looked at me doubtfully. "Bu

d. "My dear sir, don't

what you're

eoretical grounds the whole time! When he said it was "the most important" research the world had ever seen, he simply meant it squared up so many theories, settled so much that was in doubt; he had troubled

c worthy with Nature, and things like that. And that was all he saw! He would have dropped this bombshell into the world as though he had discovered a new species of gnat, if

e world. I told him of companies and patents, and the case for secret processes. All these things seemed to take him much as his mathematics had taken me. A look of perplexity came into his ruddy little face. He stammered something about indifference to wealth, but I brushed all that aside. He had got to be rich, and it was no good his stammering. I gave him to understand the sort of man

o the "we"-"you" and "

of course, was a matter we had to settle later. "That's all right," I shouted

ore universally applicable even than a patent medicine. There isn't a solitary aspect of it, not on

s extraordinary how one gets new po

you have just talke

said, "is absolutely av

there is o

d. I sto

ll! It may be one of those things that are a theoretical possibility, but

he hitch when i