ge
animals, some wild sort of mooncalf birth, perhaps. It will be only
when they have observed us better that they will begin to think we
have minds--"

"When you trace those geometrical problems," said I.

"It may be that."

We tramped on for a space.

"You see," said Cavor, "these may be Selenites of a lower class."

"The infernal fools!" said I viciously, glancing at their exasperating
faces.

"If we endure what they do to us--"

"We've got to endure it," said I.

"There may be others less stupid. This is the mere outer fringe of their
world. It must go down and down, cavern, passage, tunnel, down at last to
the sea--hundreds of miles below."

His words made me think of the mile or so of rock and tunnel that might be
over our heads already. It was like a weight dropping, on my shoulders.
"Away from the sun and air," I said. "Even a mine half a mile deep is
stuffy." remarked.

"This is not, anyhow. It's probable--Ventilation! The air would blow
from the dark side of the moon to the sunlit, and all the carbonic acid
would well out there and feed those plants. Up this tunnel, for example,
there is quite a breeze. And what a world it must be. The earnest we have
in that shaft, and those machines--"

"And the goad," I said. "Don't forget the goad!"

He walked a little in front of me for a time.

"Even that goad--" he said.

"Well?"

"I was angry at the time. But--it was perhaps necessary we should get on.
They have different skins, and probably different nerves. They may not
understand our objection--just as a being from Mars might not like our
earthly habit of nudging."

"They'd better be careful how they nudge me."

"And about that geometry. After all, their way is a way of understanding,
too. They begin with the elements of life and not of thought. Food.
Compulsion. Pain. They strike at fundamentals."

"There's no doubt about that," I said.

He went on to talk of the enormous and wonderful world into which we were
being taken. I realised slowly from his tone, that even now he was not
absolutely in despair at the prospect of going ever deeper into this
inhuman planet-burrow. His mind ran on machines and invention, to the
exclusion of a thousand dark things that beset me. It wasn't that he
intended to make any use of these things, he simply wanted to know them.

"After all," he said, "this is a tremendous occasion. It is the meeting
of two worlds! What are we going to see? Think of what is belo