H. G. Wells The First Men in the Moon

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"What do you think has become of the sphere, anyhow?" I asked.
"Lost," he said, like a man who answers an uninteresting question.
"Among those plants?"
"Unless they find it."
"And then?"
"How can I tell?"
"Cavor," I said, with a sort of hysterical bitterness, "things look bright for my Company..."
He made no answer.
"Good Lord!" I exclaimed. "Just think of all the trouble we took to get into this pickle! What did we come
for? What are we after? What was the moon to us or we to the moon? We wanted too much, we tried too
much. We ought to have started the little things first. It was you proposed the moon! Those Cavorite spring
blinds! I am certain we could have worked them for terrestrial purposes. Certain! Did you really understand
what I proposed? A steel cylinder--"
"Rubbish!" said Cavor.
We ceased to converse.
For a time Cavor kept up a broken monologue without much help from me.
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"If they find it," he began, "if they find it ... what will they do with it? Well, that's a question. It may be that's
the question. They won't understand it, anyhow. If they understood that sort of thing they would have come
long since to the earth. Would they? Why shouldn't they? But they would have sent something--they couldn't
keep their hands off such a possibility. No! But they will examine it. Clearly they are intelligent and
inquisitive. They will examine it--get inside it--trifle with the studs. Off! ... That would mean the moon for us
for all the rest of our lives. Strange creatures, strange knowledge...."
"As for strange knowledge--" said I, and language failed me.
"Look here, Bedford," said Cavor, "you came on this expedition of your own free will."
"You said to me, 'Call it prospecting'."
"There's always risks in prospecting."
"Especially when you do it unarmed and without thinking out every possibility."
"I was so taken up with the sphere. The thing rushed on us, and carried us away."
"Rushed on me, you mean."
"Rushed on me just as much. How was I to know when I set to work on molecular physics that the business
would bring me here--of all places?"
"It's this accursed science," I cried. "It's the very Devil. The medieval priests and persecutors were right and
the Moderns are all wrong. You tamper with it--and it offers you gifts. And directly you take them it knocks
you to pieces in some unexpected way. Old passions and new weapons--now it upsets your religion, now it
upsets your social ideas, now it whirls you off to desolation and misery!"
"Anyhow, it's no use your quarrelling with me now. These creatures--these Selenites, or whatever we choose
to call them--have got us tied hand and foot. Whatever temper you choose to go through with it in, you will
have to go through with it.... We have experiences before us that will need all our coolness."
He paused as if he required my assent. But I sat sulking. "Confound your science!" I said.
"The problem is communication. Gestures, I fear, will be different. Pointing, for example. No creatures but
men and monkeys point."
That was too obviously wrong for me. "Pretty nearly every animal," I cried, "points with its eyes or nose."
Cavor meditated over that. "Yes," he said at last, "and we don't. There's such differences--such differences!"
"One might.... But how can I tell? There is speech. The sounds they make, a sort of fluting and piping. I don't
see how we are to imitate that. Is it their speech, that sort of thing? They may have different senses, different
means of communication. Of course they are minds and we are minds; there must be something in common.
Who knows how far we may not get to an understanding?"
"The things are outside us," I said. "They're more different from us than the strangest animals on earth. They
are a different clay. What is the good of talking like this?"
Cavor thought. "I don't see that. Where there are minds they will have something similar--even though they
have been evolved on different planets. Of course if it was a question of instincts, if we or they are no more
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than animals--"
"Well, are they? They're much more like ants on their hind legs than human beings, and who ever got to any
sort of understanding with ants?"
"But these machines and clothing! No, I don't hold with you, Bedford. The difference is wide--"
"It's insurmountable."
"The resemblance must bridge it. I remember reading once a paper by the late Professor Galton on the
possibility of communication between the planets. Unhappily, at that time it did not seem probable that that
would be of any material benefit to me, and I fear I did not give it the attention I should have done--in view of
this state of affairs. Yet.... Now, let me see!
"His idea was to begin with those broad truths that must underlie all conceivable mental existences and
establish a basis on those. The great principles of geometry, to begin with. He proposed to take some leading
proposition of Euclid's, and show by construction that its truth was known to us, to demonstrate, for example,
that the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal, and that if the equal sides be produced the angles
on the other side of the base are equal also, or that the square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is
equal to the sum of the squares on the two other sides. By demonstrating our knowledge of these things we
should demonstrate our possession of a reasonable intelligence.... Now, suppose I ... I might draw the
geometrical figure with a wet finger, or even trace it in the air...."
He fell silent. I sat meditating his words. For a time his wild hope of communication, of interpretation, with
these weird beings held me. Then that angry despair that was a part of my exhaustion and physical misery [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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