by C. S. Lewis
‘Certainly. Just what I was going to suggest,’ said the first. ‘O.K. by me, chum,’ said the second. They were all three of them out of the air-lock in record time.
Across the sand, up the ladder, helmets off, and then:
‘What in the name of thunder have you dumped those two bitches on us for?’ said Dickson.
‘Don’t fancy ’em?’ said the Cockney stranger. ‘The people at ’ome thought as ’ow you’d be a bit sharp set by now. Ungrateful of you, I call it.’
‘Very funny to be sure,’ said Dickson. ‘But it’s no laughing matter for us.’
‘It hasn’t been for us either, you know,’ said the Oxford stranger. ‘Cheek by jowl with them for eighty-five days. They palled a bit after the first month.’
‘You’re telling me,’ said the Cockney.
There was a disgusted pause.
‘Can anyone tell me,’ said Dickson at last, ‘who in the world, and why in the world, out of all possible women, selected those two horrors to send to Mars?’
‘Can’t expect a star London show at the back of beyond,’ said the Cockney.
‘My dear fellow,’ said his colleague, ‘isn’t the thing perfectly obvious? What kind of woman, without force, is going to come and live in this ghastly place—on rations—and play doxy to half a dozen men she’s never seen? The Good Time Girls won’t come because they know you can’t have a good time on Mars. An ordinary professional prostitute won’t come as long as she has the slightest chance of being picked up in the cheapest quarter of Liverpool or Los Angeles. And you’ve got one who hasn’t. The only other who’d come would be a crank who believes all that blah about the new ethicality. And you’ve got one of that too.’
‘Simple, ain’t it?’ said the Cockney.
‘Anyone,’ said the other, ‘except the Fools at the Top could of course have foreseen it from the word go.’
‘The only hope now is the Captain,’ said Dickson.
‘Look, mate,’ said the Cockney, ‘if you think there’s any question of our taking back returned goods, you’ve ’ad it. Nothing doin’. Our Captain’ll ’ave a mutiny to settle if he tries that. Also ’e won’t. ’E’s ’ad ’is turn. So’ve we. It’s up to you now.’
‘Fair’s fair, you know,’ said the other. ‘We’ve stood all we can.’
‘Well,’ said Dickson. ‘We must leave the two chiefs to fight it out. But discipline or not, there are some things a man can’t stand. That bloody schoolmarm—’
‘She’s a lecturer at a redbrick university, actually.’
‘Well,’ said Dickson after a long pause, ‘you were going to show me over the ship. It might take my mind off it a bit.’
The Fat Woman was talking to the Monk. ‘. . . and oh, Father dear, I know you’ll think that’s the worst of all. I didn’t give it up when I could. After me brother’s wife died . . . ’e’d ’av ’ad me ’ome with ’im, and money wasn’t that short. But I went on, Gawd ’elp me, I went on.’
‘Why did you do that, daughter?’ said the Monk. ‘Did you like it?’
‘Well not all that, Father. I was never partikler. But you see—oh, Father, I was the goods in those days, though you wouldn’t think it now . . . and the poor gentlemen, they did so enjoy it.’
‘Daughter,’ he said, ‘you are not far from the Kingdom. But you were wrong. The desire to give is blessed. But you can’t turn bad bank-notes into good ones just by giving them away.’
The Captain had also left the table pretty quickly, asking Ferguson to accompany him to his cabin. The Botanist had leaped after them.
‘One moment, sir, one moment,’ he said excitedly. ‘I am a scientist. I’m working at very high pressure already. I hope there is no complaint to be made about my discharge of all those other duties which so incessantly interrupt my work. But if I am going to be expected to waste any more time entertaining those abominable females—’
‘When I give you any orders which can be considered ultra vires,’ said the Captain, ‘it will be time to make your protest.’
Paterson stayed with the Thin Woman. The only part of any woman that interested him was her ears. He liked telling women about his troubles; especially about the unfairness and unkindness of other men. Unfortunately the lady’s idea was that the interview should be devoted either to Aphrodisio-Therapy or to instruction in psychology. She saw, indeed, no reason why the two operations should not be carried out simultaneously; it is only untrained minds that cannot hold more than one idea. The difference between these two conceptions of the conversation was well on its way to impairing its success. Paterson was becoming ill-tempered; the lady remained bright and patient as an iceberg.
‘But as I was saying,’ grumbled Paterson, ‘what I do think so rotten is a fellow being quite fairly decent one day and then—’
‘Which just illustrates my point. These tensions and maladjustments are bound, under the unnatural conditions, to arise. And provided we disinfect the obvious remedy of all those sentimental or—which is quite as bad—prurient associations which the Victorian Age attached to it—’
‘But I haven’t yet told you. Listen. Only two days ago—’
‘One moment. This ought to be regarded like any other injection. If once we can persuade—’
‘How any fellow can take a pleasure—’
‘I agree. The association of it with pleasure (that is purely an adolescent fixation) may have done incalculable harm. Rationally viewed—’
‘I say, you’re getting off the point.’
‘One moment—’
The dialogue continued.
They had finished looking over the space-ship. It was certainly a beauty. No one afterwards remembered who had first said, ‘Anyone could manage a ship like this.’
Ferguson sat quietly smoking while the Captain read the letter he had brought him. He didn’t even look in the Captain’s direction. When at last conversation began there was so much circumambient happiness in the cabin that they took a long time to get down to the difficult part of their business. The Captain seemed at first wholly occupied with its comic side.
‘Still,’ he said at last, ‘it has its serious side too. The impertinence of it, for one thing! Do they think—’
‘Ye maun recall,’ said Ferguson, ‘they’re dealing with an absolutely new situation.’
‘Oh, new be damned! How does it differ from men on whalers, or even on windjammers in the old days? Or on the North-west Frontier? It’s about as new as people being hungry when food was short.’
‘Eh mon, but ye’re forgettin’ the new light of modern psychology.’
‘I think those two ghastly women have already learned some newer psychology since they arrived. Do they really suppose every man in the world is so combustible that he’ll jump into the arms of any woman whatever?’
‘Aye, they do. They’ll be sayin’ you and your party are verra abnormal. I wadna put it past them to be sending you out wee packets of hormones next.’
‘Well, if it comes to that, do they suppose men would volunteer for a job like this unless they could, or thought they could, or wanted to try if they could, do without women?’
‘Then there’s the new ethics, forbye.’
‘Oh, stow it, you old rascal. What is new there either? Who ever tried to live clean except a minority who had a religion or were in love? They’ll try it still on Mars, as they did on Earth. As for the majority, did they ever hesitate to take their pleasures wherever they could get them? The ladies of the profession know better. Did you ever see a port or a garrison town without plenty of brothels? Who are the idiots on the Advisory Council who started all this nonsense?’
‘Och, a pack o’ daft auld women (in trousers for the maist part) who like onything sexy, and onything scientific, and onything that makes them feel important. And this gives them all three pleasures at once, ye ken.’
‘Well, there’s only one thing for it, Ferguson. I’m not going to have either your Mistress Overdone or your Extension lecturer h
ere. You can just—’
‘Now there’s no manner of use talkin’ that way. I did my job. Another voyage with sic a cargo o’ livestock I will not face. And my two lads the same. There’d be mutiny and murder.’
‘But you must, I’m—’
At that moment a blinding flash came from without and the earth shook.
‘Ma ship! Ma ship!’ cried Ferguson. Both men peered out on empty sand. The space-ship had obviously made an excellent take-off.
‘But what’s happened?’ said the Captain. ‘They haven’t—’
‘Mutiny, desertion, and theft of a government ship, that’s what’s happened,’ said Ferguson. ‘Ma twa lads and your Dickson are awa’ hame.’
‘But good Lord, they’ll get hell for this. They’ve ruined their careers. They’ll be—’
‘Aye. Nae dout. And they think it cheap at the price. Ye’ll be seeing why, maybe, before ye are a fortnight older.’
A gleam of hope came into the Captain’s eyes. ‘They couldn’t have taken the women with them?’
‘Talk sense, mon, talk sense. Or if ye hanna ony sense, use your ears.’
In the buzz of excited conversation which became every moment more audible from the main room, female voices could be intolerably distinguished.
As he composed himself for his evening meditation the Monk thought that perhaps he had been concentrating too much on ‘needing less’ and that must be why he was going to have a course (advanced) in ‘loving more’. Then his face twitched into a smile that was not all mirth. He was thinking of the Fat Woman. Four things made an exquisite chord. First the horror of all she had done and suffered. Secondly, the pity—thirdly, the comicality—of her belief that she could still excite desire; fourthly, her bless’d ignorance of that utterly different loveliness which already existed within her and which, under grace, and with such poor direction as even he could supply, might one day set her, bright in the land of brightness, beside the Magdalene.
But wait! There was yet a fifth note in the chord. ‘Oh, Master,’ he murmured, ‘forgive—or can you enjoy?—my absurdity also. I had been supposing you sent me on a voyage of forty million miles merely for my own spiritual convenience.’
XII
FORMS OF THINGS UNKNOWN
. . . that what was myth in one world might always be fact in some other.
PERELANDRA
‘Before the class breaks up, gentlemen,’ said the instructor, ‘I should like to make some reference to a fact which is known to some of you, but probably not yet to all. High Command, I need not remind you, has asked for a volunteer for yet one more attempt on the Moon. It will be the fourth. You know the history of the previous three. In each case the explorers landed unhurt; or at any rate alive. We got their messages. Every message short, some apparently interrupted. And after that never a word, gentlemen. I think the man who offers to make the fourth voyage has about as much courage as anyone I’ve heard of. And I can’t tell you how proud it makes me that he is one of my own pupils. He is in this room at this moment. We wish him every possible good fortune. Gentlemen, I ask you to give three cheers for Lieutenant John Jenkin.’
Then the class became a cheering crowd for two minutes; after that a hurrying, talkative crowd in the corridor. The two biggest cowards exchanged the various family reasons which had deterred them from volunteering themselves. The knowing man said, ‘There’s something behind all this.’ The vermin said, ‘He always was a chap who’d do anything to get himself into the limelight.’ But most just shouted out, ‘Jolly good show, Jenkin,’ and wished him luck.
Ward and Jenkin got away together into a pub.
‘You kept this pretty dark,’ said Ward. ‘What’s yours?’
‘A pint of draught Bass,’ said Jenkin.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ said Ward rather awkwardly when the drinks had come. ‘I mean—if you won’t think I’m butting in—it’s not just because of that girl, is it?’
That girl was a young woman who was thought to have treated Jenkin rather badly.
‘Well,’ said Jenkin. ‘I don’t suppose I’d be going if she had married me. But it’s not a spectacular attempt at suicide or any rot of that sort. I’m not depressed. I don’t feel anything particular about her. Not much interested in women at all, to tell you the truth. Not now. A bit petrified.’
‘What is it then?’
‘Sheer unbearable curiosity. I’ve read those three little messages over and over till I know them by heart. I’ve heard every theory there is about what interrupted them. I’ve—’
‘Is it certain they were all interrupted? I thought one of them was supposed to be complete.’
‘You mean Traill and Henderson? I think it was as incomplete as the others. First there was Stafford. He went alone, like me.’
‘Must you? I’ll come, if you’ll have me.’
Jenkin shook his head. ‘I knew you would,’ he said. ‘But you’ll see in a moment why I don’t want you to. But to go back to the messages. “Stafford’s was obviously cut short by something. It went: Stafford from within fifty miles of Point XO308 on the Moon. My landing was excellent.” I have—then silence. Then come Traill and Henderson. “We have landed. We are perfectly well. The ridge M392 is straight ahead of me as I speak. Over.”’
‘What do you make of “Over”?’
‘Not what you do. You think it means finis—the message is over. But who in the world, speaking to Earth from the Moon for the first time in all history, would have so little to say—if he could say any more? As if he’d crossed to Calais and sent his grandmother a card to say “Arrived safely”. The thing’s ludicrous.’
‘Well, what do you make of “Over”?’
‘Wait a moment. The last lot were Trevor, Woodford, and Fox. It was Fox who sent the message. Remember it?’
‘Probably not so accurately as you.’
‘Well, it was this. “This is Fox speaking. All has gone wonderfully well. A perfect landing. You shot pretty well for I’m on Point XO308 at this moment. Ridge M392 straight ahead. On my left, far away across the crater I see the big peaks. On my right I see the Yerkes cleft. Behind me.” Got it?’
‘I don’t see the point.’
‘Well, Fox was cut off the moment he said “behind me”. Supposing Traill was cut off in the middle of saying “Over my shoulder I can see” or “Over behind me” or something like that?’
‘You mean?—’
‘All the evidence is consistent with the view that everything went well till the speaker looked behind him. Then something got him.’
‘What sort of a something?’
‘That’s what I want to find out. One idea in my head is this. Might there be something on the Moon—or something psychological about the experience of landing on the Moon—which drives men fighting mad?’
‘I see. You mean Fox looked round just in time to see Trevor and Woodford preparing to knock him on the head?’
‘Exactly. And Traill—for it was Traill—just in time to see Henderson a split second before Henderson murdered him. And that’s why I’m not going to risk having a companion; least of all my best friend.’
‘This doesn’t explain Stafford.’
‘No. That’s why one can’t rule out the other hypothesis.’
‘What’s it?’
‘Oh, that whatever killed them all was something they found there. Something lunar.’
‘You’re surely not going to suggest life on the Moon at this time of day?’
‘The word life always begs the question. Because, of course, it suggests organisation as we know it on Earth—with all the chemistry which organisation involves. Of course there could hardly be anything of that sort. But there might—I at any rate can’t say there couldn’t—be masses of matter capable of movements determined from within, determined, in fact, by intentions.’
‘Oh Lord, Jenkin, that’s nonsense. Animated stones, no doubt! That’s mere science fiction or mythology.’
‘Going to the Mo
on at all was once science fiction. And as for mythology, haven’t they found the Cretan labyrinth?’
‘And all it really comes down to,’ said Ward, ‘is that no one has ever come back from the Moon, and no one, so far as we know, ever survived there for more than a few minutes. Damn the whole thing.’ He stared gloomily into his tankard.
‘Well,’ said Jenkin cheerily, ‘somebody’s got to go. The whole human race isn’t going to be licked by any blasted satellite.’
‘I might have known that was your real reason,’ said Ward.
‘Have another pint and don’t look so glum,’ said Jenkin. ‘Anyway, there’s loads of time. I don’t suppose they’ll get me off for another six months at the earliest.’
But there was hardly any time. Like any man in the modern world on whom tragedy has descended or who has undertaken a high enterprise, he lived for the next few months a life not unlike that of a hunted animal. The Press, with all their cameras and notebooks, were after him. They did not care in the least whether he was allowed to eat or sleep or whether they made a nervous wreck of him before he took off. ‘Flesh-flies,’ he called them. When forced to address them, he always said, ‘I wish I could take you all with me.’ But he reflected also that a Saturn’s ring of dead (and burnt) reporters circling round his space-ship might get on his nerves. They would hardly make ‘the silence of those eternal spaces’ any more home-like.
The take-off when it came was a relief. But the voyage was worse than he had ever anticipated. Not physically—on that side it was nothing worse than uncomfortable—but in the emotional experience. He had dreamed all his life, with mingled terror and longing, of those eternal spaces; of being utterly ‘outside’, in the sky. He had wondered if the agoraphobia of that roofless and bottomless vacuity would overthrow his reason. But the moment he had been shut into his ship there descended upon him the suffocating knowledge that the real danger of space-travel is claustrophobia. You have been put in a little metal container; somewhat like a cupboard, very like a coffin. You can’t see out; you can see things only on the screen. Space and the stars are just as remote as they were on the Earth. Where you are is always your world. The sky is never where you are. All you have done is to exchange a large world of earth and rock and water and clouds for a tiny world of metal.