“Of the condition of the moon sexes, marrying and giving in marriage, and of birth and so forth among the Selenites, I have as yet been able to learn very little.  With the steady progress of Phi-oo in English, however, my ignorance will no doubt as steadily disappear.  I am of opinion that, as with the ants and bees, there is a large majority of the members in this community of the neuter sex.  Of course on earth in our cities there are now many who never live that life of parentage which is the natural life of man.  Here, as with the ants, this thing has become a normal condition of the race, and the whole of such eplacement as is necessary falls upon this special and by no means numerous class of matrons, the mothers of the moon-world, large and stately beings beautifully fitted to bear the larval Selenite.  Unless I misunderstand an explanation of Phi-oo’s, they are absolutely incapable of cherishing the young they bring into the moon; periods of foolish indulgence alternate with moods of aggressive violence, and as soon as possible the little creatures, who are quite soft and flabby and pale coloured, are transferred to the charge of celibate females, women ‘workers’ as it were, who in some cases possess brains of almost masculine dimensions.”

Just at this point, unhappily, this message broke off.  Fragmentary and tantalising as the matter constituting this chapter is, it does nevertheless give a vague, broad impression of an altogether strange and wonderful world—­a world with which our own may have to reckon we know not how speedily.  This intermittent trickle of messages, this whispering of a record needle in the stillness of the mountain slopes, is the first warning of such a change in human conditions as mankind has scarcely imagined heretofore.  In that satellite of ours there are new elements, new appliances, traditions, an overwhelming avalanche of new ideas, a strange race with whom we must inevitably struggle for mastery—­gold as common as iron or wood...

Chapter 25

The Grand Lunar

The penultimate message describes, with occasionally elaborate detail, the encounter between Cavor and the Grand Lunar, who is the ruler or master of the moon.  Cavor seems to have sent most of it without interference, but to have been interrupted in the concluding portion.  The second came after an interval of a week.

The first message begins:  “At last I am able to resume this—­” it then becomes illegible for a space, and after a time resumed in mid-sentence.

The missing words of the following sentence are probably “the crowd.”  There follows quite clearly:  “grew ever denser as we drew near the palace of the Grand Lunar—­if I may call a series of excavations a palace.  Everywhere faces stared at me—­blank, chitinous gapes and masks, eyes peering over tremendous olfactory developments, eyes beneath monstrous forehead plates;