“‘But surely they do not like it!’ translated Phi-oo.

“I assured them men of my race considered battle the most glorious experience of life, at which the whole assembly was stricken with amazement.

“‘But what good is this war?’ asked the Grand Lunar, sticking to his theme.

“‘Oh! as for good!’ said I; ‘it thins the population!’

“‘But why should there be a need—?’

“There came a pause, the cooling sprays impinged upon his brow, and then he spoke again.”

[At this point a series of undulations that have been apparent as a perplexing complication as far back as Cavor’s description of the silence that fell before the first speaking of the Grand Lunar become confusingly predominant in the record.  These undulations are evidently the result of radiations proceeding from a lunar source, and their persistent approximation to the alternating signals of Cavor is curiously suggestive of some operator deliberately seeking to mix them in with his message and render it illegible.  At first they are small and regular, so that with a little care and the loss of very few words we have been able to disentangle Cavor’s message; then they become broad and larger, then suddenly they are irregular, with an irregularity that gives the effect at last of some one scribbling through a line of writing.  For a long time nothing can be made of this madly zigzagging trace; then quite abruptly the interruption ceases, leaves a few words clear, and then resumes and continues for the rest of the message, completely obliterating whatever Cavor was attempting to transmit.  Why, if this is indeed a deliberate intervention, the Selenites should have preferred to let Cavor go on transmitting his message in happy ignorance of their obliteration of its record, when it was clearly quite in their power and much more easy and convenient for them to stop his proceedings at any time, is a problem to which I can contribute nothing.  The thing seems to have happened so, and that is all I can say.  This last rag of his description of the Grand Lunar begins in mid-sentence.]

“...interrogated me very closely upon my secret.  I was able in a little while to get to an understanding with them, and at last to elucidate what has been a puzzle to me ever since I realised the vastness of their science, namely, how it is they themselves have never discovered ‘Cavorite.’  I find they know of it as a theoretical substance, but they have always regarded it as a practical impossibility, because for some reason there is no helium in the moon, and helium...”

[Across the last letters of helium slashes the resumption of that obliterating trace.  Note that word “secret,” for that, and that alone, I base my interpretation of the message that follows, the last message, as both Mr. Wendigee and myself now believe it to be, that he is ever likely to send us.]

Chapter 26