“That copy of Lloyd’s News might help you.”

I stared at the paper for a moment, then held it above the level of my face, and found I could read it quite easily.  I struck a column of mean little advertisements.  “A gentleman of private means is willing to lend money,” I read.  I knew that gentleman.  Then somebody eccentric wanted to sell a Cutaway bicycle, “quite new and cost 15 pounds,” for five pounds; and a lady in distress wished to dispose of some fish knives and forks, “a wedding present,” at a great sacrifice.  No doubt some simple soul was sagely examining these knives and forks, and another triumphantly riding off on that bicycle, and a third trustfully consulting that benevolent gentleman of means even as I read.  I laughed, and let the paper drift from my hand.

“Are we visible from the earth?” I asked.

“Why?”

“I knew some one who was rather interested in astronomy.  It occurred to me that it would be rather odd if—­my friend—­chanced to be looking through come telescope.”

“It would need the most powerful telescope on earth even now to see us as the minutest speck.”

For a time I stared in silence at the moon.

“It’s a world,” I said; “one feels that infinitely more than one ever did on earth.  People perhaps—­”

“People!” he exclaimed.  “No!  Banish all that!  Think yourself a sort of ultra-arctic voyager exploring the desolate places of space.  Look at it!”

He waved his hand at the shining whiteness below.  “It’s dead—­dead!  Vast extinct volcanoes, lava wildernesses, tumbled wastes of snow, or frozen carbonic acid, or frozen air, and everywhere landslip seams and cracks and gulfs.  Nothing happens.  Men have watched this planet systematically with telescopes for over two hundred years.  How much change do you think they have seen?”

“None.”

“They have traced two indisputable landslips, a doubtful crack, and one slight periodic change of colour, and that’s all.”

“I didn’t know they’d traced even that.”

“Oh, yes.  But as for people—!”

“By the way,” I asked, “how small a thing will the biggest telescopes show upon the moon?”

“One could see a fair-sized church.  One could certainly see any towns or buildings, or anything like the handiwork of men.  There might perhaps be insects, something in the way of ants, for example, so that they could hide in deep burrows from the lunar light, or some new sort of creatures having no earthly parallel.  That is the most probable thing, if we are to find life there at all.  Think of the difference in conditions!  Life must fit itself to a day as long as fourteen earthly days, a cloudless sun-blaze of fourteen days, and then a night of equal length, growing ever colder and colder under these, cold, sharp stars.  In that night there must be cold, the ultimate cold, absolute zero, 273 degrees Centigrade, below the earthly freezing point.  Whatever life there is must hibernate through that, and rise again each day.”