“Perhaps it is—­”

“It isn’t one man in a million has that twist.  Most men want—­well, various things, but very few want knowledge for its own sake.  I don’t, I know perfectly well.  Now, these Selenites seem to be a driving, busy sort of being, but how do you know that even the most intelligent will take an interest in us or our world?  I don’t believe they’ll even know we have a world.  They never come out at night—­they’d freeze if they did.  They’ve probably never seen any heavenly body at all except the blazing sun.  How are they to know there is another world?  What does it matter to them if they do?  Well, even if they have had a glimpse of a few stars, or even of the earth crescent, what of that?  Why should people living inside a planet trouble to observe that sort of thing?  Men wouldn’t have done it except for the seasons and sailing; why should the moon people?...

“Well, suppose there are a few philosophers like yourself.  They are just the very Selenites who’ll never have heard of our existence.  Suppose a Selenite had dropped on the earth when you were at Lympne, you’d have been the last man in the world to hear he had come.  You never read a newspaper!  You see the chances against you.  Well, it’s for these chances we’re sitting here doing nothing while precious time is flying.  I tell you we’ve got into a fix.  We’ve come unarmed, we’ve lost our sphere, we’ve got no food, we’ve shown ourselves to the Selenites, and made them think we’re strange, strong, dangerous animals; and unless these Selenites are perfect fools, they’ll set about now and hunt us till they find us, and when they find us they’ll try to take us if they can, and kill us if they can’t, and that’s the end of the matter.  If they take us, they’ll probably kill us, through some misunderstanding.  After we’re done for, they may discuss us perhaps, but we shan’t get much fun out of that.”

“Go on.”

“On the other hand, here’s gold knocking about like cast iron at home.  If only we can get some of it back, if only we can find our sphere again before they do, and get back, then—­”

“Yes?”

“We might put the thing on a sounder footing.  Come back in a bigger sphere with guns.”

“Good Lord!” cried Cavor, as though that was horrible.

I shied another luminous fungus down the cleft.

“Look here, Cavor,” I said, “I’ve half the voting power anyhow in this affair, and this is a case for a practical man.  I’m a practical man, and you are not.  I’m not going to trust to Selenites and geometrical diagrams if I can help it.  That’s all.  Get back.  Drop all this secrecy—­or most of it.  And come again.”

He reflected.  “When I came to the moon,” he said, “I ought to have come alone.”

“The question before the meeting,” I said, “is how to get back to the sphere.”

For a time we nursed our knees in silence.  Then he seemed to decide for my reasons.