“Unless someone saw it coming and made preparation, same as old friend Challenger did.”

“That, I think, is hardly probable,” said Challenger, projecting his beard and sinking his eyelids.  “The combination of observation, inference, and anticipatory imagination which enabled me to foresee the danger is what one can hardly expect twice in the same generation.”

“Then your conclusion is that everyone is certainly dead?”

“There can be little doubt of that.  We have to remember, however, that the poison worked from below upwards and would possibly be less virulent in the higher strata of the atmosphere.  It is strange, indeed, that it should be so; but it presents one of those features which will afford us in the future a fascinating field for study.  One could imagine, therefore, that if one had to search for survivors one would turn one’s eyes with best hopes of success to some Tibetan village or some Alpine farm, many thousands of feet above the sea level.”

“Well, considerin’ that there are no railroads and no steamers you might as well talk about survivors in the moon,” said Lord John.  “But what I’m askin’ myself is whether it’s really over or whether it’s only half-time.”

Summerlee craned his neck to look round the horizon.  “It seems clear and fine,” said he in a very dubious voice; “but so it did yesterday.  I am by no means assured that it is all over.”

Challenger shrugged his shoulders.

“We must come back once more to our fatalism,” said he.  “If the world has undergone this experience before, which is not outside the range of possibility; it was certainly a very long time ago.  Therefore, we may reasonably hope that it will be very long before it occurs again.”

“That’s all very well,” said Lord John, “but if you get an earthquake shock you are mighty likely to have a second one right on the top of it.  I think we’d be wise to stretch our legs and have a breath of air while we have the chance.  Since our oxygen is exhausted we may just as well be caught outside as in.”

It was strange the absolute lethargy which had come upon us as a reaction after our tremendous emotions of the last twenty-four hours.  It was both mental and physical, a deep-lying feeling that nothing mattered and that everything was a weariness and a profitless exertion.  Even Challenger had succumbed to it, and sat in his chair, with his great head leaning upon his hands and his thoughts far away, until Lord John and I, catching him by each arm, fairly lifted him on to his feet, receiving only the glare and growl of an angry mastiff for our trouble.  However, once we had got out of our narrow haven of refuge into the wider atmosphere of everyday life, our normal energy came gradually back to us once more.