THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON
"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, something able to hide in deep burrows from the lunar night. 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° Centigrade, below the earthly freezing point. Whatever life there is must hibernate through that,—and rise again each day."
He mused. "One can imagine something worm-like," he said, "taking its air solid as an earthworm swallows earth, or thick-skinned monsters———"
"By the bye," I said, "why didn't we bring a gun?"
He did not answer that question. "No," he concluded, "we just have to go. We shall see when we get there."
I remembered something. "Of course, there's my
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