Out Of The Silent Planet Read Online Free PDF

towards the
doorway and disappeared suddenly downwards when he had passed it. When he followed - which he did
with caution - he had the curious impression that he was walking up to the edge of a precipice:
the new room beyond the doorway seemed to be built on its side so that its farther wall lay almost
in the same plane as the floor of the room he was leaving. When, however, he ventured to put
forward his foot, he found that the floor continued flush and as he entered the second room the
walls suddenly righted themselves and the rounded ceiling was over his head. Looking back, he
perceived that the bedroom in its turn was now heeling over - its roof a wall and one of its
walls a roof.
    'You will soon get used to it,' said Weston, following his gaze. 'The ship is roughly spherical,
and now that we are outside the gravitational field of the Earth "down" means - and feels - towards
the centre of our own little metal world. This, of course, was foreseen and we built her accordingly.
The core of the ship is a hollow globe - we keep our stores inside it - and the surface of that
globe is the floor we are walking on. The cabins are arranged all round this, their walls supporting
an outer globe which from our point of view is the roof. As the centre is always "down", the piece
of floor you are standing on always feels flat or horizontal and the wall you are standing against
always seems vertical. On the other hand, the globe of floor is so small that you can always see
over the edge of it - over what would be the horizon if you were a flea - and then you see the floor
and walls of the next cabin in a different plane. It is just the same; on Earth, of course, only we
are not big enough to see it.'
    After this explanation he made arrangements in his precise, ungracious way for the comfort of his
guest or prisoner. Ransom, at his advice, removed all his clothes and substituted a little metal
girdle hung with enormous weights to reduce, as far as possible, the unmanageable lightness of
his body. He also assumed tinted glasses, and soon found himself seated opposite Weston at a
small table laid for breakfast. He was both hungry and thirsty and eagerly attacked the meal
which consisted of tinned meat, biscuit, butter and coffee.
    But all these actions he had performed mechanically. Stripping, eating and drinking passed almost
unnoticed, and all he ever remembered of his first meal in the space-ship was the tyranny of heat
and light. Both were present in a degree which would have been intolerable on Earth, but each had
a new quality. The light was paler than any light of comparable intensity that he had ever seen;
it was not pure white but the palest of all imaginable golds, and it cast shadows as sharp as a
floodlight. The heat, utterly free from moisture, seemed to knead and stroke the skin like a
gigantic masseur: it produced no tendency to drowiness: rather, intense alacrity. His headache
was gone: he felt vigilant, courageous and magnanimous as he had seldom felt on Earth. Gradually
he dared to raise his eyes to the skylight. Steel shutters were drawn across all but a chink of
the glass, and that chink was covered with blinds of some heavy and dark material; but still it
was too bright to look at.
    I always thought space was dark and cold,' he marked vaguely.
    'Forgotten the sun?' said Weston contemptuously.
    Ransom went on eating for some time. Then he began, 'It it's like this in the early morning,' and
stopped, warned by the expression on Weston's face. Awe fell upon him: there were no mornings
here, no evenings, and no night - nothing but the changeless noon which had filled for centuries
beyond history so many millions of cubic miles. He glanced at Weston again, but the latter held
up his hand.
    'Don't talk,' he said. 'We have discussed all 'that is necessary. The ship does not carry oxygen
enough for any unnecessary exertion; not even for talking.'
    Shortly afterwards he rose, without