“Well, we’re committed,” I said at last.

“Yes,” he said, “we’re committed.”

“Don’t move,” he exclaimed, at some suggestion of a gesture.  “Let your muscles keep quite lax—­as if you were in bed.  We are in a little universe of our own.  Look at those things!”

He pointed to the loose cases and bundles that had been lying on the blankets in the bottom of the sphere.  I was astonished to see that they were floating now nearly a foot from the spherical wall.  Then I saw from his shadow that Cavor was no longer leaning against the glass.  I thrust out my hand behind me, and found that I too was suspended in space, clear of the glass.

I did not cry out nor gesticulate, but fear came upon me.  It was like being held and lifted by something—­you know not what.  The mere touch of my hand against the glass moved me rapidly.  I understood what had happened, but that did not prevent my being afraid.  We were cut off from all exterior gravitation, only the attraction of objects within our sphere had effect.  Consequently everything that was not fixed to the glass was falling—­slowly because of the slightness of our masses—­towards the centre of gravity of our little world, which seemed to be somewhere about the middle of the sphere, but rather nearer to myself than Cavor, on account of my greater weight.

“We must turn round,” said Cavor, “and float back to back, with the things between us.”

It was the strangest sensation conceivable, floating thus loosely in space, at first indeed horribly strange, and when the horror passed, not disagreeable at all, exceeding restful; indeed, the nearest thing in earthly experience to it that I know is lying on a very thick, soft feather bed.  But the quality of utter detachment and independence!  I had not reckoned on things like this.  I had expected a violent jerk at starting, a giddy sense of speed.  Instead I felt—­as if I were disembodied.  It was not like the beginning of a journey; it was like the beginning of a dream.

Chapter 5

The Journey to the Moon

Presently Cavor extinguished the light.  He said we had not overmuch energy stored, and that what we had we must economise for reading.  For a time, whether it was long or short I do not know, there was nothing but blank darkness.

A question floated up out of the void.  “How are we pointing?” I said.  “What is our direction?”

“We are flying away from the earth at a tangent, and as the moon is near her third quarter we are going somewhere towards her.  I will open a blind—­”

Came a click, and then a window in the outer case yawned open.  The sky outside was as black as the darkness within the sphere, but the shape of the open window was marked by an infinite number of stars.

Those who have only seen the starry sky from the earth cannot imagine its appearance when the vague, half luminous veil of our air has been withdrawn.  The stars we see on earth are the mere scattered survivors that penetrate our misty atmosphere.  But now at last I could realise the meaning of the hosts of heaven!