“Cavor!” I said.

“Yes.”

“It may be a dead world now—­but once—­”

Something arrested my attention.  I had discovered among these needles a number of little round objects.  And it seemed to me that one of these had moved.  “Cavor,” I whispered.

“What?”

But I did not answer at once.  I stared incredulous.  For an instant I could not believe my eyes.  I gave an inarticulate cry.  I gripped his arm.  I pointed.  “Look!” I cried, finding my tongue.  “There!  Yes!  And there!”

His eyes followed my pointing finger.  “Eh?” he said.

How can I describe the thing I saw?  It is so petty a thing to state, and yet it seemed so wonderful, so pregnant with emotion.  I have said that amidst the stick-like litter were these rounded bodies, these little oval bodies that might have passed as very small pebbles.  And now first one and then another had stirred, had rolled over and cracked, and down the crack of each of them showed a minute line of yellowish green, thrusting outward to meet the hot encouragement of the newly-risen sun.  For a moment that was all, and then there stirred, and burst a third!

“It is a seed,” said Cavor.  And then I heard him whisper very softly, “Life!”

“Life!” And immediately it poured upon us that our vast journey had not been made in vain, that we had come to no arid waste of minerals, but to a world that lived and moved!  We watched intensely.  I remember I kept rubbing the glass before me with my sleeve, jealous of the faintest suspicion of mist.

The picture was clear and vivid only in the middle of the field.  All about that centre the dead fibres and seeds were magnified and distorted by the curvature of the glass.  But we could see enough!  One after another all down the sunlit slope these miraculous little brown bodies burst and gaped apart, like seed-pods, like the husks of fruits; opened eager mouths. that drank in the heat and light pouring in a cascade from the newly-risen sun.

Every moment more of these seed coats ruptured, and even as they did so the swelling pioneers overflowed their rent-distended seed-cases, and passed into the second stage of growth.  With a steady assurance, a swift deliberation, these amazing seeds thrust a rootlet downward to the earth and a queer little bundle-like bud into the air.  In a little while the whole slope was dotted with minute plantlets standing at attention in the blaze of the sun.

They did not stand for long.  The bundle-like buds swelled and strained and opened with a jerk, thrusting out a coronet of little sharp tips, spreading a whorl of tiny, spiky, brownish leaves, that lengthened rapidly, lengthened visibly even as we watched.  The movement was slower than any animal’s, swifter than any plant’s I have ever seen before.  How can I suggest it to you—­the way that growth went on?  The leaf tips grew so that they moved onward even while we looked at them.  The brown seed-case shrivelled and was absorbed with an equal rapidity.  Have you ever on a cold day taken a thermometer into your warm hand and watched the little thread of mercury creep up the tube?  These moon plants grew like that.