“No.”

“How could we?”

“We might have done.  Only one gets into habits of mind.”

He thought for a time.

“Now,” he said, “it seems such an obvious thing.”

“Of course!  The moon must be enormously cavernous, with an atmosphere within, and at the centre of its caverns a sea.

“One knew that the moon had a lower specific gravity than the earth, one knew that it had little air or water outside, one knew, too, that it was sister planet to the earth, and that it was unaccountable that it should be different in composition.  The inference that it was hollowed out was as clear as day.  And yet one never saw it as a fact.  Kepler, of course—­”

His voice had the interest now of a man who has discerned a pretty sequence of reasoning.

“Yes,” he said, “Kepler with his sub-volvani was right after all.”

“I wish you had taken the trouble to find that out before we came,” I said.

He answered nothing, buzzing to himself softly, as he pursued his thoughts.  My temper was going.

“What do you think has become of the sphere, anyhow?” I asked.

“Lost,” he said, like a man who answers an uninteresting question.

“Among those plants?”

“Unless they find it.”

“And then?”

“How can I tell?”

“Cavor,” I said, with a sort of hysterical bitterness, “things look bright for my Company...”

He made no answer.

“Good Lord!” I exclaimed.  “Just think of all the trouble we took to get into this pickle!  What did we come for?  What are we after?  What was the moon to us or we to the moon?  We wanted too much, we tried too much.  We ought to have started the little things first.  It was you proposed the moon!  Those Cavorite spring blinds!  I am certain we could have worked them for terrestrial purposes.  Certain!  Did you really understand what I proposed?  A steel cylinder—­”

“Rubbish!” said Cavor.

We ceased to converse.

For a time Cavor kept up a broken monologue without much help from me.

“If they find it,” he began, “if they find it ... what will they do with it?  Well, that’s a question.  It may be that’s the question.  They won’t understand it, anyhow.  If they understood that sort of thing they would have come long since to the earth.  Would they?  Why shouldn’t they?  But they would have sent something—­they couldn’t keep their hands off such a possibility.  No!  But they will examine it.  Clearly they are intelligent and inquisitive.  They will examine it—­get inside it—­trifle with the studs.  Off! ...  That would mean the moon for us for all the rest of our lives.  Strange creatures, strange knowledge....”

“As for strange knowledge—­” said I, and language failed me.

“Look here, Bedford,” said Cavor, “you came on this expedition of your own free will.”

“You said to me, ’Call it prospecting’.”