Tesla in America", has picked up fragments of radio communications from Cavor sent from inside the Moon. Julius Wendigee, a Dutch electrician, who has been experimenting with certain apparatus akin to the apparatus used by Mr. Bedford writes and publishes his story in The Strand Magazine, then learns that "Mr. His fortune is made by some gold he brings back, but he loses the sphere when a curious boy named Tommy Simmons climbs into the unattended sphere and shoots off into space.
Do you know I had an idea that really I was something quite outside not only the world, but all worlds, and out of space and time, and that this poor Bedford was just a peephole through which I looked at life." īy good fortune, the narrator lands in the sea off the coast of Britain, near the seaside town of Littlestone, not far from his point of departure. That's just where the mistake comes in.' 'Counfound it!' I cried, 'and if I am not Bedford, what am I? But in that direction no light was forthcoming, though the strangest fancies came drifting into my brain, queer remote suspicions like shadow seem from far away. the doubts within me could still argue: 'It is not you that is reading, it is Bedford-but you are not Bedford, you know. Bedford in Infinite Space", plays no role in the plot but is a remarkable set piece in which the narrator describes experiencing a quasi-mystical "pervading doubt of my own identity. Bedford finds it but returns to Earth without Cavor, who injured himself in a fall and was recaptured by the Selenites, as Bedford learns from a hastily scribbled note he left behind.Ĭhapter 20, "Mr. Back on the surface, they split up to search for their spaceship. In their attempt to find their way back to the surface and to their sphere, they come upon some Selenites carving up mooncalves but fight their way past. In their flight they discover that gold is common on the Moon. The insectoid lunar natives (referred to as "Selenites", after Selene, the moon goddess) are part of a complex and technologically sophisticated society that lives underground, but this is revealed only in radio communications received from Cavor after Bedford's return to Earth.īedford and Cavor break out of captivity beneath the surface of the Moon and flee, killing several Selenites. They wander drunkenly until they encounter a party of six extraterrestrials, who capture them. At first they hide and crawl about, but growing hungry partake of some "monstrous coralline growths" of fungus that inebriate them.
They encounter "great beasts", "monsters of mere fatness", that they dub "mooncalves", and five-foot-high "Selenites" tending them.
They hear for the first time a mysterious booming coming from beneath their feet. Bedford and Cavor leave the capsule, but in romping about get lost in the rapidly growing jungle. On the surface of the Moon the two men discover a desolate landscape, but as the Sun rises, the thin, frozen atmosphere vaporises and strange plants begin to grow with extraordinary rapidity. On the way to the Moon, they experience weightlessness, which Bedford finds "exceedingly restful". Cavor hits upon the idea of a spherical spaceship made of "steel, lined with glass", and with sliding "windows or blinds" made of cavorite by which it can be steered, and persuades a reluctant Bedford to undertake a voyage to the Moon Cavor is certain there is no life there. Bedford sees in the commercial production of cavorite a possible source of "wealth enough to work any sort of social revolution we fancied we might own and order the whole world". When a sheet of cavorite is prematurely processed, it makes the air above it weightless and shoots off into space. Bedford befriends Cavor when he learns he is developing a new material, cavorite, which can negate the force of gravity.
After two weeks Bedford accosts the man, who proves to be a reclusive physicist named Mr. He is bothered every afternoon, however, at precisely the same time, by a passer-by making odd noises. Bedford rents a small countryside house in Lympne, in Kent, where he wants to work in peace. The narrator is a London businessman named Bedford who withdraws to the countryside to write a play, by which he hopes to alleviate his financial problems. Caption: "I was progressing in great leaps and bounds"
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