to a world so far away that a ray of light would take ten thousand years to catch us up.” He looked suspiciously at the palm of his hand, where there was a blob of some waxen substance their hosts had provided to facilitate the process of washing.
“Light wouldn’t catch us up as soon as that,” Thomas told him, “but otherwise, you seem to have the gist of it.” He applied foam generated by the waxen substance to his own body with a generous will; the sensation it imparted to his skin was by no means unpleasant, and its odor was not offensive.
“And will this world have sufficient affinity to free me from this sensation of weighing no more than a basket of apples?” Raleigh wanted to know.
“In terms of size, it will apparently be very large,” Thomas told him, summarizing the information that Lumen had given him, “but it will not exert a crushing affinity upon our bodies. It was once no bigger than the Earth, but it has been hollowed out, and all the material removed from the core redeployed upon its surface as an ever-expanding network of structures. Its core, meanwhile—having initially taken the form of a labyrinth like the one presently inside the moon—has been gradually filled by a single vast mass of flesh. These citizens of the universe remake their worlds in their own images, you see, with the molluskan model at the center. You may think of the planets of the True Civilization, if you wish, as snails with enormously convoluted shells, whose inner ramifications provide shelter to all manner of crab and insect societies, while their outer ramifications—which would appear to distant observers as their surfaces—are mostly populated by inorganic devices that mimic the properties of life: motile machines designed for countless different kinds of co-operative labor. The members of the True Civilization think, as it were, exoskeletally, habitually placing flesh at the core and protective armor at the periphery.”
Raleigh shook his head in bewilderment. “Can men really be so unusual in such a vast plurality of worlds?” he mused.
“It’s not just humans,” Thomas told him, rinsing himself off. “The entire vertebrate family is an anomaly. On other worlds, endoskeletal organization is a mere fancy, confined to a handful of wormlike and fishlike species, none of them larger than your thumb. For the descendants of fish to become reptiles, let alone birds and mammals, and to emerge from the sea as effective competitors for insects and their exoskeletal kin, was literally unthinkable until the True Civilization’s explorers found Earth.” He looked up as he finished speaking, thinking that he had glimpsed a movement in on of the shadowed coverts of the inordinately uneven ceiling, whose spiraling streamers of radiance were interrupted by numerous coverts.
“Field mistrusts this talk of evolution,” Raleigh told him, although he must have known that the clergyman had already made his opinions abundantly clear to Thomas, and was presumably trying to clarify matters in his own mind. “He is convinced that these creatures are devils sent to tempt and torment us. He is prepared to believe that the moon is Hell, and that the damned are being carefully hidden from our sight, but he does not believe that this exotic item of interdimensional artillery can shoot us to the stars. He thinks we shall be subjected to a clever illusion, with the intention of obliterating our faith.”
“I doubt that he thinks that you or I have any vestige of faith left, Walter,” Thomas said, wryly, as he let himself relax into the pool, savoring its comforts before steeling himself to get out, dress himself, feed himself and take a trip to the center of what Lumen called the galaxy—implying thereby that the Milky Way was merely one sidereal system among many.
“And he suspects de Vere of poisoning his with papist heresies,” Raleigh agreed. “I don’t much care what Ned thinks, but I trust your judgment. Is it possible, do you think, that your monstrous moth really is made in God’s image, while we are mere sports of mischance?”
“Aristocles and his kind do not think of God’s image in terms of a singular form,” Thomas told him. “They are as firmly opposed to idolatry, in their fashion, as any Puritan. God’s image, in the thinking of the True Civilization, is the image of collaboration between different species—what Lumen calls symbiosis by virtue of his incessant improvisation from Greek and Latin roots. He means more by that than the manner in which insectile species, crablike species and snail-like species play complementary roles in his beloved True Civilization. He can wax lyrical on the subject of the special relationships that exit between Earthly insects and flowers, ants and fungi, fiddler-crabs and sea anemones. In fact, Lumen seems to me to be as dedicated a celebrant of complex inter-relationships between creatures of many different kinds as his adversary Aristocles. All the life on an individual world, Aristocles claims, is not merely a single family in its own right, but an inseparable part of a much vaster family. God’s image, to him, is a kind of unity, represented by all life collectively rather than any particular form. Lumen seems to think along similar lines, although I’m not sure where he and his fellow ethereals fit into the pattern, from the viewpoint of the True Civilization or their own.”
“But we are not included in this unity of crabs, ticks and clams,” Raleigh said, peeved by the omission in spite of this being a club of which he had no wish to be a member. “Simply because of our horrid habit of wearing our hard structures on the inside rather than the outside, we’re not deemed fit company for creatures who wear their hard bits on the outside.” He looked up as he finished speaking, because Field had come into the unpartitioned room, carrying a pile of neatly-folded clothes. Although the clergyman was making every effort to avert his eyes from the bodies of his fellow men, his ears seemed to be fully alert.
“I am sorry,” the Puritan said. “The monsters would only bring your garments to the threshold—because Raleigh is right, I think, though he speaks half in jest. They can bear to look at us while we are clad, because they can consider our clothing a substitute for what you call an exoskeleton, but not while we are naked. They do not consider us part of their....untrue civilization. They are intent on our extermination, Thomas, for we do not fit into their demonic way of thinking. You must see that.”
Thomas climbed out of the bath, not caring that Field was almost as embarrassed by his naked presence as any exoskeletal bigot might have been. He took up a towel that was resting on an artificial stalagmite. Raleigh lingered, having finally committed himself more fully to the use of the alien soap.
“If that really is their intention, John,” Thomas said, calmly, “We cannot prevent them from liberating Earth on behalf of its frustrated lower orders. If we are being taken to the center of the sidereal system to stand trial on behalf of our species and its odd design, we had best make sure that we can mount a convincing defense.” Then he looked up again, abruptly, as he saw the movement in the dark covert for a second time.
“What’s that?” he asked Lumen.
“I don’t know,” the guest replied. “I only have your eyes with which to see.”
There was another movement—this time, there was no doubt. Alas, Thomas had no time to call out a warning to Raleigh, who was blinking suds from his momentarily-blinded eyes. Something black dropped on to Raleigh from above—or, more accurately, leapt upon him from above, faster than objects normally fell within the body of the moon.
It’s a spider! Thomas thought, as the thing landed. For an instant, he felt free to be grateful that it was smaller by far than the giant ants and beetles thronging the corridors, being no bigger than the head on to which it had jumped—but then Raleigh screamed, and Thomas realized that his friend was in deadly danger.
Thomas had no weapon, and there was none in Raleigh’s clothes. Whether Field had one or not was irrelevant, as his first impulse had been to throw himself backwards, away from the danger. Thomas, by contrast, leapt back into the pool and grabbed the thing that had attacked Raleigh with both hands.
It was extremely hairy, and it immediately resisted capture with all eight
