them. As to conditions, well, I don’t know much. It will be warm: I’m to go naked. Our astronomers don’t know anything about the surface of Perelandra at all. The outer layer of her atmosphere is too thick. The main problem, apparently, is whether she revolves on her own axis or not, and at what speed. There are two schools of thought. There’s a man called Schiaparelli who thinks she revolves once on herself in the same time it takes her to go once round Arbol – I mean, the Sun. The other people think she revolves on her own axis once in every twenty-three hours. That’s one of the things I shall find out.’
‘If Schiaparelli is right there’d be perpetual day on one side of her and perpetual night on the other?’
He nodded, musing. ‘It’d be a funny frontier,’ he said presently. ‘Just think of it. You’d come to a country of eternal twilight, getting colder and darker every mile you went. And then presently you wouldn’t be able to go farther because there’d be no more air. I wonder can you stand in the day, just on the right side of the frontier, and look into the night which you can never reach? And perhaps see a star or two – the only place you could see them, for of course in the Day-Lands they would never be visible … Of course if they have a scientific civilisation they may have diving-suits or things like submarines on wheels for going into the Night.’
His eyes sparkled, and even I, who had been mainly thinking of how I should miss him and wondering what chances there were of my ever seeing him again, felt a vicarious thrill of wonder and of longing to know. Presently he spoke again.
‘You haven’t yet asked me where you come in,’ he said.
‘Do you mean I’m to go too?’ said I, with a thrill of exactly the opposite kind.
‘Not at all. I mean you are to pack me up, and to stand by to unpack me when I return – if all goes well.’
‘Pack you? Oh, I’d forgotten about that coffin affair. Ransom, how on earth are you going to travel in that thing? What’s the motive power? What about air – and food – and water? There’s only just room for you to lie in it.’
‘The Oyarsa of Malacandra himself will be the motive power. He will simply move it to Venus. Don’t ask me how. I have no idea what organs or instruments they use. But a creature who has kept a planet in its orbit for several billions of years will be able to manage a packing-case!’
‘But what will you eat? How will you breathe?’
‘He tells me I shall need to do neither. I shall be in some state of suspended animation, as far as I can make out. I can’t understand him when he tries to describe it. But that’s his affair.’
‘Do you feel quite happy about it?’ said I, for a sort of horror was beginning once more to creep over me.
‘If you mean, Does my reason accept the view that he will (accidents apart) deliver me safe on the surface of Perelandra? – the answer is Yes,’ said Ransom. ‘If you mean, Do my nerves and my imagination respond to this view? – I’m afraid the answer is No. One can believe in anaesthetics and yet feel in a panic when they actually put the mask over your face. I think I feel as a man who believes in the future life feels when he is taken out to face a firing party. Perhaps it’s good practice.’
‘And I’m to pack you into that accursed thing?’ said I.
‘Yes,’ said Ransom. ‘That’s the first step. We must get out into the garden as soon as the sun is up and point it so that there are no trees or buildings in the way. Across the cabbage bed will do. Then I get in – with a bandage across my eyes, for those walls won’t keep out all the sunlight once I’m beyond the air – and you screw me down. After that, I think you’ll just see it glide off.’
‘And then?’
‘Well, then comes the difficult part. You must hold yourself in readiness to come down here again the moment you are summoned, to take off the lid and let me out when I return.’
‘When do you expect to return?’
‘Nobody can say. Six months – a year – twenty years. That’s the trouble. I’m afraid I’m laying a pretty heavy burden on you.’
‘I might be dead.’
‘I know. I’m afraid part of your burden is to select a successor: at once, too. There are four or five people whom we can trust.’
‘What will the summons be?’
‘Oyarsa will give it. It won’t be mistakable for anything else. You needn’t bother about that side of it. One other point. I’ve no particular reason to suppose I shall come back wounded. But just in case – if you can find a doctor whom we can let into the secret, it might be just as well to bring him with you when you come down to let me out.’
‘Would Humphrey do?’
‘The very man. And now for some more personal matters. I’ve had to leave you out of my will, and I’d like you to know why.’
‘My dear chap, I never thought about your will till this moment.’
‘Of course not. But I’d like to have left you something. The reason I haven’t, is this. I’m going to disappear. It is possible I may not come back. It’s just conceivable there might be a murder trial, and if so one can’t be too careful. I mean, for your sake. And now for one or two other private arrangements.’
We laid our heads together and for a long time we talked about those matters which one usually discusses with relatives and not with friends. I got to know a lot more about Ransom than I had known before, and from the number of odd people whom he recommended to my care, ‘If ever I happened to be able to do anything’, I came to realise the extent and intimacy of his charities. With every sentence the shadow of approaching separation and a kind of graveyard gloom began to settle more emphatically upon us. I found myself noticing and loving all sorts of little mannerisms and expressions in him such as we notice always in a woman we love, but notice in a man only as the last hours of his leave run out or the date of the probably fatal operation draws near. I felt our nature’s incurable incredulity; and could hardly believe that what was now so close, so tangible and (in a sense) so much at my command, would in a few hours be wholly inaccessible, an image – soon, even an elusive image – in my memory. And finally a sort of shyness fell between us because each knew what the other was feeling. It had got very cold.
‘We must be going soon,’ said Ransom.
‘Not till he – the Oyarsa – comes back,’ said I – though, indeed, now that the thing was so near I wished it to be over.
‘He has never left us,’ said Ransom, ‘he has been in the cottage all the time.’
‘You mean he has been waiting in the next room all these hours?’
‘Not waiting. They never have that experience. You and I are conscious of waiting, because we have a body that grows tired or restless, and therefore a sense of cumulative duration. Also we can distinguish duties and spare time and therefore have a conception of leisure. It is not like that with him. He has been here all this time, but you can no more call it waiting than you can call the whole of his existence waiting. You might as well say that a tree in a wood was waiting, or the sunlight waiting on the side of a hill.’ Ransom yawned. ‘I’m tired,’ he said, ‘and so are you. I shall sleep well in that coffin of mine. Come. Let us lug it out.’
We
