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 went into the next room and I was made to stand before the featureless flame which did not wait but just was, and there, with Ransom as our interpreter, I was in some fashion presented and with my own tongue sworn in to this great business. Then we took down the black-out and let in the grey, comfortless morning. Between us we carried out the casket and the lid, so cold they seemed to burn our fingers. There was a heavy dew on the grass and my feet were soaked through at once. The eldil was with us, outside there, on the little lawn; hardly visible to my eyes at all in the daylight. Ransom showed me the clasps of the lid and how it was to be fastened on, and then there was some miserable hanging about, and then the final moment when he went back into the house and reappeared, naked; a tall, white, shivering, weary scarecrow of a man at that pale, raw hour. When he had got into the hideous box he made me tie a thick black bandage round his eyes and head. Then he lay down. I had no thoughts of the planet Venus now and no real belief that I should see him again. If I had dared I would have gone back on the whole scheme: but the other thing—the creature that did not wait—was there, and the fear of it was upon me. With feelings that have since often returned to me in nightmare I fastened the cold lid down on top of the living man and stood back. Next moment I was alone. I didn’t see how it went. I went back indoors and was sick. A few hours later I shut up the cottage and returned to Oxford.
Then the months went past and grew to a year and a little more than a year, and we had raids and bad news and hopes deferred and all the earth became full of darkness and cruel habitations, till the night when Oyarsa came to me again. After that there was a journey in haste for Humphrey and me, standings in crowded corridors and waitings at small hours on windy platforms, and finally the moment when we stood in clear early sunlight in the little wilderness of deep weeds which Ransom’s garden had now become and saw a black speck against the sunrise and then, almost silently, the casket had glided down between us. We flung ourselves upon it and had the lid off in about a minute and a half.
“Good God! All smashed to bits,” I cried at my first glance of the interior.
“Wait a moment,” said Humphrey. And as he spoke the figure in the coffin began to stir and then sat up, shaking off as it did so a mass of red things which had covered its head and shoulders and which I had momentarily mistaken for ruin and blood. As they streamed off him and were caught in the wind I perceived them to be flowers. He blinked for a second or so, then called us by our names, gave each of us a hand, and stepped out on the grass.
“How are you both?” he said. “You’re looking rather knocked up.”
I was silent for a moment, astonished at the form which had risen from that narrow house—almost a new Ransom, glowing with health and rounded with muscle and seemingly ten years younger. In the old days he had been beginning to show a few grey hairs; but now the beard which swept his chest was pure gold.
“Hullo, you’ve cut your foot,” said Humphrey: and I saw now that Ransom was bleeding from the heel.
“Ugh, it’s cold down here,” said Ransom. “I hope you’ve got the boiler going and some hot water—and some clothes.”
“Yes,” said I, as we followed him into the house. “Humphrey thought of all that. I’m afraid I shouldn’t have.”
Ransom was now in the bathroom, with the door open, veiled in clouds of steam, and Humphrey and I were talking to him from the landing. Our questions were more numerous than he could answer.
“That idea of Schiaparelli’s is all wrong,” he shouted. “They have an ordinary day and night there,” and “No, my heel doesn’t hurt—or, at least, it’s only just begun to,” and “Thanks, any old clothes. Leave them on the chair” and “No thanks. I don’t somehow feel like bacon or eggs or anything of that kind. No fruit, you say? Oh well, no matter. Bread or porridge or something” and “I’ll be down in five minutes now.”
He kept on asking if we were really all right and seemed to think we looked ill. I went down to get
