w us here."

"We shan't see much if the light isn't better," I remarked.

"This is only the outer crust. Down below-- On this scale-- There will
be everything. Do you notice how different they seem one from another?
The story we shall take back!"

"Some rare sort of animal," I said, "might comfort himself in that way
while they were bringing him to the Zoo.... It doesn't follow that we are
going to be shown all these things."

"When they find we have reasonable minds," said Cavor, "they will want to
learn about the earth. Even if they have no generous emotions, they will
teach in order to learn.... And the things they must know! The
unanticipated things!"

He went on to speculate on the possibility of their knowing things he had
never hoped to learn on earth, speculating in that way, with a raw wound
from that goad already in his skin! Much that he said I forget, for my
attention was drawn to the fact that the tunnel along which we had been
marching was opening out wider and wider. We seemed, from the feeling of
the air, to be going out into a huge space. But how big the space might
really be we could not tell, because it was unlit. Our little stream of
light ran in a dwindling thread and vanished far ahead. Presently the
rocky walls had vanished altogether on either hand. There was nothing to
be seen but the path in front of us and the trickling hurrying rivulet of
blue phosphorescence. The figures of Cavor and the guiding Selenite
marched before me, the sides of their legs and heads that were towards the
rivulet were clear and bright blue, their darkened sides, now that the
reflection of the tunnel wall no longer lit them, merged indistinguishably
in the darkness beyond.

And soon I perceived that we were approaching a declivity of some sort,
because the little blue stream dipped suddenly out of sight.

In another moment, as it seemed, we had reached the edge. The shining
stream gave one meander of hesitation and then rushed over. It fell to a
depth at which the sound of its descent was absolutely lost to us. Far
below was a bluish glow, a sort of blue mist--at an infinite distance
below. And the darkness the stream dropped out of became utterly void and
black, save that a thing like a plank projected from the edge of the cliff
and stretched out and faded and vanished altogether. There was a warm air
blowing up out of the gulf.

For a moment I and Cavor stood as near the edge as we dared, peering into
a blue-