Out Of The Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis Read Free Book Online Page B

quite
recognizable object in the immediate foreground' - a hut of unmistakably terrestrial pattern
though built of strange materials.
    'They're human,' he gasped. 'They build houses?'
    'We do,' said Devine. 'Guess again,' and, producing a key from his pocket, proceeded to unlock
a very ordinary padlock on the door of the hut. With a not very clearly defined feeling of
disappointment or relief Ransom realized that his captors were merely returning to their own
camp. They behaved as one might have expected. They walked into the hut, let down the slats
which served for windows, sniffed the close air, expressed' surprise that they had left it so
dirty, and presently reemerged.
    'We'd better see about the stores,' said Weston.
    Ransom soon found that he was to have little leisure for observation and no opportunity of
escape. The monotonous work of transferring food, clothes, weapons and many unidentifiable packages
from the ship to the hut kept him vigorously occupied for the next hour or so, and in the closest
contact with his kidnappers. But something he learned. Before anything else he learned that
Malacandra was beautiful; and he even reflected how odd it was that this possibility had never
entered into his speculations about it. The same peculiar twist of imagination which led him to
people the universe with monsters - had somehow taught him to expect nothing on a strange planet
except rocky desolation or else a network of nightmare machines. He could not say why, now that
he came to think of it. He also discovered that the blue water surrounded them on at least three
sides: his view in the fourth direction was blotted out by the vast steel football in which they
had come. The hut, in fact, was built either on the point of a peninsula or on the end of an island.
He also came little by little to the conclusion that the water was not merely blue in certain lights
like terrestrial water but 'really' blue. There was something about its behaviour under the gentle
breeze which puzzled him - something wrong or unnatural about the waves. For one thing, they were
too big for such a wind, but that was not the whole secret. They reminded him somehow of the
water that he had seen shooting up under the impact of shells in pictures of naval battles. Then
suddenly realization came to him: they were the wrong shape, out of drawing, far too high for their
length, 'too narrow at the base, too steep in the sides. He was reminded of something he had read
in one of those modern poets about a sea rising in 'turreted walls'.
    'Catch!' shouted Devine. Ransom caught and hurled the parcel on to 'Weston at the hut door.
    On one side the water extended a long way - about a quarter of a mile, he thought, but perspective
was still difficult in the strange world. On the other side it was much narrower, not wider than
fifteen feet perhaps, and seemed to be flowing over a shallow - broken and swirling water that
made a softer and more hissing sound than water on earth; and where it washed the hither bank -
the pinkish-white vegetation went down to the very brink - there was a bubbling and sparkling
which suggested effervescence. He tried hard, in such stolen glances as the work allowed him, to
make out something of the farther shore. A mass of something purple, so huge that he took it
for a heather-covered mountain, was his first impression: on the other side, beyond the larger
water, there was something of the same kind. But there, he could see over the top of it. Beyond
were strange upright shapes of whitish green; too jagged and irregular for buildings, too thin
and steep for mountains. Beyond and above these again was the rose-coloured cloud-like mass. It
might really be a cloud but it was very solid looking and did not seem to have moved since he first
set eyes on it from the manhole. It looked like the top of a gigantic red cauliflower - or like a
huge bowl of red soapsuds - and it was exquisitely beautiful in tint