Tales of Space and Time
other side of the crystal. Mr. Cave was so startled and so impressed by
the absolute reality of these eyes, that he drew his head back from the
crystal to look behind it. He had become so absorbed in watching that he
was quite surprised to find himself in the cool darkness of his little
shop, with its familiar odour of methyl, mustiness, and decay. And, as
he blinked about him, the glowing crystal faded, and went out.
Such were the first general impressions of Mr. Cave. The story is
curiously direct and circumstantial. From the outset, when the valley
first flashed momentarily on his senses, his imagination was strangely
affected, and, as he began to appreciate the details of the scene he
saw, his wonder rose to the point of a passion. He went about his
business listless and distraught, thinking only of the time when he
should be able to return to his watching. And then a few weeks after his
first sight of the valley came the two customers, the stress and
excitement of their offer, and the narrow escape of the crystal from
sale, as I have already told.
Now, while the thing was Mr. Cave's secret, it remained a mere wonder, a
thing to creep to covertly and peep at, as a child might peep upon a
forbidden garden. But Mr. Wace has, for a young scientific investigator,
a particularly lucid and consecutive habit of mind. Directly the crystal
and its story came to him, and he had satisfied himself, by seeing the
phosphorescence with his own eyes, that there really was a certain
evidence for Mr. Cave's statements, he proceeded to develop the matter
systematically. Mr. Cave was only too eager to come and feast his eyes
on this wonderland he saw, and he came every night from half-past eight
until half-past ten, and sometimes, in Mr. Wace's absence, during the
day. On Sunday afternoons, also, he came. From the outset Mr. Wace made
copious notes, and it was due to his scientific method that the relation
between the direction from which the initiating ray entered the crystal
and the orientation of the picture were proved. And, by covering the
crystal in a box perforated only with a small aperture to admit the
exciting ray, and by substituting black holland for his buff blinds, he
greatly improved the conditions of the observations; so that in a little
while they were able to survey the valley in any direction they desired.
So having cleared the way, we may give a brief account of this visionary
world within the crystal. The things were in all cases seen by Mr. Cave,
and the method of working was invariably for him to watch the crystal
and report what he saw, while Mr. Wace (who as a science student had
learnt the trick of writing in the dark) wrote a brief note of his
report. When the crystal faded, it was put into its box in the proper
position and the electric light turned on. Mr. Wace asked questions, and
suggested observations to clear up difficult points. Nothing, indeed,
could have been less visionary and more matter-of-fact.
The attention of Mr. Cave had been speedily directed to the bird-like
creatures he had seen so abundantly present in each of his earlier
visions. His first impression was soon corrected, and he considered for
a time that they might represent a diurnal species of bat. Then he
thought, grotesquely enough, that they might be cherubs. Their heads
were round, and curiously human, and it was the eyes of one of them that
had so startled him on his second observation. They had broad, silvery
wings, not feathered, but glistening almost as brilliantly as new-killed
fish and with the same subtle play of colour, and these wings were not
built on the plan of bird-wing or bat, Mr. Wace learned, but supported
by curved ribs radiating from the body. (A sort of butterfly wing with
curved ribs seems best to express their appearance.) The body was small,
but fitted with two bunches of prehensile organs, like long tentacles,
immediately under the mouth. Incredible as it appeared to Mr. Wace, the
persuasion at last became irresistible, that it was these creatures
which owned the great quasi-human buildings and the magnificent garden
that made the broad valley so splendid. And Mr. Cave perceived that the
buildings, with other peculiarities, had no doors, but that the great
circular windows, which opened freely, gave the creatures egress and
entrance. They would alight upon their tentacles, fold their wings to a
smallness almost rod-like, and hop into the interior. But among them was
a multitude of smaller-winged creatures, like great dragon-flies and
moths and flying beetles, and across the greensward brilliantly-coloured
gigantic ground-beetles crawled lazily to and fro. Moreover, on the
causeways and terraces, large-headed creatures similar to the greater
winged flies, but wingless, were visible, hopping busily upon their
hand-like tangle of tentacles.
Allusion has already been made to the glittering objects upon masts that
stood upon the terrace of the nearer building. It dawned upon Mr. Cave,
after regarding one of these masts very fixedly on one particularly
vivid day, that the glittering object there was a crystal exactly like
that into which he peered. And a still more careful scrutiny convinced
him that each one in a vista of nearly twenty carried a similar object.
Occasionally one of the large flying creatures would flutter up to one,
and, folding its wings and coiling a number of its tentacles about the
mast, would regard the crystal fixedly for a space,--sometimes for as
long as fifteen minutes. And a series of observations, made at the
suggestion of Mr. Wace, convinced both watchers that, so far as this
visionary world was concerned, the crystal into which they peered
actually stood at the summit of the endmost mast on the terrace, and
that on one occasion at least one of these inhabitants of this other
world had looked into Mr. Cave's face while he was making these
observations.
So much for the essential facts of this very singular story. Unless we
dismiss it all as the ingenious fabrication of Mr. Wace, we have to
believe one of two things: either that Mr. Cave's crystal was in two
worlds at once, and that, while it was carried about in one, it remained
stationary in the other, which seems altogether absurd; or else that it
had some peculiar relation of sympathy with another and exactly similar
crystal in this other world, so that what was seen in the interior of
the one in this world was, under suitable conditions, visible to an
observer in the corresponding crystal in the other world; and _vice
versa_. At present, indeed, we do not know of any way in which two
crystals could so come _en rapport_, but nowadays we know enough to
understand that the thing is not altogether impossible. This view of the
crystals as _en rapport_ was the supposition that occurred to Mr. Wace,
and to me at least it seems extremely plausible....
And where was this other world? On this, also, the alert intelligence of
Mr. Wace speedily threw light. After sunset, the sky darkened
rapidly--there was a very brief twilight interval indeed--and the stars
shone out. They were recognisably the same as those we see, arranged in
the same constellations. Mr. Cave recognised the Bear, the Pleiades,
Aldebaran, and Sirius: so that the other world must be somewhere in the
solar system, and, at the utmost, only a few hundreds of millions of
miles from our own. Following up this clue, Mr. Wace learned that the
midnight sky was a darker blue even than our midwinter sky, and that the
sun seemed a little smaller. _And there were two small moons!_ "like our
moon but smaller, and quite differently marked" one of which moved so
rapidly that its motion was clearly visible as one regarded it. These
moons were never high in the sky, but vanished as they rose: that is,
every time they revolved they were eclipsed because they were so near
their primary planet. And all this answers quite completely, although
Mr. Cave did not know it, to what must be the condition of things on
Mars.
Indeed, it seems an exceedingly plausible conclusion that peering into
this crystal Mr. Cave did actually see the planet Mars and its
inhabitants. And, if that be the case, then the evening star that shone
so brilliantly in the sky of that distant vision, was neither more nor
less than our own familiar earth.
For a time the Martians--if they were Martians--do not seem to have
known of Mr. Cave's inspection. Once or twice one would come to peer,
and go away very shortly to some other mast, as though the vision was
unsatisfactory. During this time Mr. Cave was able to watch the
proceedings of these winged people without being disturbed by their
attentions, and, although his report is necessarily vague and
fragmentary, it is nevertheless very suggestive. Imagine the impression
of humanity a Martian observer would get who, after a difficult process
of preparation and with considerable fatigue to the eyes, was able to
peer at London from the steeple of St. Martin's Church for stretches, at
longest, of four minutes at a time. Mr. Cave was unable to ascertain if
the winged Martians were the same as the Martians who hopped about the
causeways and terraces, and if the latter could put on wings at will. He
several times saw certain clumsy bipeds, dimly suggestive of apes, white
and partially translucent, feeding among certain of the lichenous trees,
and once some of these fled before one of the hopping, round-headed
Martians. The latter caught one in its tentacles, and then the picture
faded suddenly and left Mr. Cave most tantalisingly in the dark. On
another occasion a vast thing, that Mr. Cave thought at first was some
gigantic insect, appeared advancing along the causeway beside the canal
with extraordinary rapidity. As this drew nearer Mr. Cave perceived that
it was a mechanism of shining metals and of extraordinary complexity.
And then, when he looked again, it had passed out of sight.
After a time Mr. Wace aspired to attract the attention of the Martians,
and the next time that the strange eyes of one of them appeared close to
the crystal Mr. Cave cried out and sprang away, and they immediately
turned on the light and began to gesticulate in a manner suggestive of
signalling. But when at last Mr. Cave examined the crystal again the
Martian had departed.
Thus far these observations had progressed in early November, and then
Mr. Cave, feeling that the suspicions of his family about the crystal
were allayed, began to take it to and fro with him in order that, as
occasion arose in the daytime or night, he might comfort himself with
what was fast becoming the most real thing in his existence.
In December Mr. Wace's work in connection with a forthcoming examination
became heavy, the sittings were reluctantly suspended for a week, and
for ten or eleven days--he is not quite sure which--he saw nothing of
Cave. He then grew anxious to resume these investigations, and, the
stress of his seasonal labours being abated, he went down to Seven
Dials. At the corner he noticed a shutter before a bird fancier's
window, and then another at a cobbler's. Mr. Cave's shop was closed.
He rapped and the door was opened by the step-son in black. He at once
called Mrs. Cave, who was, Mr. Wace could not but observe, in cheap but
ample widow's weeds of the most imposing pattern. Without any very
great surprise Mr. Wace learnt that Cave was dead and already buried.
She was in tears, and her voice was a little thick. She had just
returned from Highgate. Her mind seemed occupied with her own prospects
and the honourable details of the obsequies, but Mr. Wace was at last
able to learn the particulars of Cave's death. He had been found dead in
his shop in the early morning, the day after his last visit to Mr. Wace,