resources, that awfulness which they themselves could no more supply than a banker’s ledger. But this knowledge remained an abstraction. Mere bigness and loneliness overbore him.
These thoughts must have taken several hours and absorbed all his attention. He was aroused by what he least expected the sound of a human voice. Emerging from his reverie he saw that all the fishes had deserted him. His own was swimming feebly: and there a few yards away, no longer fleeing him but: moving slowly towards him, was the Un-man. It sat hugging itself, its eyes almost shut up with bruises, its flesh the colour of liver, its leg apparently broken, its mouth twisted with pain.
“Ransom,” it said feebly. Ransom held his tongue. He was not going to encourage it to start that game again.
“Ransom,” it said again in a broken voice, “for God’s sake speak to me.”
He glanced at it in surprise. Tears were on its cheeks. “Ransom, don’t cold-shoulder me,” it said. “Tell me what has happened. What have they done to us? You-you’re bleeding. My leg’s broken . . .” its voice died away in whimper.
“Who are you?” he asked sharply.
“Oh, don’t pretend you don’t know me,” mumbled Weston’s voice. “I’m Weston. You’re Ransom-Elwin Ransom of Leicester, Cambridge, the philologist. We’ve had our quarrels I know. I’m sorry. I dare say I’ve been in the wrong. Ransom, you’ll not leave me to die in this horrible place, will you?”
“Where did you learn Aramaic?” asked Ransom, keeping his eyes on the other.
“Aramaic?” said Weston’s voice. “I don’t know what you talking about. It’s not much of a game to make fun of a dying man.”
“But are you really Weston?” said Ransom, for he began to think that Weston had actually come back.
“Who else should I be?” came the answer, with a burst of weak temper, on the verge of tears.
“Where have you been?” asked Ransom.
Weston-if it was Weston-shuddered. “Where are we now?” he asked presently.
“In Perelandra-Venus, you know,” answered Ransom. “Have you found the space-ship?” asked Weston.
“I never saw it except at a distance,” said Ransom. “And I’ve no idea where it is now-a couple of hundred miles away for all I know.”
“You mean we’re trapped?” said Weston, almost in scream. Ransom said nothing and the other bowed his head and cried like a baby.
“Come,” said Ransom at last, “there’s no good taking it like that. Hang it all, you’d not be much better off if you were on Earth. You remember they’re having a war there. The Germans may be bombing London to bits at this moment!” Then seeing the creature still crying, he added, “Buck up, Weston. It’s only death, all said and done. We should have to die some day, you know. We shan’t lack water, and hunger-without thirst-isn’t too bad. As for drowning-well, a bayonet wound, or cancer, would be worse.”
“You mean to say you’re going to leave me,” said Weston. “I can’t, even if I wanted to,” said Ransom. “Don’t you see I’m in the same position as yourself?”
“You’ll promise not to go off and leave me in the lurch?” said Weston.
“All right, I’ll promise if you like. Where could I go to?” Weston looked very slowly all round and then urged his fish little nearer to Ransom’s.
“Where is . . . it?” he asked in a whisper. “You know,” and he made meaningless gestures.
“I might ask you the same question,” said Ransom.
“Me?” said Weston. His face was, in one way and another, so disfigured that it was hard to be sure expression. Have you any idea of what’s been happenmg to you for the last few days?” said Ransom.
Weston once more looked all round him uneasily. “It’s all true, you know,” he said at last. “What’s all true?” said Ransom.
Suddenly Weston turned on him with a snarl of rage. “It’s all very well for you,” he said. “Drowning doesn’t hurt and death is bound to come anyway, and all that nonsense. What do you know about death? It’s all true, I tell you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ve been stuffing myself up with a lot of nonsense all my life,” said Weston. “Trying to persuade myself that it matters what happens to the human race . . . trying to believe that anything you can do will make the universe bearable. It’s all rot, do you see?”
“And something else is truer!”
“Yes,” said Weston, and then was silent for a long time. “We’d better turn our fishes head on to this,” said Ransom presently, his eyes on the sea, “or we’ll be driven apart.” Weston obeyed without seeming to notice what he did, and for a time the two men were riding very slowly side by side.
“I’ll tell you what’s true,” said Weston presently. “What?”
“A little child that creeps upstairs when nobody’s looking and very slowly turns the handle to take one peep into the room where its grandmother’s dead body is laid out-and then runs away and has bad dreams. An enormous grandmother, you understand.”
“What do you mean by saying that’s truer?”
“I mean that child knows something about the universe which all science and all religion is trying to hide.”
Ransom said nothing.
“Lots of things,” said Weston presently. “Children are afraid to go through a churchyard at night, and the grown-ups tell them not to be silly: but the children know better than the grown-ups. People in Central Africa doing beastly things with masks on in the middle of the night-and missionaries and civil servants say it’s all superstition. Well, the blacks know more about the universe than the white people. Dirty priests in back streets in Dublin frightening half-witted children to death with stories about it. You’d say they are unenlightened. They’re not: except that they think there is a way of escape. There isn’t. That is the real universe, always has been, always will be. That’s what it all means.”
“I’m not quite clear-” began Ransom, when Weston interrupted him.
T “That’s why it’s so important to live as long as you can. All the good things are now-a thin little rind of what we call life, ut on for show, and then-the real universe for ever and ever. o thicken the rind by one centimetre-to live one week, one day, one half hour longer-that’s the only thing that matters. Of course you don’t know it: but every man who is waiting to be hanged knows it. You say “What difference does a short reprieve make?” What difference!!”
“But nobody need go there,” said Ransom.
“I know that’s what you believe,” said Weston. “But you’re wrong. It’s only a small parcel of civilised people who think that. Humanity as a whole knows better. It knows-Homer knew-that all the dead have sunk down into the inner darkness: under the rind. All witless, all twittering, gibbering, decaying. Bogeymen. Every savage knows that all ghosts hate the living who are still enjoying the rind: just as old women hate girls who still have their good looks. It’s quite right to be afraid of the ghosts. You’re going to be one all the same.”
“You don’t believe in God,” said Ransom.
“Well, now, that’s another point,” said Weston. “I’ve been to church as well as you when I was a boy. There’s more sense in parts of the Bible than you religious people know. Doesn’t is say He’s the God of the living, not of the dead? That’s just it. Perhaps your God does exist-but it makes no difference whether He does or not. No, of course you wouldn’t see it; but one day you will. I don’t think you’ve got the idea of the rind-the thin outer skin which we call life-really clear. Picture the universe as an infinite glove with this very thin crust on the outside. But remember its thickness is a thickness of time. It’s about seventy years thick in the best places. We are born on the surface of it and all our lives we are sinking through it. When we’ve got all the way through then we are what’s called Dead: we’ve got into the dark part inside, the real globe. If your God exists, He’s not in the globe-He’s outside, like a moon. As we pass into the interior we pass out of His ken. He doesn’t follow us in. You would express it by saying He’s not in time-which you think comforting! In other words He stays put: out in the light and air, outside. But we are in time. We “move with the times”. That is, from His point of view, we move away, into what He regards as nonentity, where He never follows. That is all there is to us, all there ever was. He may be there in what you call ‘Life’, or He may not. What difference does it make? We’re not going to be there for long!”
“That could hardly be the whole story,” said Ransom. “If the whole universe were like that, then we, being parts of it, would feel at home in such a universe. The very fact that it strikes us as monstrous-”
“Yes,” interrupted Weston, “that would be all very well if it wasn’t that reasoning itself is only valid as long as
