Out Of The Silent Planet Read Free Page A

silver paper which covered the cork with the point
of a corkscrew, and then stopped to ask:
    'How do you come to be in this - benighted part of the country?"
    'I'm on a walking tour,' said Ransom; 'slept at Stoke Underwood last night and had hoped to end
at Nadderby tonight. They wouldn't put me up, so I was going on to Sterk.'
    'God!' exclaimed Devine, his corkscrew still idle. 'Do you do it for money, or is it sheer masochism?'
    'Pleasure; of course,' said Ransom, keeping his eye immovably on the still unopened bottle.
    'Can the attraction of it be explained to the uninitiate?' asked Devine, remembering himself
sufficiently to rip up a small portion of the silver paper.
    'I hardly know. To begin with, I like the actual walking -'
    'God! You must have enjoyed the army. Jogging along to Thingummy, eh?'
    'No, no. It's just the opposite of the army. The whole point about the army is that you are never
alone for a moment and can never choose where you're going or even what part of the road you're
walking on. On a walking tour you are absolutely detached. You stop where you like and go on when
you like. As long as it lasts you need consider no one and consult no one but yourself.'
    'Until one night you find a wire waiting at your hotel saying, "Come back at once"',
replied Devine, at last removing the silver paper.
    'Only if you were fool enough to leave a list of addresses and go to them! The worst that could
happen to me would be that man on the wireless saying, "Will Dr Elwin Ransom, believed to be
walking somewhere in the Midlands- "'
    'I begin to see the idea,' said Devine, pausing in the very act of drawing the cork. 'It wouldn't
do if you were in business. You are a lucky devil! But can even you just disappear like that? No
wife, no young, no aged but honest parent or anything of that sort?'
    'Only a married sister in India. And then, you see, I'm a don. And a don in the middle of long
vacation is almost a non-existent creature, as you ought to remember. College neither knows nor
cares where he is, and certainly no one else does.'
    The cork at last came out of the bottle with a heart-cheering noise.
    'Say when,' said Devine, as Ransom held out his glass. 'But I feel sure there's a catch somewhere.
Do you really mean to say that no one knows where you are or when you ought to get back, and no
one can get hold of you?'
    Ransom was nodding in reply when Devine, who had picked up the syphon, suddenly swore. 'I'm afraid
this is empty,' he said. 'Do you mind having water? I'll have to get some from the scullery. How
much do you like?'
    'Fill it up, please,' said Ransom.
    A few minutes later Devine returned and handed Ransom his long delayed drink. The latter remarked,
as he put down the half-emptied tumbler with a sigh of satisfaction that Devine's choice of residence
was at least as odd as his own choice of a holiday.
    'Quite,' said Devine. 'But if you knew Weston you'd realize that it's much less trouble to go where
he wants than to argue the matter. What you call a strong colleague.'
    'Colleague?' said Ransom inquiringly.
    'In a sense.' Devine glanced at the door, drew his chair closer to Ransom's, and continued in
a more confidential tone. 'He's the goods all right, though. Between ourselves, I am putting a
little money into some experiments he has on hand. It's all straight stuff - the march of progress
and the good of humanity and all that, but it has an industrial side.'
    While Devine was speaking something odd began to happen to Ransom. At first it merely seemed
to him that Devine's words were no longer making sense. He appeared to be saying that he was
industrial all down both sides but could never get an experiment to fit him in London. Then he
realized that Devine was not so much unintelligible as inaudible, which was not surprising, since
he was now so far away - about a mile away, though perfectly clear like something seen through
the wrong end of a telescope. From that bright distance