Out Of The Silent Planet Read Free Page B

where he sat in his tiny chair he was
gazing at Ransom with a new expression on his face. The gaze became disconcerting. Ransom tried
to move in his chair but found that he had lost all power over his own body. He felt quite
comfortable, but it was as if his legs and arms had been bandaged to the chair and his head
gripped in a vice; a beautifully padded, but quite immovable, vice. He did not feel afraid, though
he knew that he ought to be afraid and soon would be. Then, very gradually, the room faded
from his sight.
    Ransom could never be sure whether what followed had any bearing on the events recorded in
this book or whether it was merely an irresponsible dream. It seemed to him that he and Weston
and Devine were all standing in a little garden surrounded by a wall. The garden was bright
and sunlit, but over the top of the wall you could see nothing but darkness. They were trying
to climb over the wall and Weston asked them to give him a hoist up. Ransom kept on telling him
not to go over the wall because it was so dark on the other side, but Weston insisted, and all
three of them set about doing so. Ransom was the last. He got astride on the top of the wall,
sitting on his coat because of the broken bottles. The other two had already dropped down on the
outside into the darkness, but before he followed them a door in the wall which none of them
had noticed was opened from without and the queerest people he had ever seen came into the
garden bringing Weston and Devine back with them. They left them in the garden and retired into
the darkness themselves, locking the door behind them. Ransom found it impossible to get down
from the wall. He remained sitting there, not frightened but rather uncomfortable because his
right leg, which was on the outside, felt so dark and his left leg felt so light. 'My leg will
drop off if it gets much darker,' he said. Then he looked down into the darkness and asked,
'Who are you?' and the Queer People must still have been there for they all replied, 'Hoo
Hoo - Hoo?' just like owls.
    He began to realize that his leg was not so much dark as cold and stiff; because he had been
resting the other on it for so long: and also that he was in an armchair in a lighted room.
A conversation was going on near him and had, he now realized, being going on for some time.
His head was comparatively clear. He realized that he had been drugged or hypnotized, or both,
and he felt that some control over his own body was returning to him though he was still very
weak. He listened intently without trying to move.
    'I'm getting a little tired of this, Weston,' Devine was saying, 'and specially as it's my money
that is being risked. I tell you he'll do quite as well as the boy, and in some ways better. Only,
he'll be coming round very soon now and we must get him on board at once. We ought to have done
it an hour ago.
    'The boy was ideal,' said Weston sulkily. 'Incapable of serving humanity and only too likely to
propagate idiocy. He was the sort of boy who in a civilized community would be automatically
handed over to a state laboratory for experimental purposes.
    'I dare say. But in England he is the sort of boy in whom Scotland Yard might cqnceivably feel
an interest. This busy-body, on the other hand, will not be missed. for months, and even then no
one will know where he was when he disappeared. He came alone. He left no address. He has no
family. And finally he has poked his nose into the whole affair of his own accord.'
    'Well, I confess I don't like it. He is, after all, human. The boy was really almost a - a
preparation. Still, he's only an individual, and probably a quite useless one. We're risking
our own lives, too. In a great cause - For the Lord's sake. don't start all that stuff now.
We haven't time.'
    'I dare say,' replied Weston, 'he would consent if he could be made to understand.'
    'Take his feet and I'll take his head,' said Devine.
    'If you really think he's