C. S. Lewis - Voyage to Venus

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VOYAGE TO VENUS

{PERELANDRA}

C. S.LEWIS

PAN BOOKS LTD : LONDON

PREFACE

THIS story can be read by itself but is also a sequel to Out of the Silent Planet in which some account

was given of Ransom's adventures in Mars-or, as its inhabitants call it, Malacandra. All the human

characters in this book are purely fictitious and none of them is allegorical. C.S.L.

First published 1943 by John Lane the Bodley Head Ltd.

Printed in Great Britain by Richard Clay {The Chaucer Press), Ltd., Bungay, Suffolk

Chapter One

As I left the railway station at Worchester and set out on the three-mile walk to Ransom's cottage, I

reflected that no one on that platform could possibly guess the truth about the man I was going to visit.

The flat heath which spread out before me (for the village lies all behind and to the north of the station)

looked an ordinary heath. The gloomy five-o'clock sky was such as you might see on any autumn

afternoon. The few houses and the clumps of red or yellowish trees were in no way remarkable. Who

could imagine that a little farther on in that quiet landscape I should meet and shake by the hand a man

who had lived and eaten and drunk in a world forty million miles distant from London, who had seen

this Earth from where it looks like a mere point of green fire, and who had spoken face to face with a

creature whose life began before our own planet was inhabitable?

For Ransom had met other things in Mars besides the Martians. He had met the creatures called eldila,

and specially that great eldil who is the ruler of Mars or, in their speech, the Oyarsa of Malacandra. The

eldila are very different from any planetary creatures. Their physical organism, if organism it can be

called, is quite unlike either the human or the Martian. They do not eat, breed, breathe, or suffer natural

death, and to that extent resemble thinking minerals more than they resemble anything we should

recognise as an animal. Though they appear on planets and may even seem to our senses to be

sometimes resident in them, the precise spatial location of an eldil at any moment presents great

problems. They themselves regard space (or Deep Heaven) as their true habitat, and the planets are to

them not closed worlds but merely moving points-perhaps even interruptions-in what we know as the

Solar System and they as the Field of Arbol.

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At present I was going to see Ransom in answer to a wire which had said 'Come down Thursday if

possible. Business.' I guessed what sort of business he meant, and that was why I kept on telling myself

that it would be perfectly delightful to spend a night with Ransom and also kept on feeling that I was not

enjoying the prospect as much as I ought to. It was the eldila that were my trouble. I could just get used

to the fact that Ransom had been to Mars ... but to have met an eldil, to have spoken with something

whose life appeared to be practically unending. Even the journey to Mars was bad enough. A man who

has been in another world does not come back unchanged. One can't put the difference into words. When

the man is a friend it may become painful: the old footing is not easy to recover. But much worse was

my growing conviction that, since his return, the eldila were not leaving him alone. Little things in his

conversation, little mannerisms, accidental allusions which he made and then drew back with an

awkward apology, all suggested that he was keeping strange company; that there were-well visitors-at

that cottage.

As I plodded along the empty, unfenced road which runs across the middle of Worchester Common I

tried to dispel my growing sense of malaise by analysing it. What, after all, was I afraid of? The moment

I had put this question I regretted it. I was shocked to find that I had mentally used the word 'afraid'. Up

till then I had tried to pretend that I was feeling only distaste, or embarrassment, or even boredom. But

the mere word afraid had let the cat out of the bag. I realised now that my emotion was neither more, nor

less, nor other, than fear. And I realised that I was afraid of two things-afraid that sooner or later I

myself might meet an eldil, and afraid that I might get 'drawn in'. I suppose everyone knows this fear of

getting 'drawn in'-the moment at which a man realises that what had seemed mere speculations are on

the point of landing him in the Communist Party or the Christian Church-the sense that a door has just

slammed and left him on the inside. The thing was such sheer bad luck. Ransom himself had been taken

to Mars (or Malacandra) against his will and almost by accident, and I had become connected with his

affair by another accident. Yet here we were both getting more and more involved in what I could only

describe as inter-planetary politics. As to ' my intense wish never to come into contact with the eldila

myself, I am not sure whether I can make you understand it. It ' was something more than a prudent

desire to avoid creatures , ' alien in kind, very powerful, and very intelligent. The truth was that all I

heard about them served to connect two things which one's mind tends to keep separate, and that

connecting gave one a sort of shock. We tend to think about non-human intelligences in two distinct

categories which we label 'normal' and 'supernatural' respectively. We think, in one mood, of Mr. Wells'

Martians (very unlike the real Malacandrians, by ' the bye), or his Selenites. In quite a different mood we

let our minds loose on the possibility of angels, ghosts, fairies, and the like. But the very moment we are

compelled to recognise a creature in either class as real the distinction begins to get blurred: and when it

is a creature like an eldil the distinction vanishes altogether. These things were not animals-to that extent

one had to classify them with the second group; but they had some kind of material vehicle whose

presence could (in principle) be scientifically verified. To that extent they belonged to the first group.

The distinction between natural and supernatural, in fact, broke down; and when it had done so, one

realised how great a comfort it had been-how it had eased the burden of intolerable strangeness which

this universe imposes on us by dividing it into two halves and encouraging the mind never to think of

both in the same context. What price we may have paid for this comfort in the way of false security and

accepted confusion of thought is another matter.

'This is a long, dreary road,' I thought to myself. 'Thank goodness I haven't anything to carry.' And then,

with a start of realisation, I remembered that I ought to be carrying a pack, containing my things for the

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night. I swore to myself. I must have left the thing in the train. Will you believe me when I say that my

immediate impulse was to turn back to the station and 'do something about it'? Of course there was

nothing to be done which could not equally well be done by ringing up from the cottage. That train, with

my pack in it, must by this time be miles away.

I realise that now as clearly as you do. But at the moment it seemed perfectly obvious that I must retrace

my steps, and I had indeed begun to do so before reason or conscience awoke and set me once more

plodding forwards. In doing this I discovered more clearly than before how very little I wanted to do it.

It was such hard work that I felt as if I were walking against a headwind; but in fact it was one of those

still, dead evenings when no twig stirs, and beginning to be a little foggy.

The farther I went the more impossible I found it to think about anything except these eldila. What, after

all, did Ransom really know about them? By his own account the sorts which he had met did not usually

visit our own planet-or had only begun to do so since his return from Mars. We had eldila of our own, he

said. Tellurian eldils, but they were of a different kind and mostly hostile to man. That, in fact, was why

our world was cut off from communication with the other planets. He described us as being in a state of

siege, as being, in fact, an enemy-occupied territory, held down by eldils who were at war both with us

and with the eldils of 'Deep Heaven', or 'space'. Like the bacteria on the microscopic level, so these co-

inhabiting pests on the macroscopic permeate our whole life invisibly and are the real explanation of that

fatal bent which is the main lesson of history. If all this were true, then, of course, we should welcome

the fact that eldila of a better kind had at last broken the frontier (it is, they say, at the Moon's orbit) and

were beginning to visit us. Always assuming that Ransom's account was the correct one.

A nasty idea occurred to me. Why should not Ransom be a dupe? If something from outer space were

trying to invade our planet, what better smoke-screen could it put up than this very story of Ransom's?

Was there the slightest evidence, after all, for the existence of the supposed maleficent eldils on this

earth? How if my friend were the unwitting bridge, the Trojan Horse, whereby some possible invader

were effecting its landing on Tellus?, And then once more, just as when I had discovered that I had to

pack, the impulse to go no farther returned to me. "Go back, go back," it whispered to me, "send him a

wire, tell him you were ill, say you'll come some other time-anything." The strength of the feeling

astonished me. I stood still for a few moments telling myself not to be a fool, and when I finally resumed

my walk I was wondering whether this might be the beginning of a nervous breakdown. No sooner had

this idea occurred to me than it also became a new reason for not visiting Ransom. Obviously, I wasn't

fit for any such jumpy 'business' as his telegram almost certainly referred to. I wasn't even fit to spend an

ordinary weekend away from home. My only sensible course was to turn back at once and get safe

home, before I lost my memory or became hysterical, and to put myself in the hands of a doctor. It was

sheer madness to go on. '

I was now coming to the end of the heath and going down a ' small hill, with a copse on my left and

some apparently deserted industrial buildings on my right. At the bottom the evening ' mist was partly

thick. 'They call it a Breakdown at first. Wasn't there some mental disease in which quite ordinary

objects looked to the patient unbelievably ominous?..

looked, in fact, just as that abandoned factory looks to me now? Great bulbous shapes of cement,

strange brickwork bogeys, glowered at me over dry scrubby grass pock-marked with grey pools and

intersected with the remains of a light railway. I was reminded of things which Ransom had seen in that

other world: only there, they were people. Long spindle-like giants whom he calls Sorns. What made it

worse was that he regarded them as good people-very much nicer, in fact, than our own race. He was in

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league with them! How did I know he was even a dupe? He might be something worse .. . and again I

came to a standstill.

The reader, not knowing Ransom, will not understand how contrary to all reason this idea was. The

rational part of my mind, even at that moment, knew perfectly well that even if the whole universe were

crazy and hostile. Ransom was sane and wholesome and honest. And this part of my mind in the end

sent me forward-but with a reluctance and a difficulty I can hardly put into words. What enabled me to

go on was the knowledge (deep down inside me) that I was getting nearer at every stride to the one

friend: but I felt that I was getting nearer to the one enemy-the traitor, the sorcerer, the man in league

with 'them' .. . walking into the trap with my eyes open, like a fool. "They call it a breakdown at first,"

said my mind, "and send you to a nursing home; later on they move you to an asylum."

I was past the dead factory now, down in the fog, where it was very cold. Then came a moment-the first

one-of absolute terror and I had to bite my lip to keep myself from screaming. It was only a cat that had

run across the road, but I found myself completely unnerved. "Soon you will really be screaming," said

my inner tormentor, "running round and round, screaming, and you won't be able to stop it."

There was a little empty house by the side of the road, with most of the windows boarded up and one

staring like the eye of a dead fish. Please understand that at ordinary times the idea of a 'haunted house'

means no more to me than it does to you. No more; but also, no less. At that moment it was nothing so

definite as the thought of a ghost that came to me. It was just the word 'haunted'. 'Haunted'. . .

'haunting' . . . what a quality there is in that first syllable! Would not a child who had never heard the

word before and did not know its meaning shudder at the mere sound if, as the day was closing in, it

heard one of its elders say to another "This house is haunted"?

At last I came to the crossroads by the little Wesleyan chapel where I had to turn to the left under the

beech trees. I ought to be seeing the lights from Ransom's windows by now-or was it past blackout time?

My watch had stopped, and I didn't know. It was dark enough but that might be due to the fog and the

trees. It wasn't the dark I was afraid of, you understand. We have all known times when inanimate

objects seemed to have almost a facial expression, and it was the expression of this bit of road which I

did not like. "It's not true," said my mind, • "that people who are really going mad never think they're

going mad." Suppose that real insanity had chosen this place in which to begin? In that case, of course,

the black enmity of those dripping trees-their horrible expectancy-would be a hallucination. But that did

not make it any better. To think that the spectre you see is an illusion does not rob him of his terrors: it

simply adds the further terror of madness itself-and then on top of that the horrible surmise that those

whom the rest call mad have, all along, been the only people who see the world as it really is.

This was upon me now. I staggered on into the cold and the darkness, already half convinced that I must

be entering what is called Madness. But each moment my opinion about sanity changed. Had it ever

been more than a convention-a comfortable set of blinkers, an agreed mode of wishful thinking, which

excluded from our view the full strangeness and malevolence of the universe we are compelled to

inhabit? The things I had begun to know during the last few months of my acquaintance with Ransom

already amounted to more than 'sanity' would admit; but I had come much too far to dismiss them as

unreal. I doubted his interpretation, or his good faith. I did not doubt the existence of the things he had

met in Mars -the Pfifltriggi, the Hrossa, and the Sorns-nor of these interplanetary eldila. I did not even

doubt the reality of that mysterious being whom the eldila call Maleldil and to whom they appear to give

a total obedience such as no Tellurian dictator can command. I knew what Ransom supposed Maleldil to

be.

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Surely that was the cottage. It was very well blacked-out. A childish, whining thought arose on my

mind: why was he not out at the gate to welcome me? An even more childish thought followed. Perhaps

he was in the garden waiting for me, hiding. Perhaps he would jump on me from behind. Perhaps I

should see a figure that looked like Ransom standing with its back to me and when I spoke to it, it would

turn round and show a face that was not human at all. ...

I have naturally no wish to enlarge on this phase of my story. The state of mind I was in was one which I

look back on with humiliation. I would have passed it over if I did not think that some account of it was

necessary for a full understanding of what follows-and, perhaps, of some other things as well. At all

events, I can't really describe how I reached the front door of the cottage. Somehow or other, despite the

loathing and dismay that pulled me back and a sort of invisible wall of resistance that met me in the face,

fighting for each step, and almost shrieking as a harmless spray of the hedge touched my face, I

managed to get through the gate and up the little path. And there I was, drumming on the door and

wringing the handle and shouting to him to let me in as if my life depended on it.

There was no reply-not a sound except the echo of the sounds I had been making myself. There was only

something white fluttering on the knocker. I guessed, of course, that it was a note. In striking a match to

read it by, I discovered how Very shaky my hands had become; and when the match went out I realised

how dark the evening had grown. After several attempts I read the thing. 'Sorry. Had to go up to

Cambridge. Shan't be back till the late train. Eatables in larder and bed made up in your usual room.

Don't wait supper for me unless you feel like it-E. R.' And immediately the impulse to retreat, which had

already assailed me several times, leaped upon me with a sort of demoniac violence. Here was my

retreat left open, positively inviting me. Now was my chance. If anyone expected me to go into that

house and sit there alone for several hours, they were mistaken! But then, as the thought of the return

journey began to take shape in my mind, I faltered. The idea of setting out to traverse the avenue of

beech trees again (it was really dark now) with this house behind me (one had the absurd feeling that it

could follow one) was not attractive. And then, I hope, something better came into my mind-some rag of

sanity and some reluctance to let Ransom down. At least I could try the door to see if it were really

unlocked. I did. And it was. Next moment, I hardly know how, I found myself inside and let it slam

behind me.

It was quite dark, and warm. I groped a few paces forward, I hit my shin violently against something,

and fell. I sat still for a few seconds nursing my leg. I thought I knew the -layout of Ransom's hall-

sitting-room pretty well and couldn't imagine what I had blundered into. Presently I groped in my

pocket, got out my matches, and tried to strike a light. The head of the match flew off. I stamped on it

and sniffed to make sure it was not smouldering on the carpet. As soon as I sniffed I became aware of a

strange smell in the room. I could not for the life of me make out what it was. It had an unlikeness to

ordinary domestic smells as great as that of some chemicals, but it was not a chemical kind of smell at

all. Then I struck another match. It nickered and went out almost at once-not unnaturally, since I was

sitting on the door-mat and there are few front doors even in better built houses than Ransom's country

cottage which do not admit a draught. I had seen nothing by it except the palm of my own hand

hollowed in an attempt to guard the flame. Obviously I must get away from the door. I rose gingerly and

felt my way forward. I came at once to an obstacle-something smooth and very cold that rose a little

higher than my knees. As I touched it I realised that it was the source of the smell. I groped my way

along this to the left and finally came to the end of it. It seemed to present several surfaces and I couldn't

picture the shape. It was not a table, for it had no top. One's hand groped along the rim of a kind of low

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wall-the thumb on the outside and the fingers down inside the enclosed space. If it had felt like wood I

should have supposed it to be a large packing-case. But it was not wood. I thought for a moment that it

was wet, but soon decided that I was mistaking coldness for moisture. When I reached the end of it I

struck my third match.

I saw something white and semi-transparent-rather like ice. A great big thing, very long: a kind of box,

an open box: and of a disquieting shape which I did not immediately recognise. It was big enough to put

a man into. Then I took a step back, lifting the lighted match higher to get a more comprehensive view,

and instantly tripped over something behind me. I found myself sprawling in darkness, not on the carpet,

but on more of the cold substance with the odd smell. How many of the infernal things were there?

I was just preparing to rise again and hunt systematically round the room for a candle when I heard

Ransom's name pronounced, and almost, but not quite, simultaneously I saw the thing I had feared so

long to see. I heard Ransom's name pronounced : but I should not like to say I heard a voice pronounce

it. The sound was quite astonishingly unlike a voice. It was perfectly articulate: it was even, I suppose,

rather beautiful. But it was, if you understand me, inorganic. We feel the difference between animal

voices (including those of the human animal) and all other noises pretty clearly, I fancy, though it is hard

to define. Blood and lungs and the warm, moist cavity of the mouth are somehow indicated in every

Voice. Here they were not. The two syllables sounded more as if they were played on an instrument than

as if they were spoken: and yet they did not sound mechanical either. A machine is something we make

out of natural materials, this was more as if rock or crystal or light had spoken of itself. And it went

through me from chest to groin like the thrill that goes through you when you think you have lost your

hold while climbing a cliff.

That was what I heard. What I saw was simply a very faint rod or pillar of light. I don't think it made a

circle of light either on the floor or the ceiling, but I am not sure of this. It certainly had very little power

of illuminating its surroundings. So far, all is plain sailing. But it had two other characteristics which are

less easy to grasp. One was its colour. Since I saw the thing I must obviously have seen it either white or

coloured; but no efforts of my memory can conjure up the faintest image of what that colour was. I try

blue, and gold, and violet, and red, but none of them will fit. How it is possible to have a visual

experience which immediately and ever after becomes impossible to remember, I do not attempt to

explain. The other was its angle. It was not at right angles to the floor. But as soon as I have said this, I

hasten to add that this way of putting it is a later reconstruction. What one actually felt at the moment

was that the column of light was vertical but the floor was not horizontal-the whole room seemed to

have heeled over as if it were on board ship. The impression, however produced, was that this creature

had reference to some horizontal, to some whole system of directions, based outside the Earth, and that

its mere presence imposed that alien system on me and abolished the terrestrial horizontal.

I had no doubt at all that I was seeing an eldil, and little doubt that I was seeing the archon of Mars, the

Oyarsa of Malacandra. And now that the thing had happened I was no longer in a condition of abject

panic. My sensations were, it is true, in some ways very unpleasant. The fact that it was quite obviously

not organic-the knowledge that intelligence was somehow located in this homogeneous cylinder of light

but not related to it as our consciousness is related to our brains and nerves-was profoundly disturbing. It

would not fit into our categories. The response which we ordinarily make to a living creature and that

which we make to an inanimate object were here both equally inappropriate. On the other hand, all those

doubts which I had felt before I entered the cottage as to whether these creatures were friend or foe, and

whether Ransom were a pioneer or a dupe, had for the moment vanished. My fear was now of another

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kind. I felt sure that the creature was what we call 'good', but I wasn't sure whether I liked 'goodness' so

much as I had supposed. This is a very terrible experience. As long as what you are afraid of is

something evil, you may still hope that the good may come to your rescue. But suppose you struggle

through to the good and find that it also is dreadful? How if food itself turns out to be the very thing you

can't eat, and home the very place you can't live, and your very comforter the person who makes you

uncomfortable? Then, indeed, there is no rescue possible: the last card has been played. For a second or

two I was nearly in that condition. Here at last was a bit of that world from beyond the world;

which I had always supposed that I loved and desired, breaking through and appearing to my senses: and

I didn't like it, I wanted it to go away. I wanted every possible distance, gulf, curtain, blanket, and barrier

to be placed between it and me. But I did not fall quite into the gulf. Oddly enough my very sense of

helplessness saved me and steadied me. For now I was quite obviously 'drawn in'. The struggle was

over. The next decision did not lie with me.

Then, like a noise from a different world, came the opening of the door and the sound of boots on the

doormat, and I saw, silhouetted against the greyness of the night in the open doorway, a figure which I

recognised as Ransom. The speaking which was not a voice came again out of the rod of light: and

Ransom, instead of moving, stood still and answered it. Both speeches were in a strange polysyllabic

language which I had not heard before. I make no attempt to excuse the feelings which awoke in me

when I heard the unhuman sound addressing my friend and my friend answering it in the unhuman

language. They are, in fact, inexcusable; but if you think they are improbable at such a juncture, I must

tell you plainly that you have read neither history nor your own heart to much effect. They were feelings

of resentment, horror, and jealousy. It was in my mind to shout out, 'Leave your familiar alone, you

damned magician, and attend to Me.'

What I actually said was, "Oh, Ransom. Thank God you've come."

1* In the text I naturally keep to what I thought and felt at the time, since this alone is first-hand

evidence: but there is obviously room for more further speculation about the form in which eldila appear

to our senses. The only serious considerations of the problem so far are to be sought in the early

seventeenth century. As a starting point for future investigation I recommend the following from

Natvilcius (De Aethereo et asrio Corpore, Basel. 1627, II. xii.), liquet simplicem flam-mem sensibus

nostris subjectcan non esse corpus proprie dictum angeli vel daemonis, sed potius aut illius carports

sensorium aut super/idem corporis in coelesti dispositions locorum supra cogitationes humanas

existentis ('It appears that the homogeneous flame perceived by our senses is not the body, properly so

called, of an angel or daemon, but rather either the sensorium of that body or the surface of a body

which exists after a manner beyond our conception in the celestial frame of spatial references'). By the

'celestial frame of references' I take him to mean what we should now call 'multi-dimensional space'.

Not, of course, that Natvilcius knew anything about multi-dimensional geometry, but that he had

reached empirically what mathematics has since reached on theoretical grounds.

Chapter Two

THE door was slammed (for the second time that night) and after a moment's groping Ransom had

found and lit a candle. I glanced quickly round and could see no one but ourselves. The most noticeable

thing in the room was the big white object. I recognised the shape well enough this time. It was a large

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coffin-shaped casket, open on the floor beside it lay its lid, and it was doubtless this that I had tripped

over. Both were made of the same white material, like ice, but more cloudy and less shining.

"By Jove, I'm glad to see you," said Ransom, advancing and shaking hands with me. "I'd hoped to be

able to meet you at the station, but everything has had to be arranged in such a hurry and I found at the

last moment that I'd got to go up to Cambridge. I never intended to leave you to make that journey

alone." Then, seeing, I suppose, that I was still staring at him rather stupidly, he added, "I say-you're all

right, aren't you? You got through the barrage without any damage?" "The barrage?-I don't understand."

"I was thinking you would have met some difficulties in getting here."

"Oh, that" said I. "You mean it wasn't just my nerves? There really was something in the way?"

"Yes. They didn't want you to get here. I was afraid something of the sort might happen but there was no

time to do anything about it. I was pretty sure you'd get through somehow."

"By they you mean the others-our own eldila?" "Of course. They've got wind of what's on hand.. . ." I

interrupted him. "To tell you the truth. Ransom," I said, "I'm getting more worried every day about the

whole business. It came into my head as I was on my way here--"

"Oh, they'll put all sorts of things into your head if you let them," said Ransom lightly. "The best plan is

to take no notice and keep straight on. Don't try to answer them. They like drawing you into an

interminable argument."

"But, look here," said I. "This isn't child's play. Are you quite certain that this Dark Lord, this depraved

Oyarsa of Tellus, really exists? Do you know for certain either that there are two sides, or which side is

ours?"

He fixed me suddenly with one of his mild, but strangely formidable, glances.

"You are in real doubt about either, are you?" he asked.

"No," said I, after a pause, and felt rather ashamed.

"That's all right, then," said Ransom cheerfully. "Now let's get some supper and I'll explain as we go

along."

"What's that coffin affair?" I asked as we moved into the kitchen.

"That is what I'm to travel in."

"Ransom!" I exclaimed. "He-it-the eldil-is not going to take you back to Malacandra?"

"Don't!" said he. "Oh, Lewis, you don't understand. Take me back to Malacandra? If only he would! I'd

give anything I possess . . . just to look down one of those gorges again and see the blue, blue water

winding in and out among the woods. Or to be up on top-to see a Sorn go gliding along the slopes. Or to

be back there of an evening when Jupiter was rising, too bright to look at, and all the asteroids like a

Milky Way, with each star in it as bright as Venus looks from Earth! And the smells! It is hardly ever

out of my mind. You'd expect it to be worse at night when Malacandra is up and I can actually see it.

But it isn't then that I get the real twinge. It's on hot summer days-looking up at the deep blue and

thinking that in there, millions of miles deep where I can never, never get back to it, there's a place I

know, and flowers at that very moment growing over Meldilorn, and friends of mine, going about their

business, who would welcome me back. No. No such luck. It's not Malacandra I'm being sent to. It's

Perelandra."

"That's what we call Venus, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"And, you say you're being sent."

"Yes. If you remember, before I left Malacandra the Oyarsa hinted to me that my going there at all

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might be the beginning of a whole new phase in the life of the Solar System-the Field of Arbol. It might

mean, he said, that the isolation of our world, the siege, was beginning to draw to an end." "Yes. I

remember."

"Well, it really does look as if something of the sort were afoot. For one thing, the two sides, as you call

them, have begun to appear much more clearly, much less mixed, here on Earth, in our own human

affairs-to show in something a little more like their true colours." "I see that all right."

"The other thing is this. The black archon-our own bent Oyarsa-is meditating some sort of attack on

Perelandra."

"But is he at large like that in the Solar System? Can he get there?"

"That's just the point. He can't get there in his own person, in his own photosome or whatever we should

call it. As you know, he was driven back within these bounds centuries before any human life existed on

our planet. If he ventured to show himself outside the Moon's orbit he'd be driven back again- by main

force. That would be a different kind of war. You or I could contribute no more to it than a flea could

contribute to the defence of Moscow. No. He must be attempting Perelandra in some different way."

"And where do you come in?" "Well-simply I've been ordered there." "By the-by Oyarsa, you mean?"

"No. The order comes from much higher up. They all do, you know, in the long run."

"And what have you got to do when you get there?" "I haven't been told."

"You are just part of the Oyarsa's entourage?" "Oh no. He isn't going to be there. He is to transport me to

Venus-to deliver me there. After that, as far as I know, I shall be alone."

"But, look here. Ransom-I mean..." my voice trailed away.

"I know!" said he with one of his singulariy disarming smiles. "You are feeling the absurdity of it. Dr

Elwin Ransom setting out single-handed to combat powers and principalities. You may even be

wondering if I've got megalomania" .. I didn't mean that quite," said I.

"Oh, but I think you did. At any rate that is what I have been feeling myself ever since the thing was

sprung on me. But when you come to think of it, is it odder than what all of us have to do every day?

When the Bible used that very expression about fighting with principalities and powers and depraved

hypersomatic beings at great heights (our translation is very misleading at that point, by the way) it

meant that quite ordinary people were to do the fighting. "Oh, I dare say," said I. "But that's rather

different. That refers to a moral conflict."

Ransom threw back his head and laughed. "Oh, Lewis, Lewis," he said, "you are inimitable, simply

inimitable!" "Say what you like. Ransom, there is a difference." "Yes. There is. But not a difference that

makes it megalomania to think that any of us might have to fight either way. I'll tell you how I look at it.

Haven't you noticed how in our own little war here on earth, there are different phases, and while any

one phase is going on people get into the habit of thinking and behaving as if it was going to be

permanent? But really the thing is changing under your hands all the time, and neither your assets nor

your dangers this year are the same as the year before. Now your idea that ordinary people will never

have to meet the Dark Eldila in any form except a psychological or moral form-as temptations or the

like-is simply an idea that held good for a certain phase of the cosmic war: the phase of the great siege,

the phase which gave to our planet its name of Thulcandra, the silent planet. But supposing that phase is

passing? In the next phase it may be anyone's job to meet them . . . well, in some quite different mode."

"I see."

"Don't imagine I've been selected to go to Perelandra because I'm anyone in particular. One never can

see, or not till long afterwards, why any one was selected for any job. And when one does, it is usually

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some reason that leaves no room for vanity. Certainly, it is never for what the man himself would have

regarded as his chief qualifications. I rather fancy I am being sent because those two blackguards who

kidnapped me and took me to Malacandra, did something which they never intended: namely, gave a

human being a chance to learn that language." "What language do you mean?"

"Hressa-Hlab, of course. The language I learned in Malacandra."

"But surely you don't imagine they will speak the same language on Venus?"

"Didn't I tell you about that?" said Ransom, leaning forward. We were now at table and had nearly

finished our cold meat and beer and tea. "I'm surprised I didn't, for I found out two or three months ago,

and scientifically it is one of the most interesting things about the whole affair. It appears we were quite

mistaken in thinking Hressa-Hlab the peculiar speech of Mars. It is really what may be called Old Solar,

HIab-Eribol-ef-Cordt." "What on earth do you mean?"

"I mean that there was originally a common speech for all rational creatures inhabiting the planets of our

system: those that were ever inhabited, I mean-what the eldils call the Low Worlds. Most of them, of

course, have never been inhabited and never will be. At least not what we'd call inhabited. That original

speech was lost on Thulcandra, our own world, when our whole tragedy took place. No human language

now known in the world is descended from it."

"But what about the other two languages on Mars?"

"I admit I don't understand about them. One thing I do know, and I believe I could prove it on purely

philological grounds. They are incomparably less ancient than Hressa-Hlab, specially Surnibur, the

speech of the Sorns. I believe it could be shown that Surnibur is, by Malacandrian standards, quite a

modern development. I doubt if its birth can be put farther back than a date which would fall within our

Cambrian Period."

"And you think you will find Hressa-Hlab, or Old Solar, spoken on Venus?"

"Yes. I shall arrive knowing the language. It saves a lot of trouble-though, as a philologist, I find it

rather disappointing."

"But you've no idea what you are to do, or what conditions you will find?"

"No idea at all what I'm to do. There are jobs, you know, "where it is essential that one should not know

too much beforehand . . . things one might have to say which one couldn't say effectively if one had

prepared them. As to conditions, well, I don't know much. It will be warm: I'm to go naked. Our

astronomers don't know anything about the surface of Perelandra at all. The outer layer of her

atmosphere is too thick. The main problem, apparently, is whether she revolves on her own axis or not,

and at what speed. There are two schools of thought. There's a man called Schiaparelli who thinks she

revolves once on herself in the same time it takes her to go once round Arbol-I mean, the Sun. The other

people think she revolves on her own axis once in every twenty-three hours. That's one of the things I

shall find out."

"If Schiaparelli is right there'd be perpetual day on one side of her and perpetual night on the other?"

He nodded, musing. "It'd be a funny frontier," he said presently. "Just think of it. You'd come to a

country of eternal twilight, getting colder and darker every mile you went. And then presently you

wouldn't be able to go farther because there'd be no more air. I wonder can you stand in the day, just on

the right side of the frontier, and look into the night which you can never reach? And perhaps see a star

or two-the only place you could see them, for of course in the Day-Lands they would never be

visible. .. . Of course if they have a scientific civilisation they may have diving-suits or things like

submarines on wheels for going into the Night."

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C. S. Lewis - Voyage to Venus

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