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the lifelong self-control of social man, the virtues which are half hypocrisy or the hypocrisy which is half a virtue,
“Then where are we?” “Standing out from Earth about eighty-five thousand miles.”
Malacandra.
We have learned how to jump off the speck of matter on which our species began; infinity, and therefore perhaps eternity, is being put into the hands of the human race. You cannot be so small-minded as to think that the rights or the life of an individual or of a million individuals are of the slightest importance in comparison with this.”
It would be easier if your philosophy of life were not so insufferably narrow and individualistic.
you cannot see things till you know roughly what they are.
Perhaps he was mad already, and not really on Malacandra but safe in bed in an English asylum.
sorn.
The love of knowledge is a kind of madness. In the fraction of a second which it took Ransom to decide that the creature was really talking, and while he still knew that he might be facing instant death, his imagination had leaped over every fear and hope and probability of his situation to follow the dazzling project of making a Malacandrian grammar.
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Such a journey would have been impossible on earth; the first quarter of an hour would have reduced a man of Ransom’s build and age to exhaustion. Here he was at first delighted with the ease of his movement, and then staggered by the gradient and length of the climb which, even under Malacandrian conditions, soon bowed his back and gave him an aching chest and trembling knees.
“Smell on this,” it said. “The hrossa also need it when they pass this way.” Ransom inhaled and was instantly refreshed. His painful shortness of breath was eased and the tension of chest and temples was relaxed. The sorn and the lighted cavern, hitherto vague and dream-like to his eyes, took on a new reality.
Ransom awoke next morning with the vague feeling that a great weight had been taken off his mind. Then he remembered that he was the guest of a sorn and that the creature he had been avoiding ever since he landed had turned out to be as amicable as the hrossa, though he was far from feeling the same affection for it.
After this, his farewells to the sorn were made and he embarked. To be once more in a boat and with a hross, to feel the warmth of water on his face and to see a blue sky above him, was almost like coming home.
“I come from another world,” began Ransom.
It was at the time of early morning, when men on Earth go out to milk the cows, that Ransom was wakened.
More than anything in the world he would have liked a cup of good tea.
“What are you so afraid of, Ransom of Thulcandra?” it said. “Of you, Oyarsa, because you are unlike me and I cannot see you.”
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“You began to be afraid of me before you set foot in my world. And you have spent all your time since then in flying from me. My servants saw your fear when you were in your ship in heaven.
Two years ago—and that is about four of your years—this ship entered the heavens from your world.
Suddenly, with an indescribable change of feeling, he realized that he was looking at men. The two prisoners were Weston and Devine and he, for one privileged moment, had seen the human form with almost Malacandrian eyes.
Ransom remained alone answering Oyarsa’s questions.
“You have shown me more wonders than are known in the whole of heaven.”
After that they discussed Ransom’s own future. He was given full liberty to remain in Malacandra or to attempt the desperate voyage to Earth. The problem was agonizing to him. In the end he decided to throw in his lot with Weston and Devine.
“You are guilty of no evil, Ransom of Thulcandra, except a little fearfulness.
It was through vast crowds of all the Malacandrian species that the three human beings embarked next day on their terrible journey.
Neither partner was pleased to find that all weapons had been removed from the spaceship,
the rest of the silent journey he was free of the whole ship.
