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IN all the circumstances it would have been reasonable to expect that Weston would be much more taken aback at Ransom&039;s presence than Ranson of it, and Ransooism which enabled this man in the very moment of his arrival on an unknoorld to stand there unarity, his ar, and his feet planted as solidly on that unearthly soil as if he had been standing with his back to the fire in his own study Then, with a shock, he noticed that Weston was speaking to the Lady in the Old Solar language with perfect fluency On Malacandra, partly from incapacity, and much more from his contempt for the inhabitants, he had never acquiredof it Here was an inexplicable and disquieting novelty Ransoe had been taken from him He felt that he was now in the presence of the incalculable If the scales had been suddenly weighted in this one respect, what ht come next?

He awoke from his abstraction to find that Weston anti the Lady had been conversing fluently, but without"You anti I are not old enough to speak together, it seeo back to the islands Will he come with us, Piebald?"

"Where are the two fishes?" said Ranso in the next bay," said the Lady "Quick, then," said Ransom to her; and then, in answer t( her look: "No, he will not coency, but her eye was on the sea and he understood her own reason for haste She had already begin to ascend the side of the valley, with - Ranso her when Weston shouted, "No, you don&039;t" Ransom turned any found himself covered by a revolver The sudden heat whirl swept over his body was the only sign by which he knew that he was frightened His head rein in this world also byone of its inhabitants?" he asked

"What are you saying?" asked the Lady, pausing and looking back at the two men with a puzzled, tranquil face

"Stay where you are, Ransoo where she likes; the sooner the better" Ransoood her escape when he realised that no i was needed He had irrationally supposed that she would understand the situation; but apparently she saw nothingwhich she did not at thethe Fixed Land at once

"You and he do not come withround "It ain Greet the King for me if you find him and speak of me always to Maleldil I stay here"

"We shall reater good will happen to us instead" Then he heard her footsteps behind him for a few seconds, and then he heard them no more and kneas alone with Weston "You allowed yourself to use the word Murder just now, Dr Ransom," said the Professor, "in reference to an accident that&039; occurred ere in Malacandra In any case, the creature killed was not a hu Allow irl as an al civilisation to a new planet"

"Seduction?" said Ranso love to her"

"When I find a naked civilised e woive to it"

"I wasn&039;t e her," said Ranso himself on this score seemed at that moment a mere weariness of the spirit "And no one wears clothes here But what does it s you to Perelandra"

"You askhere with that woman under these conditions in a state of sexless innocence?"

"Oh, sexless !" said Ransoood a description of living in Perelandra as it would be to say that a ara Falls didn&039;t i it into cups of tea But you&039;re right enough if youher than - thanCoain: "But don&039;t say I&039; I ain and end as soon as possible whatever butcheries and robberies you have come to do"

Weston eyed him for a moment with a curious expression then, unexpectedly, he returned his revolver to its holster "Ransoreat injustice"

For several seconds there was silence between the breakers hite woolpacks of foa into the cove exactly as on Earth

"Yes," said Weston at last, "and I will begin with a frank admission You may make what capital of it you please I shall not be deterred I deliberately say that I was, in some respects, mistaken - seriously mistaken - in my conception of the whole interplanetary problem when I went to Malacandra"

Partly from the relaxation which followed the disappearance of the pistol, and partly froreat scientist spoke, Ransoh But it occurred to him that this was possibly the first occasion in his whole life in which Weston had ever acknowledged hi, and that even the false dawn of huht not to be rebuffed - or not by him

"Well, that&039;s very handsome," he said "How do you mean?"

"I&039;ll tell you presently," said Weston "In the s ashore" Between the Weston&039;s pries to a spot about two hundred yards inland Ransom, who knew all the paraphernalia to be needless,like an encampment had been established in a mossy place under some blue-trunked silver-leaved trees beside a rivulet Both men sat down and Ransom listened at first with interest, then with amazement, and finally with incredulity Weston cleared his throat, threw out his chest, and assuhout the conversation that followed, Ransom was filled with a sense of crazy irrelevance Here were two huether in an alien world under conditions of inconceivable strangeness; the one separated from his space-ship, the other newly released froinable - that they should find theht just as well have occurred in a Cae combination room? Yet that, apparently, hat Weston insisted upon He showed no interest in the fate of his space-ship; he even seemed to feel no curiosity about Ransom&039;s presence on Venus Could it be that he had travelled more than thirty million miles of space in search of conversation? But as he went on talking, Ransom felt himself more and more in the presence of abut his celebrity, or a lover who can think of nothing but his mistress, tense, tedious, and unescapable, the scientist pursued his fixed idea

"The tragedy of my life," he said, "and indeed of the id specialisation of knowledge entailed by the growing coedy that an early devotion to physics has prevented y until I reached the fifties To do myself justice, I should e as an end in itself never appealed to me I alanted to know in order to achieve utility At first, that utility naturally appeared to me in a personal fornised position in the world without which a an to look farther: to the utility of the human race!"

He paused as he rounded his period and Ransom nodded to him to proceed

"The utility of the huidly on the possibility of interplanetary, and even inter-sidereal, travel That problem I solved The key of human destiny was placed in my hands It would be unnecessary - and painful to us both - to remind you horenched froent species whose existence, I admit, I had not anticipated"

"Not hostile exactly," said Ransoours of our return journey from Malacandra led to a serious breakdown in my health - "

"Mine too," said Ransom

Weston looked so my convalescence I had that leisure for reflection which I had denied myself for many years In particular I reflected on the objections you had felt to that liquidation of the non-human inhabitants of Malacandra which was, of course, the necessary preliminary to its occupation by our own species The traditional and, if I may say so, the humanitarian form in which you advanced those objections had till then concealed froan to perceive I began to see that my own exclusive devotion to human utility was really based on an unconscious dualism"

"What do youa wholly unscientific dichotomy or antithesis between Man and Nature - had conceived ainst his non-huy, and particularly into what ical philosophy Hitherto, as a physicist, I had been content to regard Life as a subject outsideviews of those who drew a sharp line between the organic and the inorganic and those who held that e call Life was inherent inhad not interested me Now it did I saw almost at once that I could ad of the cosent evolution All is one The stuff of mind, the unconsciously purposive dyna"

Here he paused Ranso pretty often before and wondered when his co to the point When Weston resumed it ith an even deeper solemnity of tone

"The majestic spectacle of this blind, inarticulate purposiveness thrusting its way upward and ever upward in an endless unity of differentiated achieveanisation, towards spontaneity and spirituality, swept away all my old conception of a duty to Man as such Man in hi spirituality - is everything I say to you quite freely, Ranso the Malacandrians It was a mere prejudice that made me prefer our own race to theirs To spread spirituality, not to spread the hu-stone on my career I worked first for myself; then for science; then for huht say, borrowing language which will be more familiar to you, the Holy Spirit "

Nohat exactly do you mean by that?" asked Ranso now divides you and ical technicalities hich organised religion has unhappily allowed itself to get incrusted But I have penetrated that crust The Meaning beneath it is as true and living as ever If you will excuse ious view of life finds a remarkable witness in the fact that it enabled you, on Malacandra, to grasp, in your own inative fashion, a truth which was hidden from me"

"I don&039;t know ious view of life," said Ranso his brow "You see, I&039;m a Christian And e mean by the Holy Ghost is not a blind, inarticulate purposiveness"

"My dear Ransom," said Weston, "I understand you perfectly I have no doubt that e to you, and perhaps even shocking Early and revered associations nise in this new for preserved and which science is now at last re-discovering But whether you can see it or not, believe "

"I&039;m not at all sure that we are"

"That, if you will peranised religion - that adherence to fornise one&039;s own friends God is a spirit, Ransom Get hold of that You&039;re familiar with that already Stick to it God is a spirit"

"Well, of course But what then?"

"What then? Why, spirit -about That is the goal towards which the whole cosement of that freedom, that spirituality, is the work to which I dedicate oal: think of it! Pure spirit: the final vortex of self-thinking, self-originating activity"