The Space Trilogy. C. S. Lewis

ascending. The road ran on before him in a kind of shallow ravine bounded on his left by the tops of the highest rock pinnacles and on his right by a smooth ascending swell of stone that ran up to the true harandra. And where he was he could still breathe, though gasping, dizzy and in pain. The blaze in his eyes was worse. The sun was setting. The hrossa must have foreseen this; they could not live, any more than he, on the harandra by night. Still staggering forward, he looked about him for any sign of Augray’s tower, whatever Augray might be.

      Doubtless he exaggerated the time during which he thus wandered and watched the shadows from the rocks lengthening towards him. It cannot really have been long before he saw a light ahead – a light which showed how dark the surrounding landscape had become. He tried to run but his body would not respond. Stumbling in haste and weakness, he made for the light; thought he had reached it and found that it was far farther off than he had supposed; almost despaired; staggered on again, and came at last to what seemed a cavern mouth. The light within was an unsteady one and a delicious wave of warmth smote on his face. It was firelight. He came into the mouth of the cave and then, unsteadily, round the fire and into the interior, and stood still blinking in the light. When at last he could see, he discerned a smooth chamber of green rock, very lofty. There were two things in it. One of them, dancing on the wall and roof, was the huge, angular shadow of a sorn: the other, crouched beneath it, was the sorn himself.

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      ‘Come in, Small One,’ boomed the sorn. ‘Come in and let me look at you.’

      Now that he stood face to face with the spectre that had haunted him ever since he set foot on Malacandra, Ransom felt a surprising indifference. He had no idea what might be coming next, but he was determined to carry out his programme; and in the meantime the warmth and more breathable air were a heaven in themselves. He came in, well in past the fire, and answered the sorn. His own voice sounded to him a shrill treble.

      ‘The hrossa have sent me to look for Oyarsa,’ he said.

      The sorn peered at him. ‘You are not from this world,’ it said suddenly.

      ‘No,’ replied Ransom, and sat down. He was too tired to explain.

      ‘I think you are from Thulcandra, Small One,’ said the sorn.

      ‘Why?’ said Ransom.

      ‘You are small and thick and that is how the animals ought to be made in a heavier world. You cannot come from Glundandra, for it is so heavy that if any animals could live there they would be flat like plates – even you, Small One, would break if you stood up on that world. I do not think you are from Perelandra, for it must be very hot; if any came from there they would not live when they arrived here. So I conclude you are from Thulcandra.’

      ‘The world I come from is called Earth by those who live there,’ said Ransom. ‘And it is much warmer than this. Before I came into your cave I was nearly dead with cold and thin air.’

      The sorn made a sudden movement with one of its long fore-limbs. Ransom stiffened (though he did not allow himself to retreat), for the creature might be going to grab him. In fact, its intentions were kindly. Stretching back into the cave, it took from the wall what looked like a cup. Then Ransom saw that it was attached to a length of flexible tube. The sorn put it into his hands.

      ‘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.

      ‘Oxygen?’ he asked; but naturally the English word meant nothing to the sorn.

      ‘Are you called Augray?’ he asked.

      ‘Yes,’ said the sorn. ‘What are you called?’

      ‘The animal I am is called Man, and therefore the hrossa call me Hmãn. But my own name is Ransom.’

      ‘Man – Ren-soom,’ said the sorn. He noticed that it spoke differently from the hrossa, without any suggestion of their persistent initial H.

      It was sitting on its long, wedge-shaped buttocks with its feet drawn close up to it. A man in the same posture would have rested his chin on his knees, but the sorn’s legs were too long for that. Its knees rose high above its shoulders on each side of its head – grotesquely suggestive of huge ears – and the head, down between them, rested its chin on the protruding breast. The creature seemed to have either a double chin or a beard; Ransom could not make out which in the firelight. It was mainly white or cream in colour and seemed to be clothed down to the ankles in some soft substance that reflected the light. On the long fragile shanks, where the creature was closest to him, he saw that this was some natural kind of coat. It was not like fur but more like feathers. In fact it was almost exactly like feathers. The whole animal, seen at close quarters, was less terrifying than he had expected, and even a little smaller. The face, it was true, took a good deal of getting used to – it was too long, too solemn and too colourless, and it was much more unpleasantly like a human face than any inhuman creature’s face ought to be. Its eyes, like those of all very large creatures, seemed too small for it. But it was more grotesque than horrible. A new conception of the sorns began to arise in his mind: the ideas of ‘giant’ and ‘ghost’ receded behind those of ‘goblin’ and ‘gawk’.

      ‘Perhaps you are hungry, Small One,’ it said.

      Ransom was. The sorn rose with strange spidery movements and began going to and fro about the cave, attended by its thin goblin shadow. It brought him the usual vegetable foods of Malacandra, and strong drink, with the very welcome addition of a smooth brown substance which revealed itself to nose, eye and palate, in defiance of all probability, as cheese. Ransom asked what it was.

      The sorn began to explain painfully how the female of some animals secreted a fluid for the nourishment of its young, and would have gone on to describe the whole process of milking and cheesemaking, if Ransom had not interrupted it.

      ‘Yes, yes,’ he said. ‘We do the same on Earth. What is the beast you use?’

      ‘It is a yellow beast with a long neck. It feeds on the forests that grow in the handramit. The young ones of our people who are not yet fit for much else drive the beasts down there in the mornings and follow them while they feed; then before night they drive them back and put them in the caves.’

      For a moment Ransom found something reassuring in the thought that the sorns were shepherds. Then he remembered that the Cyclops in Homer plied the same trade.

      ‘I think I have seen one of your people at this very work,’ he said. ‘But the hrossa – they let you tear up their forests?’

      ‘Why should they not?’

      ‘Do you rule the hrossa?’

      ‘Oyarsa rules them.’

      ‘And who rules you?’

      ‘Oyarsa.’

      ‘But you know more than the hrossa?’

      ‘The hrossa know nothing except about poems and fish and making things grow out of the ground.’

      ‘And Oyarsa – is he a sorn?’

      ‘No, no, Small One. I have told you he rules all nau’ (so he pronounced hnau) ‘and everything in Malacandra.’

      ‘I do not understand this Oyarsa,’ said Ransom. ‘Tell me more.’

      ‘Oyarsa does not die,’ said the sorn. ‘And he does not breed. He is the one of his kind who was put into Malacandra to rule it when Malacandra was made. His body is not like ours, nor yours; it is hard to see and the light