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Chapter 11
The Mooncalf Pastures
So we two poor terrestrial castaways, lost in that wild-growing moon
jungle, crawled in terror before the sounds that had come upon us. We
crawled, as it seemed, a long time before we saw either Selenite or
mooncalf, though we heard the bellowing and gruntulous noises of these
latter continually drawing nearer to us. We crawled through stony ravines,
over snow slopes, amidst fungi that ripped like thin bladders at our
thrust, emitting a watery humour, over a perfect pavement of things like
puff-balls, and beneath interminable thickets of scrub. And ever more
helplessly our eyes sought for our abandoned sphere. The noise of the
mooncalves would at times be a vast flat calf-like sound, at times it rose
to an amazed and wrathy bellowing, and again it would become a clogged
bestial sound, as though these unseen creatures had sought to eat and
bellow at the same time.
Our first view was but an inadequate transitory glimpse, yet none the less
disturbing because it was incomplete. Cavor was crawling in front at the
time, and he first was aware of their proximity. He stopped dead,
arresting me with a single gesture.
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