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"
"
"
'Yes, food.'
'Goodness me!' I cried; 'what's that?'
My eye had just caught the figure of an exceptionally big and ungainly
Selenite lying motionless among the stems, face downward. We stopped.
"'Dead?' I asked. (For as yet I have seen no dead in the moon, and I have
grown curious.)
"
'No!' exclaimed Phi-oo. 'Him--worker--no work to do. Get little drink
then--make sleep--till we him want. What good him wake, eh? No want him
walking about.'
"'There's another!' cried I.
"And indeed all that huge extent of mushroom ground was, I found, peppered
with these prostrate figures sleeping under an opiate until the moon had
need of them. There were scores of them of all sorts, and we were able to
turn over some of them, and examine them more precisely than I had been
able to previously. They breathed noisily at my doing so, but did not
wake. One, I remember very distinctly: he left a strong impression, I
think, because some trick the light and of his attitude was strongly
suggestive a drawn-up human figure. His fore-limbs were long, delicate
tentacles--he was some kind of refined manipulator--and the pose of his
slumber suggested a submissive suffering. No doubt it was a mistake for
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