Then he relapsed into silence.
“‘Yes,’ said she, ‘I was awake several times’”
Another rather strange thing that struck me as I gazed over the landscape while we waited for Chee-Chee to return was the appearance of the horizon. The Moon’s width being so much smaller than the Earth’s, the distance one could see was a great deal shorter. This did not apply so much where the land was hilly or mountainous; but on the level, or the nearly level, it made a very striking difference. The roundness of this world was much more easily felt and understood than was that of the world we had left. On this plateau, for example, you could only see seven or eight miles, it seemed, over the level before the curve cut off your vision. And it gave quite a new character even to the hills, where peaks showed behind other ranges, dropping downward in a way that misled you entirely as to their actual height.
“‘You bet they were not!’ grunted Polynesia”
Finally Chee-Chee came back to us and said he had successfully retraced his steps to the water he had found the night before. He was now prepared to lead us to it. He looked kind of scared and ill at ease. The Doctor asked him the reason for this, but he didn’t seem able to give any.
“Everything’s all right, Doctor,” said he—“at least I suppose it is. It was partly that—oh, I don’t know—I can’t quite make out what it is they have asked you here for. I haven’t actually laid eyes on any animal life since we left the moth who brought us. Yet I feel certain that there’s lots of it here. It doesn’t appear to want to be seen. That’s what puzzles me. On the Earth the animals were never slow in coming forward when they were in need of your services.”
“You bet they were not!” grunted Polynesia. “No one who ever saw them clamoring around the surgery door could doubt that.”
“Humph!” the Doctor muttered. “I’ve noticed it myself already. I don’t understand it quite—either. It almost looks as though there were something about our arrival which they didn’t like. . . . I wonder. . . . Well, anyway, I wish the animal life here would get in touch with us and let us know what it is all about. This state of things is, to say the least—er—upsetting.”