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Getting Started with Arduino 1st Edition Massimo Banzi
Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Massimo Banzi
ISBN(s): 9780596155513, 0596155514
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 1.78 MB
Year: 2008
Language: english
1
Getting Started with
Arduino
Table of Contents

2
Preface
Acknowledgments
How to Contact Us

1. Introduction
Intended Audience
Interaction Design is the design of any
interactive experience.

What Is Physical Computing?

2. The Arduino Way

Prototyping
Tinkering
Patching
Circuit Bending
Keyboard Hacks
We Love Junk!
Hacking Toys
Collaboration

3. The Arduino Platform

3
 The Arduino Hardware
14 Digital IO pins (pins 0–13)
6 Analogue In pins (pins 0–5)
6 Analogue Out pins (pins 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, and
11)

The Software (IDE)

Installing Arduino on Your Computer
Installing Drivers: Macintosh
Installing Drivers: Windows
Port Identification: Macintosh
Port Identification: Windows

4. Really Getting Started with Arduino

Anatomy of an Interactive Device
Sensors and Actuators
Blinking an LED
Pass Me the Parmesan
Arduino Is Not for Quitters
Real Tinkerers Write Comments
The Code, Step by Step
What We Will Be Building
What Is Electricity?
Using a Pushbutton to Control the LED
How Does This Work?
One Circuit, A Thousand Behaviours

5. Advanced Input and Output

4
 Trying Out Other On/Off Sensors
Switches
Thermostats
Magnetic switches (also known as "reed
relays")
Carpet switches
Tilt switches

Controlling Light with PWM

Use a Light Sensor Instead of the Pushbutton
Analogue Input
Try Other Analogue Sensors
Serial Communication
Driving Bigger Loads (Motors, Lamps, and the
Like)
Complex Sensors

6. Talking to the Cloud

Digital Output
Digital Output
Analog Output
Digital Input
Analog Input
Serial Communication

Planning
Coding
Assembling the Circuit
Here's How to Assemble It:

7. Troubleshooting

5
 Understanding
Understanding
Simplification and segmentation
Exclusion and certainty

Testing the Board

Testing Your Breadboarded Circuit
Isolating Problems
Problems with the IDE
How to Get Help Online

A. The Breadboard
B. Reading Resistors and Capacitors
C. Arduino Quick Reference

6
STRUCTURE
SPECIAL SYMBOLS
; (semicolon)
{} (curly braces)
comments

CONSTANTS
VARIABLES
boolean
char
byte
int
unsigned int
long
unsigned long
float
double
string
array

CONTROL STRUCTURES
if … else
for
switch case
while
do … while
break
continue
return

ARITHMETIC AND FORMULAS

COMPARISON OPERATORS

7
BOOLEAN OPERATORS
COMPOUND OPERATORS
increment and decrement (–– and ++)
+= , –=, *= and /=

INPUT AND OUTPUT FUNCTIONS

pinMode(pin, mode)
digitalWrite(pin, value)
int digitalRead(pin)
int analogRead(pin)
analogWrite(pin, value)
shiftOut(dataPin, clockPin, bitOrder, value)
unsigned long pulseIn(pin, value)

TIME FUNCTIONS
unsigned long millis()
delay(ms)
delayMicroseconds(us)

MATH FUNCTIONS
min(x, y)
max(x, y)
abs(x)
constrain(x, a, b)
map(value, fromLow, fromHigh, toLow,
toHigh)
double pow(base, exponent)
double sqrt(x)
double sin(rad)
double cos(rad)
double tan(rad)

8
 RANDOM NUMBER FUNCTIONS
randomSeed(seed)
long random(max) long random(min, max)

SERIAL COMMUNICATION
Serial.begin(speed)
Serial.print(data) Serial.print(data, encoding)
Serial.println(data) Serial.println(data,
encoding)
int Serial.available()
int Serial.read()
Serial.flush()

D. Reading Schematic Diagrams

9
Getting Started with
Arduino
Massimo Banzi
Copyright © 2009 Massimo Banzi

O'Reilly books may be purchased for educational,

business, or sales promotional use. For more information,
contact our corporate/institutional sales department:
800-998-9938 or [email protected].

The O'Reilly logo is a registered trademark of O'Reilly

Media, Inc. The Make: Projects series designations and
related trade dress are trademarks of O'Reilly Media, Inc.
The trademarks of third parties used in this work are the
property of their respective owners.

Important Message to Our Readers: Your safety is your

own responsibility, including proper use of equipment
and safety gear, and determining whether you have
adequate skill and experience. Electricity and other
resources used for these projects are dangerous unless
used properly and with adequate precautions, including
safety gear. Some illustrative photos do not depict safety
precautions or equipment, in order to show the project

10
steps more clearly. These projects are not intended for use
by children.

Use of the instructions and suggestions in Getting Started

with Arduino is at your own risk. O'Reilly Media, Inc.
and the author disclaim all responsibility for any resulting
damage, injury, or expense. It is your responsibility to
make sure that your activities comply with applicable
laws, including copyright.

Make

11
Preface
A few years ago I was given a very interesting challenge:
teach designers the bare minimum in electronics so that
they could build interactive prototypes of the objects they
were designing.

I started following a subconscious instinct to teach

electronics the same way I was taught in school. Later on
I realised that it simply wasn't working as well as I would
like, and started to remember sitting in a class, bored like
hell, listening to all that theory being thrown at me
without any practical application for it.

In reality, when I was in school I already knew

electronics in a very empirical way: very little theory, but
a lot of hands-on experience.

I started thinking about the process by which I really

learned electronics:

• I took apart any electronic device I could put my

hands on.

• I slowly learned what all those components were.

• I began to tinker with them, changing some of the

connections inside of them and seeing what

12
 happened to the device: usually something
between an explosion and a puff of smoke.

• I started building some kits sold by electronics

magazines.

• I combined devices I had hacked, and repurposed

kits and other circuits that I found in magazines
to make them do new things.

As a little kid, I was always fascinated by discovering

how things work; therefore, I used to take them apart.
This passion grew as I targeted any unused object in the
house and then took it apart into small bits. Eventually,
people brought all sorts of devices for me to dissect. My
biggest projects at the time were a dishwasher and an
early computer that came from an insurance office, which
had a huge printer, electronics cards, magnetic card
readers, and many other parts that proved very interesting
and challenging to completely take apart.

After quite a lot of this dissecting, I knew what electronic

components were and roughly what they did. On top of
that, my house was full of old electronics magazines that
my father must have bought at the beginning of the
1970s. I spent hours reading the articles and looking at
the circuit diagrams without understanding very much.

This process of reading the articles over and over, with

the benefit of knowledge acquired while taking apart
circuits, created a slow virtuous circle.

13
A great breakthrough came one Christmas, when my dad
gave me a kit that allowed teenagers to learn about
electronics. Every component was housed in a plastic
cube that would magnetically snap together with other
cubes, establishing a connection; the electronic symbol
was written on top. Little did I know that the toy was also
a landmark of German design, because Dieter Rams
designed it back in the 1960s.

With this new tool, I could quickly put together circuits

and try them out to see what happened. The prototyping
cycle was getting shorter and shorter.

After that, I built radios, amplifiers, circuits that would

produce horrible noises and nice sounds, rain sensors, and
tiny robots.

I've spent a long time looking for an English word that

would sum up that way of working without a specific
plan, starting with one idea and ending up with a
completely unexpected result. Finally, "tinkering" came
along. I recognised how this word has been used in many
other fields to describe a way of operating and to portray
people who set out on a path of exploration. For example,
the generation of French directors who gave birth to the
"Nouvelle Vague" were called the "tinkerers". The best
definition of tinkering that I've ever found comes from an
exhibition held at the Exploratorium in San Francisco:

Tinkering is what happens when you try something you

don't quite know how to do, guided by whim, imagination,

14
and curiosity. When you tinker, there are no
instructions—but there are also no failures, no right or
wrong ways of doing things. It's about figuring out how
things work and reworking them.

Contraptions, machines, wildly mismatched objects

working in harmony—this is the stuff of tinkering.

Tinkering is, at its most basic, a process that marries play

and inquiry.

—www.exploratorium.edu/tinkering

From my early experiments I knew how much experience

you would need in order to be able to create a circuit that
would do what you wanted starting from the basic
components.

Another breakthrough came in the summer of 1982, when

I went to London with my parents and spent many hours
visiting the Science Museum. They had just opened a new
wing dedicated to computers, and by following a series of
guided experiments, I learned the basics of binary math
and programming.

There I realised that in many applications, engineers were

no longer building circuits from basic components, but
were instead implementing a lot of the intelligence in
their products using microprocessors. Software was
replacing many hours of electronic design, and would
allow a shorter tinkering cycle.

15
Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
 XII
THE SELENITE’S FACE

I found myself sitting crouched together in a tumultuous darkness.

For a long time I could not understand where I was, nor how I had
come to this perplexity. I thought of the cupboard into which I had
been thrust at times when I was a child, and then of a very dark and
noisy bedroom in which I had slept during an illness. But these
sounds about me were not the noises I had known, and there was a
thin flavour in the air like the wind of a stable. Then I supposed we
must still be at work upon the sphere, and that somehow I had got
into the cellar of Cavor’s house. I remembered we had finished the
sphere, and fancied I must still be in it and travelling through space.
“Cavor,” I said, “cannot we have some light?”
There came no answer.
“Cavor!” I insisted.
I was answered by a groan. “My head!” I heard him say; “my head!”
I attempted to press my hands to my brow, which ached, and
discovered they were tied together. This startled me very much. I
brought them up to my mouth and felt the cold smoothness of
metal. They were chained together. I tried to separate my legs, and
made out they were similarly fastened, and also that I was fastened
to the ground by a much thicker chain about the middle of my body.
I was more frightened than I had yet been by anything in all our
strange experiences. For a time I tugged silently at my bonds.
“Cavor!” I cried out sharply. “Why am I tied? Why have you tied me
hand and foot?”
“I haven’t tied you,” he answered. “It’s the Selenites.”
The Selenites! My mind hung on that for a space. Then my
memories came back to me: the snowy desolation, the thawing of
the air, the growth of the plants, our strange hopping and crawling
among the rocks and vegetation of the crater. All the distress of our
frantic search for the sphere returned to me.... Finally the opening of
the great lid that covered the pit!
Then as I strained to trace our later movements down to our present
plight, the pain in my head became intolerable. I came to an
insurmountable barrier, an obstinate blank.
“Cavor!”
“Yes?”
“Where are we?”
“How should I know?”
“Are we dead?”
“What nonsense!”
“They’ve got us, then!”
He made no answer but a grunt. The lingering traces of the poison
seemed to make him oddly irritable.
“What do you mean to do?”
“How should I know what to do?”
“Oh, very well!” said I, and became silent. Presently I was roused
from a stupor. “O Lord!” I cried; “I wish you’d stop that buzzing!”
We lapsed into silence again, listening to the dull confusion of noises
like the muffled sounds of a street or factory that filled our ears. I
could make nothing of it, my mind pursued first one rhythm and
then another, and questioned it in vain. But after a long time I
became aware of a new and sharper element, not mingling with the
rest but standing out, as it were, against that cloudy background of
sound. It was a series of relatively very little definite sounds,
tappings and rubbings, like a loose spray of ivy against a window or
a bird moving about upon a box. We listened and peered about us,
but the darkness was a velvet pall. There followed a noise like the
subtle movement of the wards of a well-oiled lock. And then there
appeared before me, hanging as it seemed in an immensity of black,
a thin bright line.
“Look!” whispered Cavor very softly.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know.”
We stared.
The thin bright line became a band, and broader and paler. It took
upon itself the quality of a bluish light falling upon a whitewashed
wall. It ceased to be parallel-sided; it developed a deep indentation
on one side. I turned to remark this to Cavor, and was amazed to
see his ear in a brilliant illumination—all the rest of him in shadow. I
twisted my head round as well as my bonds would permit. “Cavor,” I
said, “it’s behind!”
His ear vanished—gave place to an eye!
Suddenly the crack that had been admitting the light broadened out,
and revealed itself as the space of an opening door. Beyond was a
sapphire vista, and in the doorway stood a grotesque outline
silhouetted against the glare.
We both made convulsive efforts to turn, and failing, sat staring over
our shoulders at this. My first impression was of some clumsy
quadruped with lowered head. Then I perceived it was the slender
pinched body and short and extremely attenuated bandy legs of a
Selenite, with his head depressed between his shoulders. He was
without the helmet and body covering they wear upon the exterior.
He was a blank, black figure to us, but instinctively our imaginations
supplied features to his very human outline. I, at least, took it
instantly that he was somewhat hunchbacked, with a high forehead
and long features.
He came forward three steps and paused for a time. His movements
seemed absolutely noiseless. Then he came forward again. He
walked like a bird, his feet fell one in front of the other. He stepped
out of the ray of light that came through the doorway, and it seemed
as though he vanished altogether in the shadow.
For a moment my eyes sought him in the wrong place, and then I
perceived him standing facing us both in the full light. Only the
human features I had attributed to him were not there at all!
Of course I ought to have expected that, only I didn’t. It came to me
as an absolute, for a moment an overwhelming, shock. It seemed as
though it wasn’t a face, as though it must needs be a mask, a
horror, a deformity, that would presently be disavowed or explained.
There was no nose, and the thing had dull bulging eyes at the side—
in the silhouette I had supposed they were ears. There were no
ears.... I have tried to draw one of these heads, but I cannot. There
was a mouth, downwardly curved, like a human mouth in a face that
stares ferociously....
The neck on which the head was poised was jointed in three places,
almost like the short joints in the leg of a crab. The joints of the
limbs I could not see, because of the puttee-like straps in which they
were swathed, and which formed the only clothing the being wore.
There the thing was, looking at us!
 “There the thing was, looking at us”
At the time my mind was taken up by the mad impossibility of the
creature. I suppose he also was amazed, and with more reason,
perhaps, for amazement than we. Only, confound him! he did not
show it. We did at least know what had brought about this meeting
of incompatible creatures. But conceive how it would seem to decent
Londoners, for example, to come upon a couple of living things, as
big as men and absolutely unlike any other earthly animals,
careering about among the sheep in Hyde Park! It must have taken
him like that.
Figure us! We were bound hand and foot, fagged and filthy; our
beards two inches long, our faces scratched and bloody. Cavor you
must imagine in his knickerbockers (torn in several places by the
bayonet scrub), his Jaeger shirt and old cricket cap, his wiry hair
wildly disordered, a tail to every quarter of the heavens. In that blue
light his face did not look red but very dark, his lips and the drying
blood upon my hands seemed black. If possible I was in a worse
plight than he, on account of the yellow fungus into which I had
jumped. Our jackets were unbuttoned, and our shoes had been
taken off and lay at our feet. And we were sitting with our backs to
this queer bluish light, peering at such a monster as Dürer might
have invented.
Cavor broke the silence; started to speak, went hoarse, and cleared
his throat. Outside began a terrific bellowing, as if a mooncalf were
in trouble. It ended in a shriek, and everything was still again.
Presently the Selenite turned about, flickered into the shadow, stood
for a moment retrospective at the door, and then closed it on us;
and once more we were in that murmurous mystery of darkness into
which we had awakened.
 XIII
MR. CAVOR MAKES SOME SUGGESTIONS

For a time neither of us spoke. To focus together all the things we

had brought upon ourselves, seemed beyond my mental powers.
“They’ve got us,” I said at last.
“It was that fungus.”
“Well—if I hadn’t taken it we should have fainted and starved.”
“We might have found the sphere.”
I lost my temper at his persistence, and swore to myself. For a time
we hated one another in silence. I drummed with my fingers on the
floor between my knees, and gritted the links of my fetters together.
Presently I was forced to talk again.
“What do you make of it, anyhow?” I asked humbly.
“They are reasonable creatures—they can make things and do things
—Those lights we saw....”
He stopped. It was clear he could make nothing of it.
When he spoke again it was to confess, “After all, they are more
human than we had a right to expect. I suppose——”
He stopped irritatingly.
“Yes?”
“I suppose, anyhow—on any planet where there is an intelligent
animal—it will carry its brain case upward, and have hands, and walk
erect....”
Presently he broke away in another direction.
“We are some way in,” he said. “I mean—perhaps a couple of
thousand feet or more.”
“Why?”
“It’s cooler. And our voices are so much louder. That faded quality—it
has altogether gone. And the feeling in one’s ears and throat.”
I had not noted that, but I did now.
“The air is denser. We must be some depth—a mile even, we may be
—inside the moon.”
“We never thought of a world inside the moon.”
“No.”
“How could we?”
“We might have done. Only—One gets into habits of mind.”
He thought for a time.
“Now,” he said, “it seems such an obvious thing.
“Of course! The moon must be enormously cavernous, with an
atmosphere within, and at the centre of its caverns a sea.
“One knew that the moon had a lower specific gravity than the
earth, one knew that it had little air or water outside, one knew, too,
that it was sister planet to the earth, and that it was unaccountable
that it should be different in composition. The inference that it was
hollowed out was as clear as day. And yet one never saw it as a fact.
Kepler, of course——”
His voice had the interest now of a man who has discovered a pretty
sequence of reasoning.
“Yes,” he said, “Kepler with his sub-volvani was right after all.”
“I wish you had taken the trouble to find that out before we came,” I
said.
He answered nothing, buzzing to himself softly as he pursued his
thoughts. My temper was going. “What do you think has become of
the sphere, anyhow?” I asked.
“Lost,” he said, like a man who answers an uninteresting question.
“Among those plants?”
“Unless they find it.”
“And then?”
“How can I tell?”
“Cavor,” I said, with a sort of hysterical bitterness, “things look bright
for my Company....”
He made no answer.
“Good Lord!” I exclaimed. “Just think of all the trouble we took to
get into this pickle! What did we come for? What are we after? What
was the moon to us or we to the moon? We wanted too much, we
tried too much. We ought to have started the little things first. It
was you proposed the moon! Those Cavorite spring blinds! I am
certain we could have worked them for terrestrial purposes. Certain!
Did you really understand what I proposed? A steel cylinder——”
“Rubbish!” said Cavor.
We ceased to converse.
For a time Cavor kept up a broken monologue without much help
from me.
“If they find it,” he began, “if they find it ... what will they do with it?
Well, that’s a question. It may be that’s the question. They won’t
understand it, anyhow. If they understood that sort of thing they
would have come long since to the earth. Would they? Why
shouldn’t they? But they would have sent something—They couldn’t
keep their hands off such a possibility. No! But they will examine it.
Clearly they are intelligent and inquisitive. They will examine it—get
inside it—trifle with the studs. Off!... That would mean the moon for
us for all the rest of our lives. Strange creatures, strange
knowledge....”
“As for strange knowledge—” said I, and language failed me.
“Look here, Bedford,” said Cavor, “you came on this expedition of
your own free will.”
“You said to me, ‘Call it prospecting.’”
“There’s always risks in prospecting.”
“Especially when you do it unarmed and without thinking out every
possibility.”
“I was so taken up with the sphere. The thing rushed on us, and
carried us away.”
“Rushed on me, you mean.”
“Rushed on me just as much. How was I to know when I set to work
on molecular physics that the business would bring me here—of all
places?”
“It’s this accursed science,” I cried. “It’s the very Devil. The
mediæval priests and persecutors were right and the Moderns are all
wrong. You tamper with it—and it offers you gifts. And directly you
take them it knocks you to pieces in some unexpected way. Old
passions and new weapons—now it upsets your religion, now it
upsets your social ideas, now it whirls you off to desolation and
misery!”
“Anyhow, it’s no use your quarrelling with me now. These creatures
—these Selenites, or whatever we choose to call them—have got us
tied hand and foot. Whatever temper you choose to go through with
it in, you will have to go through with it.... We have experiences
before us that will need all our coolness.”
He paused as if he required my assent. But I sat sulking. “Confound
your science!” I said.
“The problem is communication. Gestures, I fear, will be different.
Pointing, for example. No creatures but men and monkeys point.”
That was too obviously wrong for me. “Pretty nearly every animal,” I
cried, “points with its eyes or nose.”
Cavor meditated over that. “Yes,” he said at last, “and we don’t.
There’s such differences—such differences!
“One might.... But how can I tell? There is speech. The sounds they
make, a sort of fluting and piping. I don’t see how we are to imitate
that. Is it their speech, that sort of thing? They may have different
senses, different means of communication. Of course they are minds
and we are minds; there must be something in common. Who knows
how far we may not get to an understanding?”
“The things are outside us,” I said. “They’re more different from us
than the strangest animals on earth. They are a different clay. What
is the good of talking like this?”
Cavor thought. “I don’t see that. Where there are minds they will
have something similar—even though they have been evolved on
different planets. Of course if it was a question of instincts, if we or
they are no more than animals——”
“Well, are they? They’re much more like ants on their hind legs than
human beings, and who ever got to any sort of understanding with
ants?”
“But these machines and clothing! No, I don’t hold with you,
Bedford. The difference is wide——”
“It’s insurmountable.”
“The resemblance must bridge it. I remember reading once a paper
by the late Professor Galton on the possibility of communication
between the planets. Unhappily, at that time it did not seem
probable that that would be of any material benefit to me, and I fear
I did not give it the attention I should have done—in view of this
state of affairs. Yet.... Now, let me see!
“His idea was to begin with those broad truths that must underlie all
conceivable mental existences and establish a basis on those. The
great principles of geometry, to begin with. He proposed to take
some leading proposition of Euclid’s, and show by construction that
its truth was known to us, to demonstrate, for example, that the
angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal, and that if the
equal sides be produced the angles on the other side of the base are
equal also, or that the square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled
triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the two other sides.
By demonstrating our knowledge of these things we should
demonstrate our possession of a reasonable intelligence.... Now,
suppose I ... I might draw the geometrical figure with a wet finger,
or even trace it in the air....”
He fell silent. I sat meditating his words. For a time his wild hope of
communication, of interpretation, with these weird beings held me.
Then that angry despair that was a part of my exhaustion and
physical misery resumed its sway. I perceived with a sudden novel
vividness the extraordinary folly of everything I had ever done.
“Ass!” I said; “oh, ass, unutterable ass.... I seem to exist only to go
about doing preposterous things.... Why did we ever leave the
thing?... Hopping about looking for patents and concessions in the
craters of the moon!... If only we had had the sense to fasten a
handkerchief to a stick to show where we had left the sphere!”
I subsided, fuming.
“It is clear,” meditated Cavor, “they are intelligent. One can
hypotheticate certain things. As they have not killed us at once, they
must have ideas of mercy. Mercy! at any rate of restraint. Possibly of
intercourse. They may meet us. And this apartment and the
glimpses we had of its guardian. These fetters! A high degree of
intelligence....”
“I wish to heaven,” cried I, “I’d thought even twice! Plunge after
plunge. First one fluky start and then another. It was my confidence
in you! Why didn’t I stick to my play? That was what I was equal to.
That was my world and the life I was made for. I could have finished
that play. I’m certain ... it was a good play. I had the scenario as
good as done. Then.... Conceive it! leaping to the moon! Practically
—I’ve thrown my life away! That old woman in the inn near
Canterbury had better sense.”
I looked up, and stopped in mid-sentence. The darkness had given
place to that bluish light again. The door was opening, and several
noiseless Selenites were coming into the chamber. I became quite
still, staring at their grotesque faces.
Then suddenly my sense of disagreeable strangeness changed to
interest. I perceived that the foremost and second carried bowls.
One elemental need at least our minds could understand in
common. They were bowls of some metal that, like our fetters,
looked dark in that bluish light; and each contained a number of
whitish fragments. All the cloudy pain and misery that oppressed me
rushed together and took the shape of hunger. I eyed these bowls
wolfishly, and, though it returned to me in dreams, at that time it
seemed a small matter that at the end of the arms that lowered one
towards me were not hands, but a sort of flap and thumb, like the
end of an elephant’s trunk.
The stuff in the bowl was loose in texture, and whitish brown in
colour—rather like lumps of some cold soufflé, and it smelt faintly
like mushrooms. From a partially divided carcass of a mooncalf that
we presently saw, I am inclined to believe it must have been
mooncalf flesh.
My hands were so tightly chained that I could barely contrive to
reach the bowl; but when they saw the effort I made, two of them
dexterously released one of the turns about my wrist. Their tentacle
hands were soft and cold to my skin. I immediately seized a
mouthful of the food. It had the same laxness in texture that all
organic structures seem to have upon the moon; it tasted rather like
a gauffre or a damp meringue, but in no way was it disagreeable. I
took two other mouthfuls. “I wanted—foo’!” said I, tearing off a still
larger piece....
For a time we ate with an utter absence of self-consciousness. We
ate and presently drank like tramps in a soup kitchen. Never before
nor since have I been hungry to the ravenous pitch, and save that I
have had this very experience I could never have believed that, a
quarter of a million of miles out of our proper world, in utter
perplexity of soul, surrounded, watched, touched by beings more
grotesque and inhuman than the worst creations of a nightmare, it
would be possible for me to eat in utter forgetfulness of all these
things. They stood about us watching us, and ever and again
making a slight elusive twittering that stood them, I suppose, in the
stead of speech. I did not even shiver at their touch. And when the
first zeal of my feeding was over, I could note that Cavor, too, had
been eating with the same shameless abandon.
 XIV
EXPERIMENTS IN INTERCOURSE

When at last we had made an end of eating, the Selenites linked our
hands closely together again, and then untwisted the chains about
our feet and rebound them, so as to give us a limited freedom of
movement. Then they unfastened the chains about our waists. To do
all this they had to handle us freely, and ever and again one of their
queer heads came down close to my face, or a soft tentacle-hand
touched my head or neck. I don’t remember that I was afraid then
or repelled by their proximity. I think that our incurable
anthropomorphism made us imagine there were human heads inside
their masks. The skin, like everything else, looked bluish, but that
was on account of the light; and it was hard and shiny, quite in the
beetle-wing fashion, not soft, or moist, or hairy, as a vertebrated
animal’s would be. Along the crest of the head was a low ridge of
whitish spines running from back to front, and a much larger ridge
curved on either side over the eyes. The Selenite who untied me
used his mouth to help his hands.
“They seem to be releasing us,” said Cavor. “Remember we are on
the moon! Make no sudden movements!”
“Are you going to try that geometry?”
“If I get a chance. But, of course, they may make an advance first.”
We remained passive, and the Selenites, having finished their
arrangements, stood back from us, and seemed to be looking at us.
I say seemed to be, because as their eyes were at the side and not
in front, one had the same difficulty in determining the direction in
which they were looking as one has in the case of a hen or a fish.
They conversed with one another in their reedy tones, that seemed
to me impossible to imitate or define. The door behind us opened
wider, and, glancing over my shoulder, I saw a vague large space
beyond, in which quite a little crowd of Selenites were standing.
They seemed a curiously miscellaneous rabble.
“Do they want us to imitate those sounds?” I asked Cavor.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
“It seems to me that they are trying to make us understand
something.”
“I can’t make anything of their gestures. Do you notice this one,
who is worrying with his head like a man with an uncomfortable
collar?”
“Let us shake our heads at him.”
We did that, and finding it ineffectual, attempted an imitation of the
Selenites’ movements. That seemed to interest them. At any rate
they all set up the same movement. But as that seemed to lead to
nothing, we desisted at last and so did they, and fell into a piping
argument among themselves. Then one of them, shorter and very
much thicker than the others, and with a particularly wide mouth,
squatted down suddenly beside Cavor, and put his hands and feet in
the same posture as Cavor’s were bound, and then by a dexterous
movement stood up.
“Cavor,” I shouted, “they want us to get up!”
He stared open-mouthed. “That’s it!” he said.
And with much heaving and grunting, because our hands were tied
together, we contrived to struggle to our feet. The Selenites made
way for our elephantine heavings, and seemed to twitter more
volubly. As soon as we were on our feet the thick-set Selenite came
and patted each of our faces with his tentacles, and walked towards
the open doorway. That also was plain enough, and we followed
him. We saw that four of the Selenites standing in the doorway were
much taller than the others, and clothed in the same manner as
those we had seen in the crater, namely, with spiked round helmets
and cylindrical body-cases, and that each of the four carried a goad
with spike and guard made of that same dull-looking metal as the
bowls. These four closed about us, one on either side of each of us,
as we emerged from our chamber into the cavern from which the
light had come.
We did not get our impression of that cavern all at once. Our
attention was taken up by the movements and attitudes of the
Selenites immediately about us, and by the necessity of controlling
our motion, lest we should startle and alarm them and ourselves by
some excessive stride. In front of us was the short, thick-set being
who had solved the problem of asking us to get up, moving with
gestures that seemed, almost all of them, intelligible to us, inviting
us to follow him. His spout-like face turned from one of us to the
other with a quickness that was clearly interrogative. For a time, I
say, we were taken up with these things.
But at last the great place that formed a background to our
movements asserted itself. It became apparent that the source of
much, at least, of the tumult of sounds which had filled our ears
ever since we had recovered from the stupefaction of the fungus
was a vast mass of machinery in active movement, whose flying and
whirling parts were visible indistinctly over the heads and between
the bodies of the Selenites who walked about us. And not only did
the web of sounds that filled the air proceed from this mechanism,
but also the peculiar blue light that irradiated the whole place. We
had taken it as a natural thing that a subterranean cavern should be
artificially lit, and even now, though the fact was patent to my eyes,
I did not really grasp its import until presently the darkness came.
The meaning and structure of this huge apparatus we saw I cannot
explain, because we neither of us learnt what it was for or how it
worked. One after another, big shafts of metal flung out and up from
its centre, their heads travelling in what seemed to me to be a
parabolic path; each dropped a sort of dangling arm as it rose
towards the apex of its flight and plunged down into a vertical
cylinder, forcing this down before it. About it moved the shapes of
tenders, little figures that seemed vaguely different from the beings
about us. As each of the three dangling arms of the machine
plunged down, there was a clank and then a roaring, and out of the
top of the vertical cylinder came pouring this incandescent substance
that lit the place, and ran over as milk runs over a boiling pot, and
dripped luminously into a tank of light below. It was a cold blue
light, a sort of phosphorescent glow but infinitely brighter, and from
the tanks into which it fell it ran in conduits athwart the cavern.
Thud, thud, thud, thud, came the sweeping arms of this
unintelligible apparatus, and the light substance hissed and poured.
At first the thing seemed only reasonably large and near to us, and
then I saw how exceedingly little the Selenites upon it seemed, and I
realised the full immensity of cavern and machine. I looked from this
tremendous affair to the faces of the Selenites with a new respect. I
stopped, and Cavor stopped, and stared at this thunderous engine.
“But this is stupendous!” I said. “What can it be for?”
Cavor’s blue-lit face was full of an intelligent respect. “I can’t dream!
Surely these beings—Men could not make a thing like that! Look at
those arms, are they on connecting rods?”
The thick-set Selenite had gone some paces unheeded. He came
back and stood between us and the great machine. I avoided seeing
him, because I guessed somehow that his idea was to beckon us
onward. He walked away in the direction he wished us to go, and
turned and came back, and flicked our faces to attract our attention.
Cavor and I looked at one another.
“Cannot we show him we are interested in the machine?” I said.
“Yes,” said Cavor. “We’ll try that.” He turned to our guide and smiled,
and pointed to the machine, and pointed again, and then to his
head, and then to the machine. By some defect of reasoning he
seemed to imagine that broken English might help these gestures.
“Me look ’im,” he said, “me think ’im very much. Yes.”
His behaviour seemed to check the Selenites in their desire for our
progress for a moment. They faced one another, their queer heads
moved, the twittering voices came quick and liquid. Then one of
them, a lean, tall creature, with a sort of mantle added to the puttee
in which the others were dressed, twisted his elephant trunk of a
hand about Cavor’s waist, and pulled him gently to follow our guide,
who again went on ahead.
Cavor resisted. “We may just as well begin explaining ourselves now.
They may think we are new animals, a new sort of mooncalf
perhaps! It is most important that we should show an intelligent
interest from the outset.”
He began to shake his head violently. “No, no,” he said, “me not
come on one minute. Me look at ’im.”
“Isn’t there some geometrical point you might bring in apropos of
that affair?” I suggested, as the Selenites conferred again.
“Possibly a parabolic—” he began.
He yelled loudly, and leaped six feet or more!
One of the four armed moon-men had pricked him with a goad!
I turned on the goad-bearer behind me with a swift threatening
gesture, and he started back. This and Cavor’s sudden shout and
leap clearly astonished all the Selenites. They receded hastily, facing
us. For one of those moments that seem to last for ever, we stood in
angry protest, with a scattered semicircle of these inhuman beings
about us.
“He pricked me!” said Cavor, with a catching of the voice.
“I saw him,” I answered.
“Confound it!” I said to the Selenites; “we’re not going to stand that!
What on earth do you take us for?”
I glanced quickly right and left. Far away across the blue wilderness
of cavern I saw a number of other Selenites running towards us;
broad and slender they were, and one with a larger head than the
others. The cavern spread wide and low, and receded in every
direction into darkness. Its roof, I remember, seemed to bulge down
as if with the weight of the vast thickness of rocks that prisoned us.
There was no way out of it—no way out of it. Above, below, in every
direction, was the unknown, and these inhuman creatures, with
goads and gestures, confronting us, and we two unsupported men!
 XV
THE GIDDY BRIDGE

Just for a moment that hostile pause endured. I suppose that both
we and the Selenites did some very rapid thinking. My clearest
impression was that there was nothing to put my back against, and
that we were bound to be surrounded and killed. The overwhelming
folly of our presence there loomed over me in black, enormous
reproach. Why had I ever launched myself on this mad, inhuman
expedition?
Cavor came to my side and laid his hand on my arm. His pale and
terrified face was ghastly in the blue light.
“We can’t do anything,” he said. “It’s a mistake. They don’t
understand. We must go. As they want us to go.”
I looked down at him, and then at the fresh Selenites who were
coming to help their fellows. “If I had my hands free——”
“It’s no use,” he panted.
“No.”
“We’ll go.”
And he turned about and led the way in the direction that had been
indicated for us.
I followed, trying to look as subdued as possible, and feeling at the
chains about my wrists. My blood was boiling. I noted nothing more
of that cavern, though it seemed to take a long time before we had
marched across it, or if I noted anything I forgot it as I saw it. My
thoughts were concentrated, I think, upon my chains and the
Selenites, and particularly upon the helmeted ones with the goads.
At first they marched parallel with us, and at a respectful distance,
but presently they were overtaken by three others, and then they
drew nearer, until they were within arm’s length again. I winced like
a beaten horse as they came near to us. The shorter, thicker
Selenite marched at first on our right flank, but presently came in
front of us again.
How well the picture of that grouping has bitten into my brain; the
back of Cavor’s downcast head just in front of me, and the dejected
droop of his shoulders, and our guide’s gaping visage, perpetually
jerking about him, and the goad-bearers on either side, watchful, yet
open-mouthed—a blue monochrome. And, after all, I do remember
one other thing besides the purely personal affair, which is, that a
sort of gutter came presently across the floor of the cavern, and
then ran along by the side of the path of rock we followed. And it
was full of that same bright blue luminous stuff that flowed out of
the great machine. I walked close beside it, and I can testify it
radiated not a particle of heat. It was brightly shining, and yet it was
neither warmer nor colder than anything else in the cavern.
Clang, clang, clang, we passed right under the thumping levers of
another vast machine, and so came at last to a wide tunnel, in which
we could even hear the pad, pad of our shoeless feet, and which,
save for the trickling thread of blue to the right of us, was quite
unlit. The shadows made gigantic travesties of our shapes and those
of the Selenites on the irregular wall and roof of the tunnel. Ever and
again crystals in the walls of the tunnel scintillated like gems, ever
and again the tunnel expanded into a stalactitic cavern, or gave off
branches that vanished into darkness.
We seemed to be marching down that tunnel for a long time.
“Trickle, trickle,” went the flowing light very softly, and our footfalls
and their echoes made an irregular paddle, paddle. My mind settled
down to the question of my chains. If I were to slip off one turn so,
and then to twist it so....
If I tried to do it very gradually, would they see I was slipping my
wrist out of the looser turn? If they did, what would they do?
“Bedford,” said Cavor, “it goes down. It keeps on going down.”
His remark roused me from my sullen preoccupation.
“If they wanted to kill us,” he said, dropping back to come level with
me, “there is no reason why they should not have done it.”
“No,” I admitted, “that’s true.”
“They don’t understand us,” he said, “they think we are merely
strange animals, some wild sort of mooncalf birth, perhaps. It will be
only when they have observed us better that they will begin to think
we have minds——”
“When you trace those geometrical problems,” said I.
“It may be that.”
We tramped on for a space.
“You see,” said Cavor, “these may be Selenites of a lower class.”
“The infernal fools!” said I viciously, glancing at their exasperating
faces.
“If we endure what they do to us——”
“We’ve got to endure it,” said I.
“There may be others less stupid. This is the mere outer fringe of
their world. It must go down and down, cavern, passage, tunnel,
down at last to the sea—hundreds of miles below.”
His words made me think of the mile or so of rock and tunnel that
might be over our heads already. It was like a weight dropping on
my shoulders. “Away from the sun and air,” I said. “Even a mine half
a mile deep is stuffy.”
“This is not, anyhow. It’s probable—Ventilation! The air would blow
from the dark side of the moon to the sunlit, and all the carbonic
acid would well out there and feed those plants. Up this tunnel, for
example, there is quite a breeze. And what a world it must be. The
earnest we have in that shaft, and those machines——”
“And the goad,” I said. “Don’t forget the goad!”
He walked a little in front of me for a time.
“Even that goad—” he said.
“Well?”
“I was angry at the time. But—It was perhaps necessary we should
get on. They have different skins, and probably different nerves.
They may not understand our objection—Just as a being from Mars
might not like our earthly habit of nudging——”
“They’d better be careful how they nudge me.”
“And about that geometry. After all, their way is a way of
understanding, too. They begin with the elements of life and not of
thought. Food. Compulsion. Pain. They strike at fundamentals.”
“There’s no doubt about that,” I said.
He went on to talk of the enormous and wonderful world into which
we were being taken. I realised slowly from his tone, that even now
he was not absolutely in despair at the prospect of going ever
deeper into this inhuman planet-burrow. His mind ran on machines
and invention, to the exclusion of a thousand dark things that beset
me. It wasn’t that he intended to make any use of these things, he
simply wanted to know them.
“After all,” he said, “this is a tremendous occasion. It is the meeting
of two worlds! What are we going to see? Think of what is below us
here.”
“We shan’t see much if the light isn’t better,” I remarked.
“This is only the outer crust. Down below—On this scale—There will
be everything. Do you notice how different they seem one from
another? The story we shall take back!”
“Some rare sort of animal,” I said, “might comfort himself in that
way while they were bringing him to the Zoo.... It doesn’t follow that
we are going to be shown all these things.”
“When they find we have reasonable minds,” said Cavor, “they will
want to learn about the earth. Even if they have no generous
emotions, they will teach in order to learn.... And the things they
must know! The unanticipated things!”
He went on to speculate on the possibility of their knowing things he
had never hoped to learn on earth, speculating in that way, with a
raw wound from that goad already in his skin! Much that he said I
forget, for my attention was drawn to the fact that the tunnel along
which we had been marching was opening out wider and wider. We
seemed, from the feeling of the air, to be going out into a huge
space. But how big the space might really be we could not tell,
because it was unlit. Our little stream of light ran in a dwindling
thread and vanished far ahead. Presently the rocky walls had
vanished altogether on either hand. There was nothing to be seen
but the path in front of us and the trickling, hurrying rivulet of blue
phosphorescence. The figures of Cavor and the guiding Selenite
marched before me, the sides of their legs and heads that were
towards the rivulet were clear and bright blue, their darkened sides,
now that the reflection of the tunnel wall no longer lit them, merged
indistinguishably in the darkness beyond.
And soon I perceived that we were approaching a declivity of some
sort, because the little blue stream dipped suddenly out of sight.
In another moment, as it seemed, we had reached the edge. The
shining stream gave one meander of hesitation and then rushed
over. It fell to a depth at which the sound of its descent was
absolutely lost to us. Far below was a bluish glow, a sort of blue mist
—at an infinite distance below. And the darkness the stream
dropped out of became utterly void and black, save that a thing like
a plank projected from the edge of the cliff and stretched out and
faded and vanished altogether. There was a warm air blowing up out
of the gulf.
For a moment I and Cavor stood as near the edge as we dared,
peering into a blue-tinged profundity. And then our guide was pulling
at my arm.
Then he left me, and walked to the end of that plank and stepped
upon it, looking back. Then when he perceived we watched him, he
turned about and went on along it, walking as surely as though he
was on firm earth. For a moment his form was distinct, then he
became a blue blur, and then vanished into the obscurity. I became
aware of some vague shape looming darkly out of the black.
There was a pause. “Surely—!” said Cavor.
One of the other Selenites walked a few paces out upon the plank,
and turned and looked back at us unconcernedly. The others stood
ready to follow after us. Our guide’s expectant figure reappeared. He
was returning to see why we had not advanced.
“What is that beyond there?” I asked.
“I can’t see.”
“We can’t cross this at any price,” said I.
“I could not go three steps on it,” said Cavor, “even with my hands
free.”
We looked at each other’s drawn faces in blank consternation.
“They can’t know what it is to be giddy!” said Cavor.
“It’s quite impossible for us to walk that plank.”
“I don’t believe they see as we do. I’ve been watching them. I
wonder if they know this is simply blackness for us. How can we
make them understand?”
“Anyhow, we must make them understand.”
I think we said these things with a vague half hope the Selenites
might somehow understand. I knew quite clearly that all that was
needed was an explanation. Then as I saw their faces, I realised that
an explanation was impossible. Just here it was that our
resemblances were not going to bridge our differences. Well, I
wasn’t going to walk the plank, anyhow. I slipped my wrist very
quickly out of the coil of chain that was loose, and then began to
twist my wrists in opposite directions. I was standing nearest to the
bridge, and as I did this two of the Selenites laid hold of me, and
pulled me gently towards it.
I shook my head violently. “No go,” I said, “no use. You don’t
understand.”
Another Selenite added his compulsion. I was forced to step
forward.
“I’ve got an idea,” said Cavor; but I knew his ideas.
“Look here!” I exclaimed to the Selenites. “Steady on! It’s all very
well for you——”
I sprang round upon my heel. I burst out into curses. For one of the
armed Selenites had stabbed me behind with his goad.
I wrenched my wrists free from the little tentacles that held them. I
turned on the goad-bearer. “Confound you!” I cried. “I’ve warned
you of that. What on earth do you think I’m made of, to stick that
into me? If you touch me again——!”
By way of answer he pricked me forthwith.
I heard Cavor’s voice in alarm and entreaty. Even then I think he
wanted to compromise with these creatures. “I say, Bedford,” he
cried, “I know a way!” But the sting of that second stab seemed to
set free some pent-up reserve of energy in my being. Instantly the
link of the wrist-chain snapped, and with it snapped all
considerations that had held us unresisting in the hands of these
moon creatures. For that second, at least, I was mad with fear and
anger. I took no thought of consequences. I hit straight out at the
face of the thing with the goad. The chain was twisted round my
fist....
There came another of these beastly surprises of which the moon
world is full.
My mailed hand seemed to go clean through him. He smashed like—
like some softish sort of sweet with liquid in it! He broke right in! He
squelched and splashed. It was like hitting a damp toadstool. The
flimsy body went spinning a dozen yards, and fell with a flabby
impact. I was astonished. I was incredulous that any living thing
could be so flimsy. For an instant I could have believed the whole
thing a dream.
Then it had become real and imminent again. Neither Cavor nor the
other Selenites seemed to have done anything from the time when I
had turned about to the time when the dead Selenite hit the ground.
Every one stood back from us two, every one alert. That arrest
seemed to last at least a second after the Selenite was down. Every
one must have been taking the thing in. I seem to remember myself
standing with my arm half retracted, trying also to take it in. “What
next?” clamoured my brain; “what next?” Then in a moment every
one was moving!
I perceived we must get our chains loose, and that before we could
do this these Selenites had to be beaten off. I faced towards the
group of the three goad-bearers. Instantly one threw his goad at
me. It swished over my head, and I suppose went flying into the
abyss behind.
I leaped right at him with all my might as the goad flew over me. He
turned to run as I jumped, and I bore him to the ground, came
down right upon him, and slipped upon his smashed body and fell.
He seemed to wriggle under my foot.
I came into a sitting position, and on every hand the blue backs of
the Selenites were receding into the darkness. I bent a link by main
force and untwisted the chain that had hampered me about the
ankles, and sprang to my feet, with the chain in my hand. Another
goad, flung javelin-wise, whistled by me, and I made a rush towards
the darkness out of which it had come. Then I turned back towards
Cavor, who was still standing in the light of the rivulet near the gulf
convulsively busy with his wrists, and at the same time jabbering
nonsense about his idea.
“Come on!” I cried.
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