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.It went down a long way and ended in a winding and wooded valley whichcurled out of sight on his right hand round a majestic slope; but beyond that, lower down-so much lowerdown as to be almost incredible-one caught the point of mountain tops, and beyond that, fainter yet, thehint of still lower valleys, and then a vanishing of everything in golden haze.On the opposite side of thisvalley the earth leaped up in great sweeps and folds of almost Himalayan height to the red rocks.Theywere not red like Devonshire cliffs: they were true rose-red, as if they had been painted.Their brightnessastonished him, and so did the needle-like sharpness of their spires, until it occurred to him that he wasin a young world and that these mountains might, geologically speaking, be in their infancy.Also, theymight be farther off than they looked.To his left and behind him the crystal cliffs shut off his view.To his right they soon ended and beyondthem the ground rose to another and nearer peak-a much lower one than those he saw across the valley.The fantastic steepness of all the slopes confirmed his idea that he was on a very young mountain.Except for the song it was all very still.When he saw birds flying they were usually a long way belowhim.On the slopes to his right and, less distinctly, on the slope of the great massif which faced him,there was a continual rippling effect which he could not account for.It was like water flowing: but since,if it were a stream on the remoter mountain, it would have to be a stream two or three miles wide, thisseemed improbable.In trying to put the completed picture together I have omitted something which, in fact, made it a longjob for Ransom to get that picture.The whole place was subject to mist.It kept on vanishing in a veil ofsaffron or very pale gold and reappearing again-almost as if the golden sky-roof, which looked only afew feet above the mountain-tops, were opening and pouring down riches upon the world.Day by day as he came to know more of the place.Ransom also came to know more of the state of hisown body.For a long time he was too stiff almost to move and even an incautious breath made himwince.It healed, however, surprisingly quickly.But just as a man who has had a fall only discovers thereal hurt when the minor bruises and cuts are less painful, so Ransom was nearly well before he detectedhis most serious injury.It was a wound in his heel.The shape made it quite clear that the wound hadbeen inflicted by human teeth-the nasty, blunt teeth of our own species which crush and grind more thanthey cut.Oddly enough, he had no recollection of this particular bite in any of his innumerable tussleswith the Un-man.It did not look unhealthy, but it was still bleeding.It was not bleeding at all fast, butnothing he could do would stop it.But he worried very little about this.Neither the future nor the pastreally concerned him at this period.Wishing and fearing were modes of consciousness for which heseemed to have lost the faculty.Nevertheless there came a day when he felt the need of some activity and yet did not feel ready to leavethe little lair between the pool and the cliff which had become like a home.He employed that day indoing something which may appear rather foolish and yet at the time it seemed to him that he couldhardly omit it.He had discovered that the substance of the translucent cliffs was not very hard.Now hetook a sharp stone of a different kind, and cleared a wide space on the cliff wall of vegetation.Then hemade measurements and spaced it all out carefully and after a few hours had produced the following.The language was Old Solar but the letters were Roman.WITHIN THESE CAVES WAS BURNED THE BODY OF EDWARD ROLLES WESTON.Afile:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw./spaar/C.%20S.%20Lewis%20-%20Voyage%20to%20Venus.txt (96 of 115)19-2-2006 4:46:18file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswijk/Mijn%20documenten/spaar/C.%20S.%20Lewis%20-%20Voyage%20to%20Venus
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