He strode very quickly into the dark of the woods. And I don’t even need to blast the Martians, he thought. It’ll be sufficient for me to put out their spotlight. The sudden darkness will throw them into a panic of which I’ll be able to take advantage…
A noise interrupted his train of thought. It was the metallic friction of automotive vertebrae.
There they are!
He saw the luminous beam of the little spotlight hopping between the tree-trunks.
Ready!
He aimed the electro-mirror. Twenty meters away, the auto-serpent appeared, sliding sinuously along at high speed. Saint-Clair made out four Martians. The one in front was steering the machine, the one at the back was holding the lantern-pole.
Fire!
A dry click; a jet of fire; a ball of flame—and then there was darkness.
But the auto-serpent did not stop immediately. The Nyctalope saw the Martian in front gesticulating with all of its tentacles; then he saw it no longer—the machine, with its four passengers, disappeared behind a series of close-set tree-trunks. The Nyctalope bounded forward, reaching the auto-serpent as it came to a halt. In that spot, the darkness was absolute. Knowing that he alone, by virtue of his nyctalopia, was capable of sure and precise movement, Saint-Clair felt a surge of strength. Calmly, standing three paces away from the Martians, he waited, curious to see what these strange enemies would do.
The Martians, somewhat disorientated by the unexpected and incomprehensible extinction of their light, were groping with the tips of their tentacles—and they were talking to one another! Saint-Clair deduced that they were talking, and then he saw it. He saw it because the Martians’ enormous eyes had suddenly captured his attention.
A prodigy! In the middle of the fantastic creatures’ black eyes, symbols inscribed in white appeared: rapid, successive symbols, phosphorescent in the darkness; they must presumably be of another sort during the day in order to remain visible. These tiny symbols were in the form of geometric shapes. The Martians obviously had nerves that could be activated at swill within the transparency of their pupils, capable of assembling, separating and amalgamating in order to describe the minuscule figures.
The Nyctalope was bowled over by his discovery—and his emotion was such that he almost lost the benefit of his recent actions, for the silent and enigmatic conversation suddenly stopped; the Martian in front put some of its tentacles on a series of switches arranged in front of it, in the middle of the auto-serpent. The machine turned around slowly and moved off again, tentatively, towards the vague light coming from the edge of the clearing, which tinted the treetops.
“Oh!” said the Nyctalope, aloud. He quickly detached the sack that he was carrying over his shoulder, opened it and leapt forward. He brought it down on the hindmost Martian, sealed the sack and left it there. Then, leaping on to the machine itself, he made haste to slice the agitated tentacles from the other Martians with three methodical thrusts of his knife. He presumed, rightly, that the creatures would continue to live, though deprived of their tentacles.
The machine stopped, but three loud cries resounded in succession: “Ulla! Ulla! Ulla!” The three wounded Martians were calling for help.
“What?” said Saint-Clair. “What now?” It had not occurred to him that the Martians had mouths, and that these mouths emitted sounds, if not words.
The triple cry, sinister and powerful, went up again: “Ulla! Ulla! Ulla!”
There was an enormous noise of breaking branches and shattering tree-trunks, impacts and metal screeching. Abruptly, in a sudden glare of green light, the leg of a tripod appeared some distance away.
“Ulla! Ulla! Ulla!”
I’m done for! Saint-Clair said to himself—but he did not hesitate. Seizing one of the Martian amputees, he threw it on to his shoulders. In mid-“Ulla,” its cartilaginous beak ripped into the flesh of his left arm, but Saint-Clair never even felt the pain. With one bound he reached his sack, grabbed it with his right hand, threw it on to his back and started running.
The two Martians he was carrying weighed almost nothing from the human viewpoint, given the density of the Martian atmosphere and the weight of objects there. In any case, every step that Saint-Clair took, tirelessly, was an enormous bound. By contrast, the tripod that was pursuing the Nyctalope through the forest guided by the cries of “Ulla!” was impeded at every step by the trees, the branches and the foliage that it had to destroy as it went, with titanic sweeping blows of trenchant chains. The wounded Martian never ceased its eternal cry: the only one of which the historian Wells had made mention.
In his flight, however, the Nyctalope had the utmost difficulty in orientating himself. In the course of the movements he had made, the bracelet carrying the chronometer and the compass had rotated in such a way that Saint-Clair could no longer consult the compass without turning his wrist—and in order to turn his wrist, he would have to let go of the sack for at least ten seconds.14 Seconds were worth minutes at this juncture! The cries of “Ulla! Ulla!” were still resounding. The tripod was no more than 100 meters away now.
“Worse luck!” said Saint-Clair. He released the Martian amputee, which rolled over the ground. He put the sack over his shoulder and turned his wrist. “The hydroplane’s to the west... the west!” A glance at the compass convinced him that he was going the right way.
The tripod came to a halt in front of the Martian amputee. Saint-Clair deduced this from the abrupt cessation of the racket of broken branches and the cries of “Ulla! Ulla!” He gained ground.
As long as the one in the sack doesn’t start screaming now, the Nyctalope thought.
How long did that mad race between the tree-trunks go on? Ten, 12 minutes? The chronometer was no help; Saint-Clair had not consulted it immediately before the Martian attack. Bah! he thought, abruptly, as he found himself in complete darkness and absolute silence. I can stop for a moment!
He stopped, and turned his head—and a shudder of agony shook his body. His legs trembled. The sack fell from his open hand. At the exact moment when he turned round, a sudden blaze of light lit up the trees, as if millions of fireworks had suddenly been set off in the lowest branches—and leaping from these branches in unison, hundreds of food-bipeds, lived and flaccid, fell lightly on to the ground. Fluctuating wildly, the swarm hurled itself upon him.
He tried to grab in electro-mirror in order to defend himself, but he was seized by hundreds of fleshy hands, stifled by soft flesh and immobilized.
He contrived to lift one arm, with some freedom of action to the right. He hit out with his fist, with all his might. It was as if he had punched a half-deflated balloon. The horrible, livid, grimacing circle closed in on him again. And as he struggled furiously, panic-stricken now, he had the very clear impression that a tripod had surged forth beyond the mass of bipeds, amid a racket of felled trees and broken branches.
His eyes were blinded by the projection of an unsustainable glare. He felt a sort of pincer seize him by his left arm, crushing it, and his entire body was lifted up. His left shoulder must have been dislocated, for he howled in pain.
That was his last sensation. For the first time in his life, he was afraid, and knew that he was afraid—and he fainted.
X. The Nyctalope-Tripod
Meanwhile, on the hydroplane, Xavière, Verneuil and the crew had heard the racket of broken branches and uprooted trees. In the calm night, all the sounds were perfectly distinct—and as they came closer, the young woman gradually grasped their significance. Finally, she could not hold herself back. “Verneuil,” she said, “they’re after him. We have to go to meet him, to help him, perhaps provide a useful distraction.”
“I’m ready, Madame!”
“Two volunteers!” Xavière demanded.
With the Captain at the head, the entire crew of the hydroplane offered itself. Xavière chose two big men, the sturdiest of the lot.
“Thank you, Captain,” she said to the officer. “Stay here. The four of us will go to see wh
at’s happening.”
She put on a helmet, having taken care to leave the eye-holes open, in order to make direct use of her eyes. Verneuil and the two sailors did likewise.
“What are your names?” she asked the sailors.
“Ruart.”
“Depas.”
“Arm yourselves with electro-mirrors, and let’s go!”
She leapt on to the shore and ran towards the sound of breaking trees, followed by the three men. The darkness was complete, but the sounds guided her, and her instinct, rather than her eyes, allowed her to avoid the tree-trunks. She also put her hands out in front of her, and every time she touched an obstacle she moved sideways slightly, passed it by and leapt forward again. Verneuil, Ruart and Depas steered according to the sound of her footfalls and the brief instructions she called back to them.
A diffuse light was manifest, which became a vivid clarity, and then a dazzling flood of light—and, in the middle of a circle of white, grimacing creatures, a steel arm that was lifting a man into the air.
“Leo!” cried Xavière.
“The Master!” howled the three men.
Verneuil had more presence of mind. He pointed his electro-mirror at the white tumultuous mass of living flesh. A ribbon of fire was hollowed out, which immediately became a dark passage. Xavière was already running into it, towards the tripod that was lifting Saint-Clair up.
At that moment, a deathly silence reigned. In that silence Verneuil’s voice, harsh and imperious, shouted: “Stop, Madame!”
As if a powerful hand had struck her and seized her by the shoulder, Xavière stopped, went down on one knee, and ducked. Ruart and Depas had understood. Like Verneuil, they took aim with their electro-mirrors. Three arrows of fire sprang forth, flying straight towards the tripod’s turret. It exploded. The chains, and the gesticulating articulated arms, fell back like lifeless limbs.
The three men hurled themselves forward and caught the inanimate Saint-Clair in their arms. They detached him briskly from the pincer that was crushing his arm. Her face streaming with tears, Xavière embraced him.
Around the group was empty space; the bipeds had vanished.
“Look out!” howled Verneuil. He leapt backwards, electro-mirror in hand, attempting to aim the weapon.
A second tripod, which had arrived during the hectic drama, had passed unnoticed thanks to the concentration of their attention on the one that had lifted up Saint-Clair. As it lowered and advanced its articulated arms, Verneuil had seen it. Too late! The aviator was seized and lifted up, his arms pinned to his body by two enormous fingers of steel that gripped him like a vice. He was choking—but he did not lose consciousness, and he saw Xavière and the Nyctalope grabbed together and lifted up. Ruart and Depas were both caught, one by a leg, the other by the neck.
This time, Verneuil thought: We’re done for!
He fell; hard netting dug into his back. Bodies fell on top of him, stifling him. That continued for a few minutes, amid a flurry of arms and legs, sudden jolts and the noise of groans and curses, in complete darkness.
Suddenly, a clear voice—the voice of the Commander, the Master—became audible: “Xavière, Verneuil, I’m here—I can see you!”
“Leo!”
“Be calm! Take my hand, Xavière… Hold on!”
“Aren’t you wounded?”
“No… A pain in my shoulder and left arm—nothing much. Stupidly, I fainted.”
“Where the Devil are we, Master?” Verneuil hazarded.
“In the basket of a tripod. Who are these two men?”
“Hydroplaners Ruart and Depas,” Xavière replied, tranquil and strong now.
“They’re dead—one with a crushed neck, the other half-torn apart.”
Silence fell again for a moment. A formidable emotion made their hearts beat faster—but Saint-Clair saw that Xavière’s face, and Verneuil’s, were calm and resolute.
“I’ve lost my electro-mirror,” the Master added.
“Here’s mine!” said Xavière.
“I’ve got mine too!” said Verneuil.
“Give it to me, darling!”
What sweetness there was in that word, in such terrible and fantastic circumstances!
Saint-Clair took the weapon and checked it. “Don’t move,” he said. “I’ll come back.”
“Where are you going?” murmured Xavière, anguished again.
“To do something very simple and prodigious.”
“What if you die?”
“Unlikely! The Martians have one serious general disadvantage with respect to us. They’ve taken us for simple bipeds, slightly improved; they don’t realize that our intelligence is worth as much as theirs, by virtue of the simple fact that we recognize them to be superior to ourselves in certain regards, and they have one equally serious particular disadvantage with respect to me: they’re not nyctalopes. The Martian inside the turret of this tripod is so scornful of us that it threw us into its basket without first trying to find out what we are. Don’t move…”
Captive in the darkness, gripped by the lattice that formed the wall of their prison, Xavière and Verneuil did not see Saint-Clair climb up that netting, but they did not hear him speak again, and understood that he had left them.
Behind the turret, and at the same level, each tripod was furnished with a sort of rigid chain-mail basket three meters deep—the same depth as the turret. The Nyctalope climbed up from the bottom of this basket, and grasped the rim of the turret with both hands. A meter above this rim, the “cap” of the turret was turning, very rapidly, on a central pivot, producing a cold wind that contributed enormously to the cooling of Saint-Clair’s feverish head, clarifying his ideas, his will and his gaze…
He leaned over the rotating ventilator and saw a Martian immobile inside the turret. Standing on eight of its tentacles, it allowed six others to hang down from its monstrous head, and was using the other two to manipulate three switches from a numerous array set out on a vertical console.
The turret was about six meters in diameter and three in height. Cannon-barrels arranged around it, half-confined in an embrasure, left a large space around the fixed pivot, whose axle disappeared into the depths of the turret, where the motor of the entire machine was located.
The Nyctalope observed. He saw that the switches to which the Martian was applying its tentacles commanded the motion, the direction and a rotating spotlight set above the ventilation-cap. The Martian was switching on the spotlight periodically, to guide it through the forest. At a prudent pace, it was moving through the broad breach made by the pursuit.
The Martian could see all around it, outside the turret, by means of loopholes integrated into the walls, fitted with a transparent substance—which the Nyctalope recognized, on touching it, as having nothing in common with glass or crystal. When he had seen enough, and was certain that he could put the marvelous project that he had in mind into operation, he thought: With a single, very brief, blast from the electro-mirror I can carbonize this Martian…
Gripping the murderous box, he tapped it against the rim of the turret. The Martian heard he noise, turned round, raised its eyes, but at the same instant, it was blinded, blasted, annihilated.
Swiftly, Saint-Clair went got into the turret by means of a parrot-ladder disposed for that purpose on the interior wall. Coldly, with his mind clear and his nerves calm, he touched the switches. Lucid and prudent, he tried them out, observing the effects. The third one produced the effect he was looking for; the tripod stopped. Only the ventilator continued turning.
Quickly, Saint-Clair climbed back up, leaned over the chain-mail basket and called softly into the darkness: “Xavière!”
“Leo!”
“Climb up, quickly!”
“What’s happened?”
“I’m the master of the tripod—the Martian is dead!”
“Oh, my beloved!” She expressed herself in admiration as in love.
Followed by Verneuil, she climbed up, supporting herself on the ste
el netting. At the top, he greeted her with a kiss. Then he took her in his arms and went back into the turret. Verneuil arrived there almost at the same time—but the darkness was so profound that the Nyctalope was the only one who could see anything.
The charred body of the Martian was in their way; they trod on the flaccid thing accidentally.
“It’s a pity that I don’t have my electric torch!” said Verneuil.
“Hang on! It’s impossible that the Martians haven’t made provision for lighting the turret’s interior.”
The Nyctalope searched, examining every part of the circular wall from top to bottom. There was a profusion of switches, whose wires seemed to be made of platinum, and handles fabricated from the transparent substance fitted into the loopholes, which was neither glass nor crystal. “I’ve got it!” he said, in a low voice. He had just noticed a transparent pad half way up the ventilator, partly covered by a sort of shade. On the same pivot, lower down, two white buttons jutted out. Saint-Clair turned one of them. The pad lit up and spread a soft green light throughout the lower part of the turret.
“Quickly, Verneuil, throw that thing…”
The aviator seized the sticky and bloated corpse of the Martian without any apparent repugnance. He got up, put it on his shoulder, scaled the parrot-ladder and threw his burden outside. Then he climbed down again.
“Now,” said Saint-Clair, “it’s a matter of studying this machine and getting to know it, within an hour, as well as if we had made it ourselves. Xavière...”
“My love?”
“Go from loophole to loophole and look outside. We’re in a part of the forest that’s far enough away from the clearing. No longer hearing any noise, the Martians won’t be worried about two tripods that left on reconnaissance. It’s scarcely midnight. We have time enough to know everything before dawn…”
“Very well!”
The Nyctalope on Mars 2: The Triumph of Love Page 18