But such thoughts were for the future. For now the great narrator continued to drive himself straight towards the centre of events.
He reached the Unter Den Linden near the Brandenburg Gate. And here, to Walter’s surprise, people marched. Walter saw no old folk here, no children, no invalids in bath chairs; these were not refugees. And nor were they military or police; Walter made out only a handful of uniforms, shining brass helmets, standing back from the crowd warily. These marchers were the ordinary folk of the city, mostly young, male and female alike; they were heading steadily east along the great avenue, they carried the flags of Prussia and Germany, as well as crude weapons, poles and clubs, and they sang as they marched, Germany’s anthem, which shared the melody of Britain’s own: ‘Heil dir im Siegerkranz, / Herrscher des Vaterlands! / Heil, Kaiser, dir! . . .’
Walter consulted his traveller’s atlas and understood. At the eastern end of the Unter Den Linden, over a short bridge onto Museum Island, lay the Stadtschloss, the Kaiser’s city palace. Was Wilhelm in residence today? With Berlin under threat, of course he was. And where else would the people gather but at the palace of the conqueror of France and Russia? It was just as the crowds came to Buckingham Palace on great days in Britain.
‘ Fühl in des Thrones Glanz / Die hohe Wonne ganz, / Liebling des Volks zu sein! / Heil Kaiser, dir! . . .’
On impulse Walter joined the marching throng, heading east towards the palace. The sun was high now, morning mist having burned off to leave a clear and bright day, and, over the heads of the crowd, beyond the rows of leafy trees, the palace was already visible, a blocky mass on the horizon. Walter had always thought he had a side susceptible to persuasion, especially when under stress; he had never forgotten how he had fallen under the spell of Bert Cook, as, on Putney Hill, that undistinguished artilleryman had laid out his plans to defeat the Martians single-handed. Now Walter had to try hard not to lose himself in this marching, singing crowd, in their mass defiance – their mass delusion, he thought, as if a little shouting and a few thousand waved fists might deter an interplanetary invasion.
And then a Martian rose up beyond the palace.
It was clearly visible, silhouetted against the sky, towering over the building like a man standing over a doll’s house. And then another, and another, and more beyond, which Walter saw as shadowy, complex pillars. Cowled heads turned this way and that, as if looking around, curious.
As the Martians were spotted, there were shouts, and cries of dismay – and, yes, more yells of defiance, even insults. The procession stumbled to a halt, the crowd compressing, pushing.
Meanwhile the lead Martian manipulated a cylinder – even so far away, Walter seemed to see every detail, the tentacular appendages cradling the instrument and positioning it carefully. Of course Walter could see nothing of the Heat-Ray itself, at this distance. The heart of the palace exploded, a shower of brick and glass and marble.
More fighting-machines stepped in their eerie triple-legged way through the burning ruin, waded easily through the shallow strait that separated Museum Isle from the mainland – and then strode boldly, and with remarkable speed, straight down the Unter Den Linden.
The crowd broke, lost its shape, turned into a mass of individuals fleeing or fighting to flee. The uniformed soldiers and police who had been supervising them turned and ran too. At last, Walter thought, pushing his way out of the crush, at last this was the social liquefaction he had seen before, the inevitable collapse of all human organisation before the overwhelming might of the Martian machines. But even now one or two resisted the receding tide; they sheltered behind trees and aimed weapons at the struggled to improvise barricades debris.
But the Martians came on, with appalling, overwhelming speed, bowling through the crowd. People were scattered and crushed just by the touch of those mobile, electrified limbs. And the Heat-Ray projectors played, deployed with unerring accuracy and ruthlessness: people flashed and burned, gone in an instant. It was not the slaughtered whose screams Walter heard now, but the screams of the injured, those whom the Heat-Ray beams had touched more carelessly, scorching off a limb, turning a back to a crisped cinder. And now came toofamiliar smells, the stink of roasted flesh, of burned brick, of melting tarmacadam where the Heat-Rays touched the road surface.
The guns in the Tiergarten started to speak at last, a rumbling thunder, and bangs from the big Navy weapons shook the very ground. Walter could see the shells rise, threading through the air. One smashed the bronze face of a Martian; the machine staggered and fell – a few in the fleeing crowd saw this and yelled in triumph – and two of its neighbours gave up the pursuit of the human crowd to bend over it, like soldiers solicitous over a fallen colleague. But as always most of the shells were shot out of the sky by the Heat-Ray, far short of their targets. Worse, errant shells were landing in the fleeing crowd, even as the Martians scythed through that mass of humanity – the Germans were killing more of their own than the Martians.
‘Bows and arrows against the lightning,’ Walter says he murmured to himself. ‘You were right, Bert.’ But they had to try, he realised, the Germans now like the English before them – and, through this last dreadful night, like the Americans and Chinese and Russians and Turks – they had to try. And Walter advancing Martians, or from fencing and other himself, so the deep-buried survivor part of him pressed now, had to save his own much-abused skin.
He joined the crowd pressing back down the Unter Den Linden, heading west once more. If he could get past the Brandenburg Gate, which loomed before him now, he might yet reach the Tiergarten. There the crowd was fanning out, he could see, keeping away from the military emplacements, making for the shade of the trees. Walter had hidden from Martians before, underwater, in wrecked houses; he could do it again.
But the crowd was dense, and going too slowly – and the Martian machines, scattering all before them, were coming up behind much too quickly. Walter pushed at the backs of those ahead of him, squirming through the crush.
And now a new noise erupted, coming from beyond the Gate, directly before Walter, a kind of thunder bellowing down from the sky. People screamed, ducked, scattered: ‘Is it the Martians?’
‘More of them?’ Walter, his progress blocked, scrambled for shelter under a chestnut tree, whose upper branches were already singed by a lick of the Heat-Ray. There he huddled, his knees against his chest. That towering noise still poured down from the sky.
And then Walter saw them, through the branches of his tree: aeroplanes, human machines, not Martian.
The centre of the group was an immense bomber, it must have been forty feet long, with four pulsing propeller engines; its course, parallel to the avenue below, was so low it seemed it must clip the top of the Brandenburg Gate, and as it passed over Walter’s head the noise from those engines battered at the ground in heavy, thrumming waves. This behemoth had a retinue of smaller planes, fighters, much faster, that darted high in the air or close to the ground, already deploying weapons with a clatter of automatic fire. Later, Walter would learn that the bomber he saw was a Gotha V, capable of reaching ten thousand feet; the fighters were the nimble, robust craft called Albatros – planes that had once, he recalled, crossed the Channel to strike at the Martians in London.
All this was itself strange to Walter, and terrifying. The best British planes were still wood and fabric biplanes, mere kites; German air power had developed out of all recognition in the great crucible of the Russian war. Now it was not the desolate plains of Russia over which these craft flew, but the heart of the capital.
Walter had to see it all, of course. He came out of what little shelter the chestnut tree afforded him, and pushed his way to the edge of the fleeing crowd. He saw the fighters duck nimbly through the air, their weapons clattering as they launched themselves at the hoods or limbs of the Martian machines – but their bullets appeared only to bounce off the sturdy bronze hoods of the Martians’ carapaces, and one by one they were touched by the Heat-Ray, almost gen
tly it seemed, and their fragile structures crumbled, crisped and burned, and fell from the air.
But now the big bomber rose up – Walter saw it – and disgorged a load of munitions that rained heavy on the pack of Martians. The Martians fought back; the Heat-Ray projectors swivelled and snapped, and bombs popped out of existence, disintegrating harmlessly long before they reached their targets - but so plentiful was the load of the bomber that some of the munitions got through. The hoods of two Martians, three, four, exploded in dazzling flame. The crowds cheered deliriously. Walter saw more than one fighting-machine spin and topple, smoke pouring from the carapaces, and the ugly writhe of tentacles as the living occupants struggled to free themselves from the inferno. And as fireballs burst around their feet, more Martians staggered and fell, their forward march disrupted at last.
Walter would learn that the bombs used that day were incendiary weapons, D-class Elektron fire bombs, with casings of magnesium and Martian-manufacture aluminium that burned at a thousand degrees: another product of the eastern front, and tested on hapless Russian flesh. Well, the seals and linkages even of Martian machines were not immune to such temperatures. And even as the first bomber passed on, its load discharged, a deep thrumming announced the approach of a second craft, heading for the line of the Unter Den Linden as had the first.
But, as Walter watched, a handling-machine scurried through a fast-scattering crowd to the foot of the Brandenburg Gate. Somehow this machine had dashed ahead of its fellows, even as the taller fighting-machines had been targeted by the aircraft. Now, without hesitation, the handling-machine swarmed up one of the Gate’s pillars, like an outsized beetle clambering over a model, and Walter could clearly see the Martian riding the machine, a pulsing grey sack. With apparent ease the machine reached the plinth, and reared up alongside the crowning sculpture, the goddess in her chariot pulled by its four horses. And the Martian raised a bulky cylinder: a HeatRay projector.
When the second bomber came over, it seemed to fly straight into the path of the heat beam. One wing was sliced away, and fuel tanks began to detonate inside its structure, even as the great craft’s momentum carried it on, lumbering over the heads of the crowd. And it began to fall, twisting as its one remaining wing grabbed at the air. The gathered Martians trained their Heat-Rays, and the craft burst apart, raining hot shrapnel on the crowd.
Before the last remnants of the bomber reached the ground, Walter was gone and running, past the Gate, away from the triumphant Martian machines and the scattering crowd, and into the shadows of the Tiergarten.
22
A NEW YORK EDISONADE
In Manhattan, as night had fallen on that very long Friday, though they descended from the Monroe Tower, in the end Harry and Marigold had not dared venture far from Battery Park. The two of them found what appeared to be an abandoned gun emplacement, a grassy pit. Here they huddled under their coats; they drank water and ate the biscuits they had brought. At least the night was not cold, and Harry thought he slept a little, though the drifting smoke made him cough.
Once he got up and clambered out of the pit to see the progress of the war. The night was almost pitch dark, and he wondered if smoke obscured the sky, rather than cloud. Much of Lower Manhattan was blacked out, though here and there a building still shone brightly, an isolated jewel – a hospital, perhaps, with its own electrical generator. A hulk was burning on the river, perhaps one of the great, brave battleships slowly dying, casting gaudy reflections from the water.
And on the Brooklyn shore, illuminated by the light of fires which burned unchallenged, he saw fighting-machines at work. They moved cautiously through the ruins now, as if more circumspect. Every so often he could see a slim silhouette bend down, almost gracefully, and those metallic limbs reach out to pluck something from the ground – something wriggling, something screaming perhaps. Just as it had been in England before, here were the Martians harvesting Americans for their grisly repast.
He wondered what the hell else was going on around the world, this terrible night.
He returned with heavy heart to the gun emplacement, huddled against Marigold’s warmth, and tried to sleep.
He was shaken awake. Suddenly it was daylight. A blackened face loomed over him, grinning.
Harry struggled, but a hand was clamped over his mouth. Beyond, Harry saw Marigold, sitting up, pulling at her tousled hair.
Cautiously, the hand was removed from his mouth. ‘Bill Woodward?’
‘The very same.’
‘I – what time is it?’
‘About six in the morning, Harry; you were sleeping pretty deep.’
‘Six. On Saturday?’
‘Yeah, it’s Saturday. I guess we’re all exhausted.’
‘You went off to Central Park, the Army units . . .’
‘I spent the day killing Martians. Or trying to. We took a pasting,’ he said grimly. ‘They outnumbered us, two hundred to twenty thousand. But we made damn sure they knew we’re here. And the evacuation’s proceeding, maybe we saved a few lives. The radio says Babe Ruth got out safely.’
‘Well, that’s something!’
‘And then, towards the end of the day, we had a delivery.
Parachute drop. Very brave, very risky.’
‘A delivery? Of what?’
Marigold leaned over. ‘From Menlo Park, Harry.’ Harry saw now that Bill had dragged a kind of cart with him, covered by a green Army blanket. Bill pulled back the blanket to reveal three metal cylinders. He reached over and hefted one of these; perhaps a foot wide, four feet long, wrapped in leather. It looked as if it might be an engine component, or some heavy gun.
‘Think you can manage this? It’s the latest fruit of Mr Edison’s ingenuity.’
‘Edison? What are we going to do, throw light bulbs at them?’
Marigold said, ‘Oh, rather more than that. Menlo managed to produce fifty of these, and ship them over. Mostly untested, probably half won’t go off at all. But if even a fraction of them work we’ll have struck a mighty blow. After all we think there are only around two hundred and fifty fighting-machines in the area, so taking out even one -’
Harry sat up and reached for a cylinder. ‘Show me.’ Marigold slapped his hand, ‘Whoa! Hold your horses, Hopalong, there’s high explosive in there.’
Bill grinned again. ‘We’ve got work to do. Get up, empty your bladder, eat something – I have a flask of coffee -’
‘You have coffee. In the middle of the end of the world?’
‘Not that yet.’
By 7 a.m., led by Bill Woodward, the three of them had infiltrated the Lower East Side. It wasn’t difficult. There was no power, no traffic moved in the rubble-choked streets, and in some blocks fires burned unchallenged. Martian fightingmachines stood around the precinct like prison watchtowers, but just as in the Cordon in England, it seemed that individual humans were allowed to move to and fro without hindrance, so long as they offered no threat to the Martians.
No visible threat.
Bill led them to a site - Harry believed it was on Allen Street, but it was hard to be sure so extensive was the damage - where the Martians had already begun the construction, in the light of that first morning of occupation, of one of their characteristic redoubts. The excavating-machines had dug a great crater in layers of shattered masonry, cutting through broken-open cellars and stores, even gouging into the granite keel of Manhattan itself. Fighting-machines stood over the pit, some of them empty of their drivers, and busy handling-machines had already begun their efficient processing of American dirt and rock into fine aluminium ingots. In the shadows individual Martians lurked, shuffling in their heavy, leathery way, and hooting to each other as they avoided the morning sunlight – they were creatures of a colder world than ours. Ruins looked down on this scene, gaunt and eyeless.
And at the centre of the pit were people: men, women and children, perhaps thirty of them, sitting in a huddle. They seemed unconfined, but Harry had no doubt that had they tried to esc
ape they would have been struck down quickly. Instinctively he began to pen character sketches in his head. Most of them looked as if they had been inhabitants of the wretched tenements that had stood here, tired-looking women, grimy men, wide-eyed, shoeless children. But there was one soldier, apparently wounded, as helpless as the rest, and a woman in the uniform of a nurse. One mother was trying to speak to the nurse, as if asking for help for the child sleeping on her lap. But the nurse covered her ears and turned her head away.
The rebels peered at this scene from behind a broken wall.
Woodward growled, ‘Livestock to be consumed. Americans! Well, not today. Here’s the plan . . .’
The tactics were simple. Woodward and Harry would take the three bombs to a hole in the ground Woodward had spotted, close to a cluster of machines, probably a blown-open cellar. The bombs themselves would be ignited simultaneously by a wireless signal, sent by Woodward. And while the Martians were hopefully paralysed and confused, Marigold, on the opposite side of the great pit, would call to the prisoners and lead them to freedom.
That was the plan. They quickly got everything into position.
Then, with a feral grin, Woodward counted down. ‘Three, two, one -’
It almost worked.
What Edison and his whiz-kids in Menlo Park had come up with was a new kind of bomb. It came out of research into Martian technology, at least of a secondary kind. I suspect Harry never understood it fully, but then, neither do I.
It was, and is, believed that the Martians’ energy cells – used to power the Heat-Ray, for example - are based on the extraction of energy from the nuclei of atoms. Einstein and others have shown that in principle the compression of matter to sufficiently high densities will cause it to fuse to a secondary state of greater density, a different elemental combination, with tremendous energy being liberated in the process. It is as if, says Einstein, some of the very mass of the fuel has been transformed to energy. This process itself was not well understood before the Second War, and indeed is still not under our control; investigations into the phenomena dating back to the aftermath of the First Martian War caused terrible accidents, in Ealing, South Kensington and elsewhere.
The Massacre of Mankind Page 43