“I’ll ask Austin to bring you something.”
She pattered out. Left alone, Challenger stared down into the crystal. After a moment, he dragged out the black cloth to screen away the light. He was able to get a view of dust and shadows, where several bladdery bodies sprawled. They seemed to work with their tentacles, fitting together lengths and pieces of bright metal.
“The thing moves,” he grunted to himself. “It is articulated, after the manner of the jointed leg of a living creature. No slightest sign of a wheel anywhere.”
He turned his swivel chair and rose, walking out into the hall to where the telephone was fixed to the wall. He rang and asked for a number. Nobody answered and he hung up, fuming.
“Holmes!” he snorted the name aloud. “What is he doing away from home at a time like this?”
Back he went to his study. Austin appeared, quiet and leathery-faced, bearing a tray set with dishes. Challenger tucked a napkin under his bearded chin.
“Hot roast pork, I see,” he remarked. “And Brussels sprouts and scones, and gooseberry, tart. Capital, Austin.”
He ate with good appetite, and Austin carried the dishes away. Again Challenger tried to telephone Holmes, and again there was no answer. He shook his great head unhappily. A newsboy cried shrilly outside, and Challenger hurried out to buy a copy of the the special edition offered for sale. Standing in the street, he read the headlines and the leader article, then stormed into the house again.
“Imbecility compounded!” he bellowed, flourishing the paper in his wife’s startled face. “The inaccuracy of England’s pressmen is rivaled only by the foolish misdirection of the scientific pundits.”
He jabbed at the page with his mighty forefinger. “Here it is stated, with complete certitude, that the Martians are harmless beyond the direct range of their weapons, and that they can scarcely crawl. Dolt, simpleton! Does he think—if thinking is not impossible to a journalist — that they came among us with no means of transportation? They will have mechanical devices beyond anything that our Earth has ever conceived. I question even if they are hindered by our gravity. For that matter, they may not be Martians. I tried to explain that to Stent, but the idiot refused to listen.”
Yet again he tried to call Holmes, and hung up with a wheezing sigh of discontent.
“Holmes, at least, has caution and can understand the presence of danger,” he said. “You tell me he went to Woking. I give myself to hope that he was not one of the fools who died there.”
She gave a little cry of protest. “Oh, George, how can you be so callous when those scientists died so miserably?”
“Their loss, my dear, may be a tragedy considered from a conservative human standpoint,” he admitted, more quietly. “For my part, I will seek to bear it with fortitude. But I value Holmes more than Stent, Ogilvy, and all their colleagues together, and my principal concern is for him. Our researches together with the crystal were rewarding.”
She still lingered, her wide eyes upon him. “George, I have a right to ask you why you never hinted to me of all these things until now. Did you believe I would be frightened to distraction?”
He put the newspaper aside.
“That, my dear, is exactly what I believed,” he said, smiling in his beard. “Had I taken you into my confidence about this communication with Mars, and this knowledge that they were on their way to Earth, you would never have slept at night and you would have worried by day, which in turn would have worried me. But now there is no reason to keep anything from you.”
And he bent his shaggy face to kiss her.
Early on Saturday morning, he rang up Holmes again, and when there was no answer, he went out to buy newspapers.
These were full of tremendous headlines and very little news. It was plain to see that the advent of the invaders — another cylinder had landed, not far from the first — tremendously excited the British Government, without any suggestion of how to receive such a visitation. Troops had encircled the Martian positions, heavy guns were moving up, but strict orders had been issued not to attack. Efforts must be made, said the authorities, to signal the Martians in their pit; and nobody seemed vastly to fear the emergence of any dangerous Martian technology. One witness was quoted as saying that the Martians wielded their heat-ray from a mechanical vehicle, “like a moving dish-cover.” Challenger shook his head over these.
“Typical journalistic garblings of hysterical reports,” he said to Mrs Challenger at breakfast. “Those creatures might laugh, if they could laugh, over these things. Why do the papers not tell us something of true importance—the fate of Holmes, for instance?”
But by late morning, a letter came by special messenger. Challenger tore it open eagerly.
“He has escaped, and is back in London,” he said happily to his wife. “But hear what he says, to the effect that ‘Very likely they consider us lower animals.’” He crumpled the sheet in his great paw. “Lower animals, indeed; how much lower, does Holmes think? This was the conclusion he did not divulge to me, just as I did not develop to him my suspicion that the creatures observed on Mars are not native to Mars.”
“George, why do you say that?”
“Because only now have I given it serious meditation. Well, I wonder if Holmes is right about lower animals. I have felt that we are better compared to savage tribesmen than to lower animals.”
“At least Mr Holmes was fortunate to escape,” offered Mrs Challenger.
“Fortunate be damned! He was wise and prudent. He tells about it modestly. Modesty is a trait which Holmes shares with myself.”
Austin brought in more special editions of the newspapers as the day went along. They reported that the Martians were busily working in their first pit. The town of Woking had been badly damaged, many of its buildings having been set ablaze by the heat-ray. Troops were concentrating in Surrey — infantry, artillery, cavalry, and engineers — and their commanding officers confidently predicted a swift destruction of the invaders. Challenger wondered what Holmes would say.
Again he tried to telephone to 221B Baker Street, but service was disrupted and he could not achieve a connection. He tried Martha Hudson’s number, but in vain. At last he brought out the the crystal in his study and tented himself in the black cloth to look into it.
He saw a gouged, tumbled place in the earth. In the background a machine moved and revolved, stacking what appeared to be bars of pale metal. Several invaders crept and slumped there, and in their midst Challenger made out a struggling something, a human figure— undoubtedly the man who had been shoved into the pit and captured.
The fellow strove helplessly against a myriad of metal tentacles that cross-latched upon his body. He was naked, and his mouth gaped wide open as though he screamed in terror. One invader hunched above him. Challenger saw a wink of light on metal, something like a long slender pipestem. A steel tentacle drove this down into the struggling victim. The bladder-bulk stooped close above it, making contact at the free end of the pipe.
Challenger forced himself to watch the process through. Now he knew how the invading monsters fed.
“A drawing of living blood,” he muttered. “Living blood, from a living victim. Holmes is right. We are lower animals, and to them we mean food.”
“Jessie,” he called out, “we must make plans to leave London soon.”
She came from the drawing room. “Why leave London?” she asked.
“Those invaders may well be heading this way,” he said soberly. “I, for one, have no intention of serving on a reception committee. I have just seen, in the crystal, their way of treating us — and I prefer not to elaborate upon it, even to you. I shall keep in touch with events, and we must plan on being gone when those events approach too embarrassingly near.”
“You have heard from Mr Holmes. Is he at home now?”
“He was when he wrote to me.”
“Will you go to visit him?”
“Not now. I would do well to be reachable here.”
&n
bsp; Thirteen
Night came, and with it a great torrent of rain and the crashing of thunder. Challenger wondered how invaders from arid Mars, if indeed they were native to that planet, might deal with such a storm. The telephone rang. Someone was calling Professor Challenger from London University, but the connection was so faulty that he could not tell who the speaker was or what he wanted. Then the sound of the nervous voice broke off. Challenger spoke disdainfully into the dead instrument and hung up the receiver.
Sunday morning was bright again, and the street outside was thronged with excited people. Challenger came out and approached a knot of men, all of them talking at once.
“Have you any news of the invaders?” he addressed them, and his ringing bass voice riveted their attention.
“Here’s my mate, what was there at the time and place, guv’ner,” said one of the group, pointing at a pallid-faced oldster in a checked coat and cloth cap.
“It’s the truth, sir, and I don’t never want to go back there no more,” said this man earnestly. “Swelp me, they can set the ‘ole world afire, they can.”
“Yes, yes, I saw the beginning of that,” said Challenger. “What can you tell me of their operations?”
“Operations?” repeated the other. “Bless you, sir, all I can say is, I don’t want them operatin’ on me, and that’s whatever. I caught the mornin’ train in from Woking, and be’ind me I seen my old ‘ouse blazin’ away like a fire in a grate. Thank the Lord I ain’t got no wife nor child to ‘old me back. Now I’m for catchin’ another train, as it might be for Glasgow.”
“When I spoke of operations,” said Challenger, with what he thought was patient calm, “I meant their modus operandi. How they move and fight, how they manoeuvre.”
The old man blinked at him. “I don’t understand you, sir.”
“As Dr Samuel johnson said in a conversation similar to this, I am not obliged to provide you with an understanding. Tell me what you saw of their machines in action.”
“I seen only a little of that, and it was ample. They go walkin’ round in great tall things, taller than church steeples, with three legs—”
“Three legs?” repeated Challenger.
“Like a milkin’ stool, with a hood at the top, turnin’ here and there and flashin’ their devilish heat-rays, I ‘eard say they wiped out a whole regiment. I’m fair glad I wasn’t there to see that.”
Challenger turned heavily away and returned to his telephone. Once more he tried to call Holmes, then rang up the War Office, intent on offering his services. The overworked operators could put him through to neither. As he hung up the receiver with an angry snort, church bells tolled outside. Austin came to Challenger’s study with a special edition of a newspaper, shakily printed and with big screaming headlines. A third cylinder was reported as having arrived, also in Surrey. The Martians were abroad in their vaguely described machines, of which the paper said only that they were towering structures of intricate workmanship and operation, running on three jointed legs with the speed of an express train. Artillery units had been obliterated by the incomprehensible heat-ray. Not much more could be learned from anything in the journal.
In the afternoon, Challenger walked the street, trying to learn something from those who had come up from Surrey. He talked to a young man, who stopped to wipe sweat and rest in front of the house. At Challenger’s word, Austin fetched out bread and beef and a glass of ale, and the man told of his adventures, shakily but understandably.
He was an attorney’s clerk and had been visiting friends at a country house in Surrey for the weekend. He said that he had seen the Martians in action and that he counted himself fortunate in being able to flee back to London. The Martians, he told Challenger, had effortlessly and mercilessly struck houses and villages, but had seemed rather to concentrate their attention on various communications. Railroads and telegraph lines had been systematically destroyed.
“To be brief,” summed up Challenger, “they seek to disrupt us rather than exterminate us outright.”
“From what little I saw, that seems to be their policy,” said the clerk, eating the last of the sandwich.
“Thank you sir, for your kindness. I had best be getting along now, my rooms are near Promise Hill.”
He mumbled his thanks and walked away. Challenger walked slowly along the street, then back. When he returned home, it was time for the evening meal, and he was thoughtful as he ate.
“George,” said his wife at last, “what are we to do?”
“I am coming to a decision on that, Jessie. By this time in our relationship, you have learned to depend on my decisions. Tomorrow morning we leave London.”
“To go where, George?”
“That is still problematical. Please pack a change of clothes for us and bring your valuables — your jewels and so forth.”
He himself was awake in the early summer dawn, dressing himself in comfortable tweeds. He filled his pocket case with banknotes and into his trousers pockets dropped twenty gold guineas along with silver and copper coins. When he had finished with breakfast, he went to the door. Austin had stepped out at the cry of a newspaper hawker, and Challenger saw him standing on the pavement, the paper in his hand, talking to a short, heavyset man with grey sidewhiskers and a visored cap. Beside them at the curb waited a spotted horse in the shafts of a two-wheeled cart.
Austin handed Challenger the paper. Challenger glanced at the front page, while people hastened past him, jabbering to each other. LONDON IN PERIL, said the big black headline, and there was an account of military units wiped out at Kempton and Richmond and great destruction of suburban communities, also a new perilous weapon, which the paper called black smoke. This was described as a discharge of “enormous clouds of a black and poisonous vapour by means of rockets.”
Challenger turned to where Austin was arguing with the man in the cap. “I can’t go without Professor Challenger’s word,” said Austin.
“Go where?” Challenger demanded.
“I’m an old friend of Austin’s, sir,” said the strange man, touching his visor in something of a military salute. “Knew him when we was both railroad men. Now the train crews are refusing to work, and we’re getting up a volunteer crew to carry off these crowds of frightened folk to the north.”
“My duty is to you and Mrs Challenger, Professor,” said Austin, but Challenger waved the words away.
“Go with him, Austin, if he needs you. You can be of great use in helping with the train. But,” and he faced the railroad man, “if you take Austin from me, you leave your horse and cart.”
He looked at the horse. It was a gelding, perhaps eight years old at a guess, short-limbed but seemingly healthy and strong.
“What’s his name?” asked Challenger.
“Dapple, sir. But it wouldn’t hardly be regular if—”
“Nonsense!” Challenger broke in, so loudly that a passerby turned to stare over his shoulder. “What regularity is there in the present situation? These are excessively irregular times, my good man, and a certain irregularity is implicit in the meeting of them. Come now, you want Austin, I want your horse and cart. I call it more than a fair exchange!”
Again his voice rose to a roar as he spoke the last words. The railroad man almost quailed before him and held out a palm.
“Well then, sir, shall we say ten pounds?”
Challenger fished out a banknote and handed it over.
“Go pack whatever you need, Austin,” he directed his manservant. “Take cook with you, and Jane the maid, and may all of you have good luck and find safety.”
“Won’t Mrs Challenger go on the train with us, Professor?” Austin asked.
“On an overcrowded, overworked train, manned by volunteers?” Challenger blared at him. “I value her too much for that. But ask her to step out here for a word with me. Hurry along, now.”
Austin trotted in, and after a moment Mrs Challenger appeared. Her husband smiled triumphantly at her.
�
�Observe the equipage with which we will take our little jaunt into the country,” he said. “Now, I must stand by here with our new friend Dapple; someone might be tempted to drive him away. Can you manage to bring out our bags, and my straw hat and those Alpine boots? Pack us a dinner basket, too. Cold meat for today, and tinned things for later — sausages, perhaps, and sardines and pickles. Off with you, my dear, we must be quick.”
She bustled away obediently. Austin came out carrying a battered satchel and accompanied by the two women servants, and they departed with the trainman. Challenger examined the cart. It was lightly and plainly made, but serviceable, the sort of vehicle used around railroad stations to carry luggage and express packages. The floor of the bed was lined with straw, and the seat could hold two. He stroked Dapple’s flecked nose, and Dapple responded with a soft whinny.
“You and I begin to know each other already,” said Challenger.
Minutes passed, and Mrs Challenger appeared again, weighted down with a wicker picnic basket. Challenger met her on the steps and bore the basket to set in the cart.
“I must ask pardon for sending you to carry heavy things,” he said, “but I cannot leave our conveyance alone.”
He gestured to the growing stream of bustling pedestrians.
“Might you be in danger if someone wants to take the horse?”
“Let someone try! But I dislike to see you struggling with burdens.”
“I don’t ask for apologies,” she said. “I have always tried to act upon your judgement of things.”
“And with good reason,” he nodded, with a smile of approval. “There are husbands in this world upon whose judgements it is folly to act my dear, but I am not one of them. Now, the clothing.”
“I have already packed it. I will go and fetch it.”
She went back into the house. Challenger bent and examined the basket with dignified relish. It was filled with sandwiches and fruit, some tinned things, and two bottles of wine. Mrs Challenger came out again with a satchel, returned, and brought another. Into the cart went the stout boots Challenger had specified, and upon his head he set a round, stiff hat of straw with a bright ribbon. Mrs Challenger herself wore a sensible brown dress and sturdy walking shoes. She bound down her hat with a veil that tied under her chin and flung a cape around her. Once more, at her husband’s direction, she went into the house and filled a gallon earthenware jug with water.
War of the Worlds Page 10