War of the Worlds

by Manly Wade Wellman

  Creeping furtively, I won my way well above Primrose Hill and saw grateful darkness beyond. I dared stand erect and walk beside the rails. But abruptly there rose the ear-splitting peal of a siren voice, a fierce clanking of metal, seemingly close to the other side of the tracks. In cold terror I flung myself flat into a muddy hollow and lay there, not daring to stir, while the monster came clumping fearsomely along, now here, now there. If it had seen me, I told myself, I was doomed. But it went noisily back toward the green lights. Scrambling to my feet again, I fled northward into the deeper gloom.

  Today I cannot say exactly where my terrrified feet took me. I stumbled once or twice and panted for breath, but I dared not halt. I found myself fleeing along narrow, mean streets, and once or twice across open spaces among the buildings. When at last I stopped because I was almost exhausted, I judged I must be in Kentish Town. The houses there were deserted; at least, I saw no lights in them and heard no movement except the beating of my own blood in my ears. I sat on a step to rest, but I did not dare wait for long lest a pursuer come on clanging metal feet. Again I took up my journey. I came to a broad highway — Camden Road, I decided — and fared on beyond it, more slowly now. Now and then I paused to listen. Nothing came in pursuit of me, but behind me to my right still rose the green glow from Primrose Hill.

  When the early sun peered above roofs in front of me, I was among streets unfamiliar to me. This, I decided, must be Stoke Newington. I fairly staggered with weariness as I followed the pavement along in front of a line of shabby little shops and dwellings. One of the houses was half smashed, the front door hanging from one hinge. In I went, and was glad to find water in a pitcher, though there was no food anywhere. I drank in great gulps, and then lay down on a sofa, to sleep fitfully.

  Several times during the day I wakened and went to look out at the shattered windows. No fighting-machines appeared, though once or twice I saw hurrying shadows across the street and the buildings opposite. This may have been the flying-machine that, as I heard later, the invaders had put together to quest through our heavier atmosphere. I finished the water and wished I had more when, at nightfall of Saturday, I went out and sent myself to go southward again.

  Now and then I paused to get my bearings. I realised that I was moving east of Kingsland Road, and I took great care whenever I crossed a side street. Suddenly the sound of a human voice made me jump.

  Glancing around, I saw a hunched figure in fluttering rags of clothing. He came toward me until I could see him in the darkness. He was old, with an untidy white beard. His eyes glowed rather spectrally.

  “I thought that I alone was saved,” he croaked.

  “You, too, must have the mercy and favour of the Almighty.”

  “Favour of the Almighty?” I said after him, amazed at the thought. Not for days had I felt any sense of heavenly favour in my plight.

  “The destroying angels of the Lord are afoot in this evil town,” he said. “For years I have read the Bible and its prophecies, have tried to preach to the scoffers. Judgement Day is at hand, brother, and you can bank on that. You and me’s left to witness it together, the judging of the quick and the dead”

  I asked if he had seen any invaders, and he replied that they had been roaming the streets earlier in the week, “looking out human souls for judgement,” but that for two days he had seen none except at a distance. Again he urged me to stay with him, but I went on southward. My course kept me on the eastern side of Kingsland Road for a number of crossings, until I came to where I could turn my face westward, skirting a great heap of wreckage, to head slowly and furtively for Baker Street.

  At midnight, approaching Regent Street, I saw lights. They were white this time, not green. Hastening toward them, I judged that they beat up at their brightest from the direction of Piccadilly. But before I came anywhere near, I spied northward a gleaming metal tower — again one of the fighting-machines — and plunged into a cellarway to hide.

  There I cowered, miserably hungry and thirsty, until Sunday noon. There was no sound in abandoned London. At last I slunk, like the hunted animal I had become, to make my way across Regent Street and move west along Piccadilly. I reached Baker Street at last, and saw no sign of destruction there. It gave me a faint feeling of hope. Along the pavement I walked, ready at a moment’s warning to dive for shelter, until I came to the door of 221B. The familiar entry seemed strange and hushed. It was as though I had been gone for a year. Up the stairs I fairly crawled, then along the passage to turn the knob of the door. It was unlocked and opened readily. In I tottered, home at last.

  There sat Sherlock Holmes in his favourite chair, calmly filling his cherrywood pipe from the Persian slipper. He lifted his lean face to smile at me.

  “Thank God you are safe,” I muttered, half falling into my own chair across from him.

  He was on his feet in an instant and at the sideboard. He poured a stiff drink of brandy into a glass. I took it and drank, slowly and gratefully.

  “You have been here all the time?” I managed to ask as he sat down again.

  “Not quite all the time,” he said, as easily as though we were idly chatting. “On last Sunday night, at the first news of disaster heading up from Surrey into London, I escorted Mrs Hudson to the railroad station. At first I had had some thought of sending her to Norfolk alone, but the crowds were big and unruly, and so I went with her to Donnithorpe, her old home. She has relatives at the inn, and they were glad to welcome her. News came to me there. On Monday, the flight from London moved eastward to the seashore, well below Donnithorpe, with Martians in pursuit of the crowd of fugitives. Then came comparative quiet with no apparent move into Norfolk. On Wednesday I returned here, cautiously, on foot for a good part of the way, to look out for you.”

  “I was with poor Murray up at Highgate,” I said. “He has died. Perhaps it is as well to die, in the face of all this horror.”

  “Not according to my estimate of the situation,” he said. “But to resume. I have hoped for your return ever since I reached here on Thursday evening. I have hoped, too, for word from my friend, Professor Challenger. But you must be hungry, Watson.”

  I remembered that I was. On the table was a plate of cracknels and a plate of sardines, with a bottle of claret. Eagerly I ate and drank as I told of my adventures.

  “You have mentioned Professor Challenger to me, I think,” I said between mouthfuls. “Just who is he?”

  “One of England’s most brilliant zoologists, and vividly aware of his own attainments. He would say, the most brilliant by far.”

  “You speak as though he is of a tremendous egotism.”

  “And that is true, though in his case it is pardonable. But do you remember a magazine article some time back, an account of an egg-shaped crystal that reflected strange scenes and creatures?”

  “Yes, because you and I looked at it together. I do not care for its author, H. G. Wells, but I read it because young Jacoby Wace, the assistant demonstrator at St Catherine’s, was concerned. He said that the crystal had vanished.”

  “So it had,” nodded Holmes, his manner strangely self-satisfied.

  “Wace told Wells that before he could secure that crystal from the curiosity shop where it had been taken, a tall, dark man in grey had bought it and vanished beyond reach.”

  “And what does that tall, dark man in grey suggest to you?” inquired Holmes casually.

  “To me? Why, nothing in particular.”

  “Really, Watson, and you always admired my grey suit I got at Shingleton’s.”

  I almost choked on a bit of cracknel. “Do you mean that you got possession of that crystal?”

  “I did indeed. Challenger and I have studied it, and I left it at his home for his further observations. So, you see, we are not wholly unprepared for this voyage across space from Mars to Earth. When the first cylinder struck at Woking, a week ago last Friday, I hurried at once to Challenger’s home in West Kensington. His wife said that he had joined the scientists at W
oking, but I could not find him when I went there myself. I fear he may have been killed by the heat-ray, along with Ogilvy of the observatory there, and Stent, the Astronomer Royal.”

  “May I come in?” boomed a great voice from the passage outside.

  Eighteen

  Swift as thought, Holmes turned and stepped to the door. He opened it, and in tramped a squat, heavy man with the deep chest of a gorilla and the sort of black spade beard that suggests a sculptured Assyrian king. I judged him to be in his late thirties. He wore rumpled dark trousers and a rather boyish tweed jacket. In one huge hairy hand he clamped an oblong leaden case, of the sort in which choice Oriental tea is packed.

  “My dear Challenger,” Holmes greeted him. “Only this moment we were speaking of you.”

  “I have been here twice, Holmes, but you were out,” said the other, looking somewhat wistfully at the remains of the food on the table.

  “I must have been observing the Martians or laying in provisions,” said Holmes, “And speaking of provisions, you may care to help yourself to what we have here.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  The big man crossed the floor, stepping lightly for all his bulk and the heavy boots he wore. He laid his case on the table, then put two sardines upon a cracknel and opened his black beard to take in the whole arrangement at a bite. Brilliant blue eyes under shaggy brows raked me from head to foot.

  “Medium height, well built,” the deep voice rolled out oratorically. “Dolichocephalic — a prominent development of the cheekbones. Celtic, undoubtedly. Perhaps Scottish.” He forked up two more sardines. “You are kind, Holmes, to give shelter to this poor vagrant.”

  “No, Challenger,” said Holmes, busy at opening another tin. “This is my valued associate, Dr Watson, whose name I have mentioned to you from time to time.”

  “Indeed?” said Challenger, and suddenly I felt embarrassingly aware of how dirty and unkempt I must look.

  “Perhaps I would be better off for a shave and clean linen,” I admitted, rising. “If you gentlemen will excuse me.”

  I headed for my own room. There I soaped away grime and shaved my shaggy chin and washed well. Afterward, I changed clothes and returned to the sitting room, feeling much better.

  Challenger had taken a comfortable armchair and was munching cracknels as he talked to Holmes. “On Monday I was able to get a carriage, and I drove with my wife to the channel coast,” he was saying. “There, I saw her aboard a ship for France, and then I returned to London on foot.”

  “Would not the ship take you also?” Holmes asked him.

  “Yes, I could have gone with her, but my presence was badly needed here,” growled Challenger. “My intelligence — and perhaps yours, too, in a lesser degree — may yet cope successfully with these invaders.”

  “So far they have driven all before them, but they have not had everything their own way,” nodded Holmes. “In Surrey, one was destroyed by a shell. The loss of even one makes a perceptible gap in their ranks, for they can number no more than fifty.”

  “And they suffered losses at the coast, too,” Challenger told us. “I saw it happen. Three of them came wading out to destroy or capture the fugitive shipping, and the ironclad torpedo-ram Thunder Child smashed two of them before she herself blew up. You should have seen that action, Holmes. It was capital.”

  “I heard a report of that engagement at sea,” said Holmes. “It struck me that, if the Martians were so ready to take to the water, they have some experience of it, after all. We did see a waterway with the aid of the crystal, Challenger. Though you seem to feel they were mystified by that attack of the ironclad, it may well be that they understand travel on water, may even have some sort of boats of their own at home.”

  “Marvellous, Holmes!” cried Challenger, applauding, and Holmes forbore to say that it was elementary.

  “In any case, they displayed overconfidence in that situation,” he said.

  “Two at the sea coast, and the other killed at Woking, before the others there wiped out the men and guns with the heat-ray,” went on Challenger, his beard tilting with aggressive assurance. “That makes a total of three out of fifty — a six percent loss, and one which they cannot at once replace. My friends, we may yet survive, we may even fight back against them.”

  I, too, had sat down. “How can we fight back? I demanded. “They are infinitely superior to us in science, able to cross millions of miles in space. Their armament must be unthinkably greater than ours.”

  “All that is true, Watson,” said Holmes, filling his pipe again. “But reflect, Watson, they are few, as I have said. And they could fetch only relatively simple equipment across space. I keep comparing them to a party of hunters armed with sporting rifles — no really heavy artillery or high explosives — attacking a swarm of baboons. And those baboons are on familiar ground. They can roll huge rocks down slopes to crush their enemies, or perhaps lurk in ambush to charge out at them. I have heard of such things happening. Yes, beasts have fought and defeated men on more occasions than one. Rats evade the trap, foxes outrun and outwit the galloping huntsman—”

  “Marvellous, Holmes!” I could not help applauding in my turn, for his calm analysis had suddenly roused a warm flicker of hope within me.

  “Elementary,” said Challenger, before Holmes had a chance to say it himself. “I take leave to remind you, it is not enough to state the obvious. The feeling that these invaders were less than omnipotent occurred to me strongly before this conversation. I reflected on the matter while at the sea coast. There I watched there machines at a disadvantage when they waded confidently out in the water, and I conjectured that their unfamiliarity with maritime warfare might indicate unfamiliarity with other difficulties upon our Earth.” He blew out a deep breath, stirring his beard. “They were truly nonplussed as the Thunder Child came full speed upon them. They were not ready for any such manifestation. They hesitated — and they were lost, two of them.” He gestured with his big hands. “They may be destroyed by some other agency than our relatively ineffectual weapons. It remains a simple matter of scientific rationalisation to decide what that agency may be.”

  And he poured claret for himself and sipped it grandly, as though his own words pleased him.

  “Let us begin,” he continued, “by saying, once for all, that they are not invulnerable.”

  “Nor omniscient, by any means,” added Holmes, his fingertips together. “I take time to ponder, gentlemen, that all three of us have been afoot here in London these past few days, and never once has any of us fallen into their toils, though I have had a narrow escape.”

  “And I too,” I said, unhappy again as I remembered how near they had come to me.

  “When it comes to that,” Holmes went on, “I deduce that they do not seek simply to exterminate mankind.”

  “Why should they show any mercy to us if they want to take our whole world?” I asked.

  “It is my privilege to answer that question,” put in Challenger grandly. “They have descended upon London as the world’s largest center of human population, exactly because they have a practical use for men. Last night I lurked near Regent Street, and in some manner the lights had been turned on. I saw hosts of people out in the open, drinking from bottles and dancing together in a sort of saturnalia. Then, just at the sky was beginning to get pale before dawn, a big machine stepped in among them and scooped them up. It must have captured a hundred or so, and stowed them in a big cage of sorts.”

  Sickly I remembered those same lights in the street and the lurking monster. “For what purpose, then?” I asked.

  “For food,” Challenger replied.

  I sat up and cried out in protest.

  “And I saw some others captured at the sea coast, after I had sent my wife away to France,” he continued, again sipping from his glass. “And with the crystal I have observed them twice. Once at what seemed to be their first landing site near Woking, and again at what must be their principal camp. Holmes tells
me you have been close to it, Dr Watson, north of here on Primrose Hill.”

  “Yes, I came almost to that place, “I said. “But at the time I never dreamed that—”

  Again I fell silent, with horror hanging over me.

  “They esteem us as edible,” said Challenger, stroking his beard.

  “Yes,” agreed Holmes quietly. “No doubt in the world about that. And you say that you have watched them, Challenger.”

  “Very closely. It is a most interesting process. The victims are held down by the tentacles of smaller machines. I could see their mouths gape open as though to scream. The Martians gather around and pierce their veins with metal pipettes. The living blood is drawn directly into the bodies of the Martians, much as we drink with a straw. Probably it goes into their circulatory systems.”

  “Horrible!” I could not help exclaiming. “Horrible!” Challenger eyed me expressionlessly. “Permit me to say that in my opinion those drunken fools I saw last night will be no loss to respectable human society,” he rumbled. “As for horror, Dr Watson, how do you imagine an intelligent pig would view you or me in our frank relish for the flesh of his species? With alarm and disgust, you may be sure. However, their methods of feeding, together with certain other factors of life on Earth may suggest an effective campaign against them.”

  “And that?” inquired Holmes.