War of the Worlds

by Manly Wade Wellman

  “Suppose,” said Challenger slowly, “that we were to give them diseased victims, to infect their bodies.”

  Once again I was stricken with icy chills. “Surely you would not deliver our fellow men into their hands.”

  “Oh,” said Challenger reassuringly, “I do not suggest to give them healthy specimens like ourselves. Nor intelligent ones, and all three of us possess, in varying degrees, intelligence. That policy would not be effective to this campaign of which I speak, and in any case men like us — though I estimate men like us to be in relatively small numbers — can do more good to our cause if they avoid being captured and eaten. Holmes, your friend looks quite pale. Suppose I pour him some of this excellent claret.”

  “I have already had quite enough wine, thank you,” I stammered, looking at the bottle. Just then its contents seemed to have the colour of blood.

  “Then a glass for you, Holmes,” invited Challenger, tilting the bottle. “It is now time for us to consider and accomplish the necessary logistics of our counter-offensive.”

  He spoke exactly as though the campaign to defeat our enemies had been mounted and was in full swing. I looked questioningly at Holmes.

  “Watson is the military veteran among us,” said Holmes. “Quite likely he will endorse my own suggestion that we might begin by doing as they do; capture a prisoner and make a profitable study of him.”

  “Precisely the recommendation I was on the point of making,” nodded Challenger. “With certain resources that we can muster here, I venture to trust that we may soon come within reach of one of these creatures.”

  “And I venture to trust that we may not,” I protested stoutly. “When they come racing after men in their machines, all a man can hope to do is get away the best he can. I count myself fortunate in that I was able to stay out of their sight on all occasions. To be approached, even, by a Martian is to be lost.”

  “Not inevitably,” said Holmes, knocking the ashes from his pipe. “Two days ago I was at a shop looking for some things to eat, and a machine burst in at the front and all but stepped on me.”

  “And you escaped!” I cried.

  He smiled and shook his head with an air of friendly sarcasm.

  “No, Watson,” he mocked me. “I did not escape. The invader captured me and devoured me to the last crumb.”

  “His presence here demonstrates that he escaped,” Challenger boomed at me disdainfully. “The most minor rationality, Doctor, should assure you of that.”

  “I was able to run back through the shop,” Holmes related. “He was groping in at the front of it, but I had dived down into the cellar. At the rear was a coal bin, and I climbed out through the trap into the alley behind. Then on I went through the back door of a house behind, onto the next street, and so safe back here. Nor did I lose the provisions for which I had been foraging. We may be glad to have them in the coming days.”

  “My dear Holmes, you must have shown great presence of mind,” I said.

  “Say rather that I showed considerable agility,” he said smiling the compliment away. “It was something of a tight squeeze, getting out through the trap there above the coal bin, but the rest was no great problem.”

  “You were fortunate in doing so,” remarked Challenger, his blue eyes studying Holmes’ gaunt, sinewy frame. “Your feat might well have been all but impossible to one of more solid, though more impressive, physical proportions. But it strikes me that all three of us have been successful in avoiding capture by the invaders, as Holmes has already pointed out. We have ranged for miles through the very streets of London which they apparently feel that they are in command of.”

  “At least my adventure demonstrates that we have the advantage of fighting them on familiar ground, ground we know better than they,” said Holmes. “But you, Challenger, say that you, too, have avoided capture.”

  “I did, and brilliantly,” Challenger swelled with self-appreciation. “Twice their machines came directly to my house. Both times I slipped away — very cunningly, I may add — while they were reaching in with their tentacles at the front windows. But they did not do any great destruction, fortunately. No heat-ray.”

  “Possibly they sought an article of value there,” Holmes suggested.

  “Which I take as a compliment,” smiled Challenger, bowing his great, shaggy head. “Although, as you are aware, self-assertion is foreign to my character, I think it obvious that their high intelligence recognises my own particular important position among minds of the human race.”

  “How would they be able to arrive at that opinion?” I asked.

  “By being face to face with me,” he replied. “Many times I have looked into the crystal at them, and they have looked at me.”

  “It was of the crystal I was thinking when I spoke of their searching your house,” said Holmes. “You have been observing these Martians with it, then. Have you seen them without their machines?”

  “I have, and plainly,” Challenger told him. “Here, let me try to sketch one.”

  Nineteen

  He rummaged in his breast pocket for an envelope and a stylographic pencil. Swiftly he drew an oval body, set at one end with round eyes and a V-shaped mouth, between two fringes of whiplike tentacles.

  “It is like an octopus,” I suggested.

  “Somewhat, in its external appearance,” granted Challenger. “But this curious body structure is for the most part, more or less a gigantic brain-case, as I think. I discerned the rhythmic movement of what I take to be the operation of lungs. Here at the back,” and he shaded a circular area, “is what may well be an eardrum, though perhaps it is not very effective in the dense atmosphere of our planet.”

  “They do use extremely loud siren blasts to signal each other,” commented Holmes, studying the sketch. “Now, Challenger, I suggest that this anatomical specialisation — very little indeed beyond the huge brain and two sets of nimble fingers — argues a far greater evolutionary advance beyond terrestrial man than would be ours beyond, say, those baboons I have mentioned.”

  “You seem to think that they have developed from an earlier form somewhat like man,” said Challenger gruffly, almost as though he made an accusation.

  “More or less that, yes. Their machines suggest that they have accomplished some artificial approximation of what they once had naturally, in the way of legs, a torso, tentacle-arms, and a head.”

  “Those machines have three legs,” pointed out Challenger. “Do you think that the primitive race from which the invaders evolved was tripodal?”

  “It is not an impossibility. A kangaroo, for instance, uses its tail somewhat as a third supporting limb.”

  “As did the great saurians of the Mesozoic,” added Challenger. “The herbivorous Iguanodon, and the appropriately named Tyrannosaurus Rex, which must have been the most terrible creature in our whole story of life on Earth until these invaders came.” He beamed condescendingly upon Holmes. “You may well have the right of it on your side. Again I say, it is really too bad that you did not specialise in the abstract sciences. But if these invaders are so far advanced and specialised, it must follow that the process took whole eons of time.”

  “Might they not be the result of a highly organised and controlled eugenic specialisation?” I said suddenly. “Stock-breeding has developed some swift strides toward various desired physical forms.”

  “Now, that is an acceptable analogy, Doctor,” approved Challenger, striking his palms together. “The contribution of it by you is useful and, I take leave to add, somewhat surprising. I begin to join Holmes in rejoicing that you were spared to become one of our committee of resistance. But Holmes has indicated that the invaders sought the crystal at my home.”

  “That crystal was somehow sent to Earth in advance of the invasion, for observation of our planet by way of a similar device that once was on Mars and must now be here,” said Holmes. “One crystal, Watson, can make events visible when they occur in the vicinity of its mate. There is a definite rapport
that transmits images from one of them to the other.”

  I must have looked stupid, for Holmes smiled.

  “Perhaps somewhat as the telegraph transmits written messages, or the telephone spoken ones,” he amplified.

  “For lack of a better term, we might call the process television,” offered Challenger. “Do not feel ashamed, Dr Watson, if you find it difficult to understand all this. The common run of humanity could no more comprehend the properties of this crystal and what activates them than could monkeys rationalise the way to use a pair of lost binoculars they happened to pick up. But suppose I give you a chance to examine it for yourself.”

  He opened the tea casket and took out something wrapped in black velvet cloth. Loosening the folds, he revealed a clear, burnished crystal, the shape of an egg and almost as large as his massive fist. I saw a play of light and movement, deep inside the thing. For a moment I thought of those ornamental glass globes in which flakes are suspended in liquid, to simulate a snowstorm.

  “You have had this at your home since the start of the invasion,” Holmes reminded him. “Why, would you say, did they not come for it at their very first advance into London from Surrey?”

  “Why, for that matter, should they not come and seek for it now?” I asked nervously. “Would these Martians not have other crystals, with the same qualities of seeing far distances?”

  “Perhaps none like this one, which is able to transmit images far across space to Mars itself,” said Challenger. “You and I knew that it showed us Mars, Holmes, for when I observed the landscape there earlier, there were two moons in the night sky. No other planet of the solar system would afford such a spectacle.”

  “There are more moons than one circling Jupiter,” I pointed out. “And more than one moves around Saturn.”

  “But both Jupiter and Saturn have cloudy atmospheres, as Mars does not,” returned Challenger. “In any case, my friends, I suggest that they need this particular crystal with which to set up communication with their home base on Mars.”

  “But they did not at once come seeking it on their arrival more than a week ago,” Holmes pursued. “Gentlemen, this indicates to me a grave necessity with them, even a critical one.”

  Again I looked into the crystal. Its pulsing light came and went.

  “Where are those images you speak of?” I asked.

  “We need darkness to see them properly,” said Challenger. “A black cloth of some sort is indicated, Holmes.”

  Holmes stepped across to the sofa and caught up a a dark drapery from it. We three crouched together around the table, drawing the fabric over our heads and shoulders. In the gloom, the light from the crystal waxed and glowed strongly. Movement was discernible in it. Then the mist thinned, and there came a clear image. I saw a sort of crumpled face, with brilliant dark eyes, surrounded by what seemed intricate machinery.

  “A Martian?” I whispered.

  “Yes, and looking into a crystal of his own that matches its impulses with this one,” said Holmes, his own hawk face bending and peering intently.

  “Repeatedly I have had such a close view of an invader,” said Challenger from where he sat a Holmes’ other side. “This one, I should say, is in the cockpit of a machine. He may be travelling in it, on his way to find this crystal of ours.”

  “I marvel that they did not find it when they came to your house,” I said.

  “They made a search, but they seemed baffled when I put it into the casket,” said Challenger, his beard close to the image. “It happens that the casket is of lead, and the lead can interfere with electrical impulses.”

  “I daresay we shall soon know about this fellow’s errand,” commented Holmes. “When he is closer at hand, I mean.”

  Hurriedly I bobbed out from under the cloth and sprang to my feet. “What! I exclaimed. “Is a Martian coming here now?”

  Doubtless the one we have seen is now being guided by the vibrations of our own crystal,” said Challenger in the calmest of voices, also casting the drapery aside and leaning back. “Of course, he may be miles away at present.”

  “But they can move at a mile a minute!” I groaned desperately.

  Holmes was striding to the front window and peering up the street. “I take comfort, Challenger,” he said, “when you tell me that they did no great damage to your house when they sought the crystal there. Perhaps they will not utterly wreck these premises, as they have wrecked provision shops, for instance.”

  Cold fear had ridden down upon me. I think I must have swayed on my feet, like a bush blown in a gale.

  “How can you both be so calm?” I cried out. “You seem to think that a Martian is even now hurrying to come here to Baker Street.”

  “Exactly,” replied Challenger, running big fingers through his shock of dark hair. “Like a client, seeking help from Holmes.”

  “And here, Watson, if I mistake not, comes our client now,” reported Holmes from where he stood at the window.

  I ran shakily to his side and looked along Baker Street toward Portman Square.

  A fighting-machine stood on the pavement there, rising high above the buildings to either side. Its three great, jointed legs quivered as though with palsy, while green spurts of vapour issued from them and from the great oval body that housed the machinery. Steel tentacles writhed this way and that. The triangular housing of its pilot swung slowly, like a head peering near-sightedly. I had an impression of sickness, of unsure, unhappy motion.

  Challenger, too, had joined us to look. “It must have been fairly close at hand when I brought the crystal out of the case,” he commented.

  The monster took a slow step forward, then another. It approached creakily on the broad flat pedestals of its feet, nothing like the headlong, confident machines I had watched a week before. I wondered if it was searching its way to us, as a hunter follows the trace of game.

  “This is precisely what we have hoped for, Challenger,” said Holmes. I stared at him uncomprehendingly.

  Challenger stamped back across the room. He put the crystal back inside its leaden case and then carefully arranged the case, its lid open, on the seat of a chair against the rear wall.

  “Now,” he pronounced in a satisfied tone, “the impulse will operate, but any view must be of your ceiling only.” Back he came to us. “Your client, Holmes, very probably will leave his machine to enter at the window, lest he damage the house and perhaps lose the crystal. And we are here to await him.”

  Holmes stepped to the fireplace. From the corner of the mantel he took a small bottle. He opened a neat morocco case and lifted from it a hypodermic syringe. I was so aghast that I actually forgot the Martian for a moment.

  “Holmes!” I protested wretchedly. “Surely you will not use a drug now, after more than a dozen years of total abstinence—”

  “I would not use it now except that it is vitally needed,” he said, inserting the syringe and drawing back the plunger to fill it.

  Metal rang and scraped loudly, just outside. I looked out of the window again. The machine had come opposite the houses only a few doors away, approaching slowly and painfully. The green vapour dimmed the air. I fell back lest it should see me.

  “Suppose you stand in the corner, Watson,” said Holmes, as quietly as I had ever heard him speak. “But be ready.”

  Utterly uncomprehending, I moved obediently to the corner of the room next the window. Challenger had returned from setting down the crystal. Holmes gestured to him, and the two of them pressed their bodies to the wall on either side of the window.

  The metal clanked fearsomely outside. A shadow fell across the window, shutting away the bright June sunlight. I heard a mechanical drone, like the hum of an unthinkably giant bee. Holmes stood taut and lean as a wire cable. Challenger’s mighty frame hunched powerfully. I watched helplessly from where I stood.

  There was movement upon the window sill. A cluster of tentacles came gropingly into view there, like dark, searching snakes. These were not metal tentacles. As
I stared, holding my breath, a dull-coloured bulk followed them. I could see the strange face that had appeared in the crystal. Its brilliant eyes, with fluttering lids, were fixed on the chair where the casket lay open across the room. Beneath the eyes gaped a triangular mouth, stirring loosely and dripping saliva.

  The tentacles extended themselves to the floor, braced there, and heaved laboriously. In came the great bladdery shape, as big as a bear. Its shiny, leathery hide twitched and pulsed, as though with painful breathing. Another effort, and the whole form slid across the sill and thumped heavily down on the floor just inside.

  Instantly Challenger leaped, swift as a pouncing cat for all his great size. The tentacles, two bunches of them, writhed up to grapple him. They wound around his arms, and one flung itself to clasp his neck. He tore at them with both hands. For all his tremendous strength, he seemed clamped, strangled. He was like a hairy Hercules, struggling with the Hydra.

  “Now, Holmes,” he gurgled, his face crimson with effort.

  Holmes stooped down quickly and extended his arm. With a perfectly steady hand, he drove the needle of the syringe into the heaving bulb of a body, just behind the face.

  The creature’s mouth gaped wider and emitted a wild, bubbling cry. Holmes stood up straight again, setting the syringe in the bottle and again drawing it full. He bent down to thrust in the needle and inject a second dose.

  Our visitor seemed to flutter all over, and then, abruptly, it subsided into slack submission. Its tentacles drooped around Challenger, its brilliant eyes glazed. Only the heave and fall of its respiration showed that it lived.

  Struggling mightily, Challenger won free of the tentacles and gazed at the monster. I, too, left my corner to look. My nostrils were assailed by a musty, sickening odour of decay.

  “Gentlemen, this Martian is dying,” I stammered out.

  “Look, it is far gone in some fatal disease.”

  “Dying, yes,” said Challenger, wiping his broad palms on his tweed jacket. “Of disease, yes. But a Martian—”