He shook his head at me, “No, my dear Watson, no.”
Twenty
I was goggling foolishly again. Holmes emitted his quiet chuckle. He turned his aquiline face toward Challenger and nodded in agreement.
“I remember hearing Ogilvy say that you had said something of that sort at Woking,” he said.
“But, Professor, we know this creature comes from Mars,” I put in. “You yourself told us that what you saw in the crystal proved that. And those fiery blasts reported by astronomers, ten of them, sending the cylinders to us across space.”
“Yes, I remarked something of the sort,” he agreed cheerfully.
“And at the oppositions of 1894 and 1896,” I elaborated. “The telescope showed evidence then of what seemed gigantic artificial constructions on Mars. This creature manifestly comes from there.”
“I am not unacquainted with those phenomena you mention,” said Challenger, locking his brows as he studied the drugged mass that now breathed only spasmodically. “And I agree wholeheartedly that this specimen and his fellows came here from Mars. But it does not necessarily follow that they are natives of Mars.”
“No, Challenger, it does not,” agreed Holmes. “Good logic could demonstrate what you say.”
“And I shall endeavour to supply the logic.” Challenger squared his shoulders and flung back his head in his lecturer’s manner. “Bear in mind,” he said, “that no evidence of possible construction upon Mars was evident earlier than that 1894 opposition mentioned by Dr Watson.”
Holmes returned the bottle to the mantelpiece and the syringe to its case.
“It may be that I have eased the pain the poor creature felt,” he said. “Come now, Watson, you are our medical adviser. Of what does it suffer, in your opinion?”
“To judge from the odour, decomposition involves its tissues,” I replied. “It rots, even while it still clings to life.”
“Precisely so,” said Challenger, with a grand air of official endorsement. “Which indicates to me that there are no bacteria of decay on whatever world these invaders have come from to visit us.” He gestured with both arms. “Wise as they are, lords of planet after planet, as they seem to consider themselves, they did not foresee this deadly, invisible ally of man. We survive on Earth because our systems have developed resistance to bacteria through all the ages. But they thrust themselves among us, breathing and feeding and drinking, and in so doing they took death unto themselves along with what else they seized of Earth’s things.”
It was true, and I bowed my head in acknowledgment; in thanksgiving, as well.
“This makes clear the reason that they are sluggish in patrolling our streets,” contributed Holmes. “They do not range here and there so freely. I deduce that they are gathered in dismay, at their principal camp on Primrose Hill. This one,” and he gestured at the slack form of our visitor, “came stumbling hither in an effort to get hold of the crystal. Undoubtedly they want it to signal back across space, to warn their fellows to send no more cylinders to certain disaster.”
“And as to those already here—” I began.
“To sum up briefly, the invasion is doomed,” said Holmes, picking up his pipe and filling it. “We need speculate no further on how to meet and resist it.”
“I am still in the dark on one matter,” I confessed. “Professor Challenger reasons that this is no Martian, though he came here from Mars.”
“My reasoning, like that of all brilliant intellectual conclusions, is simplicity itself,” Challenger rolled out, stroking his beard. “Mars, with its lesser gravity and comparative nearness to Earth was a most logical base from which to launch the cylinders at us. But this creature’s lungs show that Mars was not his native planet.”
I looked at the laboured heaving of the bladder-body. “Its lungs move bulkily.”
“But for that great mass of flesh — and I would estimate it at four hundred pounds, Earth weight — they are not particularly big,” said Challenger. “They would be fatally inadequate in the Martian atmosphere. Are you not acquainted with Stoney’s spectroscopic observations of Mars?”
I was ashamed to tell him that I did not know who Stoney was, and so I kept my silence.
“The atmosphere is extremely rare, but with a bare trace of oxygen to support life,” Challenger said. “No, these invaders came from another world to build their base on Mars, and on Mars they existed temporarily and artificially. They would need respirators of some sort while they prepared there to accomplish their assault upon Earth.”
“Where might they have originated, Challenger?” inquired Holmes. “From a planet more distant than Mars from the sun?”
“From farther across space than that, as I theorise. From a planet in another system in our galaxy. Who can say, who could count, how many habitable worlds the universe holds?”
Holmes gazed at the dying invader with solemn, almost compassionate, attention.
“This doubt of the Martian origin is not offhand with you, Challenger. As I said, poor Ogilvy mentioned your theory to me on the evening of the sixth, only a few minutes before he was killed by the heat-ray. I would judge that the thought had occurred to you even before the arrival of the first cylinder, but that you declined to divulge it to me.”
“So I did, Holmes. I forebore, for a reason you yourself should discern — simply because I wasn’t sure. You withheld your own suspicion that they viewed us as mere lower animals, farther down the ladder of evolution than themselves.”
“All these matters we discuss help me to clarification of one of my own questions,” said Holmes, puffing on his pipe. “The year 1894, as Watson has reminded us, was the time when evidences of artificial construction upon Mars were first observed from Earth. Among other importances of that time and event, is probably the sending of the crystal egg at that time, to observe us.”
I had been watching the invader. It stirred and breathed no more. Again I stooped close to look at it.
“This invader is quite dead,” I said.
“Then suppose we get it down to the cellar below here,” said Holmes. “There is a great tub in the floor there, into which it will fit. Afterward, we can venture out — and in some degree of comparative safety, as I believe — to fetch rum and brandy and other spirits from public houses, to fill the tub and preserve this specimen for scientific study.”
All three of us bent down to hoist the heavy, evil-smelling carcass.
V
VENUS, MARS, AND BAKER STREET
BY JOHN H. WATSON, M.D.
Twenty-One
Mr H.G. Wells apparently chooses to ignore my published comments on his misleading brochure The War of the Worlds. A few scientists have derided the brilliant perceptions of Sherlock Holmes and Professor George E. Challenger that the invaders who came so balefully close to destroying our civilisation, and the human race with it, were not native to Mars. In most quarters, that supreme scientific rationalisation seems to be very little known indeed.
Some time ago I visited Holmes at his cottage five miles from Eastbourne on the Sussex Downs overlooking the Channel. It is difficult for me to understand why he retired there, at the very height of his brilliantly useful career as a consulting detective. Holmes had always seemed to me a confirmed Londoner, happy in the busy streets of the city, within easy reach of such enthusiasms as violin concerts, Turkish baths, and gourmet restaurants. I recognise the kindly loyalty of Mrs Martha Hudson, who gave up her prosperous and respected position as landlady in Baker Street to go with Holmes and serve as his housekeeper. Yet I have also wondered why the two of them settled in Sussex when both are North Country born, with family connections in that part of the kingdom.
Holmes greeted me happily at the door of the picturesque little thatched cottage, around which hung the whispering hum of bees in their hives. Over the teacups he laughingly shrugged away my suggestion that he himself take public notice of Wells’s imperfect historical publication.
“No, my dear Watson, his shortcomi
ngs strike me as mere trifles, not worthy the dignity of debate,” he said, buttering a muffin. “For my part, I am busy writing a book of my own, Handbook of Bee Culture, with Some Observations on the Segregation of the Queen.”
Mrs Hudson laughed at that, from where she stood at the door of the kitchen, though I myself saw nothing funny in the title.
More recently I dropped in on Challenger, who likewise scoffs at the scoffers. I found him studying maps and catalogues.
“Human minds, save for a very few like that of Holmes and the only one now existing of my calibre, are absurdly limited,” Challenger said, “Decades must pass, my dear Dr Watson, before the public can accept these truths so manifest to us.”
“At least Wells should be refuted,” I said.
“He is better ignored, as both Holmes and I shall do. To enter any public discussion is irksome to me, as it necessitates a descent to such simple terms as an ignorant audience can grasp. Which brings me to the notion that your own style might better suit the situation. At present, my attention must be given to my forthcoming expedition to the Amazonian jungles, where I propose to study the conclusions of Alfred Russell Wallace and Henry Walter Bates on the racial aspects of savage tribes there. I may be able to verify some of their opinions, and, quite probably, set right what I apprehend to be several glaring inconsistencies. A scientist’s manifest duty is to seek out new truths and give them to the world.”
With which ringing pronouncement he bent over a great map, and I took my departure. Nevertheless, this supplementary chronicle of mine will now also be offered to the reader in the hope that the findings of my two brilliant friends may be fully vindicated by the more perceptive.
I have already told how, on the afternoon of the tenth day of the “War of the Worlds”, we three clustered around the carcass of the invader which had died almost as it crawled through the window into our sitting room at 221B Baker Street. It lay motionless below the sill, a great oval of a body with dull, dead eyes and two limply hanging sprawls of tentacles, eight in each cluster.
“Man may yet live, and perhaps deserve his rule on Earth,” rumbled Challenger in the dark thicket of his beard. “As Dr Watson has so accurately suggested, terrestrial bacteria are killing these creatures, when the best weapons we could muster against them have failed.”
Squatting down like a giant toad, he tugged at the body. “It is heavy,” he grunted, “but the three of us can get it to the basement.”
Together we dragged it to the door and down the steps to the ground floor. It taxed our combined strength, and the odour of decay was sickening. We all panted with exertion as we rolled it down another flight of stairs into Mrs Hudson’s basement. Holmes lighted a candle and we made out a cement-faced trough in the tiled floor some nine feet by four and more than a yard deep, as I estimated.
“Once a carpet-maker had his establishment here, and this was his vat for the dyeing of fabrics,” said Holmes. “Very well, in with our specimen but take care not to damage it.”
We found cord and looped it around the slack form to lower it. Then again we mounted to the street door. The great war machine of the invader slumped there against the wall outside, almost blocking the street. We raced across to Dolamore’s wine and spirits shop. Challenger drove in the door with a mighty kick of his heavy boot. Inside, Holmes and I took big baskets and filled them with bottles of brandy, whisky, and gin. Challenger hoisted a twenty-gallon keg of rum upon the great ledge of his shoulder. Back across we went and down into the basement again. Carefully we heaped loose tiles and fragments of broken cement here and there around the carcass in the trough and poured in our spirits. Holmes muttered unhappily as I trickled out a bottle of choice Scotch whisky. Several more trips to Dolamore’s produced enough liquor of various kinds to submerge our dead invader completely.
It was dusk by the time we left the cellar, went upstairs to our lodgings, and washed thoroughly. Holmes produced a tin of tongue and some excellent cream crackers for supper, while I managed a pot of coffee on our spirit stove. After eating, we had brandy and some of Holmes’ excellent cigars.
“Suppose that we take time to attempt an estimate of our situation,” said Holmes. “We are now aware that these invaders are dying from disease, and also that they are not Martians after all.”
“Because they breathe oxygen, and there is but a trace of that element in the thin atmosphere of Mars,” amplified Challenger again. “Wherever they originated, oxygen was present for their breathing, and oxygen, as every schoolboy should know, is a necessity for the production and sustaining of organic life. Remember, too, that only ten cylinders crossed space to us from their launching site on Mars. The last departed before the first landed. That last cylinder must have arrived on Earth only last midnight.”
“Then its crew of five should be undiseased as yet,” suggested Holmes. “From those late arrivals, we may well look for some menace in the days to come.”
“Perhaps not so greatly,” I said. “If they have no natural resistance whatever to infection, they will feel damaging effects very promptly indeed. A system not conditioned to resist bacteria of disease and decay will suffer. The one we captured may well be a late arrival, and his companions from the earlier cylinders may even have succumbed ere this.”
“My congratulations, Watson,” smiled Holmes. “Often in the past I have observed to you that deductive reason is in itself contagious. Your own medical judgement there is a sound one.”
“Commonplace,” said Challenger, sipping brandy. “Dr Watson states a basic truth, one which undoubtedly was taught him at an early stage of his medical education. I am encouraged that the one that came here has not as yet been followed. He visited us on a desperate, solitary undertaking, to repossess their interplanetary signalling device yonder on the chair.”
He gestured with his cigar toward where the crystal lay in its open casket. Holmes rose and walked to where it was. I saw a faint wash of blue light on his hawk face.
“Turn down the lamp, Watson,” he said, and I leaned across and did so. “Now,” he reported, “I can see what must be the cockpit of this machine just outside our window.”
He shifted his head, as though for a clearer view. “There is a light there, and an intricate assembly of what looks like switches and panels on either side. Very well, Watson, you may turn the lamp up again.”
He came back to his chair and sat down. We began to speak about the probable bodily structure of the invaders. I knew something of comparative anatomy, and Challenger spoke as though he knew everything.
“Again I wish to speak in endorsement of Dr Watson’s suggestion that they have been developed to their present form by special breeding,” he said, as though conferring an honour upon me. “As we have discerned, they are for the most part a highly organised but at the same time simplified arrangement of brain and hands. Organically, in some ways, they have evolved as far beyond man as man has evolved beyond four-footed animals but in others they have become rudimentary. They have kept active lungs, their optical processes apparently are quite good, but they would appear to be utterly lacking in the digestive tract. When they feed, they draw living blood from their prey into their circulatory systems.”
“To their own destruction,” added Holmes.
“Here on Earth, that has been their destruction. But to continue: I have not yet determined whether they sleep, although our specimen’s eyes are furnished with lids. Holmes, I must confess that from the very first you had the right of it. Perhaps, in long ages past, their ancestors were not greatly different in physique from some humanoid form.”
“And their minds?” I inquired.
“Here, Watson, I appropriate another of your suggestions about them,” said Holmes. “I mean, your suggestion that the intelligence differential produced by a specially controlled evolution has been less than the radical difference in organic structure. I have several times drawn an analogy of baboons fighting an attack of human hunters, but perhaps the chimpanzee is a bett
er comparison than the baboon. Chimpanzees are able to learn to ride bicycles and to eat with knives and forks. Who knows?” Again he turned to gaze toward the crystal egg. “We may learn in time to make profitable use of some of their devices.”
“We have already done that, with the crystal,” said Challenger, and he yawned. “But we are all tired, I think. Our exertions today have been considerable. What do you say to sleeping on it?”
Holmes insisted that Challenger take his bedroom, and he lay down on the sofa in his old blue dressing gown. I went into my own room, and with deep gratitude sought my bed for the first time in ten days. Sleep came soothingly upon me, and I did not even dream.
When I wakened it was sunrise, and Holmes was talking excitedly in the next room.
Instantly I sprang out of bed, my heart racing. I snatched my robe from its hook, hurried it on, and ran out into the sitting room.
Our landlady, Mrs Hudson, was there, her blonde hair disordered and her white shirtwaist and dark skirt crumpled and dusty. Her usually vigourous form drooped weakly. Holmes was helping her to a seat on the sofa.
“Martha!” he cried, the only time I ever remember his using her Christian name. “I told you to stay in Donnithorpe, where you would be safe for a time, at least.”
“But I had to find out what had become of you,” she said, weeping. “Even if the worst had befallen, I had to know.”
Sitting beside her, he held her to him. “Get her some brandy, Watson,” he said, and I poured a generous tot. He took it and held it to her trembling lips. She drank gratefully and looked up, as though it had calmed and revived her.
“I had to find out,” she said again, more strongly this time.
“You have come more than a hundred miles,” Holmes said. “You rode on a velocipede, I perceive. It is quite obvious, the old-fashioned sort kicks up dust on the clothing in just that fashion.”
“I started on foot, day before yesterday,” she managed. “I found the velocipede by the side of the road, and I came on it into London last evening. Bit by bit, I made my way here.”
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