Sherlock Holmes's War of the Worlds

by Manly Wade Wellman

  Challenger helped his wife down and drew Dapple's head back to westward. "Away you go now, my boy," he said. "But I advise you to avoid Chelmsford; they evince an ungrateful attitude to horses in those parts."

  So saying, he slapped Dapple's spotted flank smartly. Dapple went trotting away on the path around the hill. Challenger stooped to pick up the satchel and the package of food.

  "A considerable embarkment is taking place here," Jessie," he said. "We would do well to see what ar­rangements may be made for taking ship."

  Together they walked on down to the sandy beach. Challenger led the way toward one knot of people who seemed to be chaffering all at once with two sailors in a lifeboat, and for a moment his wife feared that he would elbow his way through and bellow for passage. But just then a voice rose from a point farther down the beach.

  "Professor Challenger! Professor Challenger!"

  A sturdy, gray-whiskered little man with a peaked officer's cap was running toward them. Challenger wheeled to meet him.

  "Upon my soul," he boomed, "it's Mr. Blake." Out came his big hand to take the other's. "You were mate aboard the British Museum's Poinsettia in '92, when I was on the expedition to Labrador to measure cephalic indexes of the natives."

  "Yes indeed, sir," said Blake. "And now I've my own boat—there she is yonder, Professor." He gestured to where, farther offshore, rolled a big gray steam launch, a puff of smoke rising from the funnel. "These six years I've been master of her, making runs with pas­sengers and goods to France. Now I'm making a run. There's room for one more aboard her—no, for two, if this is your lady."

  "My dear, this is my friend Howard Blake, now Captain Blake," Challenger made the introductions. "Well, suppose we come down to the shore with you. Is that your dory? Nobody seems to be going with you."

  "Because I've told them, no room for more than one passenger, we're loaded heavy now," said Blake, trot­ting alongside. "But you're a different case, Professor, you're such a cargo as a man gets very seldom in his life."

  "Where are you bound?"

  "Calais," said Captain Blake. "It's a run we've often made from the London docks, and the sea, thank God, is a calm one today. You'll have a fine voyage of it, Professor. Under other conditions, it would be even a pleasant one."

  They were at the waterside. Two sailors sat in the dory, oars poised. Challenger put a hand into his pocket.

  "What is your fare?" he asked.

  "We've been asking ten guineas—gold, just now. But in your case—"

  "Here are fifteen." Challenger counted the coins into his hand, then swung around to gaze earnestly into his wife's dark eyes.

  "Jessie," he said commandingly, "you will go with Captain Blake to Calais. When you come into port, he will see you into the hands of Professor Anton Marigny —he and I were students together at the university and have corresponded on mutually rewarding terms. Marigny, in his turn, will get you to Paris, to Monsieur Jean de Corbier of the Zoological Institute there. You will remember when we entertained him."

  "But George," she wailed, "you speak as though you will not be coming."

  "You will do as I say, Jessie," he assured her master­fully. "My place is here. Among other things, I must recover a valuable scientific instrument, which, in one of the few rare moments of carelessness remarkable in my whole career, I forgot to bring along with us. I am certain of my duty, and do you be certain also. Nor must you worry above me. That duty of which I spoke is one for which I was trained, and one for which, I need not argue, I am eminently fitted."

  He handed Blake the napkinful of eatables and hugged Mrs, Challenger to him. "And so, Jessie," he said briskly, "aboard with you."

  She was shedding tears, but obediently she got into the dory. He watched in silence as they pulled out toward the launch and stood there while the sturdy craft got steam up and began to make for open sea. At last he turned and walked back across the sand to where coarse grass grew.

  16

  A stringily built man stood there, hands in his trousers pockets, gazing gloomily seaward.

  "I saw you come back when you 'ad a chance to leave, sir." he said as Challenger came near. "Might I ask why?"

  Challenger surveyed the speaker. He saw an active figure, clad in a smudged army shirt, breeches, and scuffed boots, with a gaunt stubbled face.

  "You presume, I think," he said in tones like the bass of an organ. "However, I shall tell you why I did not go. The war is going to be fought here, and I am going to help fight it. That's enough for you."

  He moved past as though to go inland but stopped when the other raised a sort of protesting cry.

  "War, sir? Help fight a war? We can't fight them, we're beat!"

  Challenger turned, beard thrust out aggressively.

  "I was in Surrey," stammered the fellow. "I saw us beat!"

  "You seem to have accepted the fact very decisively," said Challenger in cold, measured tones. "I have heard how a sea captain, one John Paul Jones, said in a similar critical situation that he had just begun to fight. Your words and behavior, my good man, suggest that you do scant credit to the vestings of the uniform you wear." He drew himself up grandly. "I take leave to inform you that I am Professor George Edward Chal­lenger."

  But the name seemed to mean nothing whatever to the trembling soldier.

  "My name's Tovey, sir, Luke Tovey," he said in his turn. "I am—I was—a trooper of the Eighth Hus­sars. I saw the fighting on Sunday. Our artillery got one of them—just one, a shell right in the ugly face of one of their machines—before their heat-ray wiped the battery out entire. I got away to London and had a ride here in a dray. But no money, not a shilling, for a ship to sail on, and I'm wonderin' what is to happen to us all." He flung out his hands. "The Martians are goin' to kill us all, every mother's son and daughter!"

  "Not all, I can assure you. I have been able to learn something of their plans for humanity. And now, Tovey, I bid you a very good morning."

  Again he stalked away toward the tree-tufted hill which he and Mrs. Challenger had passed on their way to the beach. Tovey came trotting after him.

  "You've got a plan, sir—Professor, you called your­self. You've thought about it. Won't you tell me what you think?"

  "Thinking is a process with which a dismaying ma­jority of the human race is utterly unfamiliar," re­turned Challenger bleakly. "It demands recognition of a state of affairs, an estimate of its directions and effects, and a sane decision on how to deal with it. I am in the midst of these considerations at present, and I will be obliged if you do not interrupt my mental processes."

  On he walked, and toward the hill. A sort of lane, steep but well worked, led up its rocky side. With considerable assurance he followed it and made his way to the top. The stone house among the trees was old but excellently built. Apparently it was a seaside retreat. Challenger went to the door, tried it, and found it locked. "A window, then," he muttered to himself, and inspected one in front. It, too, was locked. He returned to the doorstep, bent over the iron foot scraper, and wrenched it away with a single sudden exertion of his great strength. One end of this he jammed under the lower sash of the window as he heaved on the other. The clasp of the sills gave way and the window went up.

  A rustle behind him, and he spun, the scraper lifted. It was Tovey, the hussar, apologetic but determined.

  "I want to be with you, Professor, if you don't mind," he said. "Maybe if you think out some goodish plan, we'll both come clear of this, but why are you staying here? You don't know nothing of these Martians on the way here. They've got a Black Smoke they put down, and it kills like a plague of Egypt."

  "It so happens that I have heard something of that Black Smoke," Challenger lectured him, "and I feel able to rationalize something of its action and effect. Their machines are said to be a hundred feet high."

  "Yes, sir, more or less."

  "Then the Black Smoke must be of strikingly heavy composition, not rising to threaten the operators at the tops of these machines
. Therefore a hill as high as this one—seventy feet, as I estimate—would be a refuge of sorts. I confidently expect the invaders to come in pursuit of these crowds of refugees. It will be of the utmost value to hold an unostentatious observa­tion point up here and study their operations at com­paratively close quarters."

  Tovey grinned suddenly. "I say, Professor, that's top­ping!" he cried. "You're one of the ones, you are."

  "One of what ones?" returned Challenger austerely. "I have told you that I am George Edward Challenger. I give myself to doubt that I am to be classified care­lessly in any category of informed reasoning."

  He walked majestically out through the trees to where he had a good view of the beach. It was as he had come to it, clustered masses of frightened people and small boats plying with passengers to the craft waiting out at sea. He fished out his watch.

  "Noon, or nearly," he said to the goggling Tovey. "I have opened a way into that stone house. Suppose we see if its occupants have left us anything from which we can make a meal."

  Entering at the window, they found the kitchen, but its shelves were almost entirely stripped. Apparently the vanished occupants had taken most of the supplies. Challenger found several eggs in a bowl, and then Tovey, exploring a cupboard, turned up half a loaf of bread. On the floor was a keg with beer in it and a sack of onions. Tovey lighted an oil-burning range and broke the eggs into a frying pan with a lump of butter from somewhere. Into the omelet he sliced onions. From these things they made a luncheon and then walked out again to survey the coast. With him Challenger carried a pair of opera glasses he found on a mantelpiece.

  To northward stood a jumble of cottages, and among them a white-painted church with a lofty steeple. Chal­lenger peered, then focused his glasses. He made out a human figure in that steeple, someone else on watch.

  He turned the glasses out to sea, studying a long, dark vessel lying low in the water well out beyond the various craft taking on passengers. "Here, Tovey, what would you call that?" he asked, pointing.

  Tovey took the glasses and gazed intently. "Naval ship, sir," he said after a moment. "I've seen the like at off-coast maneuvers. Torpedo rams, they're called. That one was in the Thames when I came through town, I fancy. Someone said it's named the Thunder Child."

  "And here to help, I surmise," Challenger walked back through the trees and beyond the house. There the high ground narrowed into a slope landward, with a driveway of sorts upon it that led to a broader road beyond. Just now more people, in vehicles or afoot, were crowding along that road as though toward the shore, but not masses as large as he had seen earlier. Back he went to the front, and again scanned the craft at sea. Captain Blake's launch which had taken his wife was nowhere in sight. He permitted himself a sigh of relief about that.

  "You're calm, Professor," said Tovey, hovering near. "The one calm man I've seen since all this began. Like as if you, at least knowed what you're doing."

  "I have had the opportunity of spying upon these invaders", said Challenger.

  "Blimey now, have you? However did you manage that?"

  "I doubt if I could explain in terms simple enough for your comprehension. Suffice it to say, I have watched them at fairly close hand and am building a realization of their actions and intentions."

  "Reconnaissance, that's the word!" cried Tovey. "Swelp me God, Professor, it's what we need. If we could read them out, then we might deal with them, right?"

  "Over-simply expressed, but right."

  They went back among the trees at the house. Chal­lenger sat on a root beside the lane toward the sea. He watched for hours as the various craft, large and small, loaded themselves to the railings with passengers. Fortunes were being made aboard those vessels, he reflected; but what would money mean if all human civilization was to fall? The sun sank toward the west. It was nearly five o'clock, his watch told him.

  Then, far off to southward, he heard guns. Up above the torpedo ram rose a string of bright signal flags. The ships inshore began to stir, to move as though making way outward. Challenger shifted as he sat and looked in the direction of the gunfire.

  There it was, emerging into view and tramping three-legged across the mud flats, a towering fighting-machine.

  Even so far away, it seemed to approach with terri­fying assurance. As he watched, another appeared from the west nearer at hand, and then a third, not more than a quarter of a mile away. Challenger set his glasses upon this closest machine. It walked smooth­ly and rapidly upon those three wonderfully jointed legs. They upheld its ovid carriage of metal, sur­mounted by a triangular superstructure that turned this way and that, like a great head in a cowl. Behind the carnage was slung an openwork cage of bright metal like aluminum. Here and there stirred long, sup­ple tentacles, and close to the cowl jutted a sort of articulated arm like a crane, bearing some sort of a case. That, Challenger told himself, must house the heat-ray.

  All three of the monsters moved in open order toward the shore. The one nearest Challenger stooped a trifle. Two of its tentacles caught up little fleeing men and flipped them into the cage at its back. Then all three machines waded confidently into the sea toward the ships.

  They did not hesitate at entering the water, Chal­lenger meditated. Surely there were no such waters as this on Mars. They knew oceans from another world, He nodded to himself, a trifle smugly.

  From one machine rose a penetrating, prolonged shriek, like a steam siren. Another machine answered it. The three of them were like gigantic, grotesque children on a holiday, shouting back and forth as they sought treasures at the seaside. Now they closed the distances between them. Manifestly they meant to cut off the flight of the vessels.

  "Not a chance for them poor beasts," half-moaned Tovey behind Challenger. "I've told you, sir, they mean to kill us all."

  "And I have told you that they do not mean to kill us all," reminded Challenger, the glasses to his eyes. "You will do well to take note of the things I say, Tovey."

  The machines were all wading swiftly out, moving faster, even in the water, than the retreating swarm of craft could pull away. Challenger shifted his glasses and saw something else.

  It was the Thunder Child, full steam up and smoke pouring from its funnels as it fairly flew through the water toward the invaders. And all three machines paused, their cowled heads turning as though they stared at this onrushing curiosity. Motionless they stood, hip-deep in the water, so to speak, and stared.

  "Upon my word, they're caught off guard," mut­tered Challenger.

  "But what can that ship do?" Tovey gabbled.

  If the invaders were deadly, so was the Thunder Child. Straight for the trio it drove. They separated and retreated, actually retreated toward the shore. Now they were like seaside venturers when some unknown monster from the deep comes swimming close. One of them lifted a tubelike object in its tentacles and seemed to aim.

  Out from the tube flew a small bright projectile, which struck the approaching ram on the side and glanced off. As it struck the water it burst into a cloud of jet-black vapor, which abruptly shrouded the sur­face. But the Thunder Child had driven clear before the cloud could involve it.

  "That there's their Black Smoke, sir," Tovey was saying.

  One of the machines shifted its arm with the heat-ray chamber. A lean, pale beam of light flashed from it. Steam rose from the water against the ship's side. Above the steam rose a sudden, swift tongue of flame.

  "She's done for now," groaned Tovey.

  "Not yet, Tovey, not yet!" cried Challenger.

  For the Thunder Child had fired her guns, even as she won free from the steam and the Black Smoke. Down went the machine that had used the heat-ray, a gigantic splashing sprawl into the ocean, with foam flying high and then more clouds of steam. More guns went off, a whole salvo of them. The Thunder Child was ablaze, flames spouting from ventilators and fun­nels, but she put about and charged at a second fighting-machine as it backed away toward shore.

  She was within a hundred yards when
the invader's heat-ray jabbed its pale beam into her. The explosion shook the sea, and the Thunder Child's upper works rose into the air in jagged, flying fragments. She was finished, but not alone. The machine that had de­stroyed her reeled in the water, and a moment later the still hurtling wreck smashed into it. The machine caved in and went down in the water. More steam, great clouds of it, hid everything. Only the third invader could be dimly seen, actually striving back toward land.

  "Oh, strike me blind, what a fight that was," gasped Tovey.

  "A brilliant action, a valiant one," said Challenger. "She was blown up, brave ship, but she took two of them with her. And you told me that the artillery got one in Surrey—"

  "Just the one, sir, that's all."

  "But now, two more!" Challenger caught Tovey's arm so powerfully that the hussar flinched. "My good man, don't you see that they aren't invulnerable? They destroy but, upon my word, they've found that they too, can be destroyed. And see, the Thunder Child sacrificed herself to save that whole fleet of rescue craft."

  For all the boats, large and small, were standing well out to sea. Down on the shore, knots and swirls of people seemed to caper back and forth. The third invader stepped over their heads and retreated swiftly inland.

  "He, at least, has had enough," said Challenger grimly. "He will have an embarrassing tale to tell his fellows."

  "And he won't half cop it from his commander," added Tovey.

  "An interesting, an edifying, experience. I could wish that my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, had been here to witness it."

  "Coo, Professor, do you know Sherlock Holmes?" asked Tovey, in tones of awe that irritated Challenger.

  "You sound as though you have heard of him."

  "Who ain't heard of him, or anyway read of him?"

  "Had you read more advanced publications than the popular magazines, you might know the names of those with greater claim to celebration. But let us think of supper, and perhaps find supplies for breakfast."