Chapter Twenty-One
UNDER SIEGE
i
I had intended to throw myself across Amelia, so protecting her with my own body, but in my haste I succeeded only in throwing us both to the ground. The explosion that followed therefore afflicted us both to an equal degree. There was one mighty blast, which hurled us bodily across the garden, and this was followed by a series of smaller explosions of varying severity. We tumbled helplessly through the long grass, and when at last we stopped there was a rain of burning timber and broken masonry, crashing to the soil about us.
In the interval that followed I heard the braying of the Martian as it turned away from us, its hatred satisfied.
Then, although we heard further concussions in the near distance, it was as if a stillness had fallen. There was a moment when I could hear an animal squealing in pain, but a revolver fired and even that stopped.
Amelia lay in the grass about ten feet from me, and as soon as I had recovered my senses I crawled hastily towards her. There was a sudden pain in my back, and at once I realized my combinations were on fire. I rolled over, and although the burning pain increased momentarily, I succeeded in extinguishing the smouldering fabric. I hurried over to Amelia, and saw that her clothes too had been ignited. I beat out the tiny flames with my hands, and at once I heard her moan.
“Is that you, Edward…?” she said indistinctly.
“Are you hurt?”
She shook her head, and as I tried to turn her over she climbed painfully to her feet of her own accord. She stood before me, looking very groggy.
“By Jove! That was close!”
It was Mr Wells. He came towards us from the bushes at the side of the lawn, apparently unharmed but, like us, shocked at the ferocity of the attack.
“Miss Fitzgibbon, are you injured?” he said solicitously.
“I think not.” She shook her head sharply. “I have become a little deaf.”
“That is the blast,” I said, for my own ears were buzzing. Just then we heard shouting beside the house, and we all turned in that direction.
A group of soldiers had appeared, all looking rather dazed. An officer was trying to organize them, and after a few moments of confusion they stepped forward to the blazing house and attempted to beat out the flames with sacking.
“We had better help them,” I said to Mr Wells, and at once we set off across the lawn.
As we came around the corner of the building we met a scene of great destruction. Here the Army had mounted one of its artillery-pieces, and it was clearly at this that the Martian had fired. Its aim had been deadly accurate, for there remained just twisted and melted metal scattered about a large crater. There was almost nothing recognizable of the gun, bar one of its huge spoked wheels, which now lay about fifty yards to one side.
Further back, several horses had been tethered by one of the outhouses in the garden, and we were distressed to see that some of these had been killed; the remainder had been efficiently quieted by their handlers, who had placed blinds over their heads.
We went directly to the subaltern in charge.
“May we offer our help?” Mr Wells said.
“Is this your house, sir?”
Amelia answered. “No, I live here.”
“But the house is empty.”
“We have been abroad.” She glanced at the soldiers beating ineffectually at the flames. “There is a garden hose in that shed.”
At once the officer ordered two of the men to find the hose, and in a few moments it had been brought out and connected to a standing tap against the side of the house. Fortunately, the pressure was high and a jet of water issued at once.
We stood well back, seeing that the men had evidently been trained well, and that the firefighting was conducted intelligently and efficiently. The jet of water was played on the more ferocious concentrations of fire, while the other men continued to beat with the sacking.
The officer supervised the effort with a minimum of orders, and when he stepped back as the flames were brought under control, I went over to him.
“Have you lost any men?” I said.
“Fortunately, sir, no. We had been ordered to move back just before the attack, and so were able to take cover in time.” He indicated several deep trenches dug across the lawn; they crossed the place where (so long ago!) I had sipped iced lemonade with Amelia. “If we’d been manning the piece…”
I nodded. “Were you billeted here?”
“Yes, sir. We’ve caused no damage, I think you’ll find. Just as soon as we’ve retrieved our equipment, we will have to withdraw.”
I understood that saving the house itself was not their main concern. It was lucky indeed that they needed to save their own possessions, otherwise we should have had great difficulty dousing the fire on our own.
Within a quarter of an hour the flames were out; it was the servants’ wing which had been hit, and two of the rooms on the ground floor were uninhabitable, and the six gunners who had been billeted there lost all their equipment. On the floor above, the major damage was caused by smoke and the explosion.
Of the rest of the house, the rooms on the side furthest from the exploding gun were least damaged: Sir William’s former smoking-room, for instance, had not even one broken window. Throughout the rest of the house there was a varying amount of damage, mostly breakages caused by the explosion, and every pane of glass in the walls of the laboratory had been shattered. In the grounds there was a certain amount of grass and shrubbery on fire, but the gunners soon dealt with this.
Once the fire had been put out, the artillerymen took what they had retrieved of their equipment, loaded up an ammunition truck, and prepared to withdraw. Through all this we could hear the sounds of the battle continuing in the distance, and the subaltern told us he was anxious to join his unit in Richmond. He apologized for the damage caused when his gun had been destroyed, and we thanked him for his help in extinguishing the fire…then the troop of men rode away, down the Hill towards the town.
ii
Mr Wells said that he was going to see where the Martians now were, and stepped out across the lawn towards the edge of the ridge. I followed Amelia into the house, and when we were inside I took her in my arms and held her tightly, her face nestling against the side of mine.
For several minutes we said nothing, but then at last she held back a little, and we looked lovingly into each other’s eyes. That momentary vision of our past selves had been a salutary shock; Amelia, with her face bruised and scarred, and her chemise torn and scorched, bore almost no resemblance to the rather prim and elegantly clad young woman I had glimpsed on the Time Machine. And I knew, by the way in which she was looking at me, that a similar transformation had come over my appearance.
She said: “When we were on the Time Machine you saw the Martian. You knew all along.”
“I only saw you,” I said. “I thought I saw you dying.”
“Is that why you took the Machine?”
“I don’t know. I was desperate…I loved you even then…”
She held me again, and her lips pressed briefly against my neck.
I heard her say, in words so soft they were almost inaudible: “I understand now, Edward.”
iii
Mr Wells brought the sombre news that he had counted six of the monstrous tripods in the valley below, and that the fighting continued.
“They are all over the place,” he said, “and as far as I could see there’s almost no resistance from our men. There are three machines within a mile of this house, but they are staying in the valley. I think, we shall be safe if we lie low here for a while.”
“What are the Martians doing?” I said.
“The heat-beam is still in use. It seemed as if the whole Thames Valley is on fire. There is smoke everywhere, and it is of amazing intensity. The whole of Twickenham has vanished under a mountain of smoke. Black, thick smoke, like tar, but not rising. It is shaped like an immense dome.”
“It will be dispersed by the wind,” Amelia said.
“The wind is up,” said Mr Wells, “but the smoke stays above the town. I cannot account for it.”
It seemed to be a minor enigma, and so we paid little attention to it; it was enough to know that the Martians were still hostile and about.
All three of us were faint from hunger, and the preparation of a meal became a necessity. It was clear that Sir William’s house had not been occupied for years, and so we held out no hope of finding any food in the pantry. We did discover that the artillerymen had left some of their rations behind—some tins of meat and a little stale bread—but it was hardly enough for one meal.
Mr Wells and I agreed to visit the houses nearest to us, and see if we could borrow some food from there. Amelia decided to stay behind; she wanted to explore the house and see how much of it would be habitable.
Mr Wells and I were away for an hour. During this time we discovered that we were alone on Richmond Hill. The other inhabitants had presumably been evacuated when the soldiers arrived, and it was evident that their departure had been hasty. Few of the houses were locked, and in most we found considerable quantities of food. By the time we were ready to return, we had with us a sackful of food—consisting of a good variety of meats, vegetables and fruit—which should certainly be enough to sustain us for many days. In addition we found several bottles of wine, and a pipe and some tobacco for Mr Wells.
Before returning to the house, Mr Wells suggested that we once more survey the valley; it was suspiciously quiet below, to a degree that was making us most uneasy.
We left the sack inside the house we had last visited, and went forward cautiously to the edge of the ridge. There, concealing ourselves amongst the trees, we were afforded an uninterrupted view to north and west. To our left we could see up the Thames Valley at least as far as Windsor Castle, and before us we could see the villages of Chiswick and Brentford. Immediately below us was Richmond itself.
The sun was setting: a deep-orange ball of fire touching the horizon. Silhouetted against it was one of the Martian battle-machines. It was not moving now, and even from this distance of three miles or so we could see that the metal-mesh net at the back of the platform had been filled with bodies.
The black kopje of smoke still obscured Twickenham; another lay heavily over Hounslow. Richmond appeared still, although several buildings were on fire.
I said: “They cannot be stopped. They will rule the entire world.”
Mr Wells was silent, although his breathing was irregular and heavy. Glancing at his face I saw that his bright-blue eyes were moist. Then he said: “You opine that they are mortal, Turnbull, but we must now accept that we cannot resist them.”
At that moment, as if defying his words, a solitary gun placed on the riverside walk by Richmond Bridge fired a shot. Moments later the shell burst in the air several hundred feet away from the distant battle-machine.
The Martian’s response was instant. It whirled round and strode in our direction, causing Mr Wells and me to step back into the trees. We saw the Martian extend a broad tube from its platform, and a few seconds later something was fired from this. A large cylinder flew through the air, tumbling erratically and reflecting the orange brilliance of the sun. It described a high arc, and fell crashing somewhere into the streets of Richmond town. Moments later there was an incontinent release of blackness, and within sixty seconds Richmond had vanished under another of the mysterious static domes of black smoke.
The gun by the river, lost in the blackness, did not speak again.
We waited and watched until the sun went down, but heard no more shots fired by the Army. The Martians, arrogant in their total victory, went about their macabre business of seeking out the human survivors, and placing such unfortunates in their swelling nets.
Much sobered, Mr Wells and I retrieved our sack of food and returned to Reynolds House.
We were greeted by an Amelia transformed.
“Edward!” she called as soon as we walked through the broken door of the house. “Edward, my clothes are still here!”
And dancing into our sight came a girl of the most extraordinary beauty. She wore a pale-yellow dress and buttoned boots; her hair was brushed and shaped about her face; the wound which had so disfigured her was concealed by the artistic application of maquillage. And, as she seized my hand gaily, and exclaimed happily over the amount of food we had gathered, I sensed once more that gentle fragrance of perfume, redolent of herbs.
For no reason I could understand, I turned away from her and found myself weeping.
iv
The house had evidently been closed after Sir William’s final departure on the Time-Machine, for although everything was intact and in its place (excepting those items damaged or destroyed in the explosion and fire), the furniture had been covered with dust-sheets, and valuable articles had been locked away in cupboards. Mr Wells and I visited Sir William’s dressing-room, and there found sufficient clothing to dress ourselves decently.
A little later, smelling slightly of moth-balls, we went through the house while Amelia prepared a meal. We discovered that the servants had confined their cleaning to the domestic areas of the house, for the laboratory was as cluttered with pieces of engineering machinery as before. Everything here was filthy dirty, though, and much littered with broken glass. The reciprocating engine which generated electricity was in its place, although we dared not turn it on for fear of attracting the Martians’ attention.
We ate our meal in a ground-floor room furthest away from the valley, and sat by candlelight with the curtains closed. All was silent outside the house, but none of us could feel at ease knowing that at any moment the Martians might come by.
Afterwards, with our stomachs satisfactorily filled and our minds pleasantly relaxed by a bottle of wine, we talked again of the totalness of the Martians’ victory.
“Their aim is quite clearly to take London,” said Mr Wells. “If they do not do so during this night, then there can be nothing to stop them in the morning.”
“But if they control London, they would control the whole country!” I said.
“That is what I fear. Of course, by now the threat is understood, and I dare say that even as we speak the garrisons in the north are travelling down. Whether they would fare any better than the unfortunates we saw in action today is a matter for conjecture. But the British Army is not slow to learn by its errors, so maybe we shall see some victories. What we do not know, of course, is what these monsters seek to gain.”
“They wish to enslave us,” I said. “They cannot survive unless they drink human blood.”
Mr Wells glanced at me sharply. “Why do you say that, Turnbull?”
I was dumbfounded. We had all seen the gathering of the people by the Martians, but only Amelia and I, with our privy knowledge, could know what was to happen to them.
Amelia said: “I think we must tell Mr Wells what we know, Edward.”
“Do you have a specialist knowledge of these monsters?” said Mr Wells.
“We were…in the pit at Woking,” I said.
“I too was there, but I saw no blood-drinking. This is an astonishing revelation, and, if I may say so, more than a little sensational. I take it you are speaking with authority?”
“The authority of experience,” said Amelia. “We have been to Mars, Mr Wells, although I cannot expect you to believe us.”
Much to my surprise, our new friend did not seem at all perturbed by this announcement.
“I have long suspected that the other planets of our Solar System can support life,” he said. “It does not seem improbable to me that one day we shall visit those worlds. When we have conquered the drag of gravity we shall travel to the moon as easily as we can now travel to Birmingham.” He stared intently at us both. “Yet you say you have already been to Mars?”
I nodded. “We were experimenting with Sir William’s Time Machine, and we set the controls incorrectly.”
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��But as I understood it, Sir William intended to travel in Time only.”
In a few words, Amelia explained how I had loosened the nickel rod which until then prevented movement through the Spatial Dimension. From this, the rest of our story followed naturally, and for the next hour we recounted most of our adventures. At last we came to the description of how we had returned to Earth.
Mr Wells was silent for a long time. He had helped himself to some brandy which we had found in the smoking-room, and for many minutes he cradled this in his hands.
Then at last he said: “If you are not inventing every word of this, all I can say is that it is a most extraordinary tale.”
“We are not proud of what we have done,” I said.
Mr Wells waved his hand dismissively. “You should not blame yourselves inordinately. Others would have done as you have, and although there has been much loss of life and damage to property, you could not have anticipated the power of these creatures.”
He asked us several questions about our story, and we answered them as accurately as we could.
At length, he said: “It seems to me that your experience is itself the most useful weapon we have against these creatures. In any war, one’s tactics are best planned by anticipating the enemy. Why we have not been able to contain this menace is because their motives have been so uncertain. We three are now custodians of intelligence. If we cannot assist the authorities, we must take some action of our own.”
“I had been thinking along those lines myself,” I said. “Our first intention was to contact Sir William, for it had occurred to me that the Time Machine itself would be a powerful weapon against these beings.”
“In what way could it be used?”
“No creature, however powerful or ruthless, can defend itself against an invisible foe.”
Mr Wells nodded his understanding, but said: “Unfortunately, we find neither Sir William nor his Machine.”
“I know, sir,” I said glumly.
The Space Machine Page 32