“We must now trust to our work,” he said softly, returning the notebook to his pocket. Without ceremony he placed one stout piece of wire against the iron frame of the bedstead, and turned a screw to hold it in place. Even before he had finished, Amelia and I noticed that the artillery wheel was turning slowly.
We stood back, hardly daring to hope that our work had been successful.
“Turnbull, kindly place your hand against the frame.”
“Will I receive an electrical shock?” I said, wondering why he did not do this himself.
“I should not think so. There is nothing to be afraid of.”
I extended my hand cautiously, then, catching Amelia’s eye and seeing that she was smiling a little, I reached out resolutely and grasped the metal frame. As my fingers made contact the entire contraption shuddered visibly and audibly, just as had Sir William’s Time Machine; the solid iron bedstead became as lissom as a young tree.
Amelia stretched out her hand, and then so did Mr Wells. We laughed aloud.
“You’ve done it, Mr Wells!” I said. “We have built a Space Machine!”
“Yes, but we have not tested it yet. We must see if it can be safely driven.”
“Then let us do it at once!”
vi
Mr Wells mounted the Space Machine, and, sitting comfortably on the cushions, braced himself against the controls. By working a combination of levers he managed to shift the Machine first forwards and backwards, then to each side. Finally, he took the unwieldy Machine and drove it all around the laboratory.
None of this was seen by Amelia and myself. We have only Mr Wells’s word that he tested the Machine this way…for as soon as he touched the levers he and the Machine instantly became invisible, reappearing only when the Machine was turned off.
“You cannot hear me when I speak to you?” he said, after his tour of the laboratory.
“We can neither hear nor see you,” said Amelia. “Did you call to us?”
“Once or twice,” Mr Wells said, smiling. “Turnbull, how does your foot feel?”
“My foot, sir?”
“I regret I inadvertently passed through it on my journey. You would not pull it out of the way when I called to you.”
I flexed my toes inside the boots I had borrowed from Sir William’s dressing-room, but there seemed to be nothing wrong.
“Come, Turnbull, we must try this further. Miss Fitzgibbon, would you kindly ascend to the next floor? We shall try to follow you in the Machine. Perhaps if you would wait inside the bedroom I am using…?”
Amelia nodded, then left the laboratory. In a moment we heard her running up the stairs.
“Step aboard, Mr Turnbull. Now we shall see what this Machine can do!”
Almost before I had clambered on to the cushions beside Mr Wells, he had pushed one of the levers and we were moving forward. Around us, silence had fallen abruptly, and the distant clamouring of the weed-banks was absent.
“Let us see if we can fly,” said Mr Wells. His voice sounded flat and deep against the attenuated quiet. He tugged a second lever and at once we lifted smartly towards the ceiling. I raised my hands to ward off the blow…but as we reached the wood and jagged glass of the laboratory roof we passed right through! For a moment I had the queer experience of finding just my head out in the open, but then the bulk of the Space Machine had thrust me through, and it was as if we were hovering in the air above the conservatory-like building. Mr Wells turned one of the horizontally mounted levers, and we moved at quite prodigious speed through the brick wall of the upper storey of the main house. We found ourselves hovering above a landing. Chuckling to himself, Mr Wells guided the Machine towards his guest-room, and plunged us headlong through the closed door.
Amelia was waiting within, standing by the window.
“Here we are!” I called as soon as I saw her. “It flies too!”
Amelia showed no sign of awareness.
“She cannot hear us,” Mr Wells reminded me. “Now…I must see if I can settle us on the floor.”
We were hovering some eighteen inches above the carpet, and Mr Wells made fine adjustments to his controls. Meanwhile Amelia had left the window and was looking curiously around, evidently waiting for us to materialize. I amused myself first by blowing a kiss to her, then by pulling a face, but she responded to neither.
Suddenly, Mr Wells released his levers, and we dropped with a bump to the floor. Amelia started in surprise.
“There you are!” she said. “I wondered how you would appear.”
“Allow us to take, you downstairs,” said Mr Wells, gallantly. “Climb aboard, my dear, and let us make a tour of the house.”
So, for the next half-hour, we experimented with the Space Machine, and Mr Wells grew accustomed to making it manoeuvre exactly as he wished. Soon he could make it turn, soar, halt, as if he had been at its controls all his life. At first, Amelia and I clung nervously to the bedstead, for it seemed to turn with reckless velocity, but gradually we too saw that for all its makeshift appearance, the Space Machine was every bit as scientific as its original.
We left the house just once, and toured the garden. Here Mr Wells tried to increase our forward speed, but to our disappointment we found that for all its other qualities, the Space Machine could travel no faster than the approximate speed of a running man.
“It is the shortage of crystals,” said Mr Wells, as we soared through the upper branches of a walnut tree. “If we had more of those, there would be no limit to our velocity.”
“Never mind,” said Amelia. “We have no use for great speed. Invisibility is our prime advantage.”
I was staring out past the house to the overgrown redness of the valley. It was the constant reminder of the urgency of our efforts.
“Mr Wells,” I said quietly. “We have our Space Machine. Now is the time to put it to use.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
AN INVISIBLE NEMESIS
i
When we had landed the Space Machine, and I had loaded several of the hand-grenades on to it, Mr Wells was worried about the time we had left to us.
“The sun will be setting in two hours,” he said. “I should not care to drive the Machine in darkness.”
“But, sir, we can come to no harm in the attenuation.”
“I know, but we must at some time return to the house and leave the attenuated dimension. When we do that, we must be absolutely certain there are no Martians around. How terrible it would be if we returned to the house in the night, and discovered that the Martians were waiting for us!”
“We have been here for more than two weeks,” I said, “and no Martian has so much as glanced our way.”
Mr Wells had to agree with this, but he said: “I think we must not lose sight of the seriousness of our task, Turnbull. Because we have been confined so long in Richmond, we have no knowledge of the extent of the Martians’ success. Certainly they have subdued all the land we can see from here; in all probability they are now the lords of the entire country. For all we know, their domain might be worldwide. If we are, as we suspect, in command of the one weapon they cannot resist, we cannot afford to lose that advantage by taking unnecessary risks. We have a tremendous responsibility thrust upon us.”
“Mr Wells is right, Edward,” said Amelia. “Our revenge on the Martians is late, but it is all we have.”
“Very well,” I said. “But we must try at least one sortie today. We do not yet know if our scheme will work.”
So at last we mounted the Space Machine, and sat with suppressed excitement as Mr Wells guided us away from the house, above the obscene red tangle of weeds, and out towards the heart of the Thames Valley.
As soon as we were under way, I saw some of the wisdom of the others’ words. Our search for Martian targets was to be unguided, for we had no idea where the evil brutes currently were. We could search all day for just one, and in the boundless scale of the Martians’ intrusion we might never find our goal.
We flew for about half an hour, circling over the river, looking this way and that for some sign of the invaders, but without success.
At last Amelia suggested a plan which presented logic and simplicity. We knew, she said, where the projectiles had fallen, and further, we knew that the Martians used the pits as their headquarters. Surely, if we were seeking the monsters, the pits would be the most sensible places to look first.
Mr Wells agreed with this, and we turned directly for the nearest of the pits. This was the one in Bushy Park, where the fourth projectile had fallen. Suddenly, as I realized we were at last on the right track, I felt my heart pounding with excitement.
The valley was a dreadful sight: the red weed was growing rampantly over almost every physical protuberance, houses included. The landscape seemed from this height to be like a huge undulating field of red grass bent double by heavy rain. In places, the weeds had actually altered the course of the river, and wherever there was low-lying ground stagnant lakes had formed.
The pit had been made in the north-eastern corner of Bushy Park, and was difficult to distinguish by virtue of the fact that it, no less than anywhere else, was heavily overgrown with weed. At last we noticed the cavernous mouth of the projectile itself, and Mr Wells brought the Space Machine down to hover a few feet from the entrance. All was dark within, and there was no sign of either the Martians or their machines.
We were about to move away, when Amelia suddenly pointed into the heart of the projectile.
“Edward, look…it is one of the people!”
Her move had, startled me, but I looked in the direction she was indicating. Sure enough, lying a few feet inside the hold was a human figure. I thought for a moment that this must be one of the hapless victims snatched by the Martians…but then I saw that the body was that of a very tall man, and that he was wearing a black uniform. His skin was a mottled red, and his face, which was turned towards us, was ugly and distorted.
We stared in silence at this dead Martian human. It was perhaps even more of a shock to see one of our erstwhile allies in this place than it would have been to see one of the monsters.
We explained to Mr Wells that the man was probably one of the humans coerced into driving the projectile, and he looked at the dead Martian with great interest.
“The strain of our gravity must have been too much for his heart,” said Mr Wells.
“That has not upset the monsters’ plans,” Amelia said.
“Those beasts are without hearts,” said Mr Wells, but I supposed that he was speaking figuratively.
We recalled that another cylinder had fallen near Wimbledon, and so we turned the Space Machine away from the pathetic figure of the dead Martian human, and set off eastwards at once. From Bushy Park to Wimbledon is a distance of some five miles, and so even at our maximum speed the flight took nearly an hour. During this time we were appalled to see that even parts of Richmond Park were showing signs of the red weed.
Mr Wells had been casting several glances over his shoulder to see how long there was until sunset, and was clearly still unhappy with this expedition so soon before nightfall. I resolved that if the Martian pit at Wimbledon was also empty, then it would be I who proposed an immediate return to Reynolds House. The satisfaction of taking positive action at last had excited my nerve, though, and I would be sorry not to make at least one kill before returning.
Then at last we had our chance. Amelia suddenly cried out, and pointed towards the south. There, striding slowly from the direction of Malden, came a battle-machine.
We were at that moment travelling at a height approximately equal to that of the platform, and it was an instinct we all shared that the beast inside must have seen us, so deliberately did it march in our direction.
Mr Wells uttered a few reassuring words, and raised the Space Machine to a new height and bearing, one which would take us circling around the tripodal engine.
I reached forward with shaking hands, and took hold of one of the hand-grenades.
Amelia said: “Have you ever handled one of those before, Edward?”
“No,” I said. “But I know what to do.”
“Please be careful.”
We were less than half a mile from the Titan, and still we headed in towards it from an oblique angle.
“Where do you want me to place the Machine?” said Mr Wells, concentrating fiercely on his controls.
“Somewhat above the platform,” I said. “Approach from the side, because I do not wish to pass directly in front.”
“The monster cannot see us,” said Amelia.
“No,” I said, remembering that ferocious visage. “But we might see it.”
I found myself trembling anew as we approached. The thought of what was squatting so loathsomely inside that metal edifice was enough to reawaken all the fears and angers I had suffered on Mars, but I forced myself to be calm.
“Can you maintain the Machine at a steady speed above the platform?” I asked Mr Wells.
“I’ll do what I can, Turnbull.”
His cautious words gave no indication of the ease with which he brought our flying bed-frame to a point almost exactly above the platform. I leaned over the side of our Space Machine, while Amelia held my free hand, and I stared down at the roof of the platform.
There were numerous apertures here—some of which were large enough for me to make out the glistening body of the monster—and the grenade lodged in any one of them would probably do what was necessary. In the end I chose a large port just beside where the heat-cannon would emerge, reasoning that somewhere near there must be the incredible furnace which produced the heat. If that were fractured, then what damage the grenade did not inflict would be completed by the subsequent explosive release of energy.
“I see my target,” I shouted to Mr Wells. “I will call out as soon as I have released the grenade, and at that moment we must move away as far as possible.”
Mr Wells confirmed that he understood, and so I sat up straight for a moment, and eased the restraining pin from the detonating arm. While Amelia supported me once more, I leaned over and held the grenade above the platform.
“Ready, Mr Wells…?” I called. “Now!”
At the selfsame instant that I let go the grenade, Mr Wells took the Space Machine in a fast climbing arc away from the battle-machine. I stared back, anxious to see the effect of my attack.
A few seconds later, there was an explosion below and slightly behind the Martian tripod.
I stared in amazement. The grenade had fallen through the metal bulk of the platform and exploded harmlessly!
I said: “I didn’t expect that to happen…”
“My dear,” said Amelia. “I think the grenade was still attenuated.”
Below us, the Martian strode on, oblivious of the deadly attack it had just survived.
ii
I was seething with disappointment as we returned safely to the house. By then the sun had set, and a long, glowing evening lay across the transformed valley. As the other two went to their rooms to dress for dinner, I paced to and fro in the laboratory, determined that our vengeance should not be snatched away from us.
I ate with the others, but kept my silence throughout the meal. Amelia and Mr Wells, sensing my distemper, talked a little of the success of our building the Space Machine, but the abortive attack was carefully avoided.
Later, Amelia said she was going to the kitchen to bake some bread, and so Mr Wells and I repaired to the smoking-room. With the curtains carefully drawn, and sitting by the light of one candle only, we talked of general matters until Mr Wells considered it safe to discuss other tactics.
“The difficulty is twofold,” he said. “Clearly, we must not be attenuated when we place the explosive, otherwise the grenade has no effect, and yet we must be attenuated during the explosion, otherwise we shall be affected by the blast.”
“But if we turn off the Space Machine, the Martian will observe us,” I said.
“That is why I say
it will be difficult. We have both seen how fast those brutes react to any threat.”
“We could land the Space Machine on the roof of the tripod itself.”
Mr Wells shook his head slowly. “I admire your inventiveness, Turnbull, but it would not be practicable. I had great difficulty even keeping abreast of the engine. To essay a landing on a moving object would be extremely hazardous.”
We both recognized the urgency of finding a solution. For an hour or more we argued our ideas back and forth, but we arrived at nothing satisfactory. In the end, we went to the drawing-room where Amelia was waiting for us, and presented the problem to her.
She thought for a while, then said: “I see no difficulty. We have plenty of grenades, and can therefore afford a few misses. All we should do is hover above our target, although at a somewhat greater height than today. Mr Wells then switches off the attenuation field, and while we fall through the air Edward can lob a grenade at the Martian. By the time the bomb explodes, we should be safely back inside the attenuated dimension, and it will not matter how close we are to the explosion.”
I stared at Mr Wells, then at Amelia, considering the implications of such a hair-raising scheme.
“It sounds awfully dangerous,” I said in the end.
“We can strap ourselves to the Space Machine,” Amelia said. “We need not fall out.”
“But even so…”
“Do you have an alternative plan?” she said.
iii
The following morning we made our preparations, and were ready to set out at an early hour.
I must confess to considerable trepidation at the whole enterprise, and I think Mr Wells shared some of my misgivings. Only Amelia seemed confident of the plan, to the extent that she offered to take on the task of aiming the hand-grenades herself. Naturally, I would hear nothing of this, but she remained the only one of the three of us who exuded optimism and confidence that morning. Indeed, she had been up since first light and made us all sandwiches, so that we need not feel constrained to return to the house for lunch. Additionally, she had fixed some straps—which she had made from leather trouser-belts—across the bedstead’s cushions to hold us in place.
The Space Machine Page 34