第 12 页

"What is this crystal?" asked Mrs. Challenger, eyeing it timidly.

"Oh, I don't believe I have mentioned it to you, Jessie. Sherlock Holmes and I have been observing the Martians in it. But I was speaking of the arrant stupidity of their flag of truce. Why should they think that a white flag would seem a peace overture to such alien observers? To these invaders—which is what I take them to be—it might well have seemed the very opposite."

He strode off down the hall to his study and set the crystal on his table. His wife trotted at his heels.

"You said that people were killed," she reminded him. "A whole crowd of them."

"I saw that from a distance, after I had turned my back on Stent and Ogilvy. It was some sort of flashing light, which I judge burned as it struck. Those who survived ran. I heard about it from them."

His brow furrowed. "Nor was that all, my dear. Some poor devil was shoved into the pit when the cylinder opened, pushed into it by fools crowding eagerly to see the invaders, and I thought I saw him caught by some sort of mechanical contrivance. There was no possible chance to go to his aid. Later, at a distance, I saw his head bob up and down, heard him cry out as though he struggled. No doubt they dragged him into the cylinder. Almost at once, they brought their weapon into play. I now wonder what they will do to their first prisoner of war."

"You call it a war," she said softly.

"I foresee that it will be a war between worlds." He gazed at his wife, and his scowling face relaxed. "Yes, my dear, G. E. C. has been spared to you, and to an undeserving nation which will need him badly. I am glad to be home, and I begin to realize that I have had no dinner. Might there be something in the kitchen that may be readily prepared?"

"I'll ask Austin to bring you something."

She pattered out. Left alone, Challenger stared down into the crystal. After a moment, he dragged out the black cloth to screen away the light. He was able to get a view of dust and shadows, where several bladdery bodies sprawled. They seemed to work with their tentacles, fitting together lengths and pieces of bright metal.

"The thing moves," he grunted to himself. "It is articulated, after the manner of the jointed leg of a living creature. No slightest sign of a wheel anywhere."

He turned his swivel chair and rose, walking out into the hall to where the telephone was fixed to the wall. He rang and asked for a number. Nobody answered and he hung up, fuming.

"Holmes!" he snorted the name aloud. "What is he doing away from home at a time like this?"

Back he went to his study. Austin appeared, quiet and leathery-faced, bearing a tray set with dishes. Challenger tucked a napkin under his bearded chin.

"Hot roast pork, I see," he remarked. "And Brussels sprouts and scones, and gooseberry tart. Capital, Austin."

He ate with good appetite, and Austin carried the dishes away. Again Challenger tried to telephone Holmes, and again there was no answer. He shook his great head unhappily. A newsboy cried shrilly outside, and Challenger hurried out to buy a copy of the the special edition offered for sale. Standing in the street, he read the headlines and the leader article, then stormed into the house again.

"Imbecility compounded!" he bellowed, flourishing the paper in his wife's startled face. "The inaccuracy of England's pressmen is rivaled only by the foolish misdirection of the scientific pundits."

He jabbed at the page with his mighty forefinger. "Here it is stated, with complete certitude, that the Martians are harmless beyond the direct range of their weapons, and that they can scarcely crawl. Dolt, simpleton! Does he think—if thinking is not impossiible to a journalist—that they came among us with no means of transportation? They will have mechanical devices beyond anything that our earth has ever conceived. I question even if they are hindered by our gravity. For that matter, they may not be Martians. I tried to explain that to Stent, but the idiot refused to listen."

Yet again he tried to call Holmes, and hung up with a wheezing sigh of discontent.

"Holmes, at least, has caution and can understand the presence of danger," he said. "You tell me he went to Woking. I give myself to hope that he was not one of the fools who died there."

She gave a little cry of protest. "Oh, George, how can you be so callous when those scientists died so miserably?"

"Their loss, my dear, may be a tragedy considered from a conservative human standpoint," he admitted, more quietly. "For my part, I will seek to bear it with fortitude. But I value Holmes more than Stent, Ogilvy, and all their colleagues together, and my principal concern is for him. Our researches together with the crystal were rewarding."

She still lingered, her wide eyes upon him. "George, I have a right to ask you why you never hinted to me of all these things until now. Did you believe I would be frightened to distraction?"

He put the newspaper aside.

"That, my dear, is exactly what I believed," he said, smiling in his beard. "Had I taken you into my confidence about this communication with Mars, and this knowledge that they were on their way to earth, you would never have slept at night and you would have worried by day, which in turn would have worried me. But now there is no reason to keep anything from you."

And he bent his shaggy face to kiss her.

Early on Saturday morning, he rang up Holmes again, and when there was no answer, he went out to buy newspapers.

These were full of tremendous headlines and very little news. It was plain to see that the advent of the invaders—another cylinder had landed, not far from the first—tremendously excited the British Government, without any suggestion of how to receive such a visitation. Troops had encircled the Martian positions, heavy guns were moving up, but strict orders had been issued not to attack. Efforts must be made, said the authorities, to signal the Martians in their pit; and nobody seemed vastly to fear the emergence of any dangerous Martian technology. One witness was quoted as saying that the Martians wielded their heat-ray from a mechanical vehicle, "like a moving dish-cover." Challenger shook his head over these.

"Typical journalistic garblings of hysterical reports," he said to Mrs. Challenger at breakfast. "Those creatures might laugh, if they could laugh, over these things. Why do the papers not tell us something of true importance—the fate of Holmes, for instance?"

But by late morning, a letter came by special messenger. Challenger tore it open eagerly.

"He has escaped, and is back in London," he said happily to his wife. "But hear what he says, to the effect that 'Very likely they consider us lower animals.' " He crumpled the sheet in his great paw. "Lower animals, indeed; how much lower, does Holmes think? This was the conclusion he did not divulge to me, just as I did not develop to him my suspicion that the creatures observed on Mars are not native to Mars."

"George, why do you say that?"

"Because only now have I given it serious meditation. Well, I wonder if Holmes is right about lower animals. I have felt that we are better compared to savage tribesmen than to lower animals."

"At least Mr. Holmes was fortunate to escape," offered Mrs. Challenger.

"Fortunate be damned! He was wise and prudent. He tells about it modestly. Modesty is a trait which Holmes shares with myself."

Austin brought in more special editions of the newspapers as the day went along. They reported that the Martians were busily working in their first pit. The town of Woking had been badly damaged, many of its buildings having been set ablaze by the heat-ray. Troops were concentrating in Surrey—infantry, artillery, cavalry, and engineers—and their commanding officers confidently predicted a swift destruction of the invaders. Challenger wondered what Holmes would say.

Again he tried to telephone to 221-B Baker Street, but service was disrupted and he could not achieve a connection. He tried Martha Hudson's number, but in vain. At last he brought out the the crystal in his study and tented himself in the black cloth to look into it.

He saw a gouged, tumbled place in the earth. In the background a machine moved and revolved, stacking what appeared to be bars of pale metal. Several invaders crept and slumped there, and in their midst Challenger made out a struggling something, a human figure—undoubtedly the man who had been shoved into the pit and captured.

The fellow strove helplessly against a myriad of metal tentacles that cross-latched upon his body. He was naked, and his mouth gaped wide open as though he screamed in terror. One invader hunched above him. Challenger saw a wink of light on metal, something like a long slender pipestem. A steel tentacle drove this down into the struggling victim. The bladder-bulk stooped close above it, making contact at the free end of the pipe.

Challenger forced himself to watch the process through. Now he knew how the invading monsters fed.

"A drawing of living blood," he muttered. "Living blood, from a living victim. Holmes is right. We are lower animals, and to them we mean food."

"Jessie," he called out, "we must make plans to leave London soon.

She came from the drawing room. "Why leave London?" she asked.

"Those invaders may well be heading this way," he said soberly. "I, for one, have no intention of serving on a reception committee. I have just seen, in the crystal, their way of treating us—and I prefer not to elaborate upon it, even to you. I shall keep in touch with events, and we must plan on being gone when those events approach too embarrassingly near."

"You have heard from Mr. Holmes. Is he at home now?"

"He was when he wrote to me."

"Will you go to visit him?"

"Not now. I would do well to be reachable here."

Night came, and with it a great torrent of rain and the crashing of thunder. Challenger wondered how invaders from arid Mars, if indeed they were native to that planet, might deal with such a storm. The telephone rang. Someone was calling Professor Challenger from London University, but the connection was so faulty that he could not tell who the speaker was or what he wanted. Then the sound of the nervous voice broke off. Challenger spoke disdainfully into the dead instrument and hung up the receiver.

Sunday morning was bright again, and the street outside was thronged with excited people. Challenger came out and approached a knot of men, all of them talking at once.

"Have you any news of the invaders?" he addressed them, and his ringing bass voice riveted their attention.

"Here's my mate, what was there at the time and place, guv'ner," said one of the group, pointing at a pallid-faced oldster in a checked coat and cloth cap.

"It's the truth, sir, and I don't never want to go back there no more," said this man earnestly. "Swelp me, they can set the 'ole world afire, they can."

"Yes, yes, I saw the beginning of that," said Challenger. "What can you tell me of their operations?"

"Operations?" repeated the other. "Bless you, sir, alt I can say is, I don't want them operatin' on me, and that's whatever. I caught the mornin' train in from Woking, and be'ind me I seen my old 'ouse blazin' away like a fire in a grate. Thank the Lord I ain't got no wife nor child to 'old me back. Now I'm for catchin' another train, as it might be for Glasgow."

"When I spoke of operations," said Challenger, with what he thought was patient calm, "I meant their modus operandi. How they move and fight, how they maneuver."

The old man blinked at him. "I don't understand you, sir."

"As Dr. Samuel Johnson said in a conversation similar to this, I am not obliged to provide you with an understanding. Tell me what you saw of their machines in action."

"I seen only a little of that, and it was ample. They go walkin' round in great tall things, taller than church steeples, with three legs-—-"

"Three legs?" repeated Challenger.

"Like a milkin' stool, with a hood at the top, turnin' here and there and flashin' their devilish heat-rays, I 'eard say they wiped out a whole regiment. I'm fair glad I wasn't there to see that."

Challenger turned heavily away and returned to his telephone. Once more he tried to call Holmes, then rang up the War Office, intent on offering his services. The overworked operators could put him through to neither. As he hung up the receiver with an angry snort, church bells tolled outside. Austin came to Challenger's study with a special edition of a newspaper, shakily printed and with big screaming headlines. A third cylinder was reported as having arrived, also in Surrey. The Martians were abroad in their vaguely described machines, of which the paper said only that they were towering structures of intricate workmanship and operation, running on three jointed legs with the speed of an express train. Artillery units had been obliterated by the incomprehensible heat-ray. Not much more could be learned from anything in the journal.

In the afternoon, Challenger walked the street, trying to learn something from those who had come up from Surrey. He talked to a young man, who stopped to wipe sweat and rest in front of the house. At Challenger's word, Austin fetched out bread and beef and a glass of ale, and the man told of his adventures, shakily but understandably.

He was an attorney's clerk and had been visiting friends at a country house in Surrey for the weekend. He said that he had seen the Martians in action and that he counted himself fortunate in being able to flee back to London. The Martians, he told Challenger, had effortlessly and mercilessly struck houses and villages, but had seemed rather to concentrate their attention on various communications. Railroads and telegraph lines had been systematically destroyed.

"To be brief," summed up Challenger, "they seek to disrupt us rather than exterminate us outright."

"From what little I saw, that seems to be their policy," said the clerk, eating the last of the sandwich. "Thank you, sir, for your kindness. I had best be getting along now, my rooms are near Primrose Hill."