第 23 页

At once I climbed over to stand beside him.

The wide pit below us was strewn with overturned machines, stacks of metal bars, strange shelters. Against the rampart opposite us lay the circular airship that had terrorized humanity. It looked like a gigantic saucer, flung there by the hand of a Titan. At the deep center of the pit sprawled a dozen collapsed bladdery shapes. One or two stirred feebly and emitted weak wails. I looked up at one of the silent machines. Fluttering birds pecked at the body of an invader, hanging halfway out of the hood.

"It is the end for them," said Challenger. "The end of their adventure. Come, Doctor, we must carry the news."

Down we scrambled and hurried away as fast as our legs could carry us. At St. Martin-le-Grand we entered the telegraph office. Challenger inspected the instruments.

"Somehow the power is still turned on," he growled, as he tinkered with the key. I watched as he experimented.

At last—for his resourceful brain seemed capable of anything—he began to tap out a message. Then he paused, tensely waiting. Other tappings sounded.

"We are in touch with Paris," he informed me, and began manipulating the key again. At last he drew himself up impressively.

"There, Dr. Watson, you have been present at an historic moment," he proclaimed. "You can tell of it to your children, should you ever have any. As so often in the past, it is George Edward Challenger who gives to the world scientific information of the highest importance. That, sir, is manifest justice. Who is more deserving, better fitted, to announce the end of the war?"

"You seem to set yourself above Holmes," I could not help reproaching him.

"Please do not mistake me," he said unabashed. "I myself admire Holmes to a very high degree. But the highest level of human reason is that of pure science. It transcends even the applied analysis of human behavior,

"There is no way for me to argue with you."

"Naturally not, my dear Doctor. But come, my duty is done here. Let us carry our tidings to Holmes."

In happy excitement we set out together again for Baker Street.

25

I need not rehearse here the familiar detail of England's resolute recovery from the blows dealt by the invasion. Wells's The War of the Worlds gives as good a brief account as any of how the nations of Europe and America hurried shiploads of necessary supplies to the sufferers of stricken London and the Home Counties. Commerce and industry returned swiftly to a high volume of activity, and wrecked homes and stores and public buildings were restored. Holmes and Challenger and I helped many returning refugees as best we could.

The preserved body of the captured invader was presented to the Natural History Museum, where it is now on display. Challenger felt, and I was inclined to agree, that Curator James Illingworth was offhandedly cool in his acknowledgment of the gift. But Holmes took little notice of any slight, for among the professions that almost immediately resumed full swing in London was that of organized crime. At the end of June, Holmes solved the cunning deception that I have elsewhere chronicled as The Adventure of the Three Garridebs. In assisting Holmes to bring James Winter, alias Killer Evans, to the justice he so richly deserved, I was slightly wounded in the leg, and at the time I felt a sense of ironic comedy in suffering a hurt at the hands of my fellow man when I had come through the invasion without so much as a scratch.

No sooner was Winter safely in the hands of the police than Holmes became busy helping Scotland Yard trace the bold thieves who had stolen certain crown jewels from the Tower of London.

I saw little of him on that pursuit, for I had become busy on my own part. The privations and exertions of London citizens under those terrible sixteen days of oppression had stricken many with illness. Doctors were much in demand, and I returned to the practice I had all but given up, spending many days and nights in sickrooms and hospitals. It became necessary for me to leave the old lodgings in Baker Street and move to Queen Anne Street, where I could set up a dispensary and consulting room. It would be impossible to list all those who came under my care, but one of them proved a glorious reward to me for whatever useful labors I performed.

She had been Violet Hunter when, a dozen years before, Holmes and I had dealt with another case. She had been a governess like my dear first wife, and after the curious business which I have published under the title of The Adventure of the Copper Beeches she had become head of a girls' school at Walsall. Though she was only in her mid-twenties, little more than a young girl herself; she was successful at her post for more than five years. She then married a naval man, the gallant first officer of the Thunder Child, who perished with his shipmates in destroying two invader machines at the mouth of the Blackwater.

His unhappy widow had been forced to flee from their home in Kensington, barely escaping a rush of machines herself. She spent days in a wretched cottage on the outskirts of London, where she contracted a severe fever. It was my fortune to have her as a patient, to bring her back to good health, and to find that she had never forgotten my very minor help to her years earlier. Recovering, she regained the happy, lively charm I myself had remembered so well. She was in the prime of life, with beautiful chestnut hair and a sweet, good-natured face, freckled like a plover's egg.

It came as a dazzling surprise to me that she responded to my admiration. In September, at about the time when Holmes, too, suffered wounds in The Adventure of the Illustrious Client, she agreed to be my wife.

One October day I had visited her home in Kensington to take an early tea with her. She was engaged for dinner with some old school friends, and so I said my farewells at five o'clock and departed. Since Enmore Park was near, I decided to call upon Challenger.

Austin answered the door, and little Mrs. Challenger appeared behind him to greet me and lead me along the hall. She knocked at a door, a booming voice answered, and I entered the study. Challenger's great bearded head and tremendous shoulders bulked behind a wide table strewn, as usual, with books, papers, and instruments.

"My dear Doctor, you come at an opportune moment," he cried out. "I have been at work on a study, a truly brilliant study, which, as I am confident, will add even greater luster to my already considerable reputation."

I came to the table. Challenger thrust a sheet of paper under my nose. Frowning, I tried to read what he had scrawled upon it.

"A highly complex mathematical equation," I hazarded.

"It is a correction of some obvious errors in the late Professor Moriarty's Dynamics of an Asteroid," said Challenger. "Again and again I have reflected, how unfortunate it was that Holmes felt himself forced to destroy that brilliant intellect, that splendid adventurer among the abstractions of the cosmos. If asked to name a scientist capable of refining and advancing his researches, I can think of only—well, no matter for that, it does not become one to mention one's own gifts and attainments. But for these improvements in his equations, I must gratefully recognize our recent acquaintances."

"Recent acquaintances?" I repeated, uncomprehending.

"The invaders, or rather their fellows. The ones who did not come to earth and die of our diseases. I am in contact with some of them."

"You are?" I had thought myself beyond amazement at Challenger, but this was something new and startling. "And these figures are theirs? But I see Arabic numerals, such as we use."

"Oh, they almost immediately learned to employ those. I began with pairs and groups of coins to demonstrate simple calculations, that two and two are four and that three from four leaves one, and so forth. Holmes has been here to observe my methods once or twice, and if he did not busy himself at his crime investigations, he might even be of some help. But come with me." He heaved himself out of his chair. "I can show you at this moment how I exchange thoughts with them."

He opened a door at the rear of the study, I followed him into a small, dim chamber with heavy curtains drawn at the windows. A small desk stood in a corner, and from its top shown a familiar gleam of soft blue. As we entered, a young man rose to his feet and faced us expectantly.

"Dr. Watson, this is my assistant, Mr. Morgan," Challenger made the introductions. "And I see that you have already recognized our crystal egg."

It lay nested on a crumpled piece of black velvet. I nodded.

"I thought it had been presented to the Astronomer Royal," I said, stooping above the desk to look.

"No, he is no great improvement in scientific gifts on Stent," said Challenger. "Holmes and I only turned over the crystal I had taken from that fighting-machine.

This is the one that can transmit images across space from planet to planet, and it is far better in my hands than in those of bungling academicians. Morgan, have you seen anything new or interesting to report?"

"Not in particular, Professor," replied the other, his dark eyes upon me. "They've been sending the landscapes again."

"The landscapes of Venus," Challenger said to me.

"Not of Mars?"

"The instrument with which they send their images seems to have traveled past us to Venus, in her orbit closer to the sun. Have you not read in the daily papers that astronomers have reported something about an apparent landing on Venus? No, I suppose not. But sit down, Doctor, and look for yourself."

I dropped into the chair from which Morgan had risen. The crystal reflected a view with no luminous mists to obscure it. It was of a bleak expanse, gray and pallid, with no recognizable growth of vegetation. A haze of dusty clouds drifted in the air, Through this I was able to see a strange assortment of rocks. In the middle distance stood three gaunt pinnacles, like half-dissolved sticks of candy. Beyond them rose a steep bluff, also eroded and worn, and beyond that appeared a murky horizon. Then, as I watched, the whole scene slipped away. I found myself looking into a pair of dark, round eyes with a twitching triangular mouth below them. I had seen such countenances before.

"That is an invader," I said at once.

"You may call him that for lack of a better term," said Challenger. "Although at the present he is invading Venus. What he was exhibiting to us just now is a glimpse of the excessively inhospitable planet where he and his companions are waging a most desperate fight for life."

"How can you know that?" I wondered.

"They are quite adept in conveying information."

The face had vanished in its turn. Now we could see a sort of shelf or table, with what seemed to be a dark cup clamped in a metal stand. Steamy vapors rose from the cup. A writhing tentacle came into view, pointing. Next moment the scene had abruptly shifted back to the landscape of worn rocks and dusty clouds, and then again to the steaming cup, and at last the peering eyes showed themselves once more.

"You are aware of his information by now," said Challenger.

"I? It was amazing, somehow frightening. Yet I am obliged to confess it did not seem a clear message to me."

"Come now, my dear Doctor," Challenger said in deep organ tones. "I should have thought that you had had some experience of parlor charades and puzzle pictures. Our friend on Venus was offering us a progression of related symbols."

I shook my head. "I saw an outdoor view, and an indoor view, and a glimpse of his face. No more than that."

Challenger fixed his heavy-lidded gaze on Morgan, who remained discreetly silent.

"An outdoor view, yes," he resumed at last. "He showed us the barren surface of the planet Venus. It proves to be a barren world, whipped by dust storms, its very rocks worn to points and knobs by incessant gales. Then there came the steaming container. That, as I gather, signifies an outside temperature exceeding that of boiling water."

"But nothing could live in such a temperature," I said.

"No more it could. Such conditions would destroy life as we know it, or as the invaders know it. Somehow they have built themselves a shelter, insulated so as to allow them to exist within it. But they dare not venture themselves in the open; they can observe only from ports or windows."

Again I looked at the crystal. The image had faded, and blue clouds pulsed within it.

"Professor Challenger, they actually seek to communicate with you," I said, profoundly impressed.

"They do indeed. By now they have come to realize that in me they have by far the most elevated human comprehension in existence on earth. You can understand now why I have not put this crystal into the hands of the Astronomer Royal or any other incapable blunderer. Well, Morgan, these are things we have seen before. Have they been sending any other messages?"

"They transmitted these," replied Morgan, picking up two sheets of neatly pencilled figures. Challenger took them and studied them.

"I have been pleasantly surprised to find out that Morgan has a truly sound natural sense of mathematics," he said to me. "We have had several such tables as these, decidedly informative about Venus and her drawbacks as a possible abode of life. We have also achieved an exchange of geometrical drawings, and I have made some progress in teaching them the use of our alphabet, with a view toward sending and receiving written messages. All told, we are fast developing a profitable exchange of ideas between our two cultures."

He said all this with a calm assurance that left me with nothing to say in reply. Again I looked at the crystal. The blue mist was clearing from it. "They seem ready with something fresh, and I myself shall sit here and watch," Challenger decided. "Morgan, will you and Dr. Watson go out into the study. I should think you would find him interested in learning of our findings these past few weeks. Meanwhile, I shall try to note down whatever further message our friend on Venus may have for me."

26

Morgan and I went out together into the brighter light of the study. He closed the door and turned to gaze at me. I saw him plainer now. He was middle-sized and slender, thirty years of age or so, with a shrewd, alert face, bright dark eyes, and a respectable height of forehead.