第 25 页

He walked out, closing the door behind him.

"A matter of the utmost importance," I mused aloud. "But he completed his work on the jewel robbers when he arrested Moran, and that was his only case on hand. Why, nobody could be waiting for him at

home but Mrs. Hudson."

Challenger turned upon me a gaze of the utmost weary pity.

"Cerebral paresis," he said. "Mental inertia. Remarkable!"

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, nothing of great consequence." He turned to the door. "Suppose I tell my wife that you will be our guest at table tonight. For the moment you might like to study my notes and Moran's drawings."

APPENDIX

A LETTER FROM DR. WATSON

Plum Villa,

Axtellford,

Bucks

April 25, 1909

Mr. H. G. Wells,

Spade House,

Sandigate,

Kent.

Dear Sir:

I am writing to you personally in order to clarify certain matters which have not been fully dealt with. When my first chronicle was published I received letters from some of your supporters, protesting that the non-Martian origin of the invaders was not demonstrated by the evidence I offered. I therefore wrote a second article, massively proving that the invaders were not native to Mars, and some of my critics wrote to me and retracted. However, no statements by yourself have ever been passed along to me, and I am therefore challenging you directly.

Your supporters have complained that, in calling your book "frequently inaccurate" and full of exaggerations, I have failed to elaborate. Specifically, I meant that you vastly exaggerated your own experiences, resorting sometimes to pure faking. The contents of the 13th chapter of Book I and of the first four chapters of Book II are partially imaginary. Shortly after your book was published, Holmes did research and found that the curate of whom you wrote was your own invention, simply created in order to discredit Christianity. Your atheism is notorious. In your book you portray yourself as a Christian—or, at least, a man who believes in God and in prayer—but this is sheer posturing.

The most blatant piece of fraud in the entire book occurs in the chapter entitled What We Saw from the Ruined House. You report that you saw the invaders trying to raise themselves on their hands, but unable to do so because of the terrestrial gravity. This is sheer fabrication, simply intended to support the view that they were native Martians. In my two articles there is ample evidence that the invaders could move about on our planet as easily as men. The rest of this chapter—apart from the fiction of the curate, since in fact you were alone in the basement—is accurate and informative. But what can be thought of a writer who mixes factual observation with pure invention, just to uphold a questionable thesis? Doubts about the Martian origin of these invaders were being circulated even while the invasion was in progress. You had surely heard about this long before you started writing your book, and in order to refute the suggestion you resorted to dishonesty. For the rest, I call attention to these errors:

(1)

In your account of the battle at St. George's Hill, the action immediately preceding the discharge of the Black Smoke, you write that the invader who had been overthrown crawled out of his hood and repaired his support. This is so absurdly impossible that I should not even have to refute it, but apparently I must. In point of fact, the machine was repaired by its two companions, the pilot remaining in his cowl. Holmes learned this at Donnithorpe on Tuesday, June 10, 1902, from scouts who had observed it.

(2)

In that same chapter, describing the tragedy in Surrey in the night of June 8, you say that none of the artillerymen near Esher survived the black gas. It can be shown, however, that there were many survivors; numerous soldiers realized the danger in time to escape. Holmes interviewed some of them at Donnithorpe, for his presence there was widely rumored, and survivors of the catastrophe naturally sought him out to relate their experiences and hear his conclusions.

(3)

You insist in your book that the slaying of an invader at Weybridge a few hours before the black smoke tragedy was a lucky accident, and you quote Moran to the same effect. All of the troops at Weybridge were wiped out by the ray, but some civilians (notably including yourself) escaped; and several of them contradict you on this point. Their testimony, again given Holmes at Donnithorpe, clearly shows that the pilot was killed by a shrewdly aimed shell. An officer was heard shouting: "Aim for that turning cowl! It's something like a man's head! A shell striking there is like a bullet through the brain!" One gunner absorbed this order and, with swift and expert marksmanship, aimed the fatal shell. If only his name and his officer's were known, they should have statues in their honor, much like the monument which, at Holmes's suggestion, has been built in memory of the crew of the Thunder Child—whose exploit you describe very vividly in the best and most thrilling chapter of your unequal book.

(4)

Your first chapter contains a startling mathematical error. You imagine the Mars-based cylinders as moving at several thousand miles per minute. Yet the first one was fired at midnight on May 12, 1902, and landed just after midnight of June 5. If it had been traveling at a speed of (for instance) about 10,000 miles per minute, it would have crossed the distance in about three days. In fact, it took over three weeks.

(5)

The invaders crossed from Mars to Venus shortly after the failure of their expedition to earth, the Venusian expedition breaking down in October, 1902. This is chronicled in my second essay. Yet you, writing in the year 1908, contend in your Epilogue that evidence of the Venusian landing was observed "seven months ago now" by the astronomer Lessing. You therefore disclose a shocking ignorance of the astronomical reporting in the 1902 press, and a gross misunderstanding of what Lessing described in 1907. Lessing, in a letter to Professor Challenger, has retracted his statements, admitting that faulty equipment and hasty judgment were responsible.

I must now correct an error of my own. I wrote my second article without consulting Holmes and quoted an observation of mine which I now realize to be mistaken. When speaking to Holmes and Challenger, I suggested that the captured specimen might be a late arrival, and that his earlier companions might have already succumbed. But Holmes, upon reading my published article, informed me that this was quite wrong, and that he really should have corrected me at the time. The specimen we captured on the afternoon of June 15 was the first disease fatality. All were dead or dying by the evening of the 20th.

If you ignore this letter, I will have it published.

Yours sincerely,

John H. Watson, M.D. WARNER BOOKS EDITION

First Printing: September, 1975

Copyright © 1975 by Manly W. Wellman and Wade Wellman All rights reserved

Parts of this book have appeared in THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION

Cover illustration by F. Accanero

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