The storm burst upon us six years
ago now. As Mars approached opposition, Lavelle of Java set the wires of
the astronomical exchange palpitating with the amazing intelligence of a
huge outbreak of incandescent gas upon the planet. It had occurred towards
midnight of the twelfth; and the spectroscope, to which he had at once
resorted, indicated a mass of flaming gas, chiefly hydrogen, moving with
an enormous velocity towards this earth. This jet of fire had become
invisible about a quarter past twelve. He compared it to a colossal puff
of flame suddenly and violently squirted out of the planet, "as flaming
gases rushed out of a gun."
In spite of all that
has happened since, I still remember that vigil very distinctly: the black
and silent observatory, the shadowed lantern throwing a feeble glow upon
the floor in the corner, the steady ticking of the clockwork of the
telescope, the little slit in the roof--an oblong profundity with the
stardust streaked across it. Ogilvy moved about, invisible but audible.
Looking through the telescope, one saw a circle of deep blue and the
little round planet swimming in the field. It seemed such a little thing,
so bright and small and still, faintly marked with transverse stripes, and
slightly flattened from the perfect round. But so little it was, so
silvery warm--a pin's-head of light! It was as if it quivered, but really
this was the telescope vibrating with the activity of the clockwork that
kept the planet in view.
As I watched, the planet
seemed to grow larger and smaller and to advance and recede, but that was
simply that my eye was tired. Forty millions of miles it was from us--more
than forty millions of miles of void. Few people realise the immensity of
vacancy in which the dust of the material universe swims.
Near it in the field, I remember, were three faint points
of light, three telescopic stars infinitely remote, and all around it was
the unfathomable darkness of empty space. You know how that blackness
looks on a frosty starlight night. In a telescope it seems far profounder.
And invisible to me because it was so remote and small, flying swiftly and
steadily towards me across that incredible distance, drawing nearer every
minute by so many thousands of miles, came the Thing they were sending us,
the Thing that was to bring so much struggle and calamity and death to the
earth. I never dreamed of it then as I watched; no one on earth dreamed of
that unerring missile.
That night, too, there was
another jetting out of gas from the distant planet. I saw it. A reddish
flash at the edge, the slightest projection of the outline just as the
chronometer struck midnight; and at that I told Ogilvy and he took my
place. The night was warm and I was thirsty, and I went stretching my legs
clumsily and feeling my way in the darkness, to the little table where the
siphon stood, while Ogilvy exclaimed at the streamer of gas that came out
towards us.
That night another invisible missile
started on its way to the earth from Mars, just a second or so under
twenty-four hours after the first one. I remember how I sat on the table
there in the blackness, with patches of green and crimson swimming before
my eyes. I wished I had a light to smoke by, little suspecting the meaning
of the minute gleam I had seen and all that it would presently bring me.
Ogilvy watched till one, and then gave it up; and we lit the lantern and
walked over to his house. Down below in the darkness were Ottershaw and
Chertsey and all their hundreds of people, sleeping in peace.
"An' you ain't never seen bad luck,"He was full of speculation that night about
Edwin concluded triumphantly. "You're just as bad as Granser and his
germs. You believe in what you don't see. Go on,
Granser."
the condition of Mars, and scoffed at the vulgar idea of its having
inhabitants who were signalling us. His idea was that meteorites might be
falling in a heavy shower upon the planet, or that a huge volcanic
explosion was in progress. He pointed out to me how unlikely it was that
organic evolution had taken the same direction in the two adjacent
planets.
"The chances against anything manlike on Mars are a
million to one," he said.
Hundreds of observers saw
the flame that night and the night after about midnight, and again the
night after; and so for ten nights, a flame each night. Why the shots
ceased after the tenth no one on earth has attempted to explain. It may be
the gases of the firing caused the Martians inconvenience. Dense clouds of
smoke or dust, visible through a powerful telescope on earth as little
grey, fluctuating patches, spread through the clearness of the planet's
atmosphere and obscured its more familiar features.