To
my brother
Frank Wells,
this ren­der­ing of his idea.

But who shall dwell in these worlds if they be in­hab­ited? … Are we or they Lords of the World? … And how are all things made for man?

—Kepler, quoted in The An­a­tomy of Mel­an­choly

The War of the Worlds

Book I The Coming of the Martians

I The Eve of the War

No one would have be­lieved in the last years of the nine­teenth cen­tury that this world was be­ing watched keenly and closely by in­tel­li­gences greater than man’s and yet as mor­tal as his own; that as men busied them­selves about their vari­ous con­cerns they were scru­tin­ised and stud­ied, per­haps al­most as nar­rowly as a man with a mi­cro­scope might scru­tin­ise the tran­si­ent creatures that swarm and mul­tiply in a drop of wa­ter. With in­fin­ite com­pla­cency men went to and fro over this globe about their little af­fairs, se­rene in their as­sur­ance of their em­pire over mat­ter. It is pos­sible that the in­fus­oria un­der the mi­cro­scope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of hu­man danger, or thought of them only to dis­miss the idea of life upon them as im­possible or im­prob­able. It is curi­ous to re­call some of the men­tal habits of those de­par­ted days. At most ter­restrial men fan­cied there might be other men upon Mars, per­haps in­ferior to them­selves and ready to wel­come a mis­sion­ary en­ter­prise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that per­ish, in­tel­lects vast and cool and un­sym­path­etic, re­garded this Earth with en­vi­ous eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury came the great dis­il­lu­sion­ment.

The planet Mars, I scarcely need re­mind the reader, re­volves about the sun at a mean dis­tance of 140,000,000 miles, and the light and heat it re­ceives from the sun is barely half of that re­ceived by this world. It must be, if the neb­u­lar hy­po­thesis has any truth, older than our world; and long be­fore this Earth ceased to be mol­ten, life upon its sur­face must have be­gun its course. The fact that it is scarcely one sev­enth of the volume of the Earth must have ac­cel­er­ated its cool­ing to the tem­per­at­ure at which life could be­gin. It has air and wa­ter and all that is ne­ces­sary for the sup­port of an­im­ated ex­ist­ence.

Yet so vain is man, and so blinded by his van­ity, that no writer, up to the very end of the nine­teenth cen­tury, ex­pressed any idea that in­tel­li­gent life might have de­veloped there far, or in­deed at all, bey­ond its earthly level. Nor was it gen­er­ally un­der­stood that since Mars is older than our Earth, with scarcely a quarter of the su­per­fi­cial area and re­moter from the sun, it ne­ces­sar­ily fol­lows that it is not only more dis­tant from time’s be­gin­ning but nearer its end.

The sec­u­lar cool­ing that must someday over­take our planet has already gone far in­deed with our neigh­bour. Its phys­ical con­di­tion is still largely a mys­tery, but we know now that even in its equat­orial re­gion the mid­day tem­per­at­ure barely ap­proaches that of our cold­est winter. Its air is much more at­ten­u­ated than ours, its oceans have shrunk un­til they cover but a third of its sur­face, and as its slow sea­sons change huge snow­caps gather and melt about either pole and peri­od­ic­ally in­und­ate its tem­per­ate zones. That last stage of ex­haus­tion, which to us is still in­cred­ibly re­mote, has be­come a present-day prob­lem for the in­hab­it­ants of Mars. The im­me­di­ate pres­sure of ne­ces­sity has brightened their in­tel­lects, en­larged their powers, and hardened their hearts. And look­ing across space with in­stru­ments, and in­tel­li­gences such as we have scarcely dreamed of, they see, at its nearest dis­tance only 35,000,000 of miles sun­ward of them, a morn­ing star of hope, our own warmer planet, green with ve­get­a­tion and grey with wa­ter, with a cloudy at­mo­sphere elo­quent of fer­til­ity, with glimpses through its drift­ing cloud wisps of broad stretches of pop­u­lous coun­try and nar­row, navy-crowded seas.

And we men, the creatures who in­habit this Earth, must be to them at least as alien and lowly as are the mon­keys and lemurs to us. The in­tel­lec­tual side of man already ad­mits that life is an in­cess­ant struggle for ex­ist­ence, and it would seem that this too is the be­lief of the minds upon Mars. Their world is far gone in its cool­ing and this world is still crowded with life, but crowded only with what they re­gard as in­ferior an­im­als. To carry war­fare sun­ward is, in­deed, their only es­cape from the de­struc­tion that, gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion, creeps upon them.

And be­fore we judge of them too harshly we must re­mem­ber what ruth­less and ut­ter de­struc­tion our own spe­cies has wrought, not only upon an­im­als, such as the van­ished bison and the dodo, but upon its in­ferior races. The Tas­mani­ans, in spite of their hu­man like­ness, were en­tirely swept out of ex­ist­ence in a war of ex­term­in­a­tion waged by European im­mig­rants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to com­plain if the Mar­tians warred in the same spirit?

The Mar­tians seem to have cal­cu­lated their des­cent with amaz­ing sub­tlety—their math­em­at­ical learn­ing is evid­ently far in ex­cess of ours—and to have car­ried out their pre­par­a­tions with a well-nigh per­fect un­an­im­ity. Had our in­stru­ments per­mit­ted it, we might have seen the gath­er­ing trouble far back in the nine­teenth cen­tury. Men like Schiaparelli watched the red planet—it is odd, by-the-bye, that for count­less cen­tur­ies Mars has been the star of war—but failed to in­ter­pret the fluc­tu­at­ing ap­pear­ances of the mark­ings they mapped so well. All that time the Mar­tians must have been get­ting ready.

Dur­ing the op­pos­i­tion of 1894 a great light was seen on the il­lu­min­ated part of the disk, first at the Lick Ob­ser­vat­ory, then by Per­rotin of Nice, and then by other ob­serv­ers. Eng­lish read­ers heard of it first in the is­sue of Nature dated August 2. I am in­clined to think that this blaze may have been the cast­ing of the huge gun, in the vast pit sunk into their planet, from which their shots were fired at us. Pe­culiar mark­ings, as yet un­ex­plained, were seen near the site of that out­break dur­ing the next two op­pos­i­tions.

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.”

A sin­gu­larly ap­pro­pri­ate phrase it proved. Yet the next day there was noth­ing of this in the pa­pers ex­cept a little note in the Daily Tele­graph, and the world went in ig­nor­ance of one of the gravest dangers that ever threatened the hu­man race. I might not have heard of the erup­tion at all had I not met Ogilvy, the well-known as­tro­nomer, at Ot­ter­shaw. He was im­mensely ex­cited at the news, and in the ex­cess of his feel­ings in­vited me up to take a turn with him that night in a scru­tiny of the red planet.

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.

He was full of spec­u­la­tion that night about 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.

Even the daily pa­pers woke up to the dis­turb­ances at last, and pop­u­lar notes ap­peared here, there, and every­where con­cern­ing the vol­ca­noes upon Mars. The seri­ocomic peri­od­ical Punch, I re­mem­ber, made a happy use of it in the polit­ical car­toon. And, all un­sus­pec­ted, those mis­siles the Mar­tians had fired at us drew earth­ward, rush­ing now at a pace of many miles a second through the empty gulf of space, hour by hour and day by day, nearer and nearer. It seems to me now al­most in­cred­ibly won­der­ful that, with that swift fate hanging over us, men could go about their petty con­cerns as they did. I re­mem­ber how ju­bil­ant Markham was at se­cur­ing a new pho­to­graph of the planet for the il­lus­trated pa­per he ed­ited in those days. People in these lat­ter times scarcely real­ise the abund­ance and en­ter­prise of our nine­teenth-cen­tury pa­pers. For my own part, I was much oc­cu­pied in learn­ing to ride the bi­cycle, and busy upon a series of pa­pers dis­cuss­ing the prob­able de­vel­op­ments of moral ideas as civil­isa­tion pro­gressed.

One night (the first mis­sile then could scarcely have been 10,000,000 miles away) I went for a walk with my wife. It was star­light and I ex­plained the signs of the Zo­diac to her, and poin­ted out Mars, a bright dot of light creep­ing zenith­ward, to­wards which so many tele­scopes were poin­ted. It was a warm night. Com­ing home, a party of ex­cur­sion­ists from Chert­sey or Isle­worth passed us singing and play­ing mu­sic. There were lights in the up­per win­dows of the houses as the people went to bed. From the rail­way sta­tion in the dis­tance came the sound of shunt­ing trains, ringing and rum­bling, softened al­most into melody by the dis­tance. My wife poin­ted out to me the bright­ness of the red, green, and yel­low sig­nal lights hanging in a frame­work against the sky. It seemed so safe and tran­quil.

II The Falling Star

Then came the night of the first fall­ing star. It was seen early in the morn­ing, rush­ing over Winchester east­ward, a line of flame high in the at­mo­sphere. Hun­dreds must have seen it, and taken it for an or­din­ary fall­ing star. Al­bin de­scribed it as leav­ing a green­ish streak be­hind it that glowed for some seconds. Den­ning, our greatest au­thor­ity on met­eor­ites, stated that the height of its first ap­pear­ance was about ninety or one hun­dred miles. It seemed to him that it fell to earth about one hun­dred miles east of him.

I was at home at that hour and writ­ing in my study; and al­though my French win­dows face to­wards Ot­ter­shaw and the blind was up (for I loved in those days to look up at the night sky), I saw noth­ing of it. Yet this strangest of all things that ever came to Earth from outer space must have fallen while I was sit­ting there, vis­ible to me had I only looked up as it passed. Some of those who saw its flight say it trav­elled with a hiss­ing sound. I my­self heard noth­ing of that. Many people in Berkshire, Sur­rey, and Middle­sex must have seen the fall of it, and, at most, have thought that an­other met­eor­ite had des­cen­ded. No one seems to have troubled to look for the fallen mass that night.

But very early in the morn­ing poor Ogilvy, who had seen the shoot­ing star and who was per­suaded that a met­eor­ite lay some­where on the com­mon between Horsell, Ot­ter­shaw, and Wok­ing, rose early with the idea of find­ing it. Find it he did, soon after dawn, and not far from the sand pits. An enorm­ous hole had been made by the im­pact of the pro­jectile, and the sand and gravel had been flung vi­ol­ently in every dir­ec­tion over the heath, form­ing heaps vis­ible a mile and a half away. The heather was on fire east­ward, and a thin blue smoke rose against the dawn.

The Th­ing it­self lay al­most en­tirely bur­ied in sand, amidst the scattered splin­ters of a fir tree it had shivered to frag­ments in its des­cent. The un­covered part had the ap­pear­ance of a huge cyl­in­der, caked over and its out­line softened by a thick scaly dun-col­oured in­crust­a­tion. It had a dia­meter of about thirty yards. He ap­proached the mass, sur­prised at the size and more so at the shape, since most met­eor­ites are roun­ded more or less com­pletely. It was, how­ever, still so hot from its flight through the air as to for­bid his near ap­proach. A stir­ring noise within its cyl­in­der he ascribed to the un­equal cool­ing of its sur­face; for at that time it had not oc­curred to him that it might be hol­low.

He re­mained stand­ing at the edge of the pit that the Th­ing had made for it­self, star­ing at its strange ap­pear­ance, as­ton­ished chiefly at its un­usual shape and col­our, and dimly per­ceiv­ing even then some evid­ence of design in its ar­rival. The early morn­ing was won­der­fully still, and the sun, just clear­ing the pine trees to­wards Wey­bridge, was already warm. He did not re­mem­ber hear­ing any birds that morn­ing, there was cer­tainly no breeze stir­ring, and the only sounds were the faint move­ments from within the cindery cyl­in­der. He was all alone on the com­mon.

Then sud­denly he no­ticed with a start that some of the grey clinker, the ashy in­crust­a­tion that covered the met­eor­ite, was fall­ing off the cir­cu­lar edge of the end. It was drop­ping off in flakes and rain­ing down upon the sand. A large piece sud­denly came off and fell with a sharp noise that brought his heart into his mouth.

For a minute he scarcely real­ised what this meant, and, al­though the heat was ex­cess­ive, he clambered down into the pit close to the bulk to see the Th­ing more clearly. He fan­cied even then that the cool­ing of the body might ac­count for this, but what dis­turbed that idea was the fact that the ash was fall­ing only from the end of the cyl­in­der.

And then he per­ceived that, very slowly, the cir­cu­lar top of the cyl­in­der was ro­tat­ing on its body. It was such a gradual move­ment that he dis­covered it only through no­ti­cing that a black mark that had been near him five minutes ago was now at the other side of the cir­cum­fer­ence. Even then he scarcely un­der­stood what this in­dic­ated, un­til he heard a muffled grat­ing sound and saw the black mark jerk for­ward an inch or so. Then the thing came upon him in a flash. The cyl­in­der was ar­ti­fi­cial—hol­low—with an end that screwed out! So­mething within the cyl­in­der was un­screw­ing the top!

“Good heav­ens!” said Ogilvy. “There’s a man in it—men in it! Half roas­ted to death! Try­ing to es­cape!”

At once, with a quick men­tal leap, he linked the Th­ing with the flash upon Mars.

The thought of the con­fined creature was so dread­ful to him that he for­got the heat and went for­ward to the cyl­in­der to help turn. But luck­ily the dull ra­di­ation ar­res­ted him be­fore he could burn his hands on the still-glow­ing metal. At that he stood ir­res­ol­ute for a mo­ment, then turned, scrambled out of the pit, and set off run­ning wildly into Wok­ing. The time then must have been some­where about six o’clock. He met a wag­oner and tried to make him un­der­stand, but the tale he told and his ap­pear­ance were so wild—his hat had fallen off in the pit—that the man simply drove on. He was equally un­suc­cess­ful with the pot­man who was just un­lock­ing the doors of the pub­lic-house by Horsell Bridge. The fel­low thought he was a lun­atic at large and made an un­suc­cess­ful at­tempt to shut him into the tap­room. That sobered him a little; and when he saw Hender­son, the Lon­don journ­al­ist, in his garden, he called over the pal­ings and made him­self un­der­stood.

“Hender­son,” he called, “you saw that shoot­ing star last night?”

“Well?” said Hender­son.

“It’s out on Horsell Com­mon now.”

“Good Lord!” said Hender­son. “Fal­len met­eor­ite! That’s good.”

“But it’s some­thing more than a met­eor­ite. It’s a cyl­in­der—an ar­ti­fi­cial cyl­in­der, man! And there’s some­thing in­side.”

Hender­son stood up with his spade in his hand.

“What’s that?” he said. He was deaf in one ear.

Ogilvy told him all that he had seen. Hender­son was a minute or so tak­ing it in. Then he dropped his spade, snatched up his jacket, and came out into the road. The two men hur­ried back at once to the com­mon, and found the cyl­in­der still ly­ing in the same po­s­i­tion. But now the sounds in­side had ceased, and a thin circle of bright metal showed between the top and the body of the cyl­in­der. Air was either en­ter­ing or es­cap­ing at the rim with a thin, sizz­ling sound.

They listened, rapped on the scaly burnt metal with a stick, and, meet­ing with no re­sponse, they both con­cluded the man or men in­side must be in­sens­ible or dead.

Of course the two were quite un­able to do any­thing. They shouted con­sol­a­tion and prom­ises, and went off back to the town again to get help. One can ima­gine them, covered with sand, ex­cited and dis­ordered, run­ning up the little street in the bright sun­light just as the shop folks were tak­ing down their shut­ters and people were open­ing their bed­room win­dows. Hender­son went into the rail­way sta­tion at once, in or­der to tele­graph the news to Lon­don. The news­pa­per art­icles had pre­pared men’s minds for the re­cep­tion of the idea.

By eight o’clock a num­ber of boys and un­em­ployed men had already star­ted for the com­mon to see the “dead men from Mars.” That was the form the story took. I heard of it first from my news­pa­per boy about a quarter to nine when I went out to get my Daily Chron­icle. I was nat­ur­ally startled, and lost no time in go­ing out and across the Ot­ter­shaw bridge to the sand pits.

III On Horsell Common

I found a little crowd of per­haps twenty people sur­round­ing the huge hole in which the cyl­in­der lay. I have already de­scribed the ap­pear­ance of that co­lossal bulk, em­bed­ded in the ground. The turf and gravel about it seemed charred as if by a sud­den ex­plo­sion. No doubt its im­pact had caused a flash of fire. Hender­son and Ogilvy were not there. I think they per­ceived that noth­ing was to be done for the present, and had gone away to break­fast at Hender­son’s house.

There were four or five boys sit­ting on the edge of the Pit, with their feet dangling, and amus­ing them­selves—un­til I stopped them—by throw­ing stones at the gi­ant mass. After I had spoken to them about it, they began play­ing at “touch” in and out of the group of bystand­ers.

Among these were a couple of cyc­lists, a job­bing gardener I em­ployed some­times, a girl car­ry­ing a baby, Gregg the butcher and his little boy, and two or three loafers and golf cad­dies who were ac­cus­tomed to hang about the rail­way sta­tion. There was very little talk­ing. Few of the com­mon people in Eng­land had any­thing but the vaguest as­tro­nom­ical ideas in those days. Most of them were star­ing quietly at the big table like end of the cyl­in­der, which was still as Ogilvy and Hender­son had left it. I fancy the pop­u­lar ex­pect­a­tion of a heap of charred corpses was dis­ap­poin­ted at this in­an­im­ate bulk. Some went away while I was there, and other people came. I clambered into the pit and fan­cied I heard a faint move­ment un­der my feet. The top had cer­tainly ceased to ro­tate.

It was only when I got thus close to it that the strange­ness of this ob­ject was at all evid­ent to me. At the first glance it was really no more ex­cit­ing than an over­turned car­riage or a tree blown across the road. Not so much so, in­deed. It looked like a rusty gas float. It re­quired a cer­tain amount of sci­entific edu­ca­tion to per­ceive that the grey scale of the Th­ing was no com­mon ox­ide, that the yel­low­ish-white metal that gleamed in the crack between the lid and the cyl­in­der had an un­fa­mil­iar hue. “Ex­tra­ter­restrial” had no mean­ing for most of the on­look­ers.

At that time it was quite clear in my own mind that the Th­ing had come from the planet Mars, but I judged it im­prob­able that it con­tained any liv­ing creature. I thought the un­screw­ing might be auto­matic. In spite of Ogilvy, I still be­lieved that there were men in Mars. My mind ran fanci­fully on the pos­sib­il­it­ies of its con­tain­ing ma­nu­script, on the dif­fi­culties in trans­la­tion that might arise, whether we should find coins and mod­els in it, and so forth. Yet it was a little too large for as­sur­ance on this idea. I felt an im­pa­tience to see it opened. About el­even, as noth­ing seemed hap­pen­ing, I walked back, full of such thought, to my home in May­bury. But I found it dif­fi­cult to get to work upon my ab­stract in­vest­ig­a­tions.

In the af­ter­noon the ap­pear­ance of the com­mon had altered very much. The early edi­tions of the even­ing pa­pers had startled Lon­don with enorm­ous head­lines:

“A Mes­sage Re­ceived From Mars.”

“Re­mark­able St­ory From Wok­ing,”

and so forth. In ad­di­tion, Ogilvy’s wire to the Astro­nom­ical Ex­change had roused every ob­ser­vat­ory in the three king­doms.

There were half a dozen flies or more from the Wok­ing sta­tion stand­ing in the road by the sand pits, a bas­ket-chaise from Chobham, and a rather lordly car­riage. Besides that, there was quite a heap of bi­cycles. In ad­di­tion, a large num­ber of people must have walked, in spite of the heat of the day, from Wok­ing and Chert­sey, so that there was al­to­gether quite a con­sid­er­able crowd—one or two gaily dressed ladies among the oth­ers.

It was glar­ingly hot, not a cloud in the sky nor a breath of wind, and the only shadow was that of the few scattered pine trees. The burn­ing heather had been ex­tin­guished, but the level ground to­wards Ot­ter­shaw was blackened as far as one could see, and still giv­ing off ver­tical stream­ers of smoke. An en­ter­pris­ing sweet-stuff dealer in the Chobham Road had sent up his son with a bar­row-load of green apples and ginger beer.

Go­ing to the edge of the pit, I found it oc­cu­pied by a group of about half a dozen men—Hender­son, Ogilvy, and a tall, fair-haired man that I af­ter­wards learned was Stent, the Astro­nomer Royal, with sev­eral work­men wield­ing spades and pick­axes. Stent was giv­ing dir­ec­tions in a clear, high-pitched voice. He was stand­ing on the cyl­in­der, which was now evid­ently much cooler; his face was crim­son and stream­ing with per­spir­a­tion, and some­thing seemed to have ir­rit­ated him.

A large por­tion of the cyl­in­der had been un­covered, though its lower end was still em­bed­ded. As soon as Ogilvy saw me among the star­ing crowd on the edge of the pit he called to me to come down, and asked me if I would mind go­ing over to see Lord Hilton, the lord of the manor.

The grow­ing crowd, he said, was be­com­ing a ser­i­ous im­ped­i­ment to their ex­cav­a­tions, es­pe­cially the boys. They wanted a light rail­ing put up, and help to keep the people back. He told me that a faint stir­ring was oc­ca­sion­ally still aud­ible within the case, but that the work­men had failed to un­screw the top, as it af­forded no grip to them. The case ap­peared to be enorm­ously thick, and it was pos­sible that the faint sounds we heard rep­res­en­ted a noisy tu­mult in the in­terior.

I was very glad to do as he asked, and so be­come one of the priv­ileged spec­tat­ors within the con­tem­plated en­clos­ure. I failed to find Lord Hilton at his house, but I was told he was ex­pec­ted from Lon­don by the six o’clock train from Water­loo; and as it was then about a quarter past five, I went home, had some tea, and walked up to the sta­tion to way­lay him.

IV The Cylinder Opens

When I re­turned to the com­mon the sun was set­ting. Sc­attered groups were hur­ry­ing from the dir­ec­tion of Wok­ing, and one or two per­sons were re­turn­ing. The crowd about the pit had in­creased, and stood out black against the lemon yel­low of the sky—a couple of hun­dred people, per­haps. There were raised voices, and some sort of struggle ap­peared to be go­ing on about the pit. Strange ima­gin­ings passed through my mind. As I drew nearer I heard Stent’s voice:

“Keep back! Keep back!”

A boy came run­ning to­wards me.

“It’s a-movin’,” he said to me as he passed; “a-screwin’ and a-screwin’ out. I don’t like it. I’m a-goin’ ’ome, I am.”

I went on to the crowd. There were really, I should think, two or three hun­dred people el­bow­ing and jost­ling one an­other, the one or two ladies there be­ing by no means the least act­ive.

“He’s fallen in the pit!” cried someone.

“Keep back!” said sev­eral.

The crowd swayed a little, and I el­bowed my way through. Every­one seemed greatly ex­cited. I heard a pe­cu­liar hum­ming sound from the pit.

“I say!” said Ogilvy; “help keep these idi­ots back. We don’t know what’s in the con­foun­ded thing, you know!”

I saw a young man, a shop as­sist­ant in Wok­ing I be­lieve he was, stand­ing on the cyl­in­der and try­ing to scramble out of the hole again. The crowd had pushed him in.

The end of the cyl­in­der was be­ing screwed out from within. Nearly two feet of shin­ing screw pro­jec­ted. Some­body blundered against me, and I nar­rowly missed be­ing pitched onto the top of the screw. I turned, and as I did so the screw must have come out, for the lid of the cyl­in­der fell upon the gravel with a ringing con­cus­sion. I stuck my el­bow into the per­son be­hind me, and turned my head to­wards the Th­ing again. For a mo­ment that cir­cu­lar cav­ity seemed per­fectly black. I had the sun­set in my eyes.

I think every­one ex­pec­ted to see a man emerge—pos­sibly some­thing a little un­like us ter­restrial men, but in all es­sen­tials a man. I know I did. But, look­ing, I presently saw some­thing stir­ring within the shadow: grey­ish bil­lowy move­ments, one above an­other, and then two lu­min­ous disks—like eyes. Then some­thing re­sem­bling a little grey snake, about the thick­ness of a walk­ing stick, coiled up out of the writh­ing middle, and wriggled in the air to­wards me—and then an­other.

A sud­den chill came over me. There was a loud shriek from a wo­man be­hind. I half turned, keep­ing my eyes fixed upon the cyl­in­der still, from which other tentacles were now pro­ject­ing, and began push­ing my way back from the edge of the pit. I saw as­ton­ish­ment giv­ing place to hor­ror on the faces of the people about me. I heard in­ar­tic­u­late ex­clam­a­tions on all sides. There was a gen­eral move­ment back­wards. I saw the shop­man strug­gling still on the edge of the pit. I found my­self alone, and saw the people on the other side of the pit run­ning off, Stent among them. I looked again at the cyl­in­der, and un­gov­ern­able ter­ror gripped me. I stood pet­ri­fied and star­ing.

A big grey­ish roun­ded bulk, the size, per­haps, of a bear, was rising slowly and pain­fully out of the cyl­in­der. As it bulged up and caught the light, it glistened like wet leather.

Two large dark-col­oured eyes were re­gard­ing me stead­fastly. The mass that framed them, the head of the thing, was roun­ded, and had, one might say, a face. There was a mouth un­der the eyes, the lip­less brim of which quivered and panted, and dropped saliva. The whole creature heaved and pulsated con­vuls­ively. A lank tentacu­lar ap­pend­age gripped the edge of the cyl­in­der, an­other swayed in the air.

Those who have never seen a liv­ing Mar­tian can scarcely ima­gine the strange hor­ror of its ap­pear­ance. The pe­cu­liar V-shaped mouth with its poin­ted up­per lip, the ab­sence of brow ridges, the ab­sence of a chin be­neath the wedgelike lower lip, the in­cess­ant quiv­er­ing of this mouth, the Gor­gon groups of tentacles, the tu­mul­tu­ous breath­ing of the lungs in a strange at­mo­sphere, the evid­ent heav­i­ness and pain­ful­ness of move­ment due to the greater grav­it­a­tional en­ergy of the Earth—above all, the ex­traordin­ary in­tens­ity of the im­mense eyes—were at once vi­tal, in­tense, in­hu­man, crippled and mon­strous. There was some­thing fung­oid in the oily brown skin, some­thing in the clumsy de­lib­er­a­tion of the te­di­ous move­ments un­speak­ably nasty. Even at this first en­counter, this first glimpse, I was over­come with dis­gust and dread.

Sud­denly the mon­ster van­ished. It had toppled over the brim of the cyl­in­der and fallen into the pit, with a thud like the fall of a great mass of leather. I heard it give a pe­cu­liar thick cry, and forth­with an­other of these creatures ap­peared darkly in the deep shadow of the aper­ture.

I turned and, run­ning madly, made for the first group of trees, per­haps a hun­dred yards away; but I ran slant­ingly and stum­bling, for I could not avert my face from these things.

There, among some young pine trees and furze bushes, I stopped, pant­ing, and waited fur­ther de­vel­op­ments. The com­mon round the sand pits was dot­ted with people, stand­ing like my­self in a half-fas­cin­ated ter­ror, star­ing at these creatures, or rather at the heaped gravel at the edge of the pit in which they lay. And then, with a re­newed hor­ror, I saw a round, black ob­ject bob­bing up and down on the edge of the pit. It was the head of the shop­man who had fallen in, but show­ing as a little black ob­ject against the hot west­ern sun. Now he got his shoulder and knee up, and again he seemed to slip back un­til only his head was vis­ible. Sud­denly he van­ished, and I could have fan­cied a faint shriek had reached me. I had a mo­ment­ary im­pulse to go back and help him that my fears over­ruled.

Everything was then quite in­vis­ible, hid­den by the deep pit and the heap of sand that the fall of the cyl­in­der had made. Anyone com­ing along the road from Chobham or Wok­ing would have been amazed at the sight—a dwind­ling mul­ti­tude of per­haps a hun­dred people or more stand­ing in a great ir­reg­u­lar circle, in ditches, be­hind bushes, be­hind gates and hedges, say­ing little to one an­other and that in short, ex­cited shouts, and star­ing, star­ing hard at a few heaps of sand. The bar­row of ginger beer stood, a queer derel­ict, black against the burn­ing sky, and in the sand pits was a row of deser­ted vehicles with their horses feed­ing out of nose­bags or paw­ing the ground.

V The Heat-Ray

After the glimpse I had had of the Mar­tians emer­ging from the cyl­in­der in which they had come to the Earth from their planet, a kind of fas­cin­a­tion para­lysed my ac­tions. I re­mained stand­ing knee-deep in the heather, star­ing at the mound that hid them. I was a battle­ground of fear and curi­os­ity.

I did not dare to go back to­wards the pit, but I felt a pas­sion­ate long­ing to peer into it. I began walk­ing, there­fore, in a big curve, seek­ing some point of vant­age and con­tinu­ally look­ing at the sand heaps that hid these new­comers to our Earth. Once a leash of thin black whips, like the arms of an oc­topus, flashed across the sun­set and was im­me­di­ately with­drawn, and af­ter­wards a thin rod rose up, joint by joint, bear­ing at its apex a cir­cu­lar disk that spun with a wob­bling mo­tion. What could be go­ing on there?

Most of the spec­tat­ors had gathered in one or two groups—one a little crowd to­wards Wok­ing, the other a knot of people in the dir­ec­tion of Chobham. Evidently they shared my men­tal con­flict. There were few near me. One man I ap­proached—he was, I per­ceived, a neigh­bour of mine, though I did not know his name—and ac­cos­ted. But it was scarcely a time for ar­tic­u­late con­ver­sa­tion.

“What ugly brutes!” he said. “Good God! What ugly brutes!” He re­peated this over and over again.

“Did you see a man in the pit?” I said; but he made no an­swer to that. We be­came si­lent, and stood watch­ing for a time side by side, de­riv­ing, I fancy, a cer­tain com­fort in one an­other’s com­pany. Then I shif­ted my po­s­i­tion to a little knoll that gave me the ad­vant­age of a yard or more of el­ev­a­tion and when I looked for him presently he was walk­ing to­wards Wok­ing.

The sun­set faded to twi­light be­fore any­thing fur­ther happened. The crowd far away on the left, to­wards Wok­ing, seemed to grow, and I heard now a faint mur­mur from it. The little knot of people to­wards Chobham dis­persed. There was scarcely an in­tim­a­tion of move­ment from the pit.

It was this, as much as any­thing, that gave people cour­age, and I sup­pose the new ar­rivals from Wok­ing also helped to re­store con­fid­ence. At any rate, as the dusk came on a slow, in­ter­mit­tent move­ment upon the sand pits began, a move­ment that seemed to gather force as the still­ness of the even­ing about the cyl­in­der re­mained un­broken. Ver­tical black fig­ures in twos and threes would ad­vance, stop, watch, and ad­vance again, spread­ing out as they did so in a thin ir­reg­u­lar cres­cent that prom­ised to en­close the pit in its at­ten­u­ated horns. I, too, on my side began to move to­wards the pit.

Then I saw some cab­men and oth­ers had walked boldly into the sand pits, and heard the clat­ter of hoofs and the gride of wheels. I saw a lad trundling off the bar­row of apples. And then, within thirty yards of the pit, ad­van­cing from the dir­ec­tion of Horsell, I noted a little black knot of men, the fore­most of whom was wav­ing a white flag.

This was the Depu­ta­tion. There had been a hasty con­sulta­tion, and since the Mar­tians were evid­ently, in spite of their re­puls­ive forms, in­tel­li­gent creatures, it had been re­solved to show them, by ap­proach­ing them with sig­nals, that we too were in­tel­li­gent.

Flut­ter, flut­ter, went the flag, first to the right, then to the left. It was too far for me to re­cog­nise any­one there, but af­ter­wards I learned that Ogilvy, Stent, and Hender­son were with oth­ers in this at­tempt at com­mu­nic­a­tion. This little group had in its ad­vance dragged in­ward, so to speak, the cir­cum­fer­ence of the now al­most com­plete circle of people, and a num­ber of dim black fig­ures fol­lowed it at dis­creet dis­tances.

Sud­denly there was a flash of light, and a quant­ity of lu­min­ous green­ish smoke came out of the pit in three dis­tinct puffs, which drove up, one after the other, straight into the still air.

This smoke (or flame, per­haps, would be the bet­ter word for it) was so bright that the deep blue sky over­head and the hazy stretches of brown com­mon to­wards Chert­sey, set with black pine trees, seemed to darken ab­ruptly as these puffs arose, and to re­main the darker after their dis­persal. At the same time a faint hiss­ing sound be­came aud­ible.

Bey­ond the pit stood the little wedge of people with the white flag at its apex, ar­res­ted by these phe­nom­ena, a little knot of small ver­tical black shapes upon the black ground. As the green smoke arose, their faces flashed out pal­lid green, and faded again as it van­ished. Then slowly the hiss­ing passed into a hum­ming, into a long, loud, dron­ing noise. Slowly a humped shape rose out of the pit, and the ghost of a beam of light seemed to flicker out from it.

Forth­with flashes of ac­tual flame, a bright glare leap­ing from one to an­other, sprang from the scattered group of men. It was as if some in­vis­ible jet im­pinged upon them and flashed into white flame. It was as if each man were sud­denly and mo­ment­ar­ily turned to fire.

Then, by the light of their own de­struc­tion, I saw them stag­ger­ing and fall­ing, and their sup­port­ers turn­ing to run.

I stood star­ing, not as yet real­ising that this was death leap­ing from man to man in that little dis­tant crowd. All I felt was that it was some­thing very strange. An al­most noise­less and blind­ing flash of light, and a man fell head­long and lay still; and as the un­seen shaft of heat passed over them, pine trees burst into fire, and every dry furze bush be­came with one dull thud a mass of flames. And far away to­wards Kna­ph­ill I saw the flashes of trees and hedges and wooden build­ings sud­denly set alight.

It was sweep­ing round swiftly and stead­ily, this flam­ing death, this in­vis­ible, in­ev­it­able sword of heat. I per­ceived it com­ing to­wards me by the flash­ing bushes it touched, and was too astoun­ded and stu­pefied to stir. I heard the crackle of fire in the sand pits and the sud­den squeal of a horse that was as sud­denly stilled. Then it was as if an in­vis­ible yet in­tensely heated fin­ger were drawn through the heather between me and the Mar­tians, and all along a curving line bey­ond the sand pits the dark ground smoked and crackled. So­mething fell with a crash far away to the left where the road from Wok­ing sta­tion opens out on the com­mon. Forth­with the hiss­ing and hum­ming ceased, and the black, dome-like ob­ject sank slowly out of sight into the pit.

All this had happened with such swift­ness that I had stood mo­tion­less, dumb­foun­ded and dazzled by the flashes of light. Had that death swept through a full circle, it must in­ev­it­ably have slain me in my sur­prise. But it passed and spared me, and left the night about me sud­denly dark and un­fa­mil­iar.

The un­du­lat­ing com­mon seemed now dark al­most to black­ness, ex­cept where its road­ways lay grey and pale un­der the deep blue sky of the early night. It was dark, and sud­denly void of men. Over­head the stars were mus­ter­ing, and in the west the sky was still a pale, bright, al­most green­ish blue. The tops of the pine trees and the roofs of Horsell came out sharp and black against the west­ern af­ter­glow. The Mar­tians and their ap­pli­ances were al­to­gether in­vis­ible, save for that thin mast upon which their rest­less mir­ror wobbled. Patches of bush and isol­ated trees here and there smoked and glowed still, and the houses to­wards Wok­ing sta­tion were send­ing up spires of flame into the still­ness of the even­ing air.

Noth­ing was changed save for that and a ter­rible as­ton­ish­ment. The little group of black specks with the flag of white had been swept out of ex­ist­ence, and the still­ness of the even­ing, so it seemed to me, had scarcely been broken.

It came to me that I was upon this dark com­mon, help­less, un­pro­tec­ted, and alone. Sud­denly, like a thing fall­ing upon me from without, came—fear.

With an ef­fort I turned and began a stum­bling run through the heather.

The fear I felt was no ra­tional fear, but a panic ter­ror not only of the Mar­tians, but of the dusk and still­ness all about me. Such an ex­traordin­ary ef­fect in un­man­ning me it had that I ran weep­ing si­lently as a child might do. Once I had turned, I did not dare to look back.

I re­mem­ber I felt an ex­traordin­ary per­sua­sion that I was be­ing played with, that presently, when I was upon the very verge of safety, this mys­ter­i­ous death—as swift as the pas­sage of light—would leap after me from the pit about the cyl­in­der and strike me down.