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01 - The Eve of the War - The War of the Worlds - H G Wells · Daily Classic Sci Fi Books

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The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells epigraph But who shall
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dwell in these worlds? If they be inhabited? Are we or they?
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Lords of the world? And how are all things made? For man?
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Kepler, quoted in The Anatomy of Melancholy, Book one, The Coming of
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the Martians, Chapter one, the Eve of the War. No one would
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have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being
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watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's, and yet as mortal as
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his own, that as men busied themselves about their various concerns, they were
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scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might
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scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With
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infinite complacency, men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs,
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serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that
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the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to
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the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them
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only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It
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is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At
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most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to
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themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space
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minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that
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perish. Intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this Earth with envious eyes,
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and slowly and surely drew their plans against us, And early in the
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twentieth century came the great disillusionment. The planet Mars I scarcely need remind the
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reader revolves about the Sun at a mean distance of a hundred and forty million
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miles, and the heat and light it receives from the Sun is barely half
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of that received by this world. It must be if the nebular hypothesis has
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any truth older than our world, and long before this Earth ceased to be
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molten, life upon its surface must have begun its course. The fact that
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it is scarcely one seventh of the volume of the Earth must have accelerated its
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cooling to the temperature at which life could begin. It has air and water
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and all that is necessary for the support of animated existence. Yet so vain
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is man, and so blinded by his vanity, that no writer up to
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the very end of the nineteenth century expressed any idea that intelligent life might have
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developed there far, or indeed at all, beyond its earthly level. Nor
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is it generally understood that since Mars is older than our Earth, with scarcely
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a quarter of the superficial area, and remoter from the Sun, it necessarily
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follows that it is not only more distant from time's beginning, but nearer its
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end. The secular cooling that must some day overtake our planet has already gone
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far. Indeed, with our neighbor. Its physical condition is still largely a
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mystery. But we know now that even in its equatorial region, the midday
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temperature barely approaches that of our coldest winter. Its air is much more attenuated
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than ours, Its oceans have shrunk until they cover but a third of its
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surface, and as its slow seasons change, huge snow caps gather and melt
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about either pole and periodically inundate its temperate zones. That last stage of exhaustion,
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which to us is still incredibly remote, has become a present day problem
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for the inhabitants of Mars. The immediate pressure of necessity has brightened their intellects,
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enlarged their powers, and hardened their hearts, and looking across space with
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instruments and intelligences such as we have scarcely dreamed of, they see, at
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its nearest distance, only thirty five million of miles sunward of them, a
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morning star of hope, our own warmer planet, green with vegetation and gray
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with water, with a cloudy atmosphere eloquent of fertility, with glimpses through its
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drifting cloud wisps of broad stretches of populous country and narrow navy crowded seas.
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And we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must be to them
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at least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys and lemurs to us.
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The intellectual side of man already admits that life is an incessant struggle for existence,
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and it would seem that this too is the belief of the minds upon
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Mars. Their world is far gone in its cooling, and this world is
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still crowded with life, but crowded only with what they regard as inferior animals.
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To carry warfare sun would is indeed their only escape from the destruction that
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generation after generation creeps upon them. And before we judge of them too harshly,
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we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought,
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not only upon animals such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon
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its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were
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entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants in
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the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain
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if the Martians warred in the same spirit. The Martians seemed to have calculated
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their descent with amazing subtlety. Their mathematical learning is evidently far in excess of
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hours, and to have carried out their preparations with a well nigh perfect unanimity.
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Had our instruments permitted it, we might have seen the gathering trouble.
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Far back in the nineteenth century, men like Schiaparelli watched the Red Planet.
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It is odd by the Bye that for countless centuries Mars has been the star
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of war, but failed to interpret the fluctual du waiting appearances of the markings
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they mapped so well all that time, the Martians must have been getting ready.
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During the opposition of eighteen ninety four, a great light was seen on
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the illuminated part of the disk, first the Lick Observatory, then by Perita
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of Nice, and then by other observers. English readers heard of it first
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in the issue of Nature dated August second. I am inclined to think that
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dis blaze may have been the casting of the huge gun in the vast pit
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sunk into their planet, from which their shots were fired at US. Peculiar
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markings, as yet unexplained, were seen near the site of that outbreak during
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the next two oppositions. The storm burst upon US six years ago. Now,
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as Mars approached opposition, Lavelle of Java set the wires of the Astronomical
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Exchange Palpitation with the amazing intelligence of a huge outbreak of incandescent gas upon the
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planet. It had occurred towards midnight of the twelfth and the spectroscope to which
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he had at once resorted indicated a mass of flaming gas, chiefly hydrogen,
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moving with an enormous velocity towards this Earth. This jet of fire had become
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invisible about a quarter past twelve. He compared it to a colossal puff of
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flame suddenly and violently squatted out of the planet, as flaming gases rushed out
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of a gun, A singularly appropriate phrase, it proved. Yet the next
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day there was nothing of this in the papers except a little note in the
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Daily Telegraph, and the world went in ignorance of one of the gravest dangers
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that ever threatened the human race. I might not have heard of the eruption
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at all had I not met Ogilvie, the well known astronomer to Ottershaw.
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He was immensely excited at the news, and in the excess of his feelings,
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invited me up to take a turn with him that night in a scrutiny
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of the Red planet. In spite of all that has happened since, I
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still remember that vigil very distinctly, the black and silent observatory, the shadowed
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lantern throwing a feeble glow upon the floor in the corner, the steady ticking
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of the clockwork of the telescope, the little slit in the roof an oblong
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profundity, with the star dust streaked across it. Ogilvy moved about, invisible
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but audible. Looking through the telescope, one saw a circle of deep blue
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and the little round planet swimming in the field. It seemed such a little
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thing, so bright and small, and still faintly marked with transverse stripes,
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and slightly flattened from the perfect round, but so little. It was so
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silvery warm, a pin's head of light. It was as if it quivered.
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But really this was the telescope vibrating with the activity of the clockwork that
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kept the planet in view. As I watched, the planet seemed to grow
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larger and smaller, and to advance and recede. But that was simply that
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my eye was tired. Forty millions of miles it was from us, more
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than forty millions of miles of void. Few people realize the immensity of vacancy
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in which the dust of the material universe swims near it. In the field,
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I remember were three faint points of light, three telescopic stars, infinitely
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remote, and all around it was the unfathomable darkness of empty space. You
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know how that blackness looks on a frost starlit night in a telescope. It
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seems far profounder and invisible to me, because it was so remote and small,
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Flying swiftly and steadily towards me, across that incredible distance, drawing nearer
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every minute by so many thousands of miles, came the thing they were sending
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us, the thing that was to bring so much struggle and calamity and death
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to the Earth. I never dreamed of it. Then, as I watched,
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no one on Earth dreamed of that unerring missile. That night, too,
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there was another jetting out of gas from the distant planet. I saw
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it, a reddish flash at the edge, the slightest projection of the outline,
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just as the chronometer struck midnight. And at that I told Ogilvy,
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and he took my place. The night was warm, and I was thirsty,
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and I went, stretching my legs clumsily and feeling my way in the
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darkness to the little table where the siphon stood, while Ogilvy exclaimed at the
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streamer of gas that came out towards us. That night, another invisible missile
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started on its way to the Earth from Mars, just a second or so
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under twenty four hours after the first one. I remember how I sat on
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the table there in the darkness, with patches of green and crimson swimming before
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my eyes. I wished I had a light to smoke by, little suspecting
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the meaning of the minute gleam I had seen, and all that it would
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presently bring me. Ogilvy watched till one and then gave it up, and
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we lit the lantern and walked over to his house. Down below in the
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darkness were Ottershore and Chertsey and all their hundreds of people sleeping in peace.
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He was full of speculation that night about the condition of Mars, and scoffed
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at the vulgar idea of its having inhabits who were signaling us. His idea
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was that meteorites might be falling in a heavy shower upon the planet, or
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that a huge volcanic explosion was in progress. He pointed out to me how
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unlikely it was that organic evolution had taken the same direction in the two adjacent
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planets. The chances against anything manlike on Mars are a million to one,
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he said. Hundreds of observers saw the flame that night, and the night
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after about midnight, and again the night after, and so for ten nights,
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a flame each night. Why the shots ceased after the tenth, no
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one on Earth has attempted to explain. It may be the gases of the
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firing caused the Martians inconvenience, dense clouds of smoke or dust visible through a
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powerful telescope on Earth, as little gray fluctuating patches spread through the clearness of
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the planet's atmosphere and obscured its more familiar features. Even the daily papers woke
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up to the disturbances at last, and popular notes appeared here, there,
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and everywhere concerning the volcanoes upon Mars. The serio comic periodical Punch I remember,
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made a happy use of it in the political cartoon, And all unsuspected.
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Those missiles the Martians had fired at us drew earthwood, rushing now at
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a pace of many miles a second through the empty gulf of space, hour
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by hour, and day by day, nearer and nearer. It seems to
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me now almost incredibly wonderful that with that swift fate hanging over us, men
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could go about their petty concerns as they did. I remember how jubilant Markham
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was at securing a new photograph of the planet for the illustrated paper he edited.
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In those people in these latter times scarcely realized the abundance and enterprise of
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our nineteenth century papers. For my own part, I was much occupied in
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learning to ride the bicycle, and busy upon a series of papers discussing the
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probable developments of moral ideas as civilization progressed. One night, the first missile
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then could scarcely have been ten million miles away. I went for a walk
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with my wife. It was starlight, and I explained the signs of the
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zodiac to her and pointed out Mars, a bright dot of light creeping zenithwood,
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towards which so many telescopes were pointed. It was a warm night coming
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home. A party of excursionists from Chertsey or Isleworth passed us, singing and
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playing music. There were lights in the upper windows of the houses. As
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the people went to bed. From the railway station in a distance came the
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sound of shunting trains, ringing and rumbling, softened almost into melody by the
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distance. My wife pointed out to me the brightness of the red, green,
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and yellow signal lights hanging in a framework against the sky. It seemed
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so safe and tranquil. End of Section one.