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19 - What We Saw from the Ruined House - The War of the Worlds - H G Wells · Classic Science Fiction Books

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Speaker 1: Chapter two, what we saw from the ruined house. After eating,
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Speaker 1: we crept back to the scullery, and there I must
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Speaker 1: have dozed again, for when presently I looked round, I
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Speaker 1: was alone. The thudding vibration continued with wearisome persistence. I
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Speaker 1: whispered for the Curate several times, and at last felt
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Speaker 1: my way to the door of the kitchen. It was
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Speaker 1: still daylight, and I perceived him across the room, lying
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Speaker 1: against the triangular hole that looked out upon the Martians.
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Speaker 1: His shoulders were hunched so that his head was hidden
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Speaker 1: from me. I could hear a number of noises, almost
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Speaker 1: like those in an engine shed, and the place rocked
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Speaker 1: with that beating thud. Through the aperture in the wall,
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Speaker 1: I could see the top of a tree touched with gold,
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Speaker 1: and the warm blue of a tranquil evening sky. For
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Speaker 1: a minute or so I remained watching the Curate. And then,
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Speaker 1: when I advanced, crouching and stepping with extreme care amid
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Speaker 1: the broken crockery that littered the floor, I touched the
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Speaker 1: Curate's leg, and he started so violently that a mass
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Speaker 1: of plaster went sliding down outside and fell with a
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Speaker 1: loud impact. I gripped his arm, fearing he might cry out,
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Speaker 1: And for a long time we crouched motionless. Then I
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Speaker 1: turned to see how much of our rampart remained. The
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Speaker 1: detachment of the plaster had left a vertical slit open
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Speaker 1: in the debris, and by raising myself cautiously across a beam,
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Speaker 1: I was able to see out of this gap into
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Speaker 1: what had been overnight a quiet suburban roadway. Vast, indeed,
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Speaker 1: was the change that we beheld. The fifth cylinder must
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Speaker 1: have fallen right into the midst of the house we
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Speaker 1: had first visited. The building had vanished completely, smashed, pulverized,
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Speaker 1: and dispersed by the blow. The cylinder now lay far
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Speaker 1: beneath the original foundations, deep in a hole already vastly
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Speaker 1: larger than the pit I had looked into at woking
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Speaker 1: the earth all round. It had splashed under that tremendous impact,
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Speaker 1: splashed is the only word, and lay in heaped piles
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Speaker 1: that hid the masses of the adjacent houses. It had
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Speaker 1: behaved exactly like mud under the violent blow of a hammer.
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Speaker 1: Our house had collapsed backward. The front portion, even on
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Speaker 1: the ground floor, had been destroyed completely by a chance.
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Speaker 1: The kitchen and scullery had escaped and stood buried now
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Speaker 1: under soil and ruins, closed in by tons of earth
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Speaker 1: on every side save towards the cylinder. Over that aspect
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Speaker 1: we hung now on the very edge of the great
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Speaker 1: circular pit. The Martians were engaged in making. The heavy
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Speaker 1: beating sound was evidently just behind us, and ever and
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Speaker 1: again a bright green vapor drove up like a veil
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Speaker 1: across our peep hole. The cylinder was already opened in
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Speaker 1: the center of the pit, and on the farther edge
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Speaker 1: of the pit, amid the smashed and gravel heaped shrubbery,
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Speaker 1: one of the great fighting machines, deserted by its occupant,
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Speaker 1: stood stiff and tall against the evening sky. At first
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Speaker 1: I scarcely noticed the pit and the cylinder, although it
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Speaker 1: has been convenient to describe them. First on account of
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Speaker 1: the extraordinary glittering mechanism I saw busy in the excavation,
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Speaker 1: and on account of the strange creatures that were crawling
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Speaker 1: slowly and painfully across the heaped mold near it. The mechanism,
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Speaker 1: it certainly was, that held my attention first. It was
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Speaker 1: one of those complicated fabrics that have since been called
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Speaker 1: handling machines. And the study of which has already given
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Speaker 1: such an enormous impetus to terrestrial invention. As it dawned
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Speaker 1: upon me first, it presented a sort of metallic spider,
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Speaker 1: with five jointed, agile legs, and with an extraordinary number
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Speaker 1: of jointed levers, bars, and reaching and clutching tentacles about
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Speaker 1: its body. Most of its arms were attracted, but with
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Speaker 1: three long tentacles it was fishing out a number of rods, plates,
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Speaker 1: and bars, which lined the covering and apparently strengthened the
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Speaker 1: walls of the cylinder. These, as it extracted them, were
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Speaker 1: lifted out and deposited upon a level surface of earth
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Speaker 1: behind it. Its motion was so swift, complex and perfect
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Speaker 1: that at first I did not see it as a machine.
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Speaker 1: In spite of its metallic glitter. The fighting machines were
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Speaker 1: coordinated and animated to an extraordinary pitch. But nothing to
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Speaker 1: compare with this. People who have never seen these structures,
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Speaker 1: and have only the ill imagined efforts of artists, or
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Speaker 1: the imperfect descriptions of such eyewitnesses as mine myself to
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Speaker 1: go upon, scarcely realize that living quality. I recall, particularly
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Speaker 1: the illustration of one of the first pamphlets to give
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Speaker 1: a consecutive account of the war. The artist had evidently
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Speaker 1: made a hasty study of one of the fighting machines,
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Speaker 1: and there his knowledge ended. He presented them as tilted,
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Speaker 1: stiff tripods, without either flexibility or subtlety, and with an
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Speaker 1: altogether misleading monotony of effect. The pamphlet containing these renderings
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Speaker 1: had a considerable vogue, and I mention them here simply
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Speaker 1: to warn the reader against the impression they may have created.
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Speaker 1: They were no more like the martians I saw in
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Speaker 1: action than a Dutch doll is like a human being.
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Speaker 1: To my mind, the pamphlet would have been much better
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Speaker 1: without them. At first, I say, the handling machine did
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Speaker 1: not impress me as a machine, but as a crablike
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Speaker 1: creature with a glittering integument, the controlling martian, whose delicate
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Speaker 1: tentacles actuated its movements, seeming to be simply the equivalent
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Speaker 1: of the crab's cerebral portion. But then I perceived the
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Speaker 1: resemblance of its gray, brown, shiny, leathery integument to that
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Speaker 1: of the other sprawling bodies beyond, and the true nature
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Speaker 1: of this dexterous workman dawned upon me. With that realization,
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Speaker 1: my interest shifted to those other creatures, the real Martians.
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Speaker 1: Already I had had a transient impression of these, and
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Speaker 1: the first nausea no longer obscured my observation. Moreover, I
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Speaker 1: was concealed and motionless, and under no urgency of action.
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Speaker 1: They were. I now saw the most unearthly creatures it
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Speaker 1: is possible to conceive. They were huge round bodies, or
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Speaker 1: rather heads, about four feet in diameter, each body having
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Speaker 1: in front of it a face. This face had no nostrils. Indeed,
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Speaker 1: the Martians do not seem to have had any sense
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Speaker 1: of smell, but it had a pair of very large,
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Speaker 1: dark colored eyes, and just beneath this a kind of
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Speaker 1: fleshy beak. In the back of this head or body
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Speaker 1: I scarcely know how to speak of it was the
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Speaker 1: single tight tympanic surface since known to be anatomically an ear,
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Speaker 1: though it must have been almost useless in our dense air.
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Speaker 1: In a group round the mouth were sixteen slender, almost
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Speaker 1: whiplike tentacles arranged in two bunches of eight each. These
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Speaker 1: bunches have since been named rather aptly by that distinguished
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Speaker 1: anatomist professor Howes. The hands even as I saw these
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Speaker 1: Martians for the first time. They seemed to be endeavoring
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Speaker 1: to raise themselves on these hands, but of course, with
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Speaker 1: the increased weight of terrestrial conditions, this was impossible. There
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Speaker 1: is reason to suppose that on Mars they may have
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Speaker 1: progressed upon them with some facility. The internal anatomy, I
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Speaker 1: may remark here, as dissection has since shown, was almost
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Speaker 1: equally simple. The greater part of the structure was the brain,
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Speaker 1: sending enormous nerves to the eyes, ear, and tactile tentacles.
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Speaker 1: Besides this were the bulky lungs into which the mouth opened,
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Speaker 1: and the heart and its vessels. The pulmonary distress caused
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Speaker 1: by the denser atmosphere and greater gravitational attraction was only
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Speaker 1: too evident in the convulsive movements of the outer skin.
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Speaker 1: And this was the sum of the Martian organs. Strange
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Speaker 1: as it may seem to a human being, all the
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Speaker 1: complex apparatus of digestion which makes up the bulk of
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Speaker 1: our bodies did not exist in the Martians. They were
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Speaker 1: heads merely heads. Entrails, they had none. They did not eat,
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Speaker 1: much less digest Instead, they took the fresh, living blood
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Speaker 1: of other creatures. And injected it into their own veins.
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Speaker 1: I have myself seen this being done, as I shall
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Speaker 1: mention in its place, but squeamish as I may seem,
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Speaker 1: I cannot bring myself to describe what I could not
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Speaker 1: endure even to continue watching. Let it suffice to say
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Speaker 1: blood obtained from a still living animal, in most cases
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Speaker 1: from a human being, was run directly by means of
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Speaker 1: a little pippette into the recipient canal. The bare idea
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Speaker 1: of this is no doubt horribly repulsive to us, But
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Speaker 1: at the same time, I think that we should remember
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Speaker 1: how repulsive our carnivorous habits would seem to an intelligent rabbit.
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Speaker 1: The physiological advantages of the practice of injection are undeniable.
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Speaker 1: If one thinks of the tremendous waste of human time
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Speaker 1: and any energy occasioned by eating and the digestive process.
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Speaker 1: Our bodies are half made up of glands and tubes
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Speaker 1: and organs occupied in turning heterogeneous food into blood. The
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Speaker 1: digestive processes and their reaction upon the nervous system sap
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Speaker 1: our strength and colour our minds. Men go happy or
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Speaker 1: miserable as they have healthy or unhealthy livers or sound
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Speaker 1: gastric glands, but the Martians were lifted above all these
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Speaker 1: organic fluctuations of mood and emotion. Their undeniable preference for
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Speaker 1: men as their source of nourishment is partly explained by
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Speaker 1: the nature of the remains of the victims they had
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Speaker 1: brought with them as provisions from Mars. These creatures, the
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Speaker 1: judge from the shriveled remains that have fallen into human hands,
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Speaker 1: were bipeds, with flimsy, silicious skeletons almost like those of
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Speaker 1: the silicious sponges, and feeble musculature, standing about six feet
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Speaker 1: high and having round, erect heads and large eyes in
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Speaker 1: flinty sockets. Two or three of these seemed to have
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Speaker 1: been brought in each cylinder, and all were killed before
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Speaker 1: Earth was reached. It was just as well for them,
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Speaker 1: for the mere attempt to stand upright upon our planet
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Speaker 1: would have broken every bone in their bodies. And while
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Speaker 1: I am engaged in this description, I may add in
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Speaker 1: this place certain further details, which, although they were not
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Speaker 1: all evident to us at the time, would enable the
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Speaker 1: reader who is unacquainted with them, to form a clearer
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Speaker 1: picture of these offensive creatures. In three other points, their physiology,
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Speaker 1: differed strangely from ours. Their organisms did not sleep any
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Speaker 1: more than the heart of man sleeps. Since they had
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Speaker 1: no extensive muscular mechanism to recuperate, that periodical extinction was
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Speaker 1: unknown to them. They had little or nose sense of fatigue.
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Speaker 1: It would seem on Earth they could never have moved
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Speaker 1: without effort. Yet even to the last they kept in action.
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Speaker 1: In twenty four hours, they did twenty four hours of work,
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Speaker 1: as even on Earth. Is perhaps the case with the
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Speaker 1: ants in the next place. Wonderful as it seems in
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Speaker 1: a sexual world, the Martians were absolutely without sex, and
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Speaker 1: therefore without any of the tumultuous emotions that arise from
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Speaker 1: that difference among men. A young Martian, there can now
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Speaker 1: be no dispute, was really born upon Earth during the war,
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Speaker 1: and it was found attached to its parent, partially budded off,
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Speaker 1: just as young lillibulbs bud off, or like the young
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Speaker 1: animals in the fresh water polyp in Man. In all
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Speaker 1: the higher terrestrial animals, such a method of increase has disappeared,
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Speaker 1: but even on this Earth it was certainly the primitive
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Speaker 1: method among the lower animals, even up to those first
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Speaker 1: cousins of the vertebrated animals the tunicots. The two processes
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Speaker 1: occur side by side, but finally the sexual method superseded
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Speaker 1: its competitor altogether. On Mars, however, just the reverse has
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Speaker 1: apparently been the case. It is worthy of remark that
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Speaker 1: a certain speculative writer of quasi scientific repute, writing long
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Speaker 1: before the Martian invasion, did forecast for Man a final
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Speaker 1: structure not unlike the actual Martian condition. His prophecy, I remember,
13:36
Speaker 1: appeared in November or December eighteen ninety three in a
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Speaker 1: long defunct publication the Pall Mall Budget, and I recall
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Speaker 1: a caricature of it in a pre Martian periodical called Punch.
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Speaker 1: He pointed out, writing in a foolish, facetious tone, that
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Speaker 1: the perfection of mechanical appliances must ultimately supersede limbs, the
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Speaker 1: profect action of chemical devices digestion, that such organs as hair,
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Speaker 1: external nose, teeth, ears, and chin were no longer essential
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Speaker 1: parts of the human being, and that the tendency of
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Speaker 1: natural selection would lie in the direction of their steadied
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Speaker 1: diminuition through the coming ages. The brain alone remained a
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Speaker 1: cardinal necessity. Only one other part of the body had
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Speaker 1: a strong case for survival, and that was the hand,
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Speaker 1: teacher and agent of the brain. While the rest of
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Speaker 1: the body dwindled, the hands would grow larger. There is
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Speaker 1: many a true word written in jest, and here in
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Speaker 1: the Martians we have beyond dispute the actual accomplishment of
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Speaker 1: such a suppression of the animal side of the organism
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Speaker 1: by the intelligence. To me, it is quite credible that
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Speaker 1: the Martians may be descended from beings not unlike ourselves,
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Speaker 1: by a gradual development of brain and hand, the latter
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Speaker 1: giving rise to the two bunches of delicate tentacles at last,
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Speaker 1: at the expense of the rest of the body. Without
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Speaker 1: the body, the brain would of course become a mere
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Speaker 1: selfish intelligence, without any of the emotional substratum of the
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Speaker 1: human being. The last salient point in which the systems
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Speaker 1: of these creatures differed from ours was in what one
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Speaker 1: might have thought very trivial. Particular microorganisms which cause so
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Speaker 1: much disease and pain on Earth have either never appeared
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Speaker 1: upon Mars, or Martian sanitary science eliminated them ages ago.
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Speaker 1: A hundred diseases, all the fevers and contagions of human life, consumption, cancers,
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Speaker 1: tumors and such morbidities never enter the scheme of their life.
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Speaker 1: And speaking of the differences between the life on Mars
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Speaker 1: and terrestrial life, I may allude here to the curious
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Speaker 1: suggestions of the red weed. Apparently the vegetable kingdom in Mars,
16:05
Speaker 1: instead of having green for a dominant color, is of
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Speaker 1: a vivid blood red tint. At any rate, the seeds
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Speaker 1: which the Martians intentionally or accidentally brought with them gave
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Speaker 1: rise in all cases to red colored growths. Only that
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Speaker 1: known popularly as the red weed, however, gained any footing
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Speaker 1: in competition with terrestrial forms. The red creeper was quite
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Speaker 1: a transitory growth, and few people have seen it growing.
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Speaker 1: For a time. However, the red weed grew with astonishing
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Speaker 1: vigor and luxuriance. It spread up the sides of the
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Speaker 1: pit by the third or fourth day of our imprisonment,
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Speaker 1: and its cactus like branches formed a carmine fringe to
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Speaker 1: the edges of our triangular window. And afterwards I found
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Speaker 1: it broadcast throughout the country, and especially wherever there was
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Speaker 1: a stream of water. The marsh had what appears to
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Speaker 1: have been an auditory organ, a single round drum at
17:04
Speaker 1: the back of the head, body, and eyes, with a
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Speaker 1: visual range not very different from ours, except that, according
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Speaker 1: to Phillips, blue and violet were as black to them.
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Speaker 1: It is commonly supposed that they communicated by sounds and
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Speaker 1: tentacular gesticulations. This is asserted, for instance, in the able
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Speaker 1: but hastily compiled pamphlet written evidently by someone not an
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Speaker 1: eye witness of Martian actions, to which I have already alluded,
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Speaker 1: and which so far has been the chief source of
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Speaker 1: information concerning them. Now, no surviving human being saw so
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Speaker 1: much of the Martians in action as I did. I
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Speaker 1: take no credit to myself for an accident, but the
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Speaker 1: fact is so, and I assert that I watched them closely,
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Speaker 1: time after time, and that I have seen four, five,
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Speaker 1: and once six of them sluggishly before the most elaborately
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Speaker 1: complicated operations, together without either sound or gesture. Their peculiar
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Speaker 1: hooting invariably preceded feeding. It had no modulation, and was
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Speaker 1: I believe, in no sense a signal, but merely the
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Speaker 1: expiration of air preparatory to the suctional operation. I have
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Speaker 1: a certain claim to at least an elementary knowledge of psychology,
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Speaker 1: and in this matter I am convinced as firmly as
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Speaker 1: I am convinced of anything, that the Martians interchanged thoughts
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Speaker 1: without any physical intermediation, And I have been convinced of
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Speaker 1: this in spite of strong preconceptions. Before the Martian invasion,
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Speaker 1: As an occasional reader here or there may remember, I
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Speaker 1: had written with some little vehemence against the telepathic theory.
18:52
Speaker 1: The Martians wore no clothing. Their conceptions of ornament and
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Speaker 1: decorum were necessarily different from ours. And not only were
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Speaker 1: they evidently much less sensible of changes of temperature than
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Speaker 1: we are, but changes of pressure do not seem to
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Speaker 1: have affected their health at all seriously. Yet, though they
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Speaker 1: wore no clothing, it was in the other artificial additions
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Speaker 1: to their bodily resources that their great superiority over man lay.
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Speaker 1: We men, with our bicycles and road skates are lilienthal
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Speaker 1: soaring machines, our guns and sticks and so forth, are
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Speaker 1: just in the beginning of the evolution that the Martians
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Speaker 1: have worked out. They have become practically mere brains, wearing
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Speaker 1: different bodies according to their needs, just as men wear
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Speaker 1: suits of clothes and take a bicycle in a hurry,
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Speaker 1: or an umbrella in the wet and of their appliances.
19:49
Speaker 1: Perhaps nothing is more wonderful to a man than the
19:52
Speaker 1: curious fact that what is the dominant feature of almost
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Speaker 1: all human devices in mechanism is absent. The wheel is absent.
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Speaker 1: Among all the things they brought to earth, there is
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Speaker 1: no trace or suggestion of their use of wheels. One
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Speaker 1: would have at least expected it in locomotion. And in
20:13
Speaker 1: this connection it is curious to remark that even on
20:16
Speaker 1: this earth, nature has never hit upon the wheel, or
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Speaker 1: has preferred other expedients to its development. And not only
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Speaker 1: did the Martians either not know of which is incredible,
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Speaker 1: or abstain from the wheel, but in their apparatus singularly,
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Speaker 1: little use is made of the fixed pivot, or relatively
20:36
Speaker 1: fixed pivot with circular motions thereabout confined to one plane,
20:43
Speaker 1: almost all the joints of the machinery present a complicated
20:46
Speaker 1: system of sliding parts moving over small but beautifully curved
20:50
Speaker 1: friction bearings. And while upon this matter of detail, it
20:56
Speaker 1: is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are
21:00
Speaker 1: in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature
21:04
Speaker 1: of the disks in an elastic sheath. These disks become
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Speaker 1: polarized and drawn closely and powerfully together when traversed by
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Speaker 1: a current of electricity. In this way, the curious parallelism
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Speaker 1: to human motions, which was so striking and disturbing to
21:21
Speaker 1: the human beholder, was attained. Such quasi muscles abounded in
21:27
Speaker 1: the crablike handling machine, which, on my first peeping out
21:31
Speaker 1: of the slit I watched unpacking the cylinder. It seemed
21:36
Speaker 1: infinitely more alive than the actual Martians lying beyond it
21:40
Speaker 1: in the sunset light, panting, stirring ineffectual tentacles, and moving
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Speaker 1: feebly after their vast journey across space. While I was
21:51
Speaker 1: still watching their sluggish motions in the sunlight and noting
21:55
Speaker 1: each strange detail of their form, the Curate reminded me
21:59
Speaker 1: of his presence by pulling violently at my arm. I
22:03
Speaker 1: turned to a scowling face and silent, eloquent lips. He
22:08
Speaker 1: wanted the slit, which permitted only one of us to
22:11
Speaker 1: peep through, and so I had to forego watching them
22:14
Speaker 1: for a time while he enjoyed that privilege. When I
22:19
Speaker 1: looked again, the busy handling machine had already put together
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Speaker 1: several of the pieces of apparatus. It had taken out
22:25
Speaker 1: of the cylinder into a shape having an unmistakable likeness
22:29
Speaker 1: to its own. And down on the left a busy
22:32
Speaker 1: little digging mechanism had come into view, emitting jets of
22:36
Speaker 1: green vapor and working its way round the pit, excavating
22:40
Speaker 1: and in banking in a methodical and discriminating manner. This
22:45
Speaker 1: it was which had caused the regular beating noise and
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Speaker 1: the rhythmic shocks that had kept our ruinous refuge quivering.
22:53
Speaker 1: It piped and whistled as it worked. So far as
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Speaker 1: I could see, the thing was without a Dirac acting
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Speaker 1: martian at all. End of Section nineteen