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01 - The Eve of the War - The War of the Worlds - H G Wells · Classic Science Fiction Books

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Speaker 1: The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells epigraph
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Speaker 1: But who shall dwell in these worlds? If they be inhabited?
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Speaker 1: Are we or they? Lords of the world? And how
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Speaker 1: are all things made? For man? Kepler, quoted in The
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Speaker 1: Anatomy of Melancholy, Book one, The Coming of the Martians,
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Speaker 1: Chapter one, the Eve of the War. No one would
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Speaker 1: have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century
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Speaker 1: that this world was being watched keenly and closely by
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Speaker 1: intelligences greater than man's, and yet as mortal as his own,
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Speaker 1: that as men busied themselves about their various concerns, they
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Speaker 1: were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a
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Speaker 1: man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that
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Speaker 1: swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency,
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Speaker 1: men went to and fro over this globe about their
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Speaker 1: little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter.
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Speaker 1: It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do
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Speaker 1: the same. No one gave a thought to the older
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Speaker 1: worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought
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Speaker 1: of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon
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Speaker 1: them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall
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Speaker 1: some of the mental habits of those departed days. At
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Speaker 1: most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars,
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Speaker 1: perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise.
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Speaker 1: Yet across the gulf of space minds that are to
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Speaker 1: our minds as ours are to those of the beasts
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Speaker 1: that perish. Intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this
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Speaker 1: Earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their
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Speaker 1: plans against us, And early in the twentieth century came
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Speaker 1: the great disillusionment. The planet Mars I scarcely need remind
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Speaker 1: the reader revolves about the Sun at a mean distance
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Speaker 1: of a hundred and forty million miles, and the heat
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Speaker 1: and light it receives from the Sun is barely half
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Speaker 1: of that received by this world. It must be if
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Speaker 1: the nebular hypothesis has any truth older than our world,
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Speaker 1: and long before this Earth ceased to be molten, life
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Speaker 1: upon its surface must have begun its course. The fact
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Speaker 1: that it is scarcely one seventh of the volume of
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Speaker 1: the Earth must have accelerated its cooling to the temperature
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Speaker 1: at which life could begin. It has air and water
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Speaker 1: and all that is necessary for the support of animated existence.
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Speaker 1: Yet so vain is man, and so blinded by his vanity,
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Speaker 1: that no writer up to the very end of the
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Speaker 1: nineteenth century expressed any idea that intelligent life might have
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Speaker 1: developed there far, or indeed at all, beyond its earthly level.
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Speaker 1: Nor is it generally understood that since Mars is older
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Speaker 1: than our Earth, with scarcely a quarter of the superficial area,
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Speaker 1: and remoter from the Sun, it necessarily follows that it
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Speaker 1: is not only more distant from time's beginning, but nearer
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Speaker 1: its end. The secular cooling that must some day overtake
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Speaker 1: our planet has already gone far. Indeed, with our neighbor.
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Speaker 1: Its physical condition is still largely a mystery. But we
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Speaker 1: know now that even in its equatorial region, the midday
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Speaker 1: temperature barely approaches that of our coldest winter. Its air
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Speaker 1: is much more attenuated than ours, Its oceans have shrunk
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Speaker 1: until they cover but a third of its surface, and
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Speaker 1: as its slow seasons change, huge snow caps gather and
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Speaker 1: melt about either pole and periodically inundate its temperate zones.
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Speaker 1: That last stage of exhaustion, which to us is still
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Speaker 1: incredibly remote, has become a present day problem for the
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Speaker 1: inhabitants of Mars. The immediate pressure of necessity has brightened
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Speaker 1: their intellects, enlarged their powers, and hardened their hearts, and
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Speaker 1: looking across space with instruments and intelligences such as we
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Speaker 1: have scarcely dreamed of, they see, at its nearest distance,
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Speaker 1: only thirty five million of miles sunward of them, a
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Speaker 1: morning star of hope, our own warmer planet, green with
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Speaker 1: vegetation and gray with water, with a cloudy atmosphere eloquent
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Speaker 1: of fertility, with glimpses through its drifting cloud wisps of
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Speaker 1: broad stretches of populous country and narrow navy crowded seas.
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Speaker 1: And we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must
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Speaker 1: be to them at least as alien and lowly as
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Speaker 1: are the monkeys and lemurs to us. The intellectual side
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Speaker 1: of man already admits that life is an incessant struggle
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Speaker 1: for existence, and it would seem that this too is
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Speaker 1: the belief of the minds upon Mars. Their world is
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Speaker 1: far gone in its cooling, and this world is still
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Speaker 1: crowded with life, but crowded only with what they regard
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Speaker 1: as inferior animals. To carry warfare sun would is indeed
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Speaker 1: their only escape from the destruction that generation after generation
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Speaker 1: creeps upon them. And before we judge of them too harshly,
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Speaker 1: we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own
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Speaker 1: species has wrought, not only upon animals such as the
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Speaker 1: vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races.
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Speaker 1: The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely
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Speaker 1: swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged
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Speaker 1: by European immigrants in the space of fifty years. Are
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Speaker 1: we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the
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Speaker 1: Martians warred in the same spirit. The Martians seemed to
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Speaker 1: have calculated their descent with amazing subtlety. Their mathematical learning
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Speaker 1: is evidently far in excess of hours, and to have
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Speaker 1: carried out their preparations with a well nigh perfect unanimity.
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Speaker 1: Had our instruments permitted it, we might have seen the
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Speaker 1: gathering trouble. Far back in the nineteenth century, men like
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Speaker 1: Schiaparelli watched the Red Planet. It is odd by the
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Speaker 1: Bye that for countless centuries Mars has been the star
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Speaker 1: of war, but failed to interpret the fluctual du waiting
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Speaker 1: appearances of the markings they mapped so well all that time,
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Speaker 1: the Martians must have been getting ready. During the opposition
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Speaker 1: of eighteen ninety four, a great light was seen on
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Speaker 1: the illuminated part of the disk, first the Lick Observatory,
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Speaker 1: then by Perita of Nice, and then by other observers.
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Speaker 1: English readers heard of it first in the issue of
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Speaker 1: Nature dated August second. I am inclined to think that
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Speaker 1: dis blaze may have been the casting of the huge
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Speaker 1: gun in the vast pit sunk into their planet, from
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Speaker 1: which their shots were fired at US. Peculiar markings, as
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Speaker 1: yet unexplained, were seen near the site of that outbreak
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Speaker 1: during the next two oppositions. The storm burst upon US
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Speaker 1: six years ago. Now, as Mars approached opposition, Lavelle of
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Speaker 1: Java set the wires of the Astronomical Exchange Palpitation with
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Speaker 1: the amazing intelligence of a huge outbreak of incandescent gas
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Speaker 1: upon the planet. It had occurred towards midnight of the
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Speaker 1: twelfth and the spectroscope to which he had at once
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Speaker 1: resorted indicated a mass of flaming gas, chiefly hydrogen, moving
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Speaker 1: with an enormous velocity towards this Earth. This jet of
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Speaker 1: fire had become invisible about a quarter past twelve. He
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Speaker 1: compared it to a colossal puff of flame suddenly and
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Speaker 1: violently squatted out of the planet, as flaming gases rushed
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Speaker 1: out of a gun, A singularly appropriate phrase, it proved.
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Speaker 1: Yet the next day there was nothing of this in
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Speaker 1: the papers except a little note in the Daily Telegraph,
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Speaker 1: and the world went in ignorance of one of the
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Speaker 1: gravest dangers that ever threatened the human race. I might
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Speaker 1: not have heard of the eruption at all had I
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Speaker 1: not met Ogilvie, the well known astronomer to Ottershaw. He
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Speaker 1: was immensely excited at the news, and in the excess
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Speaker 1: of his feelings, invited me up to take a turn
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Speaker 1: with him that night in a scrutiny of the Red planet.
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Speaker 1: In spite of all that has happened since, I still
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Speaker 1: remember that vigil very distinctly, the black and silent observatory,
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Speaker 1: the shadowed lantern throwing a feeble glow upon the floor
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Speaker 1: in the corner, the steady ticking of the clockwork of
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Speaker 1: the telescope, the little slit in the roof an oblong profundity,
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Speaker 1: with the star dust streaked across it. Ogilvy moved about,
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Speaker 1: invisible but audible. Looking through the telescope, one saw a
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Speaker 1: circle of deep blue and the little round planet swimming
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Speaker 1: in the field. It seemed such a little thing, so
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Speaker 1: bright and small, and still faintly marked with transverse stripes,
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Speaker 1: and slightly flattened from the perfect round, but so little.
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Speaker 1: It was so silvery warm, a pin's head of light.
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Speaker 1: It was as if it quivered. But really this was
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Speaker 1: the telescope vibrating with the activity of the clockwork that
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Speaker 1: kept the planet in view. As I watched, the planet
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Speaker 1: seemed to grow larger and smaller, and to advance and recede.
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Speaker 1: But that was simply that my eye was tired. Forty
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Speaker 1: millions of miles it was from us, more than forty
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Speaker 1: millions of miles of void. Few people realize the immensity
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Speaker 1: of vacancy in which the dust of the material universe
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Speaker 1: swims near it. In the field, I remember were three
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Speaker 1: faint points of light, three telescopic stars, infinitely remote, and
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Speaker 1: all around it was the unfathomable darkness of empty space.
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Speaker 1: You know how that blackness looks on a frost starlit
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Speaker 1: night in a telescope. It seems far profounder and invisible
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Speaker 1: to me, because it was so remote and small, Flying
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Speaker 1: swiftly and steadily towards me, across that incredible distance, drawing
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Speaker 1: nearer every minute by so many thousands of miles, came
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Speaker 1: the thing they were sending us, the thing that was
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Speaker 1: to bring so much struggle and calamity and death to
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Speaker 1: the Earth. I never dreamed of it. Then, as I watched,
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Speaker 1: no one on Earth dreamed of that unerring missile. That night, too,
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Speaker 1: there was another jetting out of gas from the distant planet.
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Speaker 1: I saw it, a reddish flash at the edge, the
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Speaker 1: slightest projection of the outline, just as the chronometer struck midnight.
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Speaker 1: And at that I told Ogilvy, and he took my place.
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Speaker 1: The night was warm, and I was thirsty, and I went,
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Speaker 1: stretching my legs clumsily and feeling my way in the
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Speaker 1: darkness to the little table where the siphon stood, while
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Speaker 1: Ogilvy exclaimed at the streamer of gas that came out
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Speaker 1: towards us. That night, another invisible missile started on its
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Speaker 1: way to the Earth from Mars, just a second or
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Speaker 1: so under twenty four hours after the first one. I
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Speaker 1: remember how I sat on the table there in the darkness,
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Speaker 1: with patches of green and crimson swimming before my eyes.
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Speaker 1: I wished I had a light to smoke by, little
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Speaker 1: suspecting the meaning of the minute gleam I had seen,
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Speaker 1: and all that it would presently bring me. Ogilvy watched
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Speaker 1: till one and then gave it up, and we lit
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Speaker 1: the lantern and walked over to his house. Down below
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Speaker 1: in the darkness were Ottershore and Chertsey and all their
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Speaker 1: hundreds of people sleeping in peace. He was full of
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Speaker 1: speculation that night about the condition of Mars, and scoffed
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Speaker 1: at the vulgar idea of its having inhabits who were
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Speaker 1: signaling us. His idea was that meteorites might be falling
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Speaker 1: in a heavy shower upon the planet, or that a
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Speaker 1: huge volcanic explosion was in progress. He pointed out to
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Speaker 1: me how unlikely it was that organic evolution had taken
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Speaker 1: the same direction in the two adjacent planets. The chances
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Speaker 1: against anything manlike on Mars are a million to one,
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Speaker 1: he said. Hundreds of observers saw the flame that night,
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Speaker 1: and the night after about midnight, and again the night after,
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Speaker 1: and so for ten nights, a flame each night. Why
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Speaker 1: the shots ceased after the tenth, no one on Earth
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Speaker 1: has attempted to explain. It may be the gases of
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Speaker 1: the firing caused the Martians inconvenience, dense clouds of smoke
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Speaker 1: or dust visible through a powerful telescope on Earth, as
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Speaker 1: little gray fluctuating patches spread through the clearness of the
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Speaker 1: planet's atmosphere and obscured its more familiar features. Even the
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Speaker 1: daily papers woke up to the disturbances at last, and
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Speaker 1: popular notes appeared here, there, and everywhere concerning the volcanoes
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Speaker 1: upon Mars. The serio comic periodical Punch I remember, made
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Speaker 1: a happy use of it in the political cartoon, And
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Speaker 1: all unsuspected. Those missiles the Martians had fired at us
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Speaker 1: drew earthwood, rushing now at a pace of many miles
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Speaker 1: a second through the empty gulf of space, hour by hour,
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Speaker 1: and day by day, nearer and nearer. It seems to
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Speaker 1: me now almost incredibly wonderful that with that swift fate
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Speaker 1: hanging over us, men could go about their petty concerns
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Speaker 1: as they did. I remember how jubilant Markham was at
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Speaker 1: securing a new photograph of the planet for the illustrated
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Speaker 1: paper he edited. In those people in these latter times
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Speaker 1: scarcely realized the abundance and enterprise of our nineteenth century papers.
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Speaker 1: For my own part, I was much occupied in learning
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Speaker 1: to ride the bicycle, and busy upon a series of
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Speaker 1: papers discussing the probable developments of moral ideas as civilization progressed.
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Speaker 1: One night, the first missile then could scarcely have been
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Speaker 1: ten million miles away. I went for a walk with
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Speaker 1: my wife. It was starlight, and I explained the signs
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Speaker 1: of the zodiac to her and pointed out Mars, a
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Speaker 1: bright dot of light creeping zenithwood, towards which so many
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Speaker 1: telescopes were pointed. It was a warm night coming home.
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Speaker 1: A party of excursionists from Chertsey or Isleworth passed us,
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Speaker 1: singing and playing music. There were lights in the upper
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Speaker 1: windows of the houses. As the people went to bed.
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Speaker 1: From the railway station in a distance came the sound
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Speaker 1: of shunting trains, ringing and rumbling, softened almost into melody
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Speaker 1: by the distance. My wife pointed out to me the
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Speaker 1: brightness of the red, green, and yellow signal lights hanging
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Speaker 1: in a framework against the sky. It seemed so safe
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Speaker 1: and tranquil. End of Section one.