The Martian War (28 page)

Wells tried other controls, hoping to stabilize the battle tripod. With successive attempts, he moved one leg, then the other two without toppling the big machine. It was like performing an unfamiliar court dance, but as he guided the tripod through several more steps, he began to grin like a boy. “I could become accustomed to the complexities of walking with three legs instead of two. It’s like riding a bicycle for the first time!” He painstakingly retraced their path down the chaotic street, dodging rubble.

Jane stooped to look through the low turret windows set at a Martian’s eye level, trying to find their way back to the laboratory spire and Huxley. While they climbed up the legs of
the contraption they had traveled a surprising distance. “Over there.” She pointed back to the crowded skyline. “Head in that direction.”

As Wells clumsily guided them toward the scientific cathedral and its uniform towers, Jane inspected the rest of the tripod’s controls. One set raised and lowered the jointed arm that terminated in the heat-ray projector. As she experimented with the small levers, a blurry and distorted display moved across a highlighted projection screen. Her brow furrowed, and Wells remembered that look of intent concentration from when she had struggled to understand a new concept of chemistry or mathematics. Then her face lit up. “Oh! It’s the targeting circle!”

Ahead, two squat Martian walkers were harassing a group of Selenites. They lashed out with static whips to drive the drones away from a generating station. With anger tightening her expression, Jane adjusted the bright targeting point on her screen, aiming at the much smaller walker devices on the street. Then she depressed several buttons until she discovered how to activate the heat ray.

A gush of thermal energy poured out to engulf the cruel Martian slave masters. Within seconds, they and their contrivances had melted into unrecognizable blobs like solder. Jane seemed quite pleased with herself.

Wells finally managed to maneuver their swaying tripod up against the spire where they had last seen T.H. Huxley. Toying with controls, Jane discovered the booming voice projection system. “Professor! Professor Huxley, we’re here to rescue you.” Her feminine voice sounded strange and unexpected from the stilt-legged war machine. “We’re in the tripod.”

From behind the curved turret window, Wells saw a distinctly human silhouette moving swiftly but erratically as slouching hunchbacked shapes chased him. “He’s broken free, but we’ve got to get him out of there. Jane, can you control the heat ray well enough to open up the wall for him?”

“The professor would insist that I try.” Jane swiveled the jointed arm to point the heat ray at a nearby Martian building, away from the laboratory spire. She operated the controls, centered her aim, and let loose a burst of incinerating fury. The structure exploded in a shower of fire, sparks, and shrapnel.

“Just a bit of target practice.” She brushed hair out of her eyes. As she aimed the targeting point, she shouted a warning through the loudspeaker system. “Stand away from the window, Professor!” Through the murky glass, they saw Huxley’s figure duck away, and Jane fired a brief burst, just enough to blast an opening in the wall.

The older man immediately appeared at the smoldering hole, flapping his hands to disperse the fumes and smoke. Under one arm he cradled rolled charts and maps he had grabbed from his captors.

Jane opened the turret’s side door, only to see that they were dizzyingly high above the ground. Wells nudged the controls, and the battle tripod wavered and shuddered. “I don’t dare maneuver it closer!”

Holding onto the metal wall of the turret, Jane leaned out over the gulf, extending her hand beseechingly. Huxley looked at the wide, dangerous gap. “Alas, we aren’t on the Moon … but gravity here is still lower than Earth’s.”

“Jump, Professor!”

Inside the laboratory spire, the Martian master minds that
had been driven back by the heat ray blast now converged upon their prisoner again. Huxley seemed uncertain until the malicious Martians squirmed up behind him. One of them seated itself inside the hideous contraption the Grand Inquisitor had used to probe Wells’s brain.

Huxley raised his chin, clutched his maps more tightly, gathered his resolve—and jumped. The distance seemed impossible, and Wells’s heart lurched, but Huxley easily cleared the gap. He landed inside the turret still holding his maps, exhilarated by the spectacular leap. “I feel like an Olympian!”

Jane drew the old man to safety, closing the side hatch behind him. “Go, H.G.”

Catching his breath, Huxley observed the mayhem in the streets, noted the stolen battle tripod, and nodded with gruff satisfaction. “Ah, I see that you two have everything perfectly under control.”

“Remember, our intent was to bring down an enemy civilization, Professor.” Wells pivoted the tripod, and it lurched drunkenly away. “One cannot overthrow an entire world without stirring things up a bit.” He quickly fell into a rhythm, and they strode on a trio of stilt legs along the streets, seeking a way out of the city.

One of the dozen other battle tripods moved on a perpendicular course to intercept them. Apparently, the Martian driver suspected that the war machine had been stolen. “We have trouble,” Wells said. “But they can’t know who we are.”

“Let us hope the Martian hesitates,” Huxley said.

“I don’t intend to give it a chance to hesitate.” Grimly, before the other Martian fighting machine could take aggressive action, Jane blasted with her heat ray. The intense beam
decapitated the enemy tripod, turning its turret into a splash of cherry-red metal. Out of control, whirling and spinning, it crashed into a tall building before collapsing in a gargantuan heap on the streets.

They left the metropolis behind, heading into an open wilderness laced with carefully laid canals. Behind them, more Martian alarms sounded as the aliens climbed into mechanical bodies, operating heavy cars, installing weapons to be turned against the Selenite rebels.

Worse, against a backdrop of smoke and turmoil at the skyline of the Martian metropolis, the humans could see four powerful battle tripods raise their heat rays and set off in pursuit of the escapees.

Still trying to master the coordination of the alien controls, Wells did his best to flee out into the open desert.

FROM THE JOURNAL OF DR. MOREAU

We made many mistakes with our Martian, Lowell and I. As I write these last entries, I recall numerous things we should have handled differently, obvious risks that led to dire consequences. Our worst error, though, was that neither of us was suspicious enough. Not until it was too late—much too late.

After locking up the Martian, Lowell and I discussed what we must do. The shaken construction crew had returned to their camp settlement, but we would lose many of them. They’d refuse to work, afraid the “monster of Mars Hill” would go on another rampage. By the following night, the stores, streets, and saloons of Flagstaff would be abuzz with
the terrifying story of the hideous alien beast.

As I feared, the construction site sat idle the next day. Mars Hill was eerily silent. The support buildings and sheds were built and painted; the largest dome was finished, waiting to receive the Clark refractor from Massachusetts. But all the workers had stayed away. The observatory would never be finished in time for the alignment of Earth and Mars later this year.

Lowell stewed with indecision, pacing about the main house. The Martian stirred and thumped within its padlocked shed, but Lowell and I avoided the creature, letting it brood over what it had done to poor Douglass. Foolishly, we imagined it might have feelings of guilt or remorse. We were so stupid.

I am a scientist, a biologist; some even call me a genius. I am not, however, an undertaker. But since I knew Lowell would be loath to do it, I prepared the young man’s body. I understood the need to prevent questions and superstitious terror from hindering our work here.

I cleaned up Douglass’s fatal injuries, wiped away the blood, and tried to disguise his worst bruises and contusions. With his face still somewhat pliable, though rigor had begun to set in, I did my best to erase the expression of terror, making him look much more at peace.

After Lowell had already fortified himself with at least one snifter of brandy, we wrapped the corpse and placed it in the back of the Benz motorcar. No doubt after hearing the rumors, the sheriff of Flagstaff expected us. I was surprised he hadn’t already come up to Mars Hill to make inquiries.

We stopped the puttering motorcar in front of the jailhouse
and told the sheriff of our companion’s murder. The man had a drooping moustache and grizzled whiskers so thick that he was either attempting to grow a beard or avoiding the prospect of a regular shave. I did most of the talking, for I had a cooler head. When I described how Douglass had provoked and been attacked by a large exotic animal (“from Borneo”) we kept caged at the observatory site, Lowell simply agreed with the story. The “monster” had escaped, and the men from the work site had assisted us in rounding it up.

“I assure you, Sheriff,” I said, “the specimen is now properly caged. We have added additional locks and chains to ensure that it has no further opportunity to escape. Much as we grieve for our lost colleague, the blame for his death lies in his own misadventure.”

The sheriff sucked on his lips, considering. He didn’t seem to want to make extra work for himself. “And both of you gentlemen guarantee that this creature of yours will cause no further danger? If it’s like a rabid dog, we need to put it down.”

“It is not a rabid animal. This entire mishap was a fluke, nothing more.”

Lowell had said little, and the sheriff turned to him with narrowed eyes. “Do you agree with this gentleman’s account, Mr. Lowell? Is that exactly the way things happened last night?”

With only the briefest hesitation, Lowell nodded. “You can take the word of Dr. Moreau.”

The man sat up in his chair. “All right then. You’d best take the body over to the undertaker’s and get him prepared for burial.”

The sheriff’s lack of questions did not surprise me. While he might have met Douglass once or twice, everyone in Flagstaff knows that Percival Lowell is a wealthy man with a great deal of influence. His observatory project was welcomed by the town, and the local economy had prospered greatly from it. If the sheriff had any sense, he would take Lowell at his word.

“We won’t be burying young Andrew in Arizona Territory,” Lowell said. “I’ll have the undertaker build a sturdy box and pack him in salt for shipment to Massachusetts.” He turned to me, his face set and determined. “He doesn’t belong here. We will send him back to his own people. Let Harvard take care of him.”

We spent the afternoon in town, taking care of the arrangements. I sensed that no one in Flagstaff was willing to be hurried even at the best of times, and when it came to a dead man about to be sent across the country, no one understood why we needed to be impatient.

In a noisy local cafe, we ate beefsteaks, eggs, and beans spiced with hot chiles. Lowell looked exhausted and diluted of stamina. Finally, late in the day as clouds were gathering for an afternoon thunderstorm, we climbed into the motorcar and headed home.

With the construction workers gone, Mars Hill seemed like a ghost town. By the time we drove up to the main house, rain had begun pelting down. Lowell disengaged the Benz’s gears and shut down the engine. As I climbed out of the car and into the downpour, the wind picked up, making the pines scratch and rustle together.

I shouted, “Shouldn’t we check on the Martian? We’ve left it alone all day.”

“I have no further interest in that creature.”

Not wanting to push him, especially now, I joined Lowell inside the main house, where we sat together in the withdrawing room. Our small telescopes stood under the shelter of the porch, but with the dense clouds and rain, we would have no opportunity for any observing this night.

Finally I raised the question. “We must make our announcement to the world, Lowell. If rumors of Douglass’s death strike anger or horror in the astronomical community, we will not be heard objectively. But if we reveal our Martian now, the sheer excitement will make the young man’s murder a mere footnote to the story.”

“Yes,” Lowell said, his voice empty, “it will be a sensation. We have the Martian itself and the preserved cadavers of the other specimens. We can even send an expedition out to salvage the silver cylinder that crashed in the Sahara.”

I frowned. “Let us hope Tuareg scavengers haven’t stripped all the metal from it and destroyed any scientific benefit we might gain.”

Lowell refilled his brandy snifter and swallowed another large gulp. “Most importantly, we have the crystal egg.”

He went to the cabinet and took out the lovely, shining object. We sat together as he turned and tilted the ellipsoid. By now we had lit all the lamps in the room against the early darkness from the continuing rainstorm.

Thunder rattled the windowpanes like blows from a hammer, and water poured down, streaking the glass. I thought about the Martian confined in its outbuilding. On its arid, dying world, had it ever seen a summer rainstorm? Was it terrified or delighted to see droplets of water falling from the sky?

Lowell hunched over the crystal egg, turning it under the lamplight. “Look, the images are sharp again today, clear as a bell. Not like the blurred pictures Andrew saw.” He heaved a despondent sigh. “And I gazed with him, helping him gently turn it to study different views.”

Everything seemed sharper and brighter now, and I wondered if the denizens of Mars had previously been blocking or distorting the signals. The red planet was a place of grandeur, open and vast … but it seemed far too empty, too dead. How could a superior technological civilization thousands of years old have accomplished so little? Even the Egyptians left huge pyramids, the Greeks and Romans their temples and coliseums.

The Martians had cities and canals, but given the fact that they had been capable of constructing such things for millennia, shouldn’t the red planet have been a utopia, with cities and parks spanning all the open continents? Instead, Mars was just a … skeleton, the landscape entirely dead.