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The War of the Worlds

Contents 1 Book One: The Coming of the Cetians 1.1 Chapter One: The Eve of the War 1.2 Chapter Two: The Rocket from Space 1.3 Chapter Three: On Horsell Common

[edit] Book One: The Coming of the Cetians

[edit] Chapter One: The Eve of the War

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

The star that was known to the medieval Arabs as Durre Menthor, and which modern astronomers have named Tau Ceti, I scarcely need remind the reader, lies some seventy-two millions of millions of miles from our own sun in the constellation of the Whale. It is slightly redder and cooler than our own sun, and like ours, it has attendant upon it a family of planets, the second of which is the abode of reasoning creatures. This world is much warmer and drier than Earth: the largest bodies of water are large lakes, and solid ice does not exist in nature. The creatures who inhabit its semi-arid plains are heirs to a culture so ancient as to dwarf that of mankind, and long ago they achieved that political union which has thus far eluded us. They have made it their goal to bring all reasoning creatures within their reach under their own system of government, and twice already in their history they have discovered and conquered races inhabiting worlds circling other stars.

Yet so vain is man, and so blinded by his vanity, that no writer, up to the very end of the nineteenth century, expressed any idea that intelligent life might have developed among the distant stars, or that they might regard our own world as ripe for conquest. Centuries ago, they used their mastery of science to bridge the gulf between our worlds, sending a mechanical emissary to spy out our own cooler planet, green with vegetation and grey with water, with a cloudy atmosphere eloquent of fertility, with glimpses through its drifting cloud wisps of broad stretches of populous country.

And we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must have seemed to them at least as alien and lowly as are the savages of Tierra del Fuego to us. The intellectual side of man already admits that life is an incessant struggle for existence, and it would seem that this too is the belief of the minds upon Tau Ceti's second world.

And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless conquest our own species has wrought upon its inferior races. The peoples of Asia, in spite of their own ancient cultures, were entirely subjugated in wars of conquest waged by European armies, in the space of two centuries. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if other races warred in the same spirit?

The storm burst upon us six years ago now. Lavelle of Java set the wires of the astronomical exchange palpitating with the amazing intelligence of a sudden increase in the apparent magnitude of Tau Ceti. As instruments of greater power were brought to bear, it was discerned that the growing luminescence was coming, not from the star itself, but from a myriad of new stars surrounding it. The spectroscope, to which astronomers quickly resorted, indicated a mass of flaming gas, chiefly hydrogen, moving with an enormous velocity towards this earth.

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

In spite of all that has happened since, I still remember that vigil very distinctly: the black and silent observatory, the shadowed lantern throwing a feeble glow upon the floor in the corner, the steady ticking of the clockwork of the telescope, the little slit in the roof--an oblong profundity with the stardust streaked across it. Ogilvy moved about, invisible but audible. Looking through the telescope, one saw a circle of deep blue and the array of tiny lights swimming in the field. It seemed such a curious sight, like a spray of powdered sugar resting upon a setting of dark velvet--a myriad pin-points of light! It was as if they quivered, but really this was the telescope vibrating with the activity of the clockwork that kept them in view.

As I watched, the lights seemed to grow larger and smaller and to advance and recede, but that was simply that my eye was tired. Four hundred millions of miles they were from us--more than four hundred millions of miles of void. Few people realise the immensity of vacancy in which the dust of the material universe swims.

Dozens of telescopic stars infinitely remote, and all around them was the unfathomable darkness of empty space. You know how that blackness looks on a frosty starlight night. In a telescope it seems far profounder. And invisible to me because they were so remote and small, flying swiftly and steadily towards me across that incredible distance, drawing nearer every minute by so many thousands of miles, came the Things they were sending us, the Things that were to bring so much struggle and calamity and death to the earth. I never dreamed of it then as I watched; no one on earth dreamed of those unerring missiles.

Hundreds of observers saw the tiny stars that night, and for many nights thereafter. Measurements were conducted demonstrating that the collection of lights was growing steadily brighter, and expanding to cover an ever greater area of the night sky. It was soon possible to distinguish each individual light, and it was determined that the new lights totaled twenty-eight in number.

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

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

[edit] Chapter Two: The Rocket from Space

Some two months had passed since the lights had first been noticed. They had grown bright enough to become visible at daytime, and had spread out to occupy an area of the sky equal to that of the full moon, when all were unexpectedly extinguished. Those who witnessed the event report that each light faded from view quite abruptly, but that nearly an hour transpired between the fading of the first star and that of the final one. What the cause was none knew then, but now it seems certain that what we were seeing was the end of the invasion fleet's journey. They had eliminated whatever terrific impetus sent them across the void from Tau Ceti, and were now in position to effect their planned conquest of the earth. At the time, the general feeling was that whatever unknown agency had caused the lights to appear initially had now caused them to vanish, and that the phenomenon had reached its termination, never, perhaps, to recur.

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

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

But very early in the morning poor Ogilvy, who had seen the shooting star and who was persuaded that a meteorite lay somewhere on the common between Horsell, Ottershaw, and Woking, rose early with the idea of finding it. Find it he did, soon after dawn, and not far from the sand pits. It stood upon three great legs, rising hundreds of feet above the common. The heather directly below it had been charred black by the heat of its exhaust, but elsewhere nothing else was disturbed. A fir tree that stood less than a hundred feet from the Thing had suffered no damage at all.

The early morning was wonderfully still, and the sun, just clearing the pine trees towards Weybridge, was already warm. He did not remember hearing any birds that morning, there was certainly no breeze stirring, and the only sounds were the faint movements from within the object. He was all alone on the common.

The Thing itself took the form of a tapered cylinder, rising from a broad base raised twenty feet above the ground by the three legs, and terminating in a domed top. It reminded Ogilvy of nothing so much as a grain silo resting on an enormous tripod. The Thing was so plainly the product of intelligence that he did not at first connect it with the falling star. It was only when a survey of the rest of the common revealed no sign of any meteorite that he was forced to conclude that the object that rested before him had been the source of the flame he had seen crossing the sky.

At once, with a quick mental leap, he linked the Thing with the lights from Tau Ceti. This object that rested before him must have been the source of one of those lights. It was a rocket, he realized--a rocket that had traveled the immense distance from Tau Ceti. The lights that he had seen through his telescope had been its exhaust--the exhaust of this rocket and twenty-seven others. It had landed, while its companion rockets, he realized further, must still be riding above the earth's atmosphere.

While he pondered the question of how to communicate with whatever beings might inhabit the rocket, he was joined by Henderson, the London journalist. Henderson explained to Ogilvy that he had gone out to work in his garden, and had seen the thing looming on the horizon. He had dropped his spade, snatched up his jacket, and came out to see. Such was the rocket's great height, Ogilvy realized, that it must be plainly visible for miles around the common.

"What in heaven's name is it?" wondered Henderson.

"Henderson," he said, "you saw that shooting star last night?"

"Well?" said Henderson.

"This is it! It's a rocket--a rocket from space, man! And there's something inside."

Ogilvy told him all that he had seen and deduced. Henderson was a minute or so taking it in. He then went off to the railway station at once, in order to telegraph the news to London. At Ogilvy's request, he also sent word in the astronomer's name to the Astronomical Exchange.

By seven o'clock a number of people had already seen the distant object and started for the common. I would have seen it myself from the window of my study had not the Oriental College stood in the way. As it was, I heard of it first from my neighbor about a quarter after seven. I was naturally startled, and lost no time in going out and across the Ottershaw bridge to the sand pits.

[edit] Chapter Three: On Horsell Common

I found a considerable crowd surrounding the field where the rocket rested. I have already described the appearance of that colossal bulk, towering above the ground. There were half a dozen flies or more from the Woking station standing in the road by the sand pits, a basket-chaise from Chobham, and a rather lordly carriage. Besides that, there was quite a heap of bicycles. In addition, a large number of people must have walked from Woking and Chertsey, so that there was altogether quite a considerable crowd--one or two gaily dressed ladies among the others. Four or five boys had climbed up into the branches of the fir tree, and sat with their feet dangling.

There was very little talking. Few of the common people in England had anything but the vaguest astronomical ideas in those days. Most of them were staring quietly at the bright metallic bulk of the rocket. "Extra-terrestrial" had no meaning for most of the onlookers. As soon as Ogilvy saw me among the staring crowd he called me over, explained about the falling star and his ideas concerning the Thing's origins, and asked me if I would mind going over to see Lord Hilton, the lord of the manor.

The growing crowd, he said, was becoming a serious impediment to his investigations, especially the boys. They wanted a light railing put up, and help to keep the people back. He told me that a faint stirring was occasionally still audible within the rocket. The hull appeared to be enormously thick, and it was possible that the faint sounds we heard represented a noisy tumult in the interior.

I was very glad to do as he asked, and so become one of the privileged spectators within the contemplated enclosure. I failed to find Lord Hilton at his house; I was told he was in London at present, but that a wire had been sent informing him of the discovery, and a response was expected within the hour. I returned to the common to inform Ogilvy.

I had come to within a few hundred feet of the rocket, and had paused at the top of a rise, where I could see the whole of it above the heads of the crowd, when a flicker of motion caught my eye. At the base of the leg nearest to me, the silver hull had slid upward, revealing a black space behind it.

From out of that space emerged perhaps twenty figures. They were deceptively manlike at first glance, but as I stared at them I saw that they were not men. Their skin was a greenish-brown, except for a large oval upon their torsos which had been decorated in geometric designs of gray and red. Below helmets which echoed the gray and red design were faces which lacked noses, but instead pushed out into short, blunt muzzles. Behind the legs, I saw, tails projected out, also short and blunt.

Each of the figures cradled in its arms a silvery mechanism that bore the unmistakeable stamp of a weapon. From the crowd I heard inarticulate exclamations from all sides. There was a general movement backward.

Those who have never seen live Cetians can scarcely imagine the strange horror of their appearance. Their movements were inhuman--more like those of a lizard than a man, their bodies moving almost too quickly to see, then remaining utterly still when they paused.

One of the figures gave a loud command in a hissing voice, accompanied by a sharp movement of one of its arms. In response, each of the creatures raised its weapon, and began firing into the crowd. The noise was not like that of an ordinary rifle, but more like a Gatling gun firing at thrice normal speed. The effect on the circle of spectators was horrifying. Those in the front fell and did not rise, while the rest turned and attempted to flee, the whole accompanied by the sound of terrified cries coming simultaneously from a hundred panicked people.

The creatures from the rocket continued firing, slaying the spectators by the score even as they attempted to flee, until the area was littered with their bodies, and only the Cetians remained standing.

All this had happened with such swiftness that I had stood motionless, dumbfounded by the savagery of the attack. Had I moved then, I do not doubt that the creatures would have noticed me, and slain me in my turn. Instead, they turned their attention to the bodies on the ground, finishing any that still lived, and while they were so occupied I dropped to the ground, crawled to the far side of the rise, and began a stumbling run through the heather.

The fear I felt was no rational fear, but a panic terror not only of the Cetians, but of all the nameless terrors that men have brought with them out of the darkness of the savage past. Such an extraordinary effect in unmanning me it had that I ran weeping silently as a child might do. Once I had turned, I did not dare to look back.

I remember I felt an extraordinary persuasion that I was being played with, that presently, when I was upon the very verge of safety, this terrible death would leap after me from the guns of the Cetians and strike me down.