CHAPTER FIVE
THE HEAT-RAY
After the glimpse I had had of the Martians emerging from the
cylinder in which they had come to the earth from their planet, a kind
of fascination paralysed my actions. I remained standing knee-deep in
the heather, staring at the mound that hid them. I was a battleground of
fear and curiosity.
I did not dare to go back towards the pit, but I felt a passionate
longing to peer into it. I began walking, therefore, in a big curve,
seeking some point of vantage and continually looking at the sand heaps
that hid these new-comers to our earth. Once a leash of thin black
whips, like the arms of an octopus, flashed across the sunset and was
immediately withdrawn, and afterwards a thin rod rose up, joint by
joint, bearing at its apex a circular disk that spun with a wobbling
motion. What could be going on there?
Most of the spectators had gathered in one or two groups--one a
little crowd towards Woking, the other a knot of people in the direction
of Chobham. Evidently they shared my mental conflict. There were few
near me. One man I approached--he was, I perceived, a neighbour of mine,
though I did not know his name--and accosted. But it was scarcely a time
for articulate conversation.
"What ugly brutes!" he said. "Good God! What ugly brutes!" He
repeated this over and over again.
"Did you see a man in the pit?" I said; but he made no answer to
that. We became silent, and stood watching for a time side by side,
deriving, I fancy, a certain comfort in one another's company. Then I
shifted my position to a little knoll that gave me the advantage of a
yard or more of elevation and when I looked for him presently he was
walking towards Woking.
The sunset faded to twilight before anything further happened. The
crowd far away on the left, towards Woking, seemed to grow, and I heard
now a faint murmur from it. The little knot of people towards Chobham
dispersed. There was scarcely an intimation of movement from the pit.
It was this, as much as anything, that gave people courage, and I
suppose the new arrivals from Woking also helped to restore confidence.
At any rate, as the dusk came on a slow, intermittent movement upon the
sand pits began, a movement that seemed to gather force as the stillness
of the evening about the cylinder remained unbroken. Vertical black
figures in twos and threes would advance, stop, watch, and advance
again, spreading out as they did so in a thin irregular crescent that
promised to enclose the pit in its attenuated horns. I, too, on my side
began to move towards the pit.
Then I saw some cabmen and others had walked boldly into the sand
pits, and heard the clatter of hoofs and the gride of wheels. I saw a
lad trundling off the barrow of apples. And then, within thirty yards of
the pit, advancing from the direction of Horsell, I noted a little black
knot of men, the foremost of whom was waving a white flag.
This was the Deputation. There had been a hasty consultation, and
since the Martians were evidently, in spite of their repulsive forms,
intelligent creatures, it had been resolved to show them, by approaching
them with signals, that we too were intelligent.
Flutter, flutter, went the flag, first to the right, then to the
left. It was too far for me to recognise anyone there, but afterwards I
learned that Ogilvy, Stent, and Henderson were with others in this
attempt at communication. This little group had in its advance dragged
inward, so to speak, the circumference of the now almost complete circle
of people, and a number of dim black figures followed it at discreet
distances.
Suddenly there was a flash of light, and a quantity of luminous
greenish smoke came out of the pit in three distinct puffs, which drove
up, one after the other, straight into the still air.
This smoke (or flame, perhaps, would be the better word for it) was
so bright that the deep blue sky overhead and the hazy stretches of
brown common towards Chertsey, set with black pine trees, seemed to
darken abruptly as these puffs arose, and to remain the darker after
their dispersal. At the same time a faint hissing sound became audible.
Beyond the pit stood the little wedge of people with the white flag
at its apex, arrested by these phenomena, a little knot of small
vertical black shapes upon the black ground. As the green smoke arose,
their faces flashed out pallid green, and faded again as it vanished.
Then slowly the hissing passed into a humming, into a long, loud,
droning noise. Slowly a humped shape rose out of the pit, and the ghost
of a beam of light seemed to flicker out from it.
Forthwith flashes of actual flame, a bright glare leaping from one to
another, sprang from the scattered group of men. It was as if some
invisible jet impinged upon them and flashed into white flame. It was as
if each man were suddenly and momentarily turned to fire.
Then, by the light of their own destruction, I saw them staggering
and falling, and their supporters turning to run.
I stood staring, not as yet realising that this was death leaping
from man to man in that little distant crowd. All I felt was that it was
something very strange. An almost noiseless and blinding flash of light,
and a man fell headlong and lay still; and as the unseen shaft of heat
passed over them, pine trees burst into fire, and every dry furze bush
became with one dull thud a mass of flames. And far away towards
Knaphill I saw the flashes of trees and hedges and wooden buildings
suddenly set alight.
It was sweeping round swiftly and steadily, this flaming death, this
invisible, inevitable sword of heat. I perceived it coming towards me by
the flashing bushes it touched, and was too astounded and stupefied to
stir. I heard the crackle of fire in the sand pits and the sudden squeal
of a horse that was as suddenly stilled. Then it was as if an invisible
yet intensely heated finger were drawn through the heather between me
and the Martians, and all along a curving line beyond the sand pits the
dark ground smoked and crackled. Something fell with a crash far away to
the left where the road from Woking station opens out on the common.
Forth-with the hissing and humming ceased, and the black, dome-like
object sank slowly out of sight into the pit.
All this had happened with such swiftness that I had stood
motionless, dumbfounded and dazzled by the flashes of light. Had that
death swept through a full circle, it must inevitably have slain me in
my surprise. But it passed and spared me, and left the night about me
suddenly dark and unfamiliar.
The undulating common seemed now dark almost to blackness, except
where its roadways lay grey and pale under the deep blue sky of the
early night. It was dark, and suddenly void of men. Overhead the stars
were mustering, and in the west the sky was still a pale, bright, almost
greenish blue. The tops of the pine trees and the roofs of Horsell came
out sharp and black against the western afterglow. The Martians and
their appliances were altogether invisible, save for that thin mast upon
which their restless mirror wobbled. Patches of bush and isolated trees
here and there smoked and glowed still, and the houses towards Woking
station were sending up spires of flame into the stillness of the
evening air.
Nothing was changed save for that and a terrible astonishment. The
little group of black specks with the flag of white had been swept out
of existence, and the stillness of the evening, so it seemed to me, had
scarcely been broken.
It came to me that I was upon this dark common, helpless,
unprotected, and alone. Suddenly, like a thing falling upon me from
without, came--fear.
With an effort I turned and began a stumbling run through the
heather.
The fear I felt was no rational fear, but a panic terror not only of
the Martians, but of the dusk and stillness all about me. 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
mysterious death--as swift as the passage of light--would leap after me
from the pit about the cylinder and strike me down.
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