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CHAPTER ONE

Before the War

In the last years of the nineteenth cen-tury, no one believed that this world was be-ing watched closely by intelligences greaterthan our own. We had no idea that we werebeing studied almost as carefully as a scient-ist studies the small creatures in a drop ofwater. With great confidence, people trav-elled around this world and believed thatthey were in control of their lives. No onegave a thought to possible threats from otherplanets.

At most, people believed there mightbe living things on Mars, perhaps less de-veloped than us and ready to welcome visit-ors. But across the great emptiness of space,more intelligent minds than ours looked atthis Earth with jealous eyes, and slowly and

surely made their plans against us. And earlyin the twentieth century, the great shockcame.

The planet Mars, I need not remindthe reader, goes around the sun at an aver-age distance of 224,000,000 kilometres, andreceives from the sun half of the light andheat that is received by this world. It mustbe, if scientific thinking is correct, older thanour world, and life on its surface began along time before this Earth cooled down. Be-cause it is hardly one seventh of the size ofEarth, it cooled more quickly to the temper-ature at which life could begin. It has air andwater and all that is necessary to support liv-ing things.

But people are so blind that no writer,before the end of the nineteenth century,suggested that much more intelligent life haddeveloped there than on Earth. It was alsonot generally understood that because Mars

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is older and smaller than our Earth, and fur-ther from the sun, it is nearer life's end aswell as further from its beginning.

Mars is getting colder, as one day ourplanet must too. Its physical condition is stilllargely a mystery, but we know that even inthe middle of the day, in its warmest areas,the temperature is lower than during ourcoldest winter. Its air is much thinner thanours, its oceans have become smaller untilthey cover only a third of its surface, andfrom its far north and south the ice is stead-ily moving forwards. The end of all life,which is a distant possibility for us, is an im-mediate problem for the Martians.

This has brightened their intelligence,increased their abilities and hardened theirhearts. And looking across space, with in-struments and minds more powerful than wecan dream of, they see, at a distance of only56,000,000 kilometres, a morning star of

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hope - our own warmer planet with its greenland and grey seas, its cloudy atmosphereand its growing population.

We, the people who live on this Earth,must seem to them at least as different andless developed as monkeys are to us. And be-fore we criticize them for thinking in thisway, we must remember how badly we havetreated not only the animals of this planet,but also other people. Can we really com-plain that the Martians treated us in thesame way?

It seems that the Martians calculatedtheir journey very cleverly - their mathemat-ical knowledge appears to be much more de-veloped than ours. During 1894, a great lightwas seen on the surface of the planet by anumber of astronomers. I now believe thatthis was a fire built to make an enormousgun in a very deep pit. From this gun, theirshots were fired at us.

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The attack came six years ago.Towards midnight on 12 August, one astro-nomer noticed a great cloud of hot gas on thesurface of the planet. In fact, he compared itto the burning gases that might rush outfrom a gun.

This, we now know, was a very accur-ate description. However, the next day therewas no report in the newspapers except onesmall note in the Daily Telegraph, and theworld knew nothing of one of the greatestdangers that ever threatened Earth.

I do not think I would have knownanything about it myself if I had not metOgilvy, the well-known astronomer. He wasvery excited at the news and invited me tospend the night with him, watching the redplanet.

Despite everything that has happenedsince, I still remember that night veryclearly. Looking through the telescope, I saw

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a circle of deep blue with the little roundplanet in the centre. Because it was so small,I did not see the Thing they were sending us,which was flying quickly towards me acrossthat great distance. I never dreamed of itthen, as I watched. Nobody on Earth knewanything about the approaching missile.

That night, too, there was anothersudden cloud of gas from the distant planetas a second missile started on its way toEarth from Mars, just under twenty-fourhours after the first one. I saw a reddish flashat the edge, the slightest bend in its shape, asthe clock struck midnight.

I remember how I sat there in theblackness, not suspecting the meaning of thetiny light I had seen and all the trouble thatit would cause me. I told Ogilvy, and he tookmy place and watched the cloud of gas grow-ing as it rose from the surface of the planet.

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He watched until one, and then we lit thelamp and walked over to his house.

Hundreds of observers saw the flamethat night and the following night, at aboutmidnight, and again the night after that. Forten nights they saw a flame each night. Noone on Earth has attempted to explain whythe shots ended after this. It may be that thegases from the firing caused the Martians in-convenience. Thick clouds of smoke or dust,which looked like little grey, moving spotsthrough a powerful telescope on Earth,spread through the clearness of the planet'satmosphere and hid its more familiarfeatures.

Even the daily papers woke up tothese events at last, and there was much dis-cussion of their cause. But no one suspectedthe truth, that the Martians had fired mis-siles, which were now rushing towards us at

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a speed of many kilometres a second acrossthe great emptiness of space.

It seems to me almost unbelievablywonderful that, with that danger threateningus, people could continue their ordinarybusiness as they did. One night, when thefirst missile was probably less than15,000,000 kilometres away, I went for awalk with my wife. I pointed out Mars, abright spot of light rising in the sky, towardswhich so many telescopes were pointing.

The night was warm. Coming home, agroup of party-goers from Chertsey passedus, singing and playing music. There werelights in the upper windows of the houses aspeople went to bed. From the distant railwaystation came the sound of trains. The worldseemed so safe and peaceful.

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CHAPTER TWO

The Falling Star

Only a few nights later, the first fallingstar was seen towards the east. Denning, ourgreatest astronomer, said that the height ofits first appearance was about one hundredand fifty kilometres. It seemed to him that itfell to Earth about a hundred kilometres eastof him.

I was at home at the time and writingin my study with the curtains open. If I hadlooked up I would have seen the strangestthing that ever fell to Earth from space, but Idid not. Many people in that part of Englandsaw it, and simply thought that another

meteorite had fallen. Nobody went to lookfor the fallen star that night.

But poor Ogilvy had seen it fall and sohe got up very early with the idea of findingit. This he did, soon after dawn. An enorm-ous hole had been made and the Earth hadbeen thrown violently in every direction,forming piles that could be seen two kilo-metres away.

The Thing itself lay almost completelyburied in the earth. The uncovered partlooked like an enormous cylinder, aboutthirty metres across each end. It was coveredwith a thick burnt skin, which softened itsedges. He approached it, surprised at the sizeand even more surprised at the shape, sincemost meteorites are fairly round. It was,however, still very hot from its flight throughthe air and he could not get close to it. Hecould hear movement from inside but

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thought this was due to it cooling down. Hedid not imagine that it might be hollow.

He remained standing on one side ofthe pit that the Thing had made for itself,staring at its strange appearance and think-ing that there might be some intelligentdesign in its shape. He was alone on thecommon.

Then suddenly, he noticed that someof the burnt skin was falling off the roundedge at the end. A large piece suddenly cameoff with a sharp noise that brought his heartinto his mouth. For a minute he hardly real-ized what this meant, and although the heatwas great, he climbed down into the pit tosee the cylinder more closely. He realizedthat, very slowly, the round top of the cylin-der was turning.

Even then he hardly understood whatwas happening, until he heard anothersound and saw the black mark jump

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forwards a little. Then he suddenly under-stood. The cylinder was artificial - hollow -with an end that screwed out! Something in-side the cylinder was unscrewing the top!

'Good heavens!' said Ogilvy. 'There's aman in it - men in it! Half burnt to death!Trying to escape!'

At once, thinking quickly, he connec-ted the Thing with the flash on Mars.

The thought of the creature trappedinside was so terrible to him that he forgotthe heat, and went forwards to the cylinderto help. But luckily the heat stopped him be-fore he could get his hands on the metal. Hestood undecided for a moment, then climbedout of the pit and started to run into Woking.

The time then was around six o'clock.He met some local people who were up early,but the story he told and his appearancewere so wild that they would not listen to

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him. That quietened him a little, and whenhe saw Henderson, the London journalist, inhis garden, he shouted over the fence andmade himself understood.

'Henderson,' he called, 'you saw thatmeteorite last night?'

'Yes,' said Henderson. 'What about it?'

'It's out on Horsell Common now.'

'Fallen meteorite!' said Henderson.'That's good.'

'But it's something more than a met-eorite. It's a cylinder - an artificial cylinder!And there's something inside.'

'What did you say?' he asked. He wasdeaf in one ear.

When Ogilvy told him all he had seen,Henderson dropped his spade, put on hisjacket and came out into the road. The two

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men hurried back at once to the common,and found the cylinder still lying in the sameposition. But now the sounds inside hadstopped, and a thin circle of bright metalshowed between its top and body.

They listened, knocked on the burntmetal with a rock and, getting no answer,they both decided that the men inside wereeither unconscious or dead.

Of course the two were quite unable todo anything, so they went back to the townagain to get help. Henderson went to therailway station at once, to send a telegram toLondon.

By eight o'clock a number of boys andunemployed men were already walking tothe common to see the 'dead men fromMars'. That was the form the story took. Iheard it first from my newspaper boy atabout a quarter to nine and I went to thecommon immediately.

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When I got there, I found a littlecrowd of perhaps twenty people surroundingthe great pit in which the cylinder lay.Henderson and Ogilvy were not there. Ithink they understood that nothing could bedone for the moment, and had gone away tohave breakfast at Henderson's house. Iclimbed into the pit and thought I heard afaint movement under my feet. The top hadcertainly stopped turning.

At that time it was quite clear in myown mind that the Thing had come from theplanet Mars, and I felt impatient to see itopened. At about eleven, as nothing was hap-pening, I walked back, full of such thoughts,to my home in Maybury.

By the afternoon the appearance ofthe common had changed very much. Theearly editions of the evening papers hadshocked London. They printed stories like:

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MESSAGE RECEIVED FROM MARSAMAZING STORY FROM WOKING

There was now a large crowd ofpeople standing around. Going to the edge ofthe pit, I found a group of men in it -Henderson, Ogilvy, and a tall fair-hairedman I afterwards learnt was Stent, the Astro-nomer Royal, with several workmen holdingspades. Stent was giving directions. A largepart of the cylinder had now been uncovered,although its lower end was still hidden in theside of the pit.

As soon as Ogilvy saw me, he calledme to come down, and asked me if I wouldmind going over to see Lord Hilton, whoowned the land. The growing crowd, he said,was now becoming a serious problem, espe-cially the boys. He wanted a fence put up tokeep the people back.

I was very glad to do as he asked. Ifailed to find Lord Hilton at his house, but

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was told he was expected from London bythe six o'clock train. As it was then about aquarter past five, I went home, had some teaand walked up to the station to meet him.

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CHAPTER THREE

The Cylinder Opens

When I returned to the common, thesun was setting. Groups of people were hur-rying from the direction of Woking. Thecrowd around the pit had increased to acouple of hundred people, perhaps. Therewere raised voices, and some sort of struggleappeared to be going on around the pit. As Igot nearer, I heard Stent's voice:

'Keep back! Keep back! '

A boy came running towards me.

'It's moving,' he said to me as hepassed, '- unscrewing and unscrewing. Idon't like it. I'm going home.'

I went on to the crowd and pushed myway through. Everyone seemed greatly ex-cited. I heard a peculiar humming soundfrom the pit.

'Keep those fools back,' said Ogilvy.'We don't know what's in the Thing, youknow.'

I saw a young man - I believe he was ashop assistant in Woking - standing on thecylinder and trying to climb out of the pitagain. The crowd had pushed him in.

The end of the cylinder was beingscrewed out from within. Nearly half a metreof shining screw stuck out. Someone pushedagainst me, and I almost fell down on top ofthe screw. I turned, and as I did the screwcame out and the lid of the cylinder fell ontothe sand with a ringing sound. I pressed backagainst the person behind me, and turnedmy head towards the Thing again. I had the

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sunset in my eyes and for a moment theround hole seemed black.

I think everyone expected to see aman come out - possibly something a littleunlike us on Earth, but more or less a man. Iknow I did. But, looking, I soon sawsomething grey moving within the shadow,then two shining circles - like eyes. Thensomething like a little grey snake, about thethickness of a walking-stick, came out of themiddle and moved through the air towardsme - and then another.

I suddenly felt very cold. There was aloud scream from a woman behind. I half-turned, still keeping my eyes on the cylinder,from which other tentacles were now comingout, and began pushing my way back fromthe side of the pit. I saw shock changing tohorror on the faces of the people around me,and there was a general movement back-wards. I found myself alone, and saw the

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people on the other side of the pit runningoff. I looked again at the cylinder, and feltgreat terror.

A big, greyish round creature, the size,perhaps, of a bear, was rising slowly andpainfully out of the cylinder. As it moved upand caught the light, it shone like wet leath-er. Two large dark- coloured eyes were look-ing at me steadily. The head of the thing wasrounded and had, one could say, a face.There was a mouth under the eyes, and itslipless edge shone wetly. The whole creaturewas breathing heavily. One tentacle heldonto the cylinder; another moved in the air.

Suddenly, the creature disappeared. Ithad fallen over the edge of the cylinder andinto the pit. I heard it give a peculiar cry, andthen another of these creatures appeared inthe deep shadow of the door.

I turned and ran madly towards thefirst group of trees, perhaps a hundred

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metres away. I fell a number of times be-cause I was running with my head turnedround. I could not take my eyes away fromthese creatures.

The common was now covered withsmall groups of people. They were all veryfrightened, but still interested in the strangehappenings in the pit. Then I saw a roundobject moving up and down. It was the headof the shop assistant who had fallen in, look-ing black against the hot western sky. He gothis shoulder and knee up, but again heseemed to slip back until only his head wasvisible. Then he disappeared, and I thought Iheard a faint scream. For a moment I wantedto go back and help him, but I was too afraid.

The sun went down before anythingelse happened. The crowd around the pitseemed to grow as new people arrived. Thisgave people confidence and as darkness fell,a slow, uncertain movement on the common

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began. Black figures in twos and threesmoved forwards, stopped, watched, andmoved again, getting closer and closer to thepit.

And then, coming from the directionof Horsell, I noticed a little black group ofmen, the first of whom was waving a whiteflag. They were too far away for me to recog-nize anyone there, but I learned afterwardsthat Ogilvy, Stent and Henderson were withothers in this attempt at communication. Asthe group moved forwards, a number of oth-er people started to follow them.

Suddenly, there was a flash of lightand bright greenish smoke came out of thepit in three separate clouds, which movedup, one after the other, into the still air.

The smoke (or flame, perhaps, wouldbe a better word for it) was so bright that thedeep blue sky overhead seemed to darken asthese clouds rose. At the same time we could

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hear a faint sound, which changed into along, loud humming noise. Slowly a darkshape rose out of the pit and a beam of lightseemed to flash out from it.

Then flashes of bright fire came fromthe men, and I realized that the Martianswere using some kind of invisible ray. Then,by the light of their own burning, I saw eachof the men falling, and their followers turn-ing to run.

I stood staring, watching as man afterman fell over. As the unseen ray of lightpassed over them, trees caught fire and eventhe bushes exploded into flame. And faraway to the west I saw flashes of trees andbushes and wooden buildings suddenly seton fire.

This flaming death, this invisiblesword of heat, was sweeping round quicklyand steadily. I knew it was coming towardsme because of the flashing bushes it touched,

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but I was too shocked to move. All along acurving line beyond the pit, the dark groundsmoked. Then the humming stopped and theblack, rounded object sank slowly out ofsight into the pit.

All this happened so quickly that Istood without moving, shocked by theflashes of light. It that death had swunground a full circle, it would have killed me.But it passed and let me live, and left thenight around me suddenly dark and unfamil-iar. There was nobody else around. Overheadthe stars were coming out, and in the westthe sky was still a pale, bright, almost green-ish blue. The tops of the trees and the roofsof Horsell were sharp and black against thewestern sky. Areas of bush and a few treesstill smoked, and the houses towards Wokingstation were sending up tongues of flame in-to the stillness of the evening air.

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I realized that I was helpless andalone on this dark common. Suddenly, like athing falling on me from above, came fear.With an effort I turned and began an un-steady run through the grass.

The fear I felt was panic - terror notonly of the Martians but of the dark and still-ness all around me. I ran crying silently as achild might do. After I had turned, I did notdare look back.

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CHAPTER FOUR

Mars Attacks

I ran until I was totally exhausted andI fell down beside the road. That was nearthe bridge by the gas-works.

I remained there for some time.

Eventually I sat up, strangely puzzled.For a moment, perhaps, I could not clearlyunderstand how I came there. My terror hadfallen from me like a piece of clothing. A fewminutes earlier there had only been threethings in my mind: the great size of the nightand space and nature, my own weakness andunhappiness, and the near approach ofdeath. Now I was my normal self again - an

ordinary citizen. The silent common, my es-cape, the flames, seemed like a dream. Iasked myself if these things had reallyhappened. I could not believe it.

I got up and walked up the steep slopeto the bridge. My body seemed to have lostits strength. The figure of a workman carry-ing a basket appeared. Beside him ran a littleboy He passed me, wishing me good-night. Ithought about speaking to him, but did not. Ianswered his greeting and went on over thebridge.

Two men and a woman were talking atthe gate of one of the houses. I stopped.

'What news from the common?' I said.

'Eh?' said one of the men, turning.

'What news from the common?' Irepeated.

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'Haven't you just been there?' the menasked.

'People seem fairly silly about thecommon,' the woman said over the gate.'What's it all about?'

'Haven't you heard of the men fromMars?' I said. 'The creatures from Mars.'

'Quite enough,' said the woman.'Thanks.' And all three of them laughed.

I felt foolish and angry. I tried butcould not tell them what I had seen. Theylaughed again at my broken sentences.

'You'll hear more soon," I said, andwent on to my home.

My wife was shocked when she sawme, because I looked so tired and dirty. Iwent into the dining-room, sat down, andtold her the things that I had seen.

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'There is one good thing,' I said, tocalm her fears. 'They are the slowest, fattestthings I ever saw crawl. They may stay in thepit and kill people who come near them, asthey cannot get out of it . . . but they are sohorrible!'

'Don't, dear!' said my wife, putting herhand on mine.

'Poor Ogilvy!' I said. 'He may be lyingdead there.'

My wife, at least, did not think my ex-perience unbelievable.

When I saw how white her face was, Ibegan to comfort her and myself by repeat-ing all that Ogilvy had told me about the im-possibility of Martians capturing the Earth.

On the surface of the Earth the forceof gravity is three times as great as on thesurface of Mars. A Martian, therefore, would

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weigh three times more than on Mars, al-though his strength would be the same. Thatwas the general opinion. Both The Times andthe Daily Telegraph, for example, said thisvery confidently the next morning. Both ig-nored, as I did, two obvious problems withthis theory.

The atmosphere of Earth, we nowknow, contains much more oxygen thanthere is on Mars. This certainly gave theMartians much greater strength. And we alsolearned that the Martians were so mechanic-ally clever that they did not need to use theirbodies very much.

But I did not consider these points atthe time, and so I thought the Martians hadvery little chance of success. With wine andfood and the need to help my wife feel lessafraid, I slowly became braver and felt safer.

I remember the dinner table thatevening very clearly even now: my dear

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wife's sweet, worried face looking at me fromunder the pink lamp-shade, the white clothlaid with silver and glass, the glass of redwine in my hand. I did not know it, but thatwas the last proper dinner I would eat formany strange and terrible days.

If, on that Friday night, you haddrawn a circle at a distance of five kilometresfrom Horsell Common, I doubt if therewould have been one human being outside it,unless it was a relation of Stent, whose emo-tions or habits were affected by the new ar-rivals. Many people had heard of the cylin-der, of course, and talked about it, but it didnot have as much effect as a political event.

Even within the five-kilometre circle,most people were unaffected. I have alreadydescribed the behaviour of the people towhom I spoke. All over the district peoplewere eating dinner. Men were gardening,

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children were being put to bed, young peoplewere out walking together.

Maybe there was talk in the villagestreets, a new topic in the pubs - and hereand there a messenger, or even an eye-wit-ness of the later events, caused some excite-ment. However, for most of the time thedaily routine of work, food, drink and sleepwent on as it had done for countless years.

People came to the common and leftit, but all the time a crowd remained. One ortwo adventurous people went into the dark-ness and crawled quite near the Martians,but they never returned, because now andagain a light-ray swept round the common,and the Heat-Ray was ready to follow. Andall night the sound of hammering could beheard as the Martians worked on the ma-chines they were making ready.

At about eleven, a company of soldierscame through Horsell and spread out in a

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great circle around the common. Several of-ficers had been on the common earlier in theday and one was reported to be missing.Another one arrived and was busy question-ing the crowd at midnight. The army wascertainly taking things seriously.

A few seconds after midnight thecrowd in the Chertsey Road, Woking, saw astar fall from the sky into the woods to thenorth-west. This was the second cylinder.

Saturday lives in my memory as a dayof worry. It was a lazy, hot day too. I hadonly slept a little and I got up early. I wentinto my garden and stood listening, but to-wards the common there was nothingmoving.

The milkman came as usual and Iasked him the latest news. He told me thatduring the night the Martians had been sur-rounded by soldiers and that field-guns wereexpected.

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'We have to try not to kill them,' hesaid, 'if it can possibly be avoided.'

After breakfast, instead of working, Idecided to walk down towards the common.Under the railway bridge I found a group ofsoldiers - engineers, I think, men wearingsmall round caps, dirty red jackets and darktrousers. They told me that no one was al-lowed over the bridge. I talked with them fora time and told them of my sight of the Mar-tians on the previous evening. None had seenthem, so they asked me many questions. Anordinary engineer is much better educatedthan a common soldier, and they discussed,with some intelligence, the odd conditions ofthe possible fight.

After some time I left them and wenton to the railway station to get as manymorning papers as I could. These containedonly very inaccurate descriptions of thekilling of Stent, Henderson, Ogilvy and the

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others. I got back to lunch at about two, verytired because, as I have said, the day was ex-tremely hot and dull. To make myself feelbetter I took a cold bath in the afternoon.

During that day the Martians did notshow themselves. They were busy in the pit,and there was the sound of hammering and acolumn of smoke. 'New attempts have beenmade to signal, but without success,' washow the evening papers later described it. Anengineer told me that this was done by a mancrawling forwards with a flag on a long pole.The Martians took as much notice of him aswe would of a cow.

At about three o'clock I heard thesound of a gun, firing regularly, from the dir-ection of Chertsey. I learned that they wereshooting into the wood in which the secondcylinder had fallen. An hour or two later afield-gun arrived for use against the firstcylinder.

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At about six in the evening, as I hadtea with my wife in the garden, I heard an ex-plosion from the common, and immediatelyafter that the sound of gunfire. Then came aviolent crash quite close to us, that shook theground. I rushed out onto the grass and sawthe tops of the trees around the Oriental Col-lege burst into smoky red flame, and thetower of the little church beside it slide downinto ruins. The roof of the college was inpieces. Then one of our chimneys crackedand broken bricks fell down onto the flower-bed by my study window.

My wife and I stood amazed. Then Irealized that the Martians could hit the topof Maybury Hill with their Heat-Ray becausethey had cleared the college out of the way.

After that I took my wife's arm andran with her out into the road. Then I wentback and fetched the servant.

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'We can't stay here,' I said, and as Ispoke the firing started again for a momenton the common.

'But where can we go?' said my wife interror.

I thought, puzzled. Then I re-membered my cousins in Leatherhead.

'Leatherhead!' I shouted above thesudden noise.

She looked away from me downhill.Surprised people were coming out of theirhouses.

'How will we get to Leatherhead?' sheasked.

Down the hill I saw some soldiersrush under the railway bridge. Three wentthrough the open doors of the Oriental Col-lege and two began running from house tohouse. The sun, shining through the smoke

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that rose up from the tops of the trees,seemed blood-red and threw an unfamiliarbright light on everything.

'Wait here,' I said. 'You are safe here.'

I ran at once towards the pub, whoseowner had a horse and cart. I ran because Irealized that soon everyone on this side ofthe hill would be moving. I found the pub'sowner in his bar, with no idea of what wasgoing on. I explained quickly that I had toleave my home, and arranged to borrow thecart, promising to bring it back before mid-night. At the time it did not seem to me sourgent that he should leave his home.

I drove the cart down the road and,leaving it with my wife and servant, rushedinto the house and packed a few valuables.While I was doing this, a soldier ran past. Hewas going from house to house, warningpeople to leave.

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I shouted after him, 'What news?'

He turned, stared, shouted somethingabout 'crawling out in a thing like a dish cov-er', and moved on to the gate of the nexthouse. I helped my servant into the back ofthe cart, then jumped up into the driver'sseat beside my wife. In another moment wewere clear of the smoke and the noise, andmoving quickly down the opposite side ofMaybury Hill.

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CHAPTER FIVE

Running Away

Leatherhead is about twenty kilo-metres from Maybury. We got there withoutany problems at about nine o'clock, and thehorse had an hour's rest while I had supperwith my cousins and left my wife in theircare.

My wife was strangely silent duringthe drive, and seemed very worried. If I hadnot made a promise to the pub owner, shewould, I think, have asked me to stay inLeatherhead that night. Her face, I remem-ber, was very white as I drove away.

My feelings were quite different. I hadbeen very excited all day and I was not sorrythat I had to return to Maybury. I was evenafraid that the last shots I had heard mightmean the end of our visitors from Mars. Iwanted to be there at the death.

The night was unexpectedly dark, andit was as hot and airless as the day. Overheadthe clouds were passing fast, mixed here andthere with clouds of black and red smoke, al-though no wind moved the bushes aroundme. I heard a church strike midnight, andthen I saw Maybury Hill, with its tree-topsand roofs black and sharp against the redsky.

At that moment a bright green light litup the road around me and showed the dis-tant woods to the north. I saw a line of greenfire pass through the moving clouds and intothe field to my left. It was the third cylinder!

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Just after this came the first lightningof the storm, and the thunder burst like agun overhead. The horse ran forwards in ter-ror at high speed.

There is a gentle slope towards thefoot of Maybury Hill, and down this we went.After the lightning had begun, it flashedagain and again, as quickly as I have everseen. The thunder crashed almost all thetime. The flashing light was blinding andconfusing, and thin rain hit my face as Idrove down the slope.

I paid little attention to the road infront of me, and then suddenly my attentionwas caught by something. At first I thought itwas the wet roof of a house, but the lightningflashes showed that it was moving quicklydown Maybury Hill. Then there was a greatflash like daylight and this strange objectcould be seen clearly.

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How can I describe this Thing that Isaw? It was an enormous tripod, higher thanmany houses, stepping over the young trees.It was a walking engine of shining metal.

Then suddenly, the trees in the woodahead of me were pushed to the side and asecond enormous tripod appeared, rushing,as it seemed, straight towards me. And I wasdriving fast to meet it. At the sight of thissecond machine I panicked completely. Ipulled my horse's head hard round to theright. The cart turned over on the horse and Iwas thrown sideways. I fell heavily into ashallow pool of water.

I crawled out almost immediately andlay, my feet still in the water, under a bush.The horse did not move (his neck wasbroken, poor animal!) and by the lightningflashes I saw the turned-over cart and onewheel still spinning slowly. Then the

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enormous machine walked past me and wentuphill.

As it passed it gave a deafening howlthat was louder than the thunder - 'Aloo!Aloo!' - and a minute later it was with anoth-er one, half a kilometre away, bending oversomething in a field. I have no doubt thatthis was the third of the cylinders they hadfired at us from Mars.

I was wet with rain above and pool-water below. It was some time before myshock would let me struggle up into a drierposition, or think of the great danger I wasin.

I got to my feet at last and, keepinglow, managed to get into a wood near May-bury without the machines seeing me. Stay-ing in the wood, I moved towards my ownhouse. If I had really understood the mean-ing of all the things I had seen, I would havegone back to join my wife in Leatherhead

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immediately. But that night it was all verystrange and I was physically exhausted, wetto the skin, deafened and blinded by thestorm. All these things prevented me frommaking a sensible decision.

I walked up the narrow road towardsmy house. Near the top I stood on somethingsoft and, by a flash of lightning, saw the bodyof a man. I had never touched a dead bodybefore, but I forced myself to turn him overand feel for his heart. He certainly was dead.It seemed that his neck had been broken.Then the lightning flashed again and I sawhis face. It was the owner of the pub, whosecart I had taken.

I stepped over him nervously andmoved on up the hill. Towards MayburyBridge there were voices and the sound offeet, but I did not have the courage to shoutor go to them. I let myself into my house and

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locked the door, walked to the bottom of thestairs and sat down, shaking violently.

It was some time before I could get tomy feet again and put on some dry clothes.After that I went upstairs to my study. Thewindow looks over the trees and the railwaytowards Horsell Common. In the hurry toleave it had been left open. I stopped in thedoorway, at a safe distance from it.

The thunderstorm had passed. Thetowers of the Oriental College and the treesaround it had gone. Very far away, lit by redfire, the common was visible. Across thelight, great black shapes moved busily back-wards and forwards.

I closed the door noiselessly andmoved nearer the window. The view openedout until, on one side, it reached to thehouses around Woking Station, and on theother, to the burnt woods of Byfleet. Betweenthem were areas of fire and smoking ground.

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The view reminded me, more than anythingelse, of factories at night.

I turned my desk chair to the windowand stared out at the country and, in particu-lar, at the three enormous black Things thatwere moving around the common. Theyseemed very busy. I began to ask myself whatthey could be. Were they intelligent ma-chines? I felt this was impossible. Or did aMartian sit inside each, controlling it in thesame way that a man's brain controls hisbody?

The storm had left the sky clear, andover the smoke of the burning land the tinybright light of Mars was dropping into thewest, when a soldier came quietly into mygarden. I got up and leant out of the window.

'Psst!' I said, in a whisper.

He stopped for a moment, thenwalked across to the house.

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'Who's there?' he said, alsowhispering.

'Are you trying to hide?' I asked.

'I am.'

'Come into the house,' I said.

I went down, opened the door and lethim in. I could not see his face. He had nohat and his coat was unbuttoned.

'What's happened?' I asked.

'We didn't have a chance.' he said.'Not a chance.'

He followed me into the dining-room.

'Have a drink,' I said, pouring one forhim.

He drank it. Then suddenly he satdown at the table, put his head on his armsand began to cry like a little boy. It was a

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long time before he was able to answer myquestions, and the answers he gave werepuzzled and came in broken sentences.

He was part of a field-gun team. Theywere turning their gun to fire on one of thetripods when it suddenly exploded. He foundhimself lying under a group of burnt deadmen and horses. His back was hurt by thefall of a horse and he lay there for a longtime. He watched as the foot-soldiers rushedtowards the tripod. They all went down in asecond. Then the tripod walked slowly overthe common. A kind of arm held a complic-ated metal case, out of which the Heat-Rayflashed as it killed anyone who was still mov-ing. Then the tripod turned and walked awaytowards where the second cylinder lay.

At last the soldier was able to move,crawling at first, and he got to Woking. Therewere a few people still alive there; most ofthem were very frightened, and many of

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them had been burnt. He hid behind abroken wall as one of the Martian tripods re-turned. He saw this one go after a man, catchhim in one of its steel arms and knock hishead against a tree. After it got dark, the sol-dier finally ran and managed to get acrossthe railway.

That was the story I got from him, bitby bit. He grew calmer telling me. He hadeaten no food since midday, and I foundsome meat and bread and brought it into theroom. As we talked, the sky gradually be-came lighter. I began to see his face,blackened and exhausted, as no doubt minewas too.

When we had finished eating, we wentquietly upstairs to my study and I lookedagain out of the open window. In one nightthe valley had become a place of death. Thefires had died down now, but the ruins ofbroken and burnt-out houses and blackened

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trees were clear in the cold light of the dawn.Destruction had never been so total in thehistory of war. And, shining in the morninglight, three of the tripods stood on the com-mon, their tops turning as they examined thedamage they had done.

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CHAPTER SIX

The Death of Towns

As the dawn grew brighter, we movedback from the window where we hadwatched and went very quietly downstairs.

The soldier agreed with me that thehouse was not a good place to stay in. Hesuggested going towards London, where hecould rejoin his company. My plan was to re-turn at once to Leatherhead. The strength ofthe Martians worried me so much that I haddecided to take my wife to the south coast,and leave the country with her immediately.I had already decided that the area aroundLondon would be the scene of a great battlebefore the Martians could be destroyed.

Between us and Leatherhead,however, lay the third cylinder. If I had beenalone, I think I would have taken my chanceand gone straight across country. But thesoldier persuaded me not to. 'It's no kind-ness to your wife,' he said, 'for you to getkilled.' In the end I agreed to go north withhim under cover of the woods. After that Iwould leave him and turn off to reachLeatherhead.

I wanted to start at once, but the sol-dier had been in wars before and knew betterthan that. He made me find all the food anddrink that we could carry, and we filled ourpockets. Then we left the house and ran asquickly as we could down the narrow road.All the houses seemed empty. In the road laya pile of three burnt bodies close together,killed by the Heat-Ray. In fact, apart fromourselves, there did not seem to be a livingperson on Maybury Hill.

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We reached the woods at the foot ofthe hill and moved through these towardsthe road. As we ran, we heard the sound ofhorses and saw through the trees three sol-diers riding towards Woking. We shoutedand they stopped while we hurried towardsthem. They were an officer and two men.

'You are the first people I've seencoming this way this morning,' the officersaid. 'What's happening?'

The soldier who had stayed with mestepped up to him. 'My gun was destroyedlast night, sir. I've been hiding. I'm trying torejoin my company. You'll come in sight ofthe Martians, I expect, about a kilometrealong this road.'

'What do they look like?' asked theofficer.

'Big machines, sir. Thirty metres high.Three legs and a great big head, sir.'

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'What nonsense!' said the officer.

'You'll see, sir. They carry a kind ofbox that shoots fire and strikes you dead.'

'What do you mean - a gun?'

'No, sir.' And he began to describe theHeat-Ray.

Half-way through his report the of-ficer interrupted him and looked at me.

'Did you see it?' he said.

'It's perfectly true,' I replied.

'Well,' he said. 'I suppose it's my busi-ness to see it too. Listen,' he said to my newfriend, 'you'd better go to Weybridge and re-port to the highest officer.'

He thanked me and they rode away.

By Byfleet station we came out fromthe trees and found the country calm and

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peaceful in the morning sunlight. It seemedlike any other Sunday - except for the emptyhouses, and the other ones where peoplewere packing.

However, Byfleet was very busy. Sol-diers were telling people to leave and helpingthem to load carts in the main street. Manypeople, though, did not realize how seriousthe situation was. I saw one old man with abig box and a number of flower-pots, angrilyarguing with a soldier who wanted him toleave them behind.

'Do you know what's over there?' Isaid, pointing towards the woods that hid theMartians.

'Eh?' he said. 'I was explaining thatthese are valuable.'

'Death!' I shouted. 'Death is coming!Death!' and leaving him to think about that, Ihurried on to Weybridge.

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We remained there until midday, andat that time found ourselves at the placewhere the River Wey joins the River Thames.Here we found an excited crowd of people.There was no great fear at this time, butalready there were more people than all theboats could carry across the Thames. Everynow and then people looked nervously at thefields beyond Chertsey, but everything therewas still.

Then came the sound of a gun and, al-most immediately, other guns across theriver, unseen because of the trees, began tofire. Everyone stood still, stopped by the sud-den sound of battle, near us but invisible tous.

Then we saw a cloud of smoke faraway up the river. The ground moved and aheavy explosion shook the air, smashing twoor three windows in the houses and leavingus shocked.

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'Look!' shouted a man. 'Over there! Doyou see them?'

Quickly, one after the other, one, two,three, four of the Martian machines ap-peared, far away over the low trees towardsChertsey. Then, from a different direction, afifth one came towards us. Their metal bod-ies shone in the sun as they moved forwardsto the guns. One on the left, the furthestaway, held a large case high in the air, andthe terrible Heat-Ray shone towards Chert-sey and struck the town.

At the sight of these strange, quickand terrible creatures, the crowd near thewater's edge seemed for a moment to betotally shocked. There was no screaming orshouting, but a silence. Then came somequiet talk and the beginning of movement. Awoman pushed at me with her hand andrushed past me. I turned, but I was not toofrightened for thought.

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'Get under water!' I shouted, butnobody listened.

I turned around again and ran to-wards the approaching Martian, ran rightdown the stony beach and dived into the wa-ter. Others did the same. The stones undermy feet were muddy and slippery, and theriver was so low that I moved perhaps sevenmetres before I could get under the surface. Icould hear people jumping off boats into thewater.

But the Martian took no notice of us.When I lifted my head it was looking towardsthe guns that were still firing across the river.It was already raising the case which sent theHeat-Ray when the first shell burst sixmetres above its head.

I gave a cry of surprise. Then two oth-er shells burst at the same time in the airnear its body. Its head twisted round in time

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to receive, but not in time to avoid, thefourth shell.

This exploded right in its face. Itshead flashed and burst into a dozen brokenpieces of red flesh and shining metal.

'Hit!' I shouted.

The headless machine marched on,swinging from side to side. It hit a churchtower, knocking it down, then moved on andfell into the river out of sight.

A violent explosion shook the air, anda column of water, steam, mud and brokenmetal shot far up into the sky. In anothermoment a great wave of very hot water camesweeping round the bend. I saw peoplestruggling towards the shore and heard theirscreaming and shouting faintly above thenoise of the Martian's fall.

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I rushed through the water until Icould see round the bend. The Martian cameinto sight down the river, most of it underthe water. Thick clouds of steam were pour-ing from the wreckage, and through it I couldsee its long legs and tentacles moving in thewater.

My attention was caught by an angrynoise. A man, knee-deep in the water,shouted to me and pointed, although I couldnot hear what he said. Looking back, I sawthe other Martians walking down the river-bank from the direction of Chertsey. Theguns fired again, but with no effect.

At that moment I got under the waterand, holding my breath until movement waspainful, swam under the surface for as longas I could. The river was rough around meand quickly growing hotter.

When for a moment I raised my headto breathe and throw the hair and water out

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of my eyes, the steam was rising in a whitefog that hid the Martians completely. Thenoise was deafening. Then I saw them,enormous grey figures. They had passed meand two were bending over the fallen one.

The third and fourth stood beside himin the water. The cases that produced theHeat-Rays were waved high and the beamsflashed this way and that.

The air was full of deafening and con-fusing noises: the loud sounds of the Mar-tians, the crash of falling houses, the flash offire as trees and fences began to burn. Thickblack smoke was rising to mix with the steamfrom the river.

Then suddenly the white flashes of theHeat-Ray came towards me. The houses fellas it touched them, and exploded into flame.The trees caught fire with a loud noise. TheHeat- Ray came down to the water's edgeless than fifty metres from where I stood. It

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ran across the river and the water behind itboiled. I turned towards the shore.

In another moment a large wave of al-most boiling water rushed towards me. Iscreamed and ran. If my foot had slipped, itwould have been the end. I fell in full view ofthe Martians on the stony beach. I expectedonly death.

I have a faknee-int memory of the footof a Martian coming down within twentymetres of my head, going straight into theloose stones. Then I saw the four of themcarrying the remains of the fallen onebetween them, now clear and then later faintthrough a curtain of smoke, moving awayfrom me across a great space of river andfields. And then, very slowly. I realized thatsomehow I had escaped.

I saw an empty boat, very small andfar away, moving down the river and, takingoff most of my wet clothes, I swam to it. I

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used my hands to keep it moving, down theriver towards Walton, going very slowly andoften looking behind me. I was in some painand very tired. When the bridge at Waltonwas coming into sight, I landed on theMiddlesex bank and lay down, very sick, inthe long grass.

I do not remember the arrival of thecurate, so probably I slept for some time. AsI woke up, I noticed a seated figure with hisface staring at the sky, watching the sunset.

I sat up, and at the sound of my move-ment he looked at me.

'Have you any water?' I asked.

He shook his head.

'You have been asking for water forthe last hour,' he said.

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For a moment we were silent, staringat each other. He spoke suddenly, lookingaway from me.

'What does it mean? he said. 'What dothese things mean?'

I gave no answer.

'Why are these things allowed? Whathave we done - what has Weybridge done?The morning service was over. I was walkingthe roads to clear my brain, and then - fireand death! All our work - everything des-troyed. The church! We rebuilt it only threeyears ago. Gone! Why?'

Another pause, and then he shouted,'The smoke of her burning goes up for everand ever!' His eyes were wide and he pointeda thin finger in the direction of Weybridge.

It was clear to me that the greattragedy in which he was involved - it seemed

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that he had escaped from Weybridge - haddriven him to the edge of madness.

'Are we far from Sunbury?' I said, veryquietly.

'What can we do?' he asked. 'Are thesecreatures everywhere? Has the Earth beengiven to them?'

'Are we far from Sunbury?'

'Only this morning I was in charge ofthe church service -'

'Things have changed!' I said, quietly.'You must stay calm. There is still hope.'

'Hope!'

'Yes, a lot of hope, despite all this de-struction. Listen!'

From beyond the low hills across thewater came the dull sound of the distant

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guns and a far-away strange crying. Theneverything was still. High in the west themoon hung pale above the smoke and thehot, still beauty of the sunset.

'We had better follow this path,' I said.'To the north.'

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CHAPTER SEVEN

In London

My younger brother was in Londonwhen the Martians fell at Woking. He was amedical student, working for an examina-tion, and he heard nothing of the arrival un-til Saturday morning. The morning paperson Saturday contained, in addition to a greatdeal of information about the planet Mars,one very short report.

The Martians, alarmed by the ap-proach of a crowd, had killed a number ofpeople with a quick-firing gun, the story said.It ended with the words, 'Although they seemfrightening, the Martians have not moved

from the pit into which they have fallen, anddon't seem able to do so.'

Even the afternoon papers had noth-ing to tell apart from the movement of sol-diers around the common, and the burningof the woods between Woking and Wey-bridge. Nothing more of the fighting wasknown that night, the night of my drive toLeatherhead and back.

My brother was not worried about us,as he knew from the description in the pa-pers chat the cylinder was three kilometresfrom my house. That night he made up hismind to visit me, in order to see the Thingsbefore they were killed. He sent a telegram,which never reached me.

On the Saturday evening, at Waterloostation, he learned that an accident preven-ted trains from reaching Woking. He couldnot discover what kind of accident it was. Infact, the people in charge of the railway did

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not clearly know at that time. There was verylittle excitement at the station. Few peopleconnected the problem with the Martians.

I have read, in another description ofthese events, that on Sunday morning 'allLondon was panicked by the news fromWoking.' In fact, this is simply not true.Plenty of Londoners did not hear of the Mar-tians until Monday morning. Some did, butthey needed time to realize what all the re-ports in the Sunday papers actually meant.But most people in London do not readSunday papers.

Besides this, Londoners are very usedto feeling safe, and exciting news is so nor-mal in the papers that they could read re-ports like this without great fear:

At about seven o'clock last night theMartians came out of the cylinder and,moving around in metal machines, com-pletely destroyed Woking station and the

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houses around it, and killed around 600 sol-diers. No details are known. Machine gunsare completely useless against them, andfield-guns have been put out of action. TheMartians appear to be moving towardsChertsey. People in West Surrey are veryworried and defences have been built toslow the Martians' movement towardsLondon.

No one in London knew what theMartians looked like, and there was still afixed idea that they must be slow: 'crawling','moving painfully' - words like these were inall the earlier reports. But none of them werewritten by anyone who had actually seen aMartian. The Sunday papers printed separ-ate editions as further news came in. Butthere was almost nothing to tell people untilthe government announced that the peopleof Walton and Weybridge, and all chat dis-trict, were pouring along the roads towardsLondon.

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My brother went again to Waterloostation to find out if the line to Woking wasopen. There he heard that the Chertsey linewas also closed. He learned that several un-usual telegrams had been received in themorning from Byfleet and Chertsey stations,but that these had suddenly stopped. Mybrother could get very little exact informa-tion out of them. 'There's fighting going onaround Weybridge,' was all the informationthey had.

Quite a number of people who hadbeen expecting friends to arrive by train werestanding at the station. One man spoke tomy brother.

'There are lots of people coming intoKingston in carts and things, with boxes andcases,' he said. 'They come from Weybridgeand Walton, and they said guns have beenheard at Chertsey, heavy firing, and that sol-diers told them to move out at once because

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the Martians are corning. What does it allmean? The Martians can't get out of their pit,can they?'

My brother could not tell him.

At about five o'clock the growingcrowd in the station was greatly excited bythe opening of the line between theSouthEastern and South-Western stations,which is usually closed. Then trains carryinglarge guns and many soldiers passed throughthe station, moving towards Kingston. Soonafter that the police arrived and began tomove the crowd out of the station, and mybrother went out into the street again.

On Waterloo Bridge a number ofpeople were watching an odd brown liquidthat came down the river from time to time.The sun was just setting and the Houses ofParliament stood against a peaceful sky.There was talk of a floating body.

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In Wellington Street my brother mettwo men selling newspapers which had justbeen printed. The advertising boards said,'Terrible tragedy! Fighting at Weybridge! De-feat of the Martians! London in danger!' Hebought a paper.

Then, and only then, he understoodsomething of the full power and terror of theMartians. He learned that they were not justa few small crawling creatures, but that theycould control enormous mechanical bodies.They could move quickly and strike withsuch power that even the biggest guns couldnot stand against them. They were describedas, 'great machines like spiders, nearly thirtymetres high, as fast as an express train, andable to shoot out a beam of strong heat.'

Many field-guns, the report said, hadbeen hidden around the country near HorsellCommon, and especially between the Wok-ing district and London. Five of the

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machines had been seen moving towards theThames and one, by a lucky chance, hadbeen destroyed. In other cases the shells hadmissed, and the guns had at once been des-troyed by the Heat-Rays. Heavy losses of sol-diers were mentioned, but in general the re-port was optimistic.

The Martians had been defeated, mybrother read. They had gone back to theircylinders again, in the circle around Woking.Guns, including some very large ones, weremoving in quickly. One hundred and sixteenwere now in position, mainly covering Lon-don. There had never been such a large orfast movement of war equipment in Englandbefore.

No doubt, said the report, the situ-ation was strange and serious, but the publicwas asked to avoid and discourage panic. Nodoubt the Martians were very frightening,

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but there could not be more than twenty ofthem against our millions.

All down Wellington Street peoplecould be seen reading the paper. Men camerunning from buses to get copies. Certainlypeople were excited by the news, whateverthey had felt before. A map shop in theStrand opened specially, and a man in his

Sunday clothes could be seen insidequickly fixing maps of Surrey to the shopwindow.

Going along the Strand to TrafalgarSquare, my brother saw some of the refugeesfrom West Surrey. There was a man with hiswife and two boys and some pieces of fur-niture in a cart, and close behind him cameanother one with five or six well-dressedpeople and some boxes and cases. The facesof the people showed that they were verytired. Some distance behind them was a man

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on an old-fashioned bicycle. He was dirtyand white-faced.

My brother turned towards Victoriastation, and met a number of people likethese. He had an idea that he might see me.He noticed an unusual number of police con-trolling the traffic. Some of the refugees wereexchanging news with the people on thebuses. Most were excited by their strange ex-perience. My brother spoke to several of therefugees but none could give him any newsof Woking, except one man who said that ithad been totally destroyed the previousnight.

At that time there was a strong feelingon the streets that the government should beblamed because they had not destroyed theMartians already.

At about eight o'clock the sound of tir-ing could be heard clearly ail over the southof London. My brother walked from

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Westminster to his room near Regent's Park.He was now very worried about me.

There were one or two carts withrefugees going along Oxford Street, but thenews was spreading so slowly that RegentStreet and Portland Place were full of peopletaking their usual Sunday night walk. Alongthe edge of Regent's Park there were as manyromantic couples as there had ever been. Thenight was warm and still. The sound of gunscontinued from time to time and after mid-night there seemed to be lightning in thesouth.

My brother read and reread the paper,thinking that the worst had happened to me.He was restless, and after supper went outagain. He returned and tried to concentrateon his examination notes, but without suc-cess. He went to bed a little after midnightand was woken in the early hours of Mondaymorning by the sound of knocking on doors,

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feet running in the street, distant drummingand the ringing of bells. For a moment he layin surprise. Then he jumped out of bed andran to the window.

Up and down the street other win-dows were opening and people were shout-ing questions. 'They are coming!' a police-man shouted back, banging on the door. 'TheMartians are coming!' Then he hurried to thenext door.

The sound of drums came from thearmy base in Albany Street and bells wereringing in every church. There was a noise ofdoors opening, and the lights went on inwindow after window in the houses acrossthe street.

A closed carriage came up the street,quickly followed by a number of other fast-moving vehicles. Most of them were going toChalk Farm station, where special trainswere being loaded.

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For a long time my brother stared outof the window in total surprise, watching thepoliceman banging at door after door. Thenhe crossed the room and began to dress, run-ning with each piece of clothing to the win-dow in order to miss nothing of the growingexcitement. And then men selling unusuallyearly newspapers came shouting into thestreet:

'London in danger! Kingston andRichmond defences broken! Terrible killingin the Thames Valley!'

All around him - in the rooms below,in the houses on each side and across theroad, and all across London - people wererubbing their eyes and opening windows tostare out and ask questions, and gettingdressed quickly as the first breath of thecoming storm of fear blew through thestreets. It was the beginning of the great pan-ic. London, which had gone to bed on

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Sunday night not knowing much and caringeven less, was woken in the early hours ofMonday morning to a real sense of danger.

Unable to learn what was happeningfrom his window, my brother went down andout into the street, just as the sky turnedpink with the dawn. Every moment broughtmore and more fast-moving people invehicles.

'Black Smoke!' he heard people shout-ing. 'Black Smoke!' As he stood at the door,not knowing what to do, he saw anothernewspaper-seller approaching him. The manwas running away with the others and sellinghis papers for many times their normal priceas he ran - a strange mixture of profit andpanic.

And from this paper my brother readthat terrible report from the commander ofthe army:

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The Martians are able to send outenormous clouds of black smoke. They havepoisoned our gunners, destroyed Richmond,Kingston and Wimbledon, and are movingslowly towards London, destroyingeverything on the way, It is impossible tostop them. There is no safety from the BlackSmoke except by running away.

That was all, but it was enough. All ofthe six million people who lived in the greatcity were beginning to move. Soon everybodywould be trying to escape to the north. 'BlackSmoke!' the voices shouted. 'Fire!'

The bells of the local church rangloudly, a carelessly-driven cart smashed, andpeople screamed and swore. Yellow lightsmoved around in the houses. And in the skyabove them, the dawn was growing brighter -clear and calm.

He heard people running in therooms, and up and down the stairs behind

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him. His neighbour came to the door. Shewas not properly dressed and her husbandfollowed her, shouting.

As my brother began to realize howserious the situation was, he returnedquickly to his room, put all the money he had- about ten pounds - into his pockets andwent out again into the streets.

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CHAPTER EIGHT

The Black Smoke

While the curate had sat and talked sowildly to me in the flat fields near Walton,and while my brother was watching therefugees pour across Westminster Bridge,the Martians had started to attack again. Asit was reported later, most of them remainedbusy with preparations in the pit on HorsellCommon until nine that night, doingsomething that produced a great amount ofBlack Smoke.

But three certainly came out at abouteight o'clock. They moved forwards slowlyand carefully towards Ripley and Weybridge,and so came in sight of the waiting guns.

These Martians moved in a line, perhaps twokilometres apart. They communicated witheach other by loud howls.

It was this howling and the firing ofthe guns at Ripley and Weybridge that weheard at Walton. The Ripley gunners hadnever been in action before. The guns firedone ineffective shell each, then the soldiersran away. The Martian, without using hisHeat-Ray, walked calmly over their guns.

The Weybridge men, however, werebetter led or were more experienced. Hiddenby a wood, it seems they were not noticed bythe Martian nearest to them. They aimedtheir guns well and fired at a distance ofabout one kilometre.

The shells exploded all round it. and itwas seen to move forwards a few steps, andgo down. The guns were reloaded quickly.The fallen Martian used its voice, and imme-diately a second one answered it, appearing

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over the trees to the south. It seemed thatone of its three legs had been broken. All ofthe second shells missed the Martian on theground and, immediately.

The other Martians used their Heat-Rays on the guns. The shells blew up, thetrees all around the guns caught fire and onlyone or two of the men escaped.

After this it seemed that the threeMartians spoke together, and those whowere watching them report that they stayedabsolutely quiet for the next half-hour. Thefallen Martian crawled slowly out of its ma-chine and began to repair its leg. By aboutnine it had finished, and the machine wasseen to move again.

A few minutes later these three werejoined by four other Martians, each carryinga thick black tube. A similar tube was givento each of the three, and the seven spread out

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at equal distances along a curved linebetween Weybridge and Ripley.

A dozen signal lights went on as soonas they began to move, warning the waitingguns around Esher. At the same time four ofthe fighting-machines, also carrying tubes,crossed the river, and two of them, blackagainst the western sky, came into sight ofmyself and the curate as we hurried alongthe road to the north.

When he saw them, the curate made afrightened noise and began running, but Iknew it was no good running from a Martianand I crawled into some bushes by the sideof the road. He looked back and turned tojoin me.

We heard the distant sound of a gun,then another nearer, and then another. Andthen the Martian closest to us raised his tubeand fired it towards the guns, with a loudbang that made the ground shake. The other

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one did the same. There was no flash, nosmoke, simply a loud noise.

[I was so excited by all this that I com-pletely forgot about my persona] safety andraised my head out of the bushes. As I did, Iheard another bang and something flew fastover my head. I expected at least to seesmoke or fire, but there was only the deep-blue sky above and one single star. There hadbeen no explosion, no answer from the guns.Silence returned, and three minutes passed.

'What's happened?' said the curate,standing up.

'I've no idea,' I answered.

I looked again at the Martian, and sawthat it was now moving east along the riverbank. Every moment I expected a hiddengun to fire at it, but the evening calm was un-broken. The figure of the Martian grew smal-ler as it moved away, and soon it was hidden

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by the mist and the coming night. The curateand I climbed higher up the hill and lookedaround. Towards Sunbury there wassomething dark, like a hill, hiding our view ofthe country further away. Then, far acrossthe river, we saw another, similar hill. Thesehills grew lower and broader as we stared.

I had a sudden thought and looked tothe north, and there I saw a third of thesecloudy black hills.

Everything had become very still. Faraway to the north-east we heard the Mar-tians calling to each other, but our guns weresilent.

At the time we could not understandthese things, but later I learnt the meaning ofthese frightening black hills. Each of theMartians, standing in the great curve I havedescribed, had used the tube he carried tofire a large cylinder over whatever hill, woodor other possible hiding-place for guns might

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be in front of him. Some fired only one ofthese, some two or more. These broke whenthey hit the ground - they did not explode -and let out an enormous amount of thickBlack Smoke. This rose up in a cloud shapedlike a hill, then sank and spread itself slowlyover the surrounding country. And it wasdeath to breathe that smoke.

It was heavy, this smoke, so when itbegan to sink down it behaved like a liquid,running down hills and into the valleys. Andwhere it met with water, or even mist or wetgrass, a chemical action took place and itturned into a powder that sank slowly andmade room for more.

When the smoke had begun to settle,it stayed quite close to the ground so thateven fifteen metres up in the air, on the rootsand upper floors of houses and in high trees,there was a chance of escaping its poison. Aman later told me that he had watched from

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a church roof as the smoke filled his village.For a day and a half he stayed up there, tired,hungry and burnt by the sun before it wassafe to come down. But that was in a villagewhere the Black Smoke was allowed to re-main until it sank into the ground. Usually,when it had done its work, the Martiancleared the air by blowing steam at it.

They did this to the black clouds nearus, as we saw in the starlight from the upperwindow of an empty house. From there wecould see the searchlights on Richmond Hilland Kingston Hill moving in the sky, and atabout eleven the windows shook, and weheard the sound of the large guns that hadbeen put in position there. These continuedfor a quarter of an hour, firing blindly atMartians too far away to be seen. Then thefourth cylinder fell - a bright green star to thenorth-east.

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So, doing it methodically, as a manmight kill insects, the Martians spread thisstrange killing smoke over the country to-wards London. The ends of the curve slowlymoved apart, until at last they formed a lineabout twelve kilometres long.

All through the night their tubesmoved forwards. They never gave the gunsany chance against them. Wherever therewas a possibility of guns being hidden, theyfired a cylinder of Black Smoke at them, andwhere the guns could be seen they used theHeat-Ray.

By midnight the burning trees alongthe slopes of Richmond Hill lit up clouds ofBlack Smoke which covered the whole valleyof the Thames, and went as far as the eyecould see.

They only used the Heat-Ray fromtime to time that night, either because theyhad a limited supply of material for its

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production or because they did not want todestroy the country, but only to defeat itspeople. They certainly succeeded. Sundaynight was the end of organized opposition totheir movement.

After that no group of men wouldstand against them, because this would meanalmost certain death.

You have to imagine what happenedto the gunners towards Esher, waiting sotensely in the evening light, because none ofthem lived to tell the story. You can see thequiet expectation, the officers watching, thegunners waiting with their horses, thegroups of local people standing as near asthey were allowed, the ambulances and hos-pital tents with the burnt and wounded fromWeybridge. Then came the dull noise of theshots that the Martians fired, and the cylin-der flying over the trees and houses andbreaking in the neighbouring fields.

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You can imagine, too, how theywatched as the blackness rose into the sky.The men and horses near it were seen run-ning, screaming, falling down. There wereshouts of fear, the guns suddenly left behind,men on the ground struggling to breathe,and the fast spreading of the dark smoke - asilent black cloud hiding its dead.

Before dawn the Black Smoke waspouring through the streets of Richmond.The government, already falling apart, madeone last effort. It told the people of Londonthat they had to run away.

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CHAPTER NINE

Escape

You can understand the wave of fearthat swept through the greatest city in theworld at dawn on Monday morning. Peopleran to the railway stations, to the boats onthe Thames, and hurried by even street thatwent north or east. By ten o'clock the policewere finding it hard to keep control.

All the railway lines north of theThames had been warned by midnight onSunday, and trains were being filled. Passen-gers were fighting for standing room in thecarriages even at two o'clock in the morning.By three the crowds were so large around thestations that people were being pushed over

and walked on. Guns were fired and kniveswere used. The police who had been sent todirect the traffic, exhausted and angry, werefighting with the people they had been calledout to protect.

And as time passed and the enginedrivers and firemen refused to return to Lon-don, the people turned in growing crowdsaway from the stations and onto the roadsrunning north. By midday a cloud of slowlysinking Black Smoke had moved along theThames, cutting off all escape across thebridges. Another cloud came over Ealing,and surrounded a little island of people onCastle Hill, alive but unable to escape.

After trying unsuccessfully to get ontoa train at Chalk Farm my brother came outinto the road, pushed through the hurryinglines of vehicles, and had the luck to be at thefront of a crowd which was taking bicyclesfrom a shop. He got his hands on one. He put

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a hole in its front tyre while he was pulling itthrough the broken window, and cut hiswrist, but he managed to get away on it. Thefoot of Haverstock Hill was blocked by fallenhorses, but my brother got onto the BelsizeRoad.

So he escaped from the worst of thepanic in London and reached Edgware atabout seven. A kilometre before the villagethe front wheel of the bicycle broke. He left itat the roadside and walked on. People therewere standing on the pavement, looking insurprise at the growing crowds of refugees.He succeeded in getting some food at a pub.

My brother had some friends inChelmsford, and this perhaps made him takethe road that ran to the east. He saw few oth-er refugees until he met the two ladies wholater travelled with him. He arrived just intime to save them.

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He heard their screams and, hurryinground the corner, saw a couple of men tryingto pull them out of the little cart which theyhad been driving, while a third held onto thefrightened horse's head. One of the ladies, ashort woman dressed in white, was scream-ing. The other, younger one was hitting theman who held her arm with a whip.

My brother shouted and ran towardsthem. One of the men turned towards him.Realizing from his face that a fight was un-avoidable, and being a good boxer, my broth-er hit him hard and knocked him back ontothe wheel of the cart.

It was no time for fair fighting, andmy brother quietened him with a kick, thentook hold of the collar of the man who heldthe younger lady's arm. He heard the horsemove forwards and then the third man hithim between the eyes. The man he held

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pulled himself free and ran off down the roadin the direction from which he had come.

Still recovering, my brother foundhimself facing the man who had held thehorse's head, and realized that the cart wasmoving away along the road. The man, wholooked very well built, tried to move incloser, but my brother hit him in the face.Then, realizing that he was alone, he ranalong the road after the cart, with the bigman behind him. The man who had runaway had now stopped and turned and wasfollowing my brother at a greater distance.

Suddenly, my brother fell. The bigman tripped over him, and when my brothergot to his feet he found himself facing both ofthem. He would have had very little chance ifthe younger lady had not very bravelystopped the cart and returned to help him. Itseemed that she had had a gun all the time,but it had been under her seat when they

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were attacked. She fired from six metresaway, narrowly missing my brother. The lessbrave of the two attackers ran away, and theother one followed cursing him. They bothstopped further down the road, where thethird man lay unconscious.

'Take this!' the younger lady said, andshe gave my brother the gun.

'Let's go back to the cart,' said mybrother, wiping the blood from his lip.

They walked to where the lady inwhite was struggling to hold the frightenedhorse. My brother looked back along theroad. The robbers had had enough and weremoving away.

'I'll sit here,' he said, 'if I may,' and hegot up on the front seat. The younger lady satbeside him and made the horse move.

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My brother learned that the two wo-men were the wife and younger sister of adoctor living in Stanmore, The doctor hadheard about the Martians at the railway sta-tion, on his way home from seeing a patient,and had sent them off, promising to followafter telling the neighbours. He said hewould catch up with them by about half-pastfour in the morning, but it was now nearlynine and there was no sign of him.

They stopped and waited for a fewhours, but the doctor did not appear. Theyounger woman suggested that they shouldmove on and catch a train at St Albans. Mybrother, who had seen the situation at thestations in London, thought that was hope-less. He suggested that they should driveacross Essex to the sea at Harwich, and fromthere get right out of the country.

Mrs Elphinstone - that was the nameof the woman in white - refused to listen to

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his argument, and kept calling for 'George',but her sister-in-law was very quiet andsensible and agreed to my brother's sugges-tion. So, intending to cross the Great NorthRoad, they went on towards Barnet. As theygot closer they saw- more and more people,all tired and dirty. They also noticed a longline of dust rising among the houses in frontof them. There was a sharp bend in the road,less than fifty metres from the crossroads.When they came out of it Mrs Elphinstonesaid. 'Good heavens! What is this you aredriving us into'"

My brother stopped the horse.

The main road was a boiling stream ofpeople, a river of human beings rushing tothe north. A great cloud of dust, white underthe strong sun, made everything within fivemetres of the ground grey and unclear. Moredust was raised all the time by the thick

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crowd of men and women, horses andvehicles.

'Go on! Go on!' the voices said.'They're coming.'

It seemed that the whole populationof London was moving north. There werepeople of every class and profession, but theywere all dusty; their skins were dry, their lipsblack and cracked, and all of them lookedvery afraid.

My brother saw Miss Elphinstone cov-ering her eyes.

'Let's go back!' he shouted. 'We cannotcross this.'

They went back a hundred metres inthe direction they had come. As they passedthe bend in the road, my brother saw a manlying not far away. His face was white and

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shining. It was clear that he was near death.The two women sat in silence.

Beyond the bend my brother changedhis mind. He turned to Miss Elphinstone.'We must go that way,' he said, and turnedthe horse round again.

For the second time that day the girlshowed her courage. My brother went intothe crowd and stopped a horse pulling a cart,while she drove in front of it. In another mo-ment they were caught and swept forwardswith the stream of vehicles. My brother, withred whip-marks on his face and hands fromthe cart's driver, got up into the driving seat.

'Point the gun at the man behind,' hesaid, giving it to her,'it he pushes us toohard. No - point it at his horse.'

Then they began to look for a chanceof getting to the right side of the road. But assoon as they were in the stream of vehicles,

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there was little they could do. They weretaken through Barnet and were more than akilometre beyond the centre of the town be-fore they could fight their way across to theother side of the road.

They turned to the east and climbed ahill. There they stopped for the rest of the af-ternoon, because they were all exhausted.

They were beginning to feel veryhungry and the night was cold. In the even-ing many people came hurrying along theroad near their stopping-place, escapingfrom unknown dangers and going in the dir-ection from which my brother had come.

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CHAPTER TEN

The Thunder Child

If the Martians had only wanted de-struction, they could have killed the wholepopulation of London on Monday, as itmoved out slowly through the neighbouringcountryside. It one had flown over Londonthat morning, every road to the north or eastwould have seemed black with movingrefugees, everyone a frightened and ex-hausted human being.

None of the wars of history had suchan effect - six million people, moving withoutweapons or food or any real sense of direc-tion. It was the start of the death of the hu-man race.

And over the blue hills to the south ofthe river, the Martians moved backwardsand forwards, calmly spreading their poisonclouds over one piece of country and thenover another. They destroyed any weaponsthey found and wrecked the railways hereand there. They seemed in no hurry, and didnot go beyond the central part of London allthat day. It is possible that many peoplestayed in their houses through Mondaymorning. It is certain that many died athome, killed by the Black Smoke.

Until about midday there were stillmany ships on the Thames, attracted by theenormous sums of money offered byrefugees. It is said that many who swam outto these ships were pushed away anddrowned. At about one o'clock in the after-noon, the thin remains of a cloud of BlackSmoke was seen coming through London'sBlackfriars Bridge. This caused a terriblepanic and all the ships and boats tried to

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leave at the same time. Many became stucktogether under Tower Bridge, and the sailorshad to fight against people who tried to geton from the riverside. People were actuallyclimbing down onto the boats from thebridge above.

When, an hour later, a Martianwalked down the river, there was nothing butbroken pieces of boats in the water.

I will tell you later about the falling ofthe fifth cylinder. The sixth one fell inWimbledon. My brother, watching beside thewomen in the cart in the field, saw the greenflash of it far beyond the hills. On Tuesdaythe three of them, still intending to get out tosea, drove through the busy country towardsColchester.

That day the refugees began to realizehow much they needed food. As they grewhungry, they began to steal. Farmers defen-ded their animals and crops with guns in

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their hands. A number of people now, likemy brother, were moving to the east, andsome were even so desperate that theyturned back towards London to get food.These were mainly people from the northernsuburbs who had only heard of, but not seen,the Black Smoke.

My brother heard that about half themembers of the government had met inBirmingham, in central England, and thatenormous amounts of explosive were beingprepared to be used in the Midlands. He wastold that the Midland Railway Company hadstarted running trains again, and was takingpeople north from St Albans. There was alsoa notice which said that within twenty-fourhours bread would be given to the hungrypeople. But this did not change their plans,and they continued travelling east. Theyheard no more about the bread than this no-tice, and nobody else did either.

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That night the seventh cylinder fell inLondon, on Primrose Hill.

On Wednesday my brother and thetwo women reached Chelmsford, and there anumber of people, calling themselves theCouncil of Public Safety, took their horse forfood. Although the three of them werehungry themselves, they decided to walk on.

After several more hours on the road,they suddenly saw the sea and the mostamazing crowd of ships of all types that it ispossible to imagine.

After the sailors could no longer comeup the Thames, they went to the towns onthe Essex coast to take people onto theirships. Close to the shore was a large numberof fishing-boats from various countries, andsteamboats from the Thames. Beyond thesewere the larger ships - a great number of coalships, ships carrying goods, and neat white

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and grey passenger ships from Southamptonand Hamburg.

About three kilometres out there wasa warship. This was the Thunder Child, theonly one in sight, but far away to the right acolumn of smoke marked the position of oth-er warships. These waited in a long line,ready for action, right across the mouth ofthe Thames, watching the Martian attack butpowerless to prevent it.

At the sight of the sea Mrs Elphm-stone panicked. She had never been out ofEngland before; she would rather die than befriendless in a foreign country. She had beengrowing increasingly upset and depressedduring the two days' journey. Her great ideawas to return to Stanmore. Things had al-ways been safe in Stanmore. They would findGeorge in Stanmore.

It was very difficult to get her down tothe beach, where after some time my brother

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caught the attention of some men from asteamboat. They sent a small boat andagreed on a price of thirty-six pounds for thethree passengers. The steamboat was going,these men said, to the Belgian port ofOstend.

It was about two o'clock when mybrother got onto it with the two women.There was food available, although the priceswere very high, and the three of them had ameal.

There were already around forty pas-sengers on the boat, some of whom hadspent their last money getting a ticket, butthe captain stayed until five in the afternoon,picking up passengers until the boat wasdangerously crowded. He would probablyhave stayed longer it the sound or guns hadnot begun at about that time in the south.The Thunder Child, too, fired a small gunand sent up a string of flags. Some smoke

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rose as its engines started. At the same time,far away in the south-east, the shapes ofthree warships appeared, beneath clouds ofsmoke.

The little steamboat was already mov-ing out to sea, when a Martian appeared,small and far away, moving along the muddycoast from the south. The captain swore atthe top of his voice at his own delay, and theship increased speed.

It was the first Martian that my broth-er had seen, and he stood, more amazed thanfrightened, as it moved steadily towards theships, walking further and further into thewater. Then, far away, another appeared,stepping over some small trees, and then an-other could be seen even further away, cross-ing the flat mud that lay between the sea andthe sky.

Looking to the north-east, my brothersaw the long line of ships already moving

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away from the approaching terror. One shipwas passing behind another; many wereturning. Steamships whistled and sent upclouds of steam, sails were let out and smallboats rushed here and there. He was so in-terested in this that he did not look out tosea. And then a quick movement of thesteamboat (which had turned to avoid beinghit) threw him off the seat on which he hadbeen standing. There was shouting allaround him. a movement of feet and a cheerthat seemed to be answered.

He got to his feet and saw to the right,less than a hundred metres away, the war-ship cutting through the water at full speed,throwing enormous waves out on either side.

Some water came over the side of thesteamboat and blinded my brother for a mo-ment. When his eyes were clear again, thewarship had passed and was rushing towardsthe land. He looked past it at the Martians

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again and saw the three of them now closetogether, and standing so far out to sea thattheir legs were almost completely underwater.

It seemed to him that they were sur-prised by this new enemy. To their minds,perhaps, no other machine could be as largeas themselves. The Thunder Child fired nogun, but simply sailed at full speed towardsthem. Probably because it did not fire, itmanaged to get quite close. They did notknow what it was. If the ship had fired oneshell, they would have sent it straight to thebottom with the Heat-Ray.

Suddenly, the nearest Martianlowered his tube and fired a cylinder at theThunder Child. This hit its left side and sentup a black cloud that the ship moved awayfrom. To the watchers on the steamboat, lowin the water and with the sun in their eyes, it

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seemed that the warship was already amongthe Martians.

They saw the three thin figures separ-ating and rising out of the water as theymoved back towards the shore, and one ofthem raised the box that fired his Heat-Ray.He held it pointing down, and a cloud ofsteam came up from the water as it hit theship.

A flame rose up through the steamand then the Martian began to fall over. Inanother moment it had hit the sea, and agreat amount of water and steam flew highin the air. The guns of the Thunder Childwere heard going off one after another, andone shot hit the water close by thesteamboat.

No one worried about that very much.As the Martian fell, the captain shouted andall the crowded passengers at the back of thesteamer joined in. And then he shouted

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again. Because rushing out beyond thesmoke and steam came something long andblack with flames coming from it.

The warship could stilt turn and itsengines worked. It went straight towards asecond Martian, and was within a hundredmetres of it when the Heat-Rav hit it. Therewas a violent bang, a blinding flash and thewarship blew up. The Martian was thrownback by the violence of the explosion, and inanother moment the burning wreckage, stillmoving forwards, had broken the Martianlike something made of wood. My brothershouted. A boiling cloud of steam hideverything again.

'Two!' shouted the captain.

Everyone was shouting and they couldhear shouts and cheers from the other shipsand the boats. The steam stayed in the air formany minutes, hiding the third Martian andthe coast. All this time the steamboat was

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moving steadily out to sea and away from thefight, and when at last the steam cleared, theblack cloud got in the way and they could seenothing of either the Thunder Child or thethird Martian. But the other warships werenow quite close and moving in towards theshore.

The little ship my brother was on con-tinued to move out to sea, and the warshipsbecame smaller in the distance.

Then suddenly, out of the golden sun-set, came the sound of guns and the sight ofblack shadows moving. Everyone moved tothe side of the steamboat and looked to thewest, but smoke rose and blocked the sun.Nothing could be seen clearly. The ship trav-elled on while the passengers wondered.

The sun sank into grey clouds, the skydarkened and an evening star came intosight. Then the captain cried out and poin-ted. Something rushed up into the sky,

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something flat and broad and very large, andflew in a great curve. It grew smaller, sankslowly and disappeared again into the night.And as it flew, it rained down darkness onthe land.

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CHAPTER ELEVEN

Earth Under the Martians

In the last two chapters I have movedaway from my own adventures to tell of theexperiences of my brother. All through thistime I and the curate had been hiding in theempty house where we went to escape theBlack Smoke. We stayed there all Sundaynight and all the next day - the day of thepanic - in a little island of daylight, cut off bythe Black Smoke from the rest of the world.We could only wait and be bored duringthose two days.

I was very worried about my wife. Ithought of her in Leatherhead, frightened, indanger, thinking of me already as a dead

man. I knew my cousin was brave enough forany emergency, but he was not the sort ofman to understand danger quickly and dosomething about it. These worries stayed onmy mind and I grew very tired of the curate'sconstant talking. After trying and failing tokeep him quiet, I kept away from him in oth-er rooms in the house.

We were surrounded by the BlackSmoke all that day and the following morn-ing. There were signs of people in the nexthouse on Sunday evening - a face at a win-dow and moving lights, and later the closingof a door. But I do not know who thesepeople were or what happened to them. Wesaw nothing of them the next day. The BlackSmoke moved slowly towards the river allthrough Monday morning, slowly gettingnearer and nearer to us, coming at last alongthe road outside the house that hid us.

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A Martian walked across the fields atabout midday, killing the stuff with steam.When we looked out I saw the countrycovered with black dust, but we were nolonger trapped. As soon as I saw that escapewas possible, my dream of action returned.But the curate did not want to leave.

'We are safe here - safe here,' herepeated.

I decided to leave him. The soldierhad taught me well and I looked for food anddrink and a spare shirt to take with me.When it was clear to the curate that I inten-ded to go alone, he suddenly decided tocome. Everything was quiet through the af-ternoon and we started at about five o'clockalong the blackened road to Sunbury.

Here and there along the road, and inSunbury itself, were dead bodies of horses aswell as men, turned-over carts and luggage,all covered thickly with black dust. As we

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passed other small towns, we found themunaffected by either Heat-Ray or BlackSmoke, and there were some people alive, al-though none could give us news. Here too,there were signs of quick departure. I re-member a pile of three broken bicycles,flattened by the wheels of passing carts. Wecrossed Richmond Bridge at about half-pasteight. Once again, on the Surrey side, therewas black dust that had once been smoke,and some dead bodies - a number of themnear the approach to the station.

Then suddenly, as we walked north,we saw some people running. The top of aMartian fighting-machine came into sightover the house tops, less than a hundredmetres away from us. We stood shocked byour danger, and if the Martian had beenlooking down we would have died immedi-ately. We were too frightened to go on andhid in a hut in a garden. There the curate lay

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down, crying silently and refusing to moveagain.

But my fixed idea of reaching Leather-head would not let me rest, and in the even-ing I went out again. I left the curate in thehut, but he came hurrying after me.

That second start was the most foolishthing I ever did. It was obvious that the Mar-tians were all around us. As soon as the cur-ate caught up with me, we saw either thefighting-machine we had seen before or an-other one, far away across the fields. Four orfive little black figures hurried in front of it,and in a moment it became obvious that thisMartian was hunting them. In three steps itwas among them, and they ran away in alldirections. It did not use its Heat-Ray, butpicked them up one by one and threw theminto a large metal box which stuck out be-hind it.

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For the first time, I realized that per-haps the Martians had another purpose,apart from destroying human beings. Westood for a moment in terror, then ranthrough a gate behind us into a garden andhid in a corner until the stars were out.

It was nearly eleven o'clock before wefelt brave enough to go out again. We keptaway from the road, moving through gardensand some areas full of trees. When we got toSheen, the curate said that he felt unwell andwe decided to try one of the houses.

The one we chose was in a walledgarden, and in the kitchen we found somefood. There were two loaves of bread, a rawsteak and some cooked meat. Under a shelfwe found some bottled beer, and there weretwo bags of green beans and some lettuce. Ina cupboard there was some tinned soup andfish and two tins of cake. I am listing these

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exactly because we lived on this food for thenext fortnight.

We sat in the kitchen in the dark andhad a meal of cold food, and just before mid-night there was a blinding flash of green lightfollowed by the loudest bang I have everheard. There was a crash of glass, the soundof falling walls, and then the ceiling fell downin pieces on our heads. I was knocked acrossthe floor and my head hit the oven. I laythere unconscious for a long time, the curatetold me, and when I woke up he was wipingmy face with a wet handkerchief.

For some time I could not rememberwhat had happened.

'Are you better?' he asked.

At last I answered him. I sat up.

'Don't move,' he said. 'The floor iscovered with broken plates. You can't

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possibly move without making a noise, and Ithink they are outside.'

We both sat in complete silence, so wecould hardly hear each other breathing. Out-side and very near was the noise from a ma-chine, which started and stopped.

'What is it?' I asked.

'A Martian!' said the curate.

Our situation was so strange and un-believable that for three or four hours, untilthe dawn came, we hardly moved. And thenthe light came, not through the window,which was filled with earth from the garden,but through a small hole that had beenknocked in the wall. Through this we saw thebody of a Martian, watching a cylinder whichwas still red with heat. When we saw that, wemoved as slowly as possible out of the greylight of the kitchen and into the darkness ofthe hall.

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Suddenly, the truth came to me.

'The fifth cylinder!' I whispered. 'It'shit this house and buried us under the ruins!'

For a time the curate was silent, thenhe said, 'God help us!'

For hours we lay there in the dark-ness, while from outside came the sounds ofhammering and then, after some time, asound like an engine. Towards the end of theday I found that I was very hungry. I told thecurate that I was going to look for food, andmoved back into the kitchen again. He didnot answer, but as soon as I began eating Iheard him crawling towards me.

After eating we went back to the hall,and I fell asleep. When I woke up and lookedaround I was alone. I crawled back into thekitchen and saw him lying down and lookingout of the hole at the Martians.

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The noises still continued. Throughthe hole I could see the top of a tree, turnedto gold by the evening sun. I stepped care-fully through the broken plates that coveredthe floor.

I touched the curate's leg, and hemoved so suddenly that some bricks sliddown outside with a loud crash. I took holdof his arm, afraid that he might cry out, andfor a long time we remained still. Then Iraised my head cautiously to see what hadhappened. The falling bricks had left anotherhole in the wall of the building. Through thisI was able to see into what had been, only theprevious night, a quiet road. Things hadchanged greatly.

The fifth cylinder had not fallen onour house, but on top of the house next door.The building had completely disappeared.The cylinder had gone right through it andmade a large hole in the ground, much larger

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than the pit I had looked into in Woking. Theearth all around had been thrown up overthe neighbouring houses. Our house hadfallen backwards. The front part of it hadbeen destroyed completely. By chance thekitchen had escaped and now stood buriedunder earth and bricks, covered on everyside except towards the cylinder. We now layon the very edge of the enormous round pitthat the Martians were making.

The cylinder was already open in thecentre of the pit, and on the furthest side oneof the great fighting-machines, empty now,stood tall and unmoving against the eveningsky. However, at first I hardly noticed the pitand the cylinder, because of the strange shin-ing machine that I saw working there, andthe odd creatures that were crawling slowlyand painfully across the earth near it.

This machine was shaped like a spiderwith five legs and a great number of

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tentacles. With these it was taking pieces ofmetal out of the cylinder and laying them onthe earth behind it. It was doing this soquickly and perfectly that I did not see it as amachine at first. The fighting-machines wereextraordinary, but could not compare to thisbuilding-machine. People who have neverseen these things can hardly understand howalive they looked.

I had seen the Martians themselvesonce before, but only for a short time, andthen the sight had almost made me sick.Now I was more used to them, and was in agood position with a lot of time to studythem properly. They were the strangestcreatures it is possible to imagine. They hadlarge, round bodies - or perhaps heads -about a metre and a half across. Each bodyhad a face in front of it. This face had nonose - I do not think they had any sense ofsmell - but it had a pair of very large, darkeyes, and just beneath these a kind of v-

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shaped mouth. In the back of the head, orbody - I do not really know what to call it -there was a flat surface like the skin of adrum, which we now know worked as an ear.Around the mouth were sixteen thin, whip-like tentacles, arranged in two groups ofeight. These worked like hands.

As I watched the Martians, theyseemed to be trying to raise themselves onthe hands, but with their increased weight onEarth this was impossible. It may be that onMars they moved around on them quiteeasily.

Most of the space inside their bodieswas taken by the brain. Besides this they hada heart, but they had no stomach becausethey did not eat. Instead, they took freshblood from living creatures and used a tubeto put it straight into their own bodies. Thisidea seems horrible to us, but at the sametime I think we should remember how

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disgusting our meat-eating habits wouldseem to an intelligent rabbit.

In three other ways their bodies weredifferent from ours. They did not sleep, andbecause they had very simple bodies theynever seemed to get tired. On Earth theycould not move without effort, but even atthe end of their time here they remained act-ive. In twenty-four hours they did twenty-four hours of work.

Also, strange as it may seem, the Mar-tians were absolutely without sex. A youngMartian, we now know, was born on Earthduring the war, and it was found growing outof the body of its parent, just like someyoung plants.

A final difference seems very unim-portant. Germs, which cause so much dis-ease and pain on Earth, have either never ap-peared on Mars or they got rid of them a longtime ago.

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It is generally supposed that the Mar-tians communicated by sounds and by mov-ing their arms. But no human being saw asmuch of them as I did and lived to tell thestory, and I can say that I have seen four, fiveor six of them slowly performing the mostdifficult work without sound or any othersignal. I know a little of psychology and I amabsolutely certain that they exchangedthoughts.

While I was still watching their slowmovements in the sunlight, the curate pulledviolently at my arm. I turned and saw an un-happy face and silent, moving lips. Hewanted to see what was happening. The holewas only big enough for one of us to lookthrough, so I had to stop watching them for atime while he had his chance.

When I looked again, the busybuilding-machine had already put togetherseveral of the pieces of metal from inside the

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cylinder into a shape that was very like itsown. Down on the left a busy little digging-machine could be seen, sending out smallclouds of green smoke and working its wayround the pit, making it bigger and piling theearth up over the top. This was what hadcaused the regular heating noise. It whistledas it worked, and no Martian seemed to becontrolling it.

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CHAPTER TWELVE

In the Ruined House

The arrival of a second fighting-ma-chine made us move back out of the kitcheninto the hall, because we were afraid thatfrom that height the Martian might see usthrough the hole. At a later date we began tofeel less in danger of being seen because thesunlight outside was very bright, but at firstanything approaching the house drove usback into the hall in fear. However, despitethe danger, we could not prevent ourselvesfrom going back to look again and again. Inour desire to watch, we even fought each oth-er within a few centimetres of being seen.

We were very different people withdifferent habits of thought and action, andthose differences increased because we wereliving together in this dangerous place. Thecurate talked endlessly, and this preventedme from forming a plan of action.

He had no self-control at all andsometimes cried for hours at a time. He atemore than I did, and did not seem to under-stand that we had to stay in the house untilthe Martians had finished their work if wewanted to stay alive. I tried threatening him,and in the end I hit him. That worked forsome time.

The curate was watching through thehole when the first men were brought there.I was sitting near him, listening hard. Hemade a sudden movement backwards andfor a moment I shared his panic. Then curi-osity gave me courage and I got up, steppedacross him and went to the hole.

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At first I could see no reason for hisbehaviour. The night was coming but theMartians had lights on their machines. Thewhole scene was one of moving lights andshadows, difficult for the eyes. The Martiansat the bottom of the pit could no longer beseen, because the earth around it was now sohigh. A fighting- machine stood in the cornerof the pit. Then, through the noise of the ma-chinery, came the faint sound of humanvoices.

I watched the fighting-machineclosely, sure for the first time that it did actu-ally contain a Martian. I could see the oilyshine of its skin and the brightness of itseyes. And suddenly I heard a shout and saw along tentacle reaching over the shoulder ofthe machine to the little cage on its back.Then something - something struggling viol-ently - was lifted high against the sky andbrought down again. I saw that it was a man.He was fat, red- faced, middle-aged, well-

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dressed; perhaps earlier he had been import-ant. He disappeared behind the pile of earthand for a moment there was silence. Then weheard him scream and the sound of long andcheerful calling from the Martians.

I moved away from the hole, put myhands over my ears and ran into the hall. Thecurate, who had been lying silently with hisarms over his head, looked up as I passed,cried out quite loudly and came runningafter me.

That night, as we hid in the hall, I felta great need to do something but could thinkof no plan of escape. But afterwards, duringthe second day, I was able to consider ourposition clearly. The curate, I found, wasquite unable to discuss anything. The deathof the man outside had taken away all hispowers of thought. He had almost sunk tothe level of an animal. I began to think that,although our position was terrible, there was

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no reason yet to give up hope. The Martiansmight only stay in this pit for a short time,then move on. Or if they stayed permanently,they might not think it necessary to watch itall the time.

On the third day, if I remember cor-rectly, I saw a boy killed. It was the only oc-casion on which I actually saw the Martiansfeed. After that I avoided the hole in the wallfor most of a day.

The Martians had made such an im-pression on me that at first I did not think Icould escape. I did not think that they couldbe defeated by human beings. But on thefourth or fifth night I heard a sound likeheavy guns.

It was very late and the moon wasshining brightly. The Martians had takenaway the digging-machine and apart fromthe fighting-machine on the far side of thepit and a building- machine that was busy

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out of my sight, the pit was empty. I heard adog, and that familiar sound made me listen.Then I heard a noise exactly like the sound ofbig guns. I heard six bangs and then sixmore. And that was all.

On the sixth day of our imprisonmentI looked out for the last time, and I soonfound myself alone. Instead of staying closeand trying to move me away from the pit, thecurate had gone back into the hall. I followedhim quickly and quietly and in the darkness Iheard him drinking. I put my hand out andmy fingers closed around a bottle of wine.

For a few minutes we fought together.The bottle hit the floor and broke, and Istopped fighting and got up. We stoodbreathing heavily, staring at each other. Inthe end I moved between him and the foodand told him that I was going to take control.

I divided the food in the cupboard in-to separate amounts to last us ten days. I

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would not let him eat any more that day. Inthe afternoon he tried to get some food. I hadbeen asleep but in a moment I was awake.All day and all night we sat face to face. I wastired but would not give up, and he cried andcomplained about his immediate hunger.The rest of the time he just talked to himself,and I began to realize that he had gone com-pletely mad.

Through the eighth and ninth days hisvoice grew louder. He threatened me, beggedme, and this was mixed with a great deal oftalk about his service to God. Then he sleptfor some time and began again with evenmore strength, so loudly that I had to try tostop him.

'Be still!' I demanded.

He rose to his knees. 'I have been stilltoo long,' he said, loud enough for the Mar-tians to hear, 'and now I must tell the world.

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This place will be destroyed because of thebad things we have done!'

'Shut up!' I said, getting to my feet.'Please -'

'No!' he shouted, at the top of hisvoice. 'Speak! The word of God is with me!'

In three steps he was at the door lead-ing to the kitchen.

I went after him, picking up the coal-hammer as I entered the room. Before hewas half-way across the floor, I was right be-hind him. I swung the hammer and hit himon the back of the head. He fell forwards andlay flat on the floor. I stepped over him andstood there breathing hard. He did not move.

Suddenly, I heard a noise outside andthe hole in the wall became dark. I looked upand saw the lower part of a building- ma-chine coming slowly across it. Then, through

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a sort of glass plate, I saw the large, darkeyes of a Martian, and one of its tentacles ap-peared, moving in through the hole.

I turned, tripped over the curate andstopped at the hall door. The tentacle wasnow two metres or more into the room, mov-ing backwards and forwards with strange,sudden movements. I forced myself back in-to the hall. I shook violently and could hardlystand straight. Had the Martian seen me?What was it doing now?

Then I heard the sound of a heavybody - I knew whose it was - being draggedacross the floor of the kitchen towards theopening. I could not stop myself - I moved tothe door and looked back into the kitchen. Inthe light from outside, I saw the Martianstudying the curate's head. I thought at oncethat it would know that I was there from themark of the hammer.

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I shut the door and moved back intothe hall and tried to hide myself in thecorner. Then I heard a faint metallic soundas the tentacle moved back across the kit-chen floor. I thought that it might not belong enough to reach me. I prayed. Then Iheard it touching the handle. It had foundthe door. The Martians understood doors!

It moved the handle up and down fora moment, and then the door opened.

In the darkness I could just see thething moving towards me and examining thewall and the floor. It was like a black snakemoving its head from side to side.

Once, even, it touched my boot. I al-most screamed, but I bit my hand. For a timeit did not move, then it moved back throughthe door.

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I heard it go into the food cupboard, Itmoved the tins and a bottle broke. Thenthere was silence.

Had it gone?

At last I decided that it had.

The tentacle did not come into the hallagain, but I lay all the tenth day in the dark-ness, too frightened even to move for a drink.I did not enter the kitchen again for twodays. When at last I did, I found that thefood cupboard was now empty. The Martianshad taken everything. On that day and thenext I had no food and nothing to drink.

On the twelfth day my thirst was sobad that I went into the kitchen and used thenoisy rainwater pump that stood by the sink.I managed to get a couple of glasses of dirtywater. This made me feel a lot better, and thenoise of the pump did not bring a tentacle inthrough the opening.

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On the thirteenth day I drank somemore water, and thought of impossible plansof escape. Whenever I slept, I dreamed eitherof the death of the curate or of wonderfuldinners.

Then, early on the fifteenth day, Iheard the sound of a dog outside. Thisgreatly surprised me. I went into the kitchenand saw its head looking in through the hole.

I thought that if I could attract it inquietly, I would be able, perhaps, to kill andeat it. It would be a good idea to kill it any-way, in case its actions attracted the atten-tion of the Martians.

I moved forwards, saying, 'Good dog!'very softly, but it suddenly pulled his headback and disappeared.

I listened. I heard the sound of somebirds but that was all.

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For a long time I lay close to the open-ing until, encouraged by the silence, I lookedout.

Except in the corner, where a numberof birds fought over some dead bodies, therewas not a living thing in the pit.

I stared around, hardly believing myeyes. All the machinery had gone. Slowly Imade the opening larger and pushed myselfthrough it. I could see in every direction ex-cept behind me and there were no Martiansin sight.

I hesitated, then with a rush of des-perate courage, and with my heart beatingviolently, I climbed to the top of the pile ofearth in which I had been buried.

When I had last seen this part ofSheen, it had been a street of comfortablewhite and red houses. Now the neighbouringones had all been destroyed. Far away I saw

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a thin cat walking along a wall, but there wasno sign of people.

After my time in the darkness, the dayseemed very bright, the sky was shining blue.A gentle wind moved the flowers. And oh!the sweetness of the air.

For some time I stood there, not wor-rying about my safety. At that moment, I feltthe beginning of something that soon grewquite clear in my mind, that worried me formany days. I was not the master now, but ananimal among the animals, under the powerof the Martians. The rule of man had ended.

But as soon as this feeling came, it leftme, and my main problem became hunger. Iclimbed a wall and fell into a neighbouringgarden. Here I found some young vegetables,which I took. Then I started walking towardsthe river. There were two ideas in my mind -to get more food and to move, as quickly aspossible, away from the pit.

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When I reached the Thames, I drankas much water as I could. I then walked up ahill to Putney Common.

Here I moved through areas whichhad been totally destroyed and others whichwere totally undamaged; houses with theircurtains and their doors closed. I went into acouple of the houses, looking for food, but allof it had already been taken. I lay for the restof the day in a garden, too exhausted to goon.

All this time I saw no human beingsand no signs of the Martians. I saw a coupleof hungry-looking dogs, but they hurriedaway from me. I also saw some humanbones, with all the flesh eaten off. After sun-set I struggled on along the road towardsPutney, and in a garden I found some pota-toes, enough to stop my hunger. From thereI looked down on Putney and the river.

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The view of blackened trees andempty ruined buildings made me very un-happy. And over all - silence. It filled mewith terror to think how quickly that greatchange had come. Near the top of PutneyHill I came across more human bones, eatenclean and left lying around. The Martians, itseemed, had killed and eaten everyonearound there, except for a few lucky ones likemyself. They were now looking for foodsomewhere else. Perhaps even now theywere destroying Berlin or Paris, or maybethey were moving north.

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Man on Putney Hill

I spent that night in the pub thatstands on the top of Putney Hill, sleeping ina made bed for the first time since I had runaway to Leatherhead. I broke into the house- and afterwards found that the front doorwas unlocked. I searched every room forfood until, when I was ready to give up, Ifound some bread and two tins of fruit in oneof the bedrooms. The place had already beensearched and emptied. Later, in the bar, Ifound some sandwiches that no one had no-ticed. I ate some of these and put the rest inmy pockets.

I lit no lamps, afraid that a Martianmight come through that part of Londonlooking for food in the night. Before I went tobed I was very restless and went from win-dow to window, looking out for some sign ofthem. I slept little. As I lay in bed, I foundmyself thinking of the killing of the curate.

I had no regrets about this, but in thestillness of the night, with a sense that Godwas near, I thought again of every part of ourconversation from the time we had first met.We had been unable to co-operate. If I hadknown, I would have left him at Walton, butI had not been able to see ahead. Nobodysaw me kill him, but I have described it hereand the reader can make a judgement.

The morning was bright and fine andthere were little golden clouds in the easternsky. In the road that runs from the top ofPutney Hill to Wimbledon many things hadbeen left behind by the crowds that ran

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towards London on the Sunday night afterthe fighting began. There was a little two-wheeled cart with a broken wheel. It had thename of a shop written on it. There was a hatlying in the mud, and a lot of broken glasswith blood on it.

I moved slowly because I was verytired and my plans were uncertain. I had anidea of going to Leatherhead, although Iknew there was little chance of finding mywife there. Certainly, unless they had beenkilled, she and my cousins would have runaway.

I came to the edge of WimbledonCommon and stood there, under cover ofsome trees and bushes. It stretched far andwide and I hesitated on the edge of that largeopen space. Soon I had an odd feeling of be-ing watched and, turning suddenly, I sawsomething hiding in some of the bushes. Itook a step towards it, and it rose up and

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became a man armed with a sword. I ap-proached him slowly. He stood silently,watching me but not moving.

As I came nearer, I saw that he wasdressed in clothes as dusty and dirty as myown. His black hair fell over his eyes, and hisface was dark and dirty and thin, so at first Idid not recognize him.

'Stop!' he cried, when I was within tenmetres of him, and I stopped. 'Where haveyou come from?' he said.

I thought, watching him.

'I have come from Sheen,' I said. 'Iwas buried near the pit the Martians madearound their cylinder. I have escaped.'

'There is no food around here,' hesaid. 'This is my country: all this hill down tothe river and up to the edge of the common.

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There is only food for one. Which way areyou going?'

'I don't know,' I said.

He looked at me uncertainly, then hisexpression suddenly changed. He pointed atme.

'It's you,' he said,'- the man fromWoking. And you weren't killed atWeybridge?'

I recognized him at the same moment.

'You're the soldier who came into mygarden.'

'What luck!' he said. 'We are luckyones!'

He put out a hand and I took it.

'I hid,' he said. 'But they didn't killeveryone. And after they went away, I went

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towards Walton across the fields. But - it'sonly been sixteen days and your hair is grey.'He looked over his shoulder suddenly. 'Onlya bird,' he said. 'This is a bit open. Let's crawlunder those bushes and talk.'

'Have you seen any Martians?' Iasked. 'Since I got out -'

'They've gone away across London,' hesaid. 'I guess they've got a bigger camp there.The night before last I saw some lights up inthe air. I believe they've built a flying-ma-chine and are learning to fly'

I stopped, on hands and knees, be-cause we had come to the bushes.

'Fly!'

'Yes,' he said, 'fly!'

I crawled into an open space in thebushes and sat down.

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'If they manage to do that, we haven'tgot a chance,' I said. 'They will simply goround the world.'

'They will. But it will make thingseasier around here. And besides ...' he lookedat me. 'Don't you believe that we're beaten? Ido.'

I stared. Strange as it may seem, I hadnot thought of things this way, although itwas perfectly obvious. I had still held ontosome hope.

'It's finished,' he said. 'They've lostone - just one. And they've taken over thecapital of the most powerful country in theworld. The death of that one at Weybridgewas an accident. And these are only the firstones. They keep coming. These green stars -I've seen none for five or six days, but I've nodoubt they're falling somewhere every night.There's nothing we can do. We're beaten!'

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I did not answer. I sat staring in frontof me, trying without success to find a way ofarguing against him. Suddenly, I re-membered the night I had watched throughthe telescope.

'After the tenth shot they fired nomore - at least until the first cylinder came.'

'How do you know?' said the soldier. Iexplained. 'Something wrong with the gun?'he said. 'But even it there is, they'll get itright again.'

We sat looking at each other.

'And what will they do with us?' I said.

'That's what I've been thinking.' hesaid. 'It seems to me that at the moment theycatch us when they want food. But they won'tkeep doing that. As soon as they've destroyedall our guns and ships and railways, they'llbegin to catch us one by one, picking the best

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and keeping us in cages and things. Theyhaven't begun on us yet. Don't you see that?'

'Not begun!' I cried.

'Not begun. And instead of rushingaround blindly, we've got to change to suitthe new situation. That's how I see it.'

'But if that's true,' I said, 'what is thereto live for?'

'There won't be anything importantfor a million years or more - no music, no artand no nice little visits to restaurants. No en-tertainment. But men like me are going to goon living - so human beings can continue.And if I'm not mistaken, you'll show howstrong you are too. We aren't going to bekilled. And I don't intend to be caught,either, and caged and fattened. Ugh!'

'You don't mean -'

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'I do. I'm going on. Under their feet.I've thought about it. We've got to learnwhile we've got a chance. And we've got tolive and stay independent while we learn.That's what has to be done.'

I stared, surprised and greatly affectedby the man's courage.

'Good God!' I said. 'You are a braveman.' And suddenly I held his hand. 'Go on,'I said.

'Well, people who intend to escapethem must get ready. I'm getting ready. Butnot all of us can live like animals, and that'show we'll have to live. That's why I watchedyou. I had my doubts. You're thinner. I didn'tknow that it was you, you see. All these - thesort of people that lived in these houses, allthose little office workers that used to livedown that way - they'd be no good. Theyhaven't any spirit in them - no proud dreamsand no great ideas. They just used to rush off

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to work - I've seen hundreds of them, with abit of breakfast in their hand, running tocatch their train, frightened they'd be sackedif they didn't. Well, the Martians will be agood thing for them. Nice big cages, fatten-ing food, no worry. After a week or two run-ning around the fields on empty stomachsthey'll come and be caught quite happily.' Hepaused. 'The Martians will probably makepets of some of them; train them to do tricks- who knows? And some, maybe, they willtrain to hunt us.'

'No,' I cried, 'that's impossible! No hu-man being -'

'What's the good of going on with suchlies?' said the soldier. 'There are men whowould do it cheerfully. What nonsense topretend there aren't!'

And I realized that I agreed with him.

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I sat and thought about these things.It was interesting that he, an ordinary sol-dier, seemed to have a much better under-standing of the situation than I, a profession-al writer.

'What plans do you have?' I said.

He hesitated.

'Well, we have to invent a life wherepeople can live and have children, and besafe enough to bring the children up. Yes -wait a bit, and I'll make it clearer what Ithink ought to be done. The ones the Mar-tians capture will be like farm animals; in afew years they'll be big, beautiful, stupid -rubbish. But we who stay free risk turninginto wild animals.

'You see, I intend to live underground.I've been thinking about the drains. UnderLondon there are hundreds of kilometres ofthem. And we can dig passages between the

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drains and buildings. And then there are therailways, where they go underground. Youbegin to see? And we'll get some people to-gether - strong, clean-minded men. We'renot going to accept any rubbish that comesin. Weak ones go out again.'

'As you intended me to go?'

'Well - I discussed it, didn't I?

'We won't argue about that. Go on.'

'The people who stay will obey orders.We want strong, good women too - mothersand teachers. No lazy ones with rolling eyes.We can't have any weak or silly ones. Life isreal again, and the useless and bad ones haveto die. They ought to die. They ought to bewilling to die. It would be wrong of them tolive and weaken the others.

'But it's no good just staying alive.That's just living like rats. We have to save

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our knowledge, and add to it. That's whymen like you are needed. We must makegreat safe places deep underground, and getall the books we can; not novels and poetry,but ideas, science books. We must go to theBritish Museum and choose the best booksin it. Especially, we must keep our science -learn more.'

The soldier paused and laid a brownhand on my arm.

'In fact, it may not be so difficult tolearn how their fighting- machines work.Think of four or five of them with men in-side, firing Heat-Rays back at the Martians!'

For some time the imagination of thesoldier, and the confidence and courage heshowed, persuaded me completely. I believedin his idea of the future and in the possibilityof his plans. We talked like this through theearly morning, and later came out of thebushes. After checking the sky for Martians,

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we hurried quickly to the house on PutneyHill where he had his hiding-place.

There I saw the work he had spent aweek on. It was a passage about ten metreslong, designed to reach the main drain onPutney Hill. For the first time I began tothink that there was some distance betweenhis dreams and his powers, because I coulddig a hole like this in a day. But I believed inhim enough to work with him all that morn-ing at his digging.

As we worked I thought about the job,and soon some doubts began to come intomy mind. I thought about the distance to thedrain and the chances of missing it com-pletely. I also felt that it would be easier toget into the drain and dig back towards thehouse. And just as I was beginning to facethese things, the soldier stopped digging andlooked at me.

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'We're working well,' he said. 'Let'sstop. I think it's time we looked around fromthe top of the house.'

I wanted to continue, but a thoughtcame to me.

'Why were you walking around on thecommon,' I asked, 'instead of being here?'

'Taking the air,' he said. 'It's safer bynight.'

'But the work?'

'Oh, one can't always work,' he said,and in a flash I understood the man clearly.

We went together to the roof andstood on a ladder, looking out of the roofdoor. No Martians could be seen. We wentback down into the house. Neither of uswanted to start digging again, and when hesuggested a meal I was quite happy to agree.

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Afterwards we drank wine and playedcards. He won most of the games, and whenwe did not want to play any more I wentback up on the roof.

I stayed there for a long time, lookingnorth over the city. I began to feel that I hadfailed my wife, and decided to leave thisdreamer of great things and to go on intoLondon. There, it seemed to me, I had thebest chance of learning what the Martiansand human beings were doing.for death

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Dead London

After I had said goodbye to the sol-dier, I went down the hill, along the HighStreet and across the bridge to Fulham.There was black dust on the road after thebridge, and it grew thicker in Fulham. Thestreets were horribly quiet. I found some oldbread in a baker's shop there. After that, thestreets became clear of powder and I passedsome white houses which were on fire. Thenoise of burning was actually better thansilence.

Beyond Fulham the streets were quietagain. Here I found more black powder andsome dead bodies. I saw about ten along

Fulham Road. They had been dead for manydays, so I hurried quickly past them. Theblack powder covered them and softenedtheir shapes. One or two had been partlyeaten by dogs.

Where there was no black powder, itwas curiously like Sunday in the financialarea of London, with the closed shops, thehouses locked up and the curtains closed. Insome places thieves had been at work, butusually only at the food and wine shops. Ajeweller's window had been broken open inone place, but the thief had clearly beenchased away, because a number of goldchains and a watch were lying on the pave-ment. I did not take the trouble to touchthem. Further down the road, a woman intorn clothes was sitting on a doorstep. Thehand that hung over her knee was cut, andblood had fallen onto her dirty brown dress.A broken bottle of wine had formed a pool on

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the pavement. She seemed asleep, but shewas dead.

The silence grew greater. But it wasnot the stillness of death - it was the stillnessof expectation. At any time the destructionthat had already happened to the north-western borders of the city, that had des-troyed Ealing, might strike among thesehouses and leave them smoking ruins. It wasan empty city waiting for death...

In South Kensington the streets wereclear of dead people and of black powder,and near there I first heard the howling. Itstarted very quietly. It was a sad movementbetween two notes, 'Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla,' con-tinuing without stopping. When I passedstreets that ran to the north it grew louder,and then houses and buildings seemed to cutit off again. It came most loudly down Exhib-ition Road. I stopped, staring towards Kens-ington Gardens.

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It seemed that all the empty houseshad found a voice for their fear andloneliness.

'Ulla, ulla, ulla,' cried that inhumannote - great waves of sound sweeping downthe broad, sunlit road, between the tall build-ings on each side. I turned to the north, to-wards the iron gates of Hyde Park. The voicegrew stronger and stronger, although I couldsee nothing above the roof-tops on the northside of the park except some smoke to thenorth-west.

'Ulla, ulla, ulla,' cried the voice, com-ing, it seemed to me, from the districtaround Regent's Park. The howl affected mymind, and my mood changed. I also foundthat I was very tired, and hungry and thirstyagain.

It was already past midday. Why was Iwalking alone in this city of the dead? Ithought of old friends that I had forgotten

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for years. I thought of the poisons in thechemists' shops, the bottles in the wineshops .. .

I came into Oxford Street by MarbleArch, and here again were black powder andseveral bodies. After a lot of trouble, I man-aged to break into a pub and find some foodand drink. I was tired after eating and wentinto the room behind the bar and slept on ablack leather sofa that I found there.

I awoke to find that sad howling stillin my ears: 'Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla,' It wasnow getting dark, and after I had found somebread and cheese in the bar I walked onthrough the silent squares to Baker Streetand so came at last to Regents Park. And as Icame out of the top of Baker Street, I saw faraway over the trees, in the clearness of thesunset, the top of the Martian fighting-ma-chine from winch this howling came. I wasnot frightened. I watched it for some time,

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but it did not move. It appeared to be stand-ing and calling, for no reason that I coulddiscover.

I tried to work out a plan of action.That non-stop sound of 'Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla'confused my mind. Perhaps I was too tired tobe very afraid. Certainly I was more curiousto know the reason for this howling. I turnedand went into Park Road, intending to goround the edge of the park, with housesbetween us to keep me safe, and get a view ofthis unmoving, howling Martian from thedirection of St John's Wood.

I came to a destroyed building-ma-chine halfway to St John's Wood station. Atfirst I thought a house had fallen across theroad, but when I climbed up on the ruins Isaw, with a shock, this great machine lying,with its tentacles bent and twisted, amongthe ruins that it had made. The front part ofit was pushed in. It seemed that it had been

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driven blindly straight at the house, and hadbeen turned over when the house fell on it.

Wondering about all that I had seen, Imoved on towards Primrose Hill. Far away,through a space in the trees, I saw a secondMartian fighting-machine, as unmoving asthe first, standing in the park near the Zoo.Then the sound of 'Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla'stopped. The silence came suddenly. Andnow night, the mother of fear and mystery,was coming.

London around me looked like a cityof ghosts. My imagination heard a thousandnoiseless enemies moving. Terror came tome. In front of me the road became blackand I saw the twisted shape of a body lyingacross the pavement. I could not go on. Iturned down St John's Wood Road and ranaway from this terrible stillness.

I hid from the night and the silenceuntil long after midnight, in a garden hut in

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Harrow Road. But before dawn my couragereturned, and while the stars were still in thesky I turned again towards Regent's Park. Ilost my way among the streets, and soon sawdown a long road, in the half-light of theearly dawn, the curve of Primrose Hill.There, on the top, high against the earlymorning stars, was a third Martian, standingstill like the others.

A mad idea came to me. I would dieand end it. And I would save myself even thetrouble of killing myself. I marched onwithout fear towards this great machine, andthen, as I came nearer and the light grew, Isaw that a number of black birds were circ-ling and gathering around the top of it. Ibegan to feel very happy and I started run-ning along the road.

I got onto the grass before the sunrose. Great piles of earth had formed arounda pit at the top of the hill - the final and

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largest one the Martians had made - andfrom behind these piles thin smoke roseagainst the sky. Against the sky-line an eagerdog ran and disappeared. The thought thathad flashed into my mind grew real, and be-lievable. I felt no fear, only a wild, shakingexcitement, as I ran up the hill towards theunmovmg Martian. Out of the top of it hunglong, brown pieces of flesh, which the birdswere tearing away.

In another moment I had climbed apile of earth and stood on its top, and the pitwas below me. It was a large space, withenormous machines here and there within it,great piles of material and strange buildings.And all around it, some in their overturnedwar-machines and some in building-ma-chines, and ten of them lying in a row, werethe Martians - dead! They had been killed bygerms against which their systems could notfight; killed, after all man's machines had

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failed, by the smallest things that God hasput on this Earth.

It had happened in this way, and I andmany others did not see that it would happenbecause terror and disaster had blinded ourminds. These germs of disease have killedpeople and animals since the beginning oftime, but over these many years we have de-veloped the ability to fight against them. Butthere are no germs on Mars, and as soon asthe Martians arrived, as soon as they drankand fed, our tiny friends began to destroythem. By paying with a million lives, humanbeings have bought their right to live onEarth. It is our home and would be ours evenif the Martians were ten times as strong asthey are.

I stood staring into the pit, and myheart grew wonderfully happy as the risingsun lit up the world around me. The pit wasstill in darkness. Only the tops of the great

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engines, so unearthly in their shape, could beseen in the morning light. I heard a largenumber of dogs fighting over the bodies thatlay in the darkness at the bottom of the pit.

Across the pit, on its further edge, laythe great flying-machine which they hadbeen testing in our heavier atmosphere whendisease and death stopped them. Death hadnot come a day too soon. At the sound ofbirds overhead I looked up at the enormousfighting-machine that would never fightagain, at the pieces of red flesh that droppeddown onto the overturned seats on the top ofPrimrose Hill.

I turned and looked down the slope ofthe hill at those two other Martians that Ihad seen the previous night. They were sur-rounded by birds now. One of them had diedas it had been crying to its friends. Perhaps itwas the last to die, and its voice had gone onand on until its machinery stopped. They

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stood now, harmless tripods of shining met-al, against the brightness of the rising sun.

All around the pit, and saved fromeverlasting destruction, lay the great city.And as I looked at it, and realized that theshadows had been rolled back, and thatpeople might still live in its streets, and thatthis dear city of mine might be once morealive and powerful again, I felt such emotionthat I was very close to tears.

The trouble had ended. That same daythe healing would begin. People who werestill alive would start to return, and lifewould come back to the empty streets. Thesound of tools would soon be heard in all theburnt and broken houses. At the thought, Ilifted my hands towards the sky and beganthanking God. In a year, I thought, we wouldrebuild all that had been destroyed.

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Then came the thought of myself, ofmy wife, and the old life of hope and tenderhelpfulness that had ended forever.

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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Wreckage

And now comes the strangest thing inmy story. But perhaps it is not totallystrange. I remember, clearly and in great de-tail, all that I did that day until the timewhen I stood crying on the top of PrimroseHill. And then I forget.

I know nothing of the next three days.I have learned since then that I was not thefirst discoverer of the Martian defeat -severalwanderers like me had already known aboutit on the previous night. One man - the first -had even managed to send a telegram to Par-is. From there the happy news had flashedall over the world; a thousand cities, living in

great fear, suddenly- turned on all theirlights.

They knew of it in Dublin, Edinburgh,Manchester and Birmingham at the timewhen I stood on the edge of the pit. Alreadymen, crying with joy, as I have heard, weregetting onto trains to go to London. Men onbicycles rode through the countryside shout-ing the news to all.

And the food! Across the Channel,across the Irish Sea, across the Atlantic,corn, bread and meat were coming to us. Allthe ships in the world seemed to be comingto London in those days. But I have nomemory of all of this. For three days I walkedaimlessly, a madman. Then I found myself ina house of kind people, who had found me.They have told me since that I was singing acrazy song about 'The Last Man Left Alive!The Last Man Left Alive!' Although they weretroubled with their own affairs, these people

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were very helpful to me. They gave me aplace to stay and protected me from myself.

Very gently, when my mind was work-ing again, they told me all they knew aboutwhat had happened in Leatherhead. Twodays after I was imprisoned it had been des-troyed, with every person in it, by a Martian.He had swept it all away for no reason at all,it seemed.

I was a lonely man, and they were verykind to me. I was a sad one too, and theywere patient with me. I stayed with them forfour days after my recovery. All that time Ifelt a growing need to look again at whateverremained of the little life that had seemed sohappy and bright in my past. My hosts triedto change my mind but at last, promisingfaithfully to return to them, I went out againinto the streets that had lately been so darkand strange and empty.

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Already they were busy with returningpeople; in places there were even shopsopen. I remember how bright that dayseemed as I went sadly back to the littlehouse in Woking - how busy the streets were,and how full of life. But then I noticed how illthe people looked and how many of themstill wore old and dirty clothes. The churcheswere giving out bread sent to us by theFrench government, and tired-looking po-licemen stood at the corners of every street.

At the end of Waterloo Bridge Ibought a copy of the first newspaper to re-appear. I learned nothing new except thatalready in one week the examination of theMartians' machines had produced amazingresults. Among other things, the newspapersaid that the 'Secret of Flying' had been dis-covered. I did not believe this at the time.

At Waterloo I found that free trainswere taking people to their homes. The first

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rush had already ended and there were fewpeople on the train. The city we wentthrough was dirty with the powder of theBlack Smoke, despite two days of thunder-storms and rain.

All down the line from there, thecountry looked empty and unfamiliar.Wimbledon particularly had suffered, andbeyond there I saw piles of earth around thesixth cylinder. A number of people werestanding by it, and some soldiers were busyin the middle. Over it was a British flag, fly-ing cheerfully in the wind.

The line on the London side of Wok-ing station was still being repaired, so I gotoff the train at Byfleet and took the road toMaybury, past the place where I had seen theMartian fighting- machine in the thunder-storm. I was curious and I stopped to findthe twisted and broken dog-cart with the

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whitened bones of the horse. For a time Istood and looked at the remains ...

Then I returned through the wood to-wards my home. A man standing at the opendoor of a house greeted me by name as Ipassed. I looked at my own house with aquick flash of hope that died immediately.The door had been broken, and it was open-ing slowly as I approached.

It blew shut again. The curtains of mystudy blew out of the open window fromwhich I and the soldier had watched thedawn. No one had closed it since then. I wentinto the hall, and the house felt empty. Thestair carpet was discoloured where I had sat,wet to the skin from the thunderstorm onthat first terrible night. Our muddy footstepsstill went up the stairs.

I followed them to my study andfound, lying on my writing- table, the page ofwork I had left on the afternoon of the

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opening of the cylinder. For some time Istood reading it. I remembered how I couldnot concentrate that morning, hardly amonth before, and how I had stopped workto get my newspaper from the newsboy. I re-membered how I went to the garden gate ashe came past, and how I had listened to hisodd story of 'Men from Mars'.

I came down and went into thedining-room. There were the remains of themeat and the bread, now gone bad, wherethe soldier and I had left them. My home wasa lonely place. I realized the stupidity of thesmall hope I had held on to for so long. Andthen a strange thing happened.

'The house is deserted,' said a voice.'No one has been here for ten days. Don'tstay here and make yourself unhappy. Noone escaped except you.'

I was shocked. Had I spoken mythought aloud? I turned, and the door to the

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garden was open behind me. I took a step to-wards it and stood looking out.

And there, amazed and afraid, as I toostood amazed and afraid, were my cousinand my wife - my wife white and tearless.She gave a faint cry.

'I came here,' she said. 'I knew-knew -'She put her hand to her throat and started tofall. I stepped forwards and caught her in myarms.

I can only regret now, as I finish mystory, how little I can help with the manyquestions which are still unanswered. In onearea I shall certainly be criticized. I knowvery little about medical matters, but itseems to me most likely that the Martianswere killed by germs.

Certainly, in all the bodies of the Mar-tians that were examined after the war, nogerms were found except ones that came

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from Earth. Besides this, we still know verylittle about the Black Smoke, and the waythat the Heat-Ray worked remains a puzzle.

A question of more serious interest isthe possibility of another attack from theMartians. I do not think that nearly enoughattention is being paid to this. Every time theplanet Mars comes near to us, I worry thatthey might try again. We should be prepared.It should be possible to find the position ofthe gun from which the shots came, to watchthis part of the planet carefully and be ready.

In that case, the cylinder could be des-troyed before it was cool enough for the Mar-tians to come out, or they could be killed byguns as soon as the door opened. It seems tome that they have lost a great advantage inthe failure of their first surprise. Possiblythey also believe this.

One astronomer has given excellentreasons for supposing that the Martians have

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actually landed on Venus. Seven months ago,when these planets were close together,faint, dark marks appeared on photographswhich suggested that a cylinder had beenfired from one to the other.

However, whether we expect anotherattack or not, our views of the human futuremust now be changed by these events. Wehave learned that we cannot think of thisplanet as a safe home for humans. We cannever know what unseen good or evil mightcome to us suddenly out of space. Perhapsthis attack from Mars will be helpful to us inthe end. It has taken away our confidence inthe future, which was making us soft; it hasgiven great help to science, and it has madeus think of human beings as one family.

Perhaps, across the great distances ofspace, the Martians have watched whathappened to the ones that landed on Earthand learned their lesson - and have found a

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safer home on the planet Venus. Even if thatis true, for many years we will continue towatch Mars carefully, and all falling stars willmake us afraid.

The war has broadened people'sminds enormously. Before it there was a gen-eral belief that there was no life in spaceapart from on our tiny planet. If the Mar-tians can reach Venus, there is no reason tothink that this is impossible for us. So whenthe slow cooling of the sun means that wecannot continue to live on Earth, it may bethat life which began here can reach out andcontinue there.

But that is a distant dream. We may,on the other hand, still be destroyed by theMartians. The future may belong to themand not to us.

I must admit that the trouble anddanger of our time have left a continuingsense of doubt and fear in my mind. I sit in

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my study writing by lamplight, and suddenlyI see the valley below on fire again, and feelthat the house around me is empty andlonely. I go out into the Byfleet Road, andvehicles pass me, a boy on a bicycle, childrengoing to school - and suddenly they becomestrange and unreal, and I hurry on againwith the soldier through the hot, dangeroussilence. At night I see the black powder-dark-ening the silent streets, and the twisted bod-ies covered by it. They stand up in front ofme, torn and dog-bitten. They talk and growangry, paler, uglier, and I wake, cold andshaking, in the darkness.

I go to London and see the busycrowds in Fleet Street and the Strand, and itcomes to my mind that they are just theghosts of the past, walking the streets that Ihave seen silent and empty, spirits in a deadcity. And it is strange, too, to stand on Prim-rose Hill, as I did only a day before writingthis last chapter. I saw the houses stretching

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away and disappearing into the smoke andmist, people walking up and down betweenthe flower-beds, and the sightseers aroundthe Martian machine that still stands there. Iheard the noise of playing children and re-membered the deep silence of the dawn ofthat last great day...

And it is strangest of all to hold mywife's hand again, and to think that I havethought of her, and that she has thought ofme, among the dead.

- THE END -

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