The Martian War

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE


SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATIONS

T.H. Huxley was left alone in the laboratory spire with the three Martian master minds. Even though the Martians intended to invade Earth, destroy human civilization, and enslave mankind, the professor could not help but find them fascinating. They were as far from human beings on the evolutionary ladder as he himself was from the jellyfish he’d studied aboard the Rattlesnake.

He was deeply concerned about young Wells and Miss Robbins, not to mention his own fate. He supposed that these large-brained creatures intended to dissect him and perform a symphony of exotic and excruciating tests. In a detached way, he could understand the Martian curiosity, but he found it immensely bothersome to be a specimen instead of a colleague.

Since his younger days, Huxley had advanced his scientific knowledge by studying the works of other researchers. When those answers did not satisfy him, he embarked on his own journeys of discovery. By the age of fifteen, he had been apprenticed to his brother-in-law—a doctor—and later won a free scholarship to the Charing Cross Hospital’s medical school. By twenty, Huxley had joined the Royal Navy’s medical service. It was just the beginning of a life of scientific investigations.

Though he professed to be an agnostic—in fact, he had invented the term for popular use—Huxley felt that these Martians were evil.

From the Grand Lunar he already knew how the Martians had swept from the red planet, conquered the Moon, and raided all the healthy Selenites, stealing them to be slaves on another world. The Martians had exploited the drones, forcing them to reproduce, then to run all the burdens of their high-technology civilization. Huxley was sure, from what he had seen, that the Martians could no longer survive without their slaves.

But what had driven them to such a dire situation? What had the Martians done before stealing the Selenites? He did not know what sort of catastrophe had created the environmental disaster on Mars, but he had a deep-seated suspicion that the rapacious Martians with their short-sighted consumption and their urge to conquer and destroy had brought the tragedy upon themselves.

Perhaps other breeds of Martian had once lived on the red planet, creatures secondary to the bloated master minds. The superior Martians could have enslaved them first, exploited them, then driven them to extinction. Their industry could have caused the ecosystem to collapse, forcing the Martians to take extravagant gestures for their own survival. And for that, they required a vast pool of laborers. Hence, the lunar invasion.

And now, perhaps, the Selenite drones were no longer adequate for the Martians’ new plans. They had to look elsewhere, deeper into the Solar System.

Huxley doubted these desperate creatures would reconsider their impending invasion of Earth, but nevertheless he held out hope, for combat never seemed a viable solution. He would hear what the master minds had to say, if they deigned to communicate with him at all.

From Wells’s brain, the master minds had apparently extracted a general understanding of the human race, its temperament and biology; therefore, the creatures were aware of the work Huxley had done. No doubt, they found the old scientist much more valuable as a knowledgeable resource than as a manual laborer.

He thrust his chin forward and addressed the three alien leaders perched before him on their pedestals. “Go on, then— what do you have to show me?”

The nearest Martian reached its tentacles into a concealed alcove in its podium and removed a transparent ovoid object, a crystal egg like the one Moreau had described in his journal. “Ah, that is your observation and communication device!”

The Martian twisted the curved object so that images formed and flowed within, then held it out. Huxley saw that the crystal egg contained thousands of tiny facets, like the segments of a fly’s eye, each one tuned to a specific “channel” that could connect to sister crystal eggs.

Squinting into the strange lens, he witnessed scenes of Martian cities, canals, and industries, and hordes of Selenite workers completing gargantuan construction projects, like Israelite slaves forced to build Egyptian pyramids. The Martian master mind rotated the egg so that Huxley could see many views of the world. For an instant, he caught a glimpse of Wells and Miss Robbins standing together, dirty and sweating on a work line, but still alive and apparently unharmed.

The Martian’s eyes brightened with a flare that seemed almost like anger. The image jolted and changed, sweeping to another planet entirely—and Huxley looked with amazement upon the bearded face of Dr. Moreau!

Standing amid the wreckage of what was clearly Cavor’s laboratory at the Imperial Institute, the bear-like man peered into a counterpart crystal egg. Others paced through the ruins, poking about in the burned timbers, fallen bricks, and shattered glass. Several downcast scientists and engineers stood in the room. In the image, Cavor’s assistants appeared particularly disheartened. Huxley saw their mouths moving but could hear no words from their lips.

The fire from the nitroglycerin explosion was extinguished by now, of course, but he saw singed papers and laboratory notebooks strewn on the floor, waterlogged in oily puddles. Holding the crystal egg, a scowling Moreau tromped about, kicking aside pieces of wreckage.

Judging from the visible damage, both Griffin and Cavor must have been killed in the frightful detonation. Huxley swallowed his anger, unable to conceive how even the mad invisible man could have worried about stealing weapons for Kaiser Wilhelm when the fate of the Earth hung in the balance!

Moreau gestured to where the missing cavorite sphere had been cradled, pointed up into the sky. The other scientists looked at him skeptically, but the rogue biologist was insistent.

“Ah, I believe he’s guessed it,” Huxley shouted at the egg, but before he could see if Moreau reacted, the Martian snatched the object away. When it turned the egg again, the images vanished, showing only the greenish Martian sky.

The three master minds climbed into the control seats of their small personal walkers and, motioning for him to come, lurched off. Huxley accompanied them willingly, curious as to what they meant to show him next.

In a different room of the laboratory spire, the Martians showed him an enormous telescope the size of a giant cannon poking out of the tower, directing its lenses and mirrors toward Earth. In his travels, Huxley had seen the impressive Avu Observatory near Borneo; these observational devices were vastly superior to the best equipment Earthbound astronomers had.

Next, the creatures presented long maps to him. Huxley recognized the contours of England and Ireland, France and Spain. He saw mountain ranges and river valleys, the mosaic of cities, uneven roadways. Even the best maps drawn by the most meticulous explorers could not boast such precision and accuracy.

Huxley could identify some notable buildings—the cathedrals of Rome, the bridges and towers of London, immaculate Versailles in France—but the Martians were not interested in architecture. They paid greater attention to the British Navy, fleets of warships at sea, the fortifications of cities.

Huxley looked at the master minds in their thrumming walkers. Were they waiting for his assessment? Did they hope to intimidate him into surrendering on behalf of the human race, without even a fight? He hid any expression of dismay on his face, though he doubted they could interpret human emotions. “Clearly, you are drawing your plans against us.”

Leaving the map surveillance room, the master minds guided Huxley out of the scientific cathedral. Looking upward, he saw one of the towering battle tripods as high as a tall Martian building. The high tripod stood with an open turret at the top of its three long legs, waiting to receive passengers. The three Martian leaders crawled out of their walking contrivances and onto a detachable platform; when Huxley joined them, the whole platform was levered upward on a jointed arm. He heard the rumble of engines, the groan of gears. The ground dropped dizzyingly away from him as they were lifted to the height of the tripod’s control turret.

The Martians pressed him forward into the open door in the side of the turret. “I will say it’s better to be inside than in a cage slung below.” Working together, the three master minds grasped motivating levers and operated mechanisms until the side door of the turret sealed shut. Huxley braced himself against a curved metal wall as the towering tripod set off.

With its strangely awkward three-legged gait, the battle tripod lurched away from the Martian metropolis and out onto the rusty flatlands, covering distance swiftly with each extended leg. Holding on to maintain his balance, Huxley stared through the low windows until finally the tall machine reached an immense industrial site, where clouds of dust and smoke boiled upward.

“Now what are you trying to show me? Another mine or quarry?” No doubt such superior creatures as the Martians could communicate with him, if they chose, but they remained silent, as if to increase his fear.

In a veritable beehive of activity, amidst the smokes of factories and smelters, Selenite slave crews bustled about— building, installing, constructing in a never-faltering line of mass-production. They worked with metal presses and hot riveters, turning out and assembling huge sheets of red-hot armor that swiftly cooled to a silvery luster in the frigid air.

The battle tripod strode along, cresting a rise. As the turret tilted downward, Huxley could see the extent of the flat crater, a holding area, a landing field. There, a brand new war fleet was being constructed: row upon row of silvery cylinders gleamed, ready for launch—an entire invading navy, just like the one that had conquered the Moon centuries ago. A terrible rain of cylinders would descend upon Earth, pinpointing target after strategic target from the incredibly detailed surveillance maps the Martians had compiled by observing through their giant telescopes.

Huxley felt an inconsolable dread and helplessness. What could he possibly do against such an enemy? Selenites were completing the construction of hundreds of spacecraft, while sinister battle tripods watched their every move, forcing them to cooperate.

Occasionally, the towering guardian machines let out small blasts of their heat rays, but Huxley could see that the lunar creatures were already working as swiftly as they could. They had no choice in the matter.

With thousands of clever hands and strong bodies, the Selenites had assembled this war fleet, and it would certainly launch as the opposition of Mars approached. The three Martian master minds were looking at him, assessing his reaction. They must have sensed his primal fear, for they appeared to be smug and satisfied.