The Martian War

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO


THE STOLEN BACILLUS

Using the Martians’ own command collar and their enslavement devices, Jane had issued her rebellious call to all the drone workers in the canal industries, the ancient cities, the polar ice quarries. Unleashed with the same relentless efficiency they devoted to every task, hordes of Selenites had overrun the ice cap operations, swarming over the tentacled slave masters and toppling their short, sturdy walking contrivances.

Jane’s skin paled, turning the color of milk. “Good heavens, look at the damage they’ve done. Did I … incite all this?”

Wells looked through the scratched windows of their stolen turret as he marched to the work site. “It would appear so.” He squeezed her arm. “These Selenites were kidnapped generations ago and put to work. They had no instructions from the Grand Lunar, no guidance. You gave them new orders—and their freedom.”

Smoke curled into the greenish sky from fires lit by heat-ray blasts. The drones had thrown themselves against the defending Martians until they brought down the guardian tripods.

Jane’s voice was thin with disbelief. “But thousands have been slaughtered, all because I carry the eye of their Grand Lunar.”

Armored cars and pumping machinery lay scattered about. Only a few of the swollen brains lumbered off in wild flight across the desert, their squat walkers or tall battle tripods destroyed.

Huxley smiled. “We can only hope, Miss Robbins, that this insurrection will thwart the Martians’ plans to invade our Earth. You may well have saved the human race.”

“I pray they didn’t accidentally damage our cavorite sphere in their mayhem,” Wells said.

Down below, he saw that the drones had blocked off the central water-distribution network, so that the icy current melted from polar cliffs flooded the stippled plains. Even as he watched now, crowds of pale Selenites surrounded two sealed Martian bubble boats and tore them from their docks; the tentacled Martian slave masters inside were pulled from their sheltered domes and cast into the rushing, icy water, where they were borne away helpless in the current.

Jane stood stoically. “Let’s help the Selenites, while we still can, H.G.”

“I wouldn’t mind striking a blow or two of our own.” Calm now, he brought the tripod forward into the scorched battlefield, where hundreds of white drones still ran amok. Jane spoke through the stolen communication device. “We are coming. We mean you no harm in this tripod. Please don’t attack us.”

Only three of the Martian battle tripods remained, and the Selenite swarms had backed them up onto the cliffs, where the slave masters were fighting for their lives. The war machines had climbed up the stair-step ledges of the polar quarry and now made their last stand on a sheer ledge where slabs of frozen water had been cut away. The three desperate tripods stood side by side, burning a swath of death all around them. But they were trapped, and the Selenites seemed inexhaustible.

As Wells brought his battered three-legged walker forward, the defeated tripods bellowed out a haunting “Ulla! Ulla!” as if they expected him to be their rescuer. Inside the tripod’s control deck, he saw a buzzing sequence of lights. Perhaps a transmission? Questions from the cornered Martians, inquiries evolving into angry commands? And then stuttering panic as they heard no answer.

Wells scowled with determination. “Jane, with a single blast from your heat ray, you can undercut that frozen ice ledge beneath them and—”

She saw it immediately. “It’ll be my pleasure, H.G.” Her face hard, glancing once more at the thousands of dead Selenites lying all about, she raised the camera apparatus and unleashed a line of fire that cut through the ice as if it were butter, fracturing the solid cliffs.

The three remaining battle tripods fired back, but the ground beneath them became unstable. In a rush and a roar, the side of the frozen quarry collapsed in an avalanche of blocky ice. The metal war machines were crushed, buried under the steaming white rubble that piled at the bottom of the huge pit.

“This polar facility is ours now,” Jane said.

“I should think that puts an end to it,” Huxley agreed. “Now, on to business.”

Wells brought their commandeered tripod to a halt in the middle of the pumping yards. He opened the hatch at the base of the turret and carefully climbed down the stilt-like leg with Jane and Huxley following. The descent was easier than expected in the low gravity, especially since there was no desperate hurry this time, no Martians battling in the streets. On solid ground again, surrounded by chill steam and fading smoke, they raised their hands like conquering heroes.

Chittering with unusual excitement, the Selenites clustered around them, touching them in strange greeting. The drones were exuberant with their new liberation.

“Like downtrodden laborers everywhere, they could have obtained their freedom all along,” Wells said, “if they had simply pooled their resources and acted in unison.”

Though she had safely replaced the eye of the Grand Lunar in the folds of her skirt, the Selenites still treated Jane like a queen. She smiled, returning their greeting by touching the creatures. “Aren’t they so … charming? They are lost and far from home. For many generations they haven’t known who they are. They had no hope. But now we’ve freed them.”

Huxley seemed to be drowning in Selenites, and wishing he could be taking notes as to their taxonomy. “They are a most curious species. I wonder why they show such particular attention to you, Miss Robbins. Is it only because you carry the eye of the Grand Lunar? They are practically worshipful, as if you were their goddess.”

Smiling, Wells took her arm. “Perhaps the Selenites simply have good taste in women, as I do. I worship Jane myself.”

She put her hands on her hips and looked at Wells and Huxley, then rolled her eyes in exasperation. “You gentlemen spend so much time studying biology from a distance that you don’t understand it in your hearts. You have the information but you don’t view the picture. Where are your powers of observation that you would miss something so obvious?”

She looked back and forth between them, but both men remained perplexed. Jane let out a long sigh. Wells remembered teaching Jane a botany lesson one languid summer afternoon, and he had teasingly used nearly those same words to get her to notice the obvious. Now he waited for her to reveal her secret.

“The Grand Lunar gave the eye gem to me, specifically, gentlemen. She was their queen. A female.” Then she gave Wells an impish smile. “To these Selenites, you men are simply my drones.”

Jane relayed instructions to the devoted Selenites, and the lunar workers tore open locked doors and pried apart the walls of hangars and warehouses, searching for the cavorite sphere. They found the milky-white vessel connected to numerous analytical instruments. Thankfully, the Martian scientists had done no damage to it during their investigations.

Wells’s heart nearly jumped into his throat, and he gave Jane a quick, enthusiastic hug. “At last, our ticket home, our steamer to the stars.” Beside them, Huxley was grinning like a fool.

They carefully inspected the sphere, searching for any damage, deep scrapes or breaches that would allow air to leak out in space. Jane opened the hatch and climbed inside to verify that their stores and equipment remained intact. Famished, she, Wells, and Huxley sat under the dim greenish skies to have a peculiar picnic as the Selenites bustled about, putting out the remaining fires and scouring the industrial fields for any surviving or hiding Martians. It seemed the battle was over here at the pole.

Instead of being relieved, though, Wells was deeply troubled. “I fear the Martians will rally before long. If the Selenites did not rise up everywhere on the planet, then the Martians will contain them, perhaps kill all the drones.”

Jane looked squeamish, but did not dispute his conclusion.

Wells continued, “They will soon know what has befallen their operations here at the ice cap. They are not a passive civilization, and they cannot survive unless water flows through the canals. They’ll have no choice but to gather reinforcements and reconquer the south pole, no matter what it takes. This rebellion has caught them by surprise, but they will return with hundreds of their battle tripods, and these drones can never withstand it.”

“But they need the Selenites! As slaves and as … food.” Jane looked around at all the drones.

“They will concern themselves first with their immediate survival.” Huxley nodded heavily. “I believe you have the truth of it, Mr. Wells. We know the terrible plans these creatures have made against the Earth. This violent insurrection has set their invasion plans back by decades—perhaps as much as a century—but I do not believe the Martians will give up. With so many of their Selenite drones killed in the uprising, the Martians will have a greater need than ever for new slaves, new lifeblood.”

Wells took a long draught from one of the bottles of beer. “We need to escape so that we can inform the Institute of all we have learned. Let them put their minds to the problem.”

Jane was alarmed. “H.G., we can’t just leave these Selenites to their fates! After everything they’ve sacrificed in order to help us?” She looked at Huxley for a suggestion.

His face was troubled as he stared at the icy cliffs, then off to the dry, dusty horizon. “Escape is not enough right now, my friends. We might save ourselves, but we would doom all of humanity.” Preoccupied, he went back to the open hatch of the sphere. “Ah, excuse me a moment. I must check something.”

While the professor rummaged around, Wells noted how easily the old man moved. Ever since they had left Earth and arrived in the low gravity of the Moon and here on Mars, he seemed spry and healthy, as if his arthritic pains and the weariness of age had been stripped away.

After a few moments Huxley emerged, satisfied but grim. His conscience seemed to be weighing on him more heavily than the planet’s gravity. “What is it, Professor?” Jane asked.

Wells narrowed his eyes. “He has an idea—but he doesn’t like it.”

Jane asked in a small voice, “What … what did you take from inside the sphere, Professor?”

“We have the means to end this now.” Huxley reached into the pocket of his striped dressing robe and removed the six test tubes that had been carefully sealed and padded against accidental damage. “Vials of the deadly cholera germ that Dr. Griffin intended to deliver to the Kaiser.”

“The stolen bacillus,” Wells murmured.

Though he seemed beaten, Huxley straightened his back, dredging up determination and justifications from deep within. “At the Imperial Institute I had many discussions with Philby about the morality of conducting a germ warfare against our enemies. If such a thing is to be contemplated, if such action is ever to be considered—what circumstances could possibly be more valid than here and now? We are speaking of the fate of an entire world.”

“And dooming another one, Professor,” Wells pointed out.

Jane looked around at the drones. “What about all the Selenites still here? If you unleash that plague, won’t they die in as many numbers as the Martians?”

Huxley shook his head. “Recall what the Grand Lunar said. It—she made it abundantly clear that the drones and other lunar castes are immune to microbiological hazards. Their physiology is much different from ours.”

Wells spoke up quickly. “And from Dr. Moreau’s journal we already know that the Martians are vulnerable to Earthly sicknesses and other morbidities.”

Huxley nodded, his brow furrowed. “Without the extreme ministrations and vigorous grafting surgery Moreau performed, the Martian scout would have perished shortly after exposure to our air. But if it managed to transmit information via the crystal egg, subsequent invaders will know to take precautions.” He strode away from the cavorite sphere. “I don’t intend to give them the chance. I will buy more than a simple reprieve for the human race.”

The Selenites swarmed around them, watching their every move. With Wells and Jane following him, the professor reached the primary barricade the drones had erected to block the melted water from the ice caps. “Miss Robbins, please instruct them to open the floodgates. Have them start the water flowing through all the canal lines.”

Holding the Grand Lunar’s eye gem, Jane spoke into the Martian command device and passed along the request. The white drones did not hesitate or question the commands of their new female master mind.

Though some of the gears and automated machinery had been damaged in the chaotic uprising, the Selenites used main strength to force open the barrier. Surging like wild horses suddenly released from their pen, the waters of the antarctic cap gushed into the channel again, flowing back toward the Martian cities. Chunks of white ice burst along, bobbing against each other.

Without the work crews and industry to process the glaciers, the water supply would dwindle. Any surviving Martians in the cities would be forced to conserve every drop. By then Wells hoped it would be too late for them.

After the flow had stabilized into a glistening ribbon that spread along the intersecting canals, Huxley stood on the lip of the primary supply and uncorked the vials of the deadly plague. “I have to do this myself.” He looked weak and beaten, crushed by the realization of what he intended to do. His hands trembled as he held the six test tubes. “I am a biologist. Since I was a boy, I have studied life in all its forms and all its wonder. This is a terrible, terrible thing for a man like myself to contemplate.”

Wells said firmly, “No more terrible than the war these Martians intended to unleash upon our world. They would burn our cities, enslave our people, drink their blood.”

“Alas, Mr. Wells, you are entirely correct.”

Wells took two of the test tubes from the old man. “We must do it.” Seeing what he intended, Jane took a pair for herself. Together, the three looked at each other and then simultaneously poured the deadly solution into the flowing water. The current of the Martian canals would distribute the fatal germs throughout the ancient, stagnant Martian civilization.

But when it was done, not one of them felt a sense of triumph.