The Space Machine

  “Look, Edward,” she said. “We are coming to a city.”

  I leaned outside too, and saw in the light of the setting sun that a mile or two further on there were many large buildings, clustered together untidily. Like Amelia, I was relieved at this sight, for the all-apparent barbarities of life in the countryside had repelled me. Life in any city, however foreign, is by its nature familiar to other city-dwellers, and there we knew we would find the responsible authorities we were seeking. Whatever this country, and however repressive their local laws, we as travellers would receive favoured treatment, and as soon as Amelia and I had come to agreement (which was itself a matter I had still to resolve) we would be bound, by sea or rail, for England. Instinctively, I patted my breast pocket to make sure my wallet was still there. If we were to return immediately to England what little money we had with us—we had established earlier in the day that we had two pounds fifteen shillings and sixpence between us—would have to be used, as a surety of our good faith with the Consul.

  Such reassuring thoughts were in my mind as the train moved steadily towards the city. The sun had now set, and the night was upon us.

  “See, Edward, the evening star is bright.”

  Amelia pointed to it, huge and blue-white, a few degrees above the place of the sun’s setting. Next to it, looking small, and in quarter-phase, was the moon.

  I stared at the evening star, remembering Sir William’s words about the planets which made up our solar system. There was one such, lonely and beautiful, impossibly distant and unattainable.

  Then Amelia gasped, and I felt my heart tighten in the same moment.

  “Edward,” she said. “There are two moons visible!”

  The mysteries of this place could no longer be ignored. Amelia and I stared at each other in horror, understanding at long last what had become of us. I thought of the riotous growth of scarlet weed, the thinness of the atmosphere, the freezing cold, the unfiltered heat of the sun, the lightness in our tread, the deep-blue sky, the red-bodied people, the very alienness of all that surrounded us. Now, seeing the two moons, and seeing the evening star, there was a final mystery, one which placed an intolerable burden on our ability to support our dearest belief, that we were still on our home world. Sir William’s Machine had taken us to futurity, but it had also borne us unwittingly through the dimension of Space. A Time Machine it might be, but also a Space Machine, for now both Amelia and I accepted the frightful knowledge that in some incredible way we had been brought to another world, one where our own planet was the herald of night. I stared down at the canal, seeing the brilliant point of light that was Earth reflecting from the water, and knew only desperation and a terrible fear. For we had been transported through Space to Mars, the planet of war.

  Chapter Eight

  THE CITY OF GRIEF

  i

  I moved across to sit next to Amelia, and she took my hand.

  “We should have realized,” she said, whispering. “Both of us knew we could no longer be on Earth, but neither of us would admit it.”

  “We could not have known. It is beyond all experience.”

  “So is the notion of travel through Time, and yet we readily accepted that.”

  The train lurched slightly, and we felt it begin to slow. I looked past Amelia’s profile, across the arid desert towards that brilliant light in the sky.

  “How can we be sure that that is Earth?” I said. “After all, neither of us has ever—”

  “Don’t you know, Edward? Can’t you feel it inside you? Doesn’t everything else about this place seem foreign and hostile? Is there not something that speaks to us instinctively when we look at that light? It is a sight of home, and we both feel it.”

  “But what are we to do?” The train braked again as I spoke, and looking through the windows on the opposite side of the carriage I saw that we were stopping inside a large, darkened train-shed. On our side of the train a wall came between us and our view of the sky and its ominous reminders.

  Amelia said: “We will have no option in the matter. It is not so much what we do, as what is to be done with us.”

  “Are you saying that we are in danger?”

  “Possibly…as soon as it is realized that we are not of this world. After all, what would be likely to happen to a man who came to Earth from another world?”

  “I have no idea,” I said.

  “Therefore we can have no idea what is in store for us. We shall have to hope for the best, and trust that in spite of their primitive society we will be well treated. I should not care to spend the rest of my days like an animal.”

  “Nor I. But is that likely, or even feasible?”

  “We have seen how the slaves are treated. If we were taken for two of those wretches, then we could well be put to work.”

  “But we have already been taken for two of the overseers,” I reminded her. “Some accident of clothing, or something about our appearance, has compounded in our favour.”

  “We still need to be careful. There is no telling what we shall find here.”

  In spite of the resolution in our words, we were in no condition to take charge of our fate, for in addition to the multitude of questions that surrounded our prospects, we were both dishevelled, tired and hungry from our ordeal in the desert. I knew that Amelia could feel no better than I, and I was exhausted. Both of us were slurring our words, and in spite of our attempts to articulate our feelings, the realization of where we had been deposited by the Time Machine had been the final blow to our morale.

  Outside, I could hear the slaves being herded from the train, and the distinctive crackle of the electrical whips was an unpleasant reminder of our precarious position.

  “The train will be moving off soon,” I said, pushing Amelia gently into an upright position. “We have come to a city, and we must look for shelter there.”

  “I don’t want to go.”

  “We will have to.”

  I went to the far side of the carriage, and opened the nearest door. I took a quick glance along the length of the train; evidently the slaves were being taken from the opposite side of the train for here there was no movement, bar one man sauntering slowly away from me. I went back to Amelia, who was still sitting passively.

  “In a few minutes the train will be going back to where we came from,” I said. “Do you wish to spend another night in the desert?”

  “Of course not. I’m just a little nervous at the thought of entering the city.”

  I said “We must eat some food, Amelia, and find somewhere safe and warm to sleep. The very fact that this is a city is to our advantage: it must be large enough for us to go unnoticed. We have already survived a great ordeal, and I do not think we need fear anything further. Tomorrow we will try to establish what rights we have.”

  Amelia shook her head lethargically, but to my relief she then rose wearily to her feet and followed me from the carriage. I gave her my hand to help her to the ground, and she took it. Her grasp was without pressure.

  ii

  The sound of the whips echoed from the other side of the train as we hurried towards where a glow of light emanated from behind a protruding corner. There was no sign of the man I had seen earlier.

  As we came round the corner we saw ahead of us a tall doorway, set well back into the brick wall and painted white. Over the top was a sign, illuminated in some manner from behind, and bearing a legend in a style of printing that was totally incomprehensible to me. It was this sign that drew our attention, rather than the door itself, for this was our first sight of Martian written language.

  After we had stared at this for a few seconds—the lettering was black on a white background, but here the superficial similarity with Earth scripts came to an end—I led Amelia forward, anxious to find warmth and food. It was bitterly cold in the train-shed, for it was open to the night air.

  There was no handle on the door, and for a moment I wondered if there would be some alien mechanism that would defy us. I pus
hed experimentally, and discovered that one side of the door moved slightly.

  I must have been weak from our sojourn in the wilds, for beyond this I was incapable of shifting it. Amelia helped me, and in a moment we found that we could push the door open far enough for us to pass through, but as soon as we released it the heavy device swung back and closed with a slam. We had come into a short corridor, no longer than five or six yards, at the end of which was another door. The corridor was completely featureless, with the exception of one electrical incandescent lamp fixed to the ceiling. We went to the second door and pushed it open, feeling a similar weight. This door also closed quickly behind us.

  Amelia said: “My ears feel as though they are blocked.”

  “Mine too,” I said. “I think the pressure of air is greater here.”

  We were in a second corridor, identical to the first. Amelia remembered something she had been taught when she was in Switzerland, and showed me how to relieve the pressure in my ears by holding my nose and blowing gently.

  As we passed through the third door there was another increase in the density of the air.

  “I feel I can breathe at last,” I said, wondering how we had survived for so long in the thin air outside.

  “We must not over-exert ourselves,” Amelia said. “I feel a little dizzy already.”

  Even though we were anxious to continue on our way we waited in the corridor for a few minutes longer. Like Amelia, I was feeling light-headed in the richer air, and this sensation was sharpened by a barely detectable hint of ozone. My fingertips were tingling as my blood was renewed with this fresh supply of oxygen, and this coupled with the fact of the lighter Martian gravity—which, while we had been in the desert, we had attributed to some effect of high altitude—lent a spurious feeling of great energy. Spurious it surely was, for I knew we must both be near the end of the tether; Amelia’s shoulders were stooped, and her eyes were still half-closed.

  I placed my arm around Amelia’s shoulders.

  “Come along,” I said. “We do not have much further to go.”

  “I am still a little frightened.”

  “There is nothing that can threaten us,” I said, but in truth I shared her fears. Neither of us was in any position to understand the full implications of our predicament. Deep inside, I was feeling the first tremblings of an instinctive dread of the alien, the strange, the exotic.

  We stepped slowly forward, pushed our way through the next door, and at last found ourselves looking out across a part of the Martian city.

  iii

  Outside the door through which we had come a street ran from left to right, and directly opposite us were two buildings. These, at first sight, loomed large and black, so used were we to the barrenness of the desert, but on a second examination we saw that they were scarcely bigger than the grander private houses of our own cities. Each one stood alone, and was intricately ornamented with moulded plaster on the outside walls; the doors were large, and there were few windows. If this lends to such buildings an aura of grace or elegance, then it should be added that both of the two buildings we then saw were in a state of advanced decay. One, indeed, had one wall partially collapsed, and a door hung open on a hinge. In the interiors we could see much rubble and litter, and it was clear that neither had been occupied for many years. The walls still standing were cracked and crumbling, and there was no visible sign that a roof still stood.

  I glanced up and saw that the city was open to the sky, for I could make out the stars overhead. Curiously, though, the air was as dense here as it had been inside the corridors, and the temperature was much warmer than we had experienced in the desert.

  The street we were in was lighted: at intervals along each side were several more of the towers we had seen, and now we realized a part, at least, of their function, for on the polished roof of each tower was a powerful light which swept to and fro as the platform rotated slowly. These constantly sweeping beams had a strangely sinister aspect, and they were far removed from the warm, placid gaslights to which we were both accustomed, but the very fact that the Martians illuminated their streets at night was a reassuringly human detail.

  “Which way shall we go?” Amelia said.

  “We must find the centre of the city,” I said. “Clearly this is a quarter that has fallen into disuse. I suggest we strike directly away from this rail-terminus until we meet some of the people.”

  “The people? You mean…Martians?”

  “Of course,” I said, taking her hand in mine with a show of confidence. “We have already accosted several without knowing who they were. They seem very like us, so we have nothing to fear from them.”

  Without waiting for a reply I pulled her forward, and we walked briskly along the street towards the right. When we came to the corner we turned with it, and found we were in a similar, though rather longer, street. Along each side of this were more buildings, styled as ornately as the first we had seen, but with sufficient subtle variations in architecture to avoid obvious repetition of shape. Here too the buildings were in decay, and we had no means of knowing for what purposes they had once been used. The ruination apart, this was not a thoroughfare which would have disgraced one of the spa-towns of England.

  We walked for about ten minutes without seeing any other pedestrians, although as we passed one street-junction we briefly saw, at some distance down the intersecting road, a powered conveyance moving swiftly across our view. It had appeared too quickly for us to see it in any detail, and we were left with an impression of considerable speed and incontinent noise.

  Then as we approached a cluster of buildings from which several lights issued, Amelia suddenly pointed along a smaller street to our right.

  “See, Edward,” she said softly. “There are people by that building.”

  Along that street too were lighted buildings, and from one of them, as she had indicated, several people had just walked. I turned that way instantly, but Amelia held back.

  “Let’s not go that way,” she said. “We don’t know—”

  “Are you prepared to starve?” I cried, although my bravura was a facade. “We must see how these people live, so that we may eat and sleep.”

  “Do you not think we should be more circumspect? It would be foolhardy to walk into a situation we could not escape from.”

  “We are in such a situation now,” I said, then deliberately made my voice more persuasive. “We are in desperate trouble, Amelia dear. Maybe you are right to think it would be foolish to walk straight up to these people, but I know no other way.”

  Amelia said nothing for a moment, but she stood close by my side, her hand limp in mine. I wondered if she were about to faint once more, for she seemed to be swaying slightly, but after a while she looked up at me. As she did so, the sweeping beam from one of the towers fell full across her face, and I saw how tired and ill she looked.

  She said: “Of course you are right, Edward. I did not think we should survive in the desert. We must of course mingle with these Martian people, for we cannot return to that.”

  I squeezed her hand to comfort her, and then we walked slowly towards the building where we had seen the people. As we approached, more appeared through the main doorway and headed up the street away from us. One man even glanced in our direction as two of the light-beams swept across us, so that he must have seen us clearly, but he showed no visible reaction and walked on with the others.

  Amelia and I came to a halt in front of the doorway, and for a few seconds I stared down the street at the Martians. They all walked with a curious, easy loping motion; doubtless this was a product of the low gravity conditions, and doubtless a gait that Amelia and I would perfect as soon as we grew more accustomed to the conditions here.

  “Do we go inside?” Amelia said.

  “I can think of no other course,” I said, and led the way up the three low steps in front of the door. Another group of Martian people was coming out in the opposite direction, and they passed without appea
ring to notice us. Their faces were indistinct in the half-light, but close to we saw just how tall they were. They were all at least six inches taller than I.

  Light from within was spilling down the passage beyond the door, and as we passed through we came into a huge, brightly lit room, one so large that it seemed it must occupy the whole of the building.

  We stopped just inside the door, standing warily, waiting for our eyes to adjust to the brilliance.

  All was at first confusing, for what furniture was there was in haphazard order, and consisted, for the most part, of what seemed to be tubular scaffolding. From this were suspended by ropes what I can best describe as hammocks: large sheets of thick fabric or rubber, hanging some two feet from the ground. On these, and standing around them, were several dozen of the Martian people.

  With the exception of the peasant-slaves—whom we surmised to be of the lowest social order—these were the first Martians we had seen closely. These were the city-dwellers, the same as those men we had seen wielding the electrical whips. These were the people who ordered this society, elected its leaders, made its laws. These were from now to be our peers, and in spite of our tiredness and mental preoccupations Amelia and I regarded them with considerable interest.

  iv

  I have already noted that the average Martian is a tall being; what is also most noticeable, and of emphatic importance, is that the Martians are undeniably human, or human-like.

  To speak of the average Martian is as misleading as to speak of the average human on Earth, for even in those first few seconds as we regarded the occupants of the building, Amelia and I noticed that there were many superficial differences. We saw some who were taller than most, some shorter; there were thinner Martians and fatter ones; there were some with great manes of hair, others were bald or balding; the predominant skin-tone was a reddish tint, but this was more evident in some than in others.

  With this in mind, then, let me say that the, average adult Martian male could be roughly described thus: