_"LET US GO TO MARS"_
It is impossible that the stupendous events which followed the
disastrous invasion of the earth by the Martians should go without
record, and circumstances having placed the facts at my disposal, I deem
it a duty, both to posterity and to those who were witnesses of and
participants in the avenging counterstroke that the earth dealt back at
its ruthless enemy in the heavens, to write down the story in a
connected form.
The Martians had nearly all perished, not through our puny efforts, but
in consequence of disease, and the few survivors fled in one of their
projectile cars, inflicting their crudest blow in the act of departure.
They possessed a mysterious explosive, of unimaginable puissance, with
whose aid they set their car in motion for Mars from a point in Bergen
County, N. J., just back of the Palisades.
The force of the explosion may be imagined when it is recollected that
they had to give the car a velocity of more than seven miles per second
in order to overcome the attraction of the earth and the resistance of
the atmosphere.
The shock destroyed all of New York that had not already fallen a prey,
and all the buildings yet standing in the surrounding towns and cities
fell in one far-circling ruin.
The Palisades tumbled in vast sheets, starting a tidal wave in the
Hudson that drowned the opposite shore.
The victims of this ferocious explosion were numbered by tens of
thousands, and the shock, transmitted through the rocky frame of the
globe, was recorded by seismographic pendulums in England and on the
Continent of Europe.
The terrible results achieved by the invaders had produced everywhere a
mingled feeling of consternation and hopelessness. The devastation was
widespread. The death-dealing engines which the Martians had brought
with them had proved irresistible and the inhabitants of the earth
possessed nothing capable of contending against them. There had been no
protection for the great cities; no protection even for the open
country. Everything had gone down before the savage onslaught of those
merciless invaders from space. Savage ruins covered the sites of many
formerly flourishing towns and villages, and the broken walls of great
cities stared at the heavens like the exhumed skeletons of Pompeii. The
awful agencies had extirpated pastures and meadows and dried up the very
springs of fertility in the earth where they had touched it. In some
parts of the devastated lands pestilence broke out; elsewhere there was
famine. Despondency black as night brooded over some of the fairest
portions of the globe.
Yet all had not been destroyed, because all had not been reached by the
withering hand of the destroyer. The Martians had not had time to
complete their work before they themselves fell a prey to the diseases
that carried them off at the very culmination of their triumph.
From those lands which had, fortunately, escaped invasion, relief was
sent to the sufferers. The outburst of pity and of charity exceeded
anything that the world had known. Differences of race and religion were
swallowed up in the universal sympathy which was felt for those who had
suffered so terribly from an evil that was as unexpected as it was
unimaginable in its enormity.
But the worst was not yet. More dreadful than the actual suffering and
the scenes of death and devastation which overspread the afflicted lands
was the profound mental and moral depression that followed. This was
shared even by those who had not seen the Martians and had not witnessed
the destructive effects of the frightful engines of war that they had
imported for the conquest of the earth. All mankind was sunk deep in
this universal despair, and it became tenfold blacker when the
astronomers announced from their observatories that strange lights were
visible, moving and flashing upon the red surface of the Planet of War.
These mysterious appearances could only be interpreted in the light of
past experience to mean that the Martians were preparing for another
invasion of the earth, and who could doubt that with the invincible
powers of destruction at their command they would this time make their
work complete and final?
This startling announcement was the more pitiable in its effects because
it served to unnerve and discourage those few of stouter hearts and more
hopeful temperaments who had already begun the labor of restoration and
reconstruction amid the embers of their desolated homes. In New York
this feeling of hope and confidence, this determination to rise against
disaster and to wipe out the evidences of its dreadful presence as
quickly as possible, had especially manifested itself. Already a company
had been formed and a large amount of capital subscribed for the
reconstruction of the destroyed bridges over the East River. Already
architects were busily at work planning new twenty-story hotels and
apartment houses; new churches and new cathedrals on a grander scale
than before.
Amid this stir of renewed life came the fatal news that Mars was
undoubtedly preparing to deal us a death blow. The sudden revulsion of
feeling flitted like the shadow of an eclipse over the earth. The scenes
that followed were indescribable. Men lost their reason. The
faint-hearted ended the suspense with self-destruction, the
stout-hearted remained steadfast, but without hope and knowing not what
to do.
But there was a gleam of hope of which the general public as yet knew
nothing. It was due to a few dauntless men of science, conspicuous among
whom were Lord Kelvin, the great English savant; Herr Roentgen, the
discover of the famous X-ray, and especially Thomas A. Edison, the
American genius of science. These men and a few others had examined with
the utmost care the engines of war, the flying machines, the generators
of mysterious destructive forces that the Martians had produced, with
the object of discovering, if possible, the sources of their power.
Suddenly from Mr. Edison's laboratory at Orange flashed the startling
intelligence that he had not only discovered the manner in which the
invaders had been able to produce the mighty energies which they
employed with such terrible effect, but that, going further, he had
found a way to overcome them.
The glad news was quickly circulated throughout the civilized world.
Luckily the Atlantic cables had not been destroyed by the Martians, so
that communication between the Eastern and Western continents was
uninterrupted. It was a proud day for America. Even while the Martians
had been upon the earth, carrying everything before them, demonstrating
to the confusion of the most optimistic that there was no possibility of
standing against them, a feeling--a confidence had manifested itself in
France, to a minor extent in England, and particularly in Russia, that
the Americans might discover means to meet and master the invaders.
Now, it seemed, this hope and expectation was to be realized. Too late,
it is true, in a certain sense, but not too late to meet the new
invasion which the astronomers had announced was impending. The effect
was as wonderful and indescribable as that of the despondency which but
a little while before had overspread the world. One could almost hear
the universal sigh of relief which went up from humanity. To relief
succeeded confidence--so quickly does the human spirit recover like an
elastic spring, when pressure is released.
"Let them come," was the almost joyous cry. "We shall be ready for them
now. The Americans have solved the problem. Edison has placed the means
of victory within our power."
Looking back upon that time now, I recall, with a thrill, the pride that
stirred me at the thought that, after all, the inhabitants of the earth
were a match for those terrible men from Mars, despite all the advantage
which they had gained from their millions of years of prior civilization
and science.
As good fortunes, like bad, never come singly, the news of Mr. Edison's
discovery was quickly followed by additional glad tidings from that
laboratory of marvels in the lap of the Orange mountains. During their
career of conquest the Martians had astonished the inhabitants of the
earth no less with their flying machines--which navigated our atmosphere
as easily as they had that of their native planet--than with their more
destructive inventions. These flying machines in themselves had given
them an enormous advantage in the contest. High above the desolation
that they had caused to reign on the surface of the earth, and, out of
the range of our guns, they had hung safe in the upper air. From the
clouds they had dropped death upon the earth.
Now, rumor declared that Mr. Edison had invented and perfected a flying
machine much more complete and manageable than those of the Martians had
been. Wonderful stories quickly found their way into the newspapers
concerning what Mr. Edison had already accomplished with the aid of his
model electrical balloon. His laboratory was carefully guarded against
the invasion of the curious, because he rightly felt that a premature
announcement, which should promise more than could actually be
fulfilled, would, at this critical juncture, plunge mankind back again
into the gulf of despair, out of which it had just begun to emerge.
Nevertheless, inklings of the truth leaked out. The flying machine had
been seen by many persons hovering by night high above the Orange hills
and disappearing in the faint starlight as if it had gone away into the
depths of space, out of which it would re-emerge before the morning
light had streaked the east, and be seen settling down again within the
walls that surrounded the laboratory of the great inventor. At length
the rumor, gradually deepening into a conviction, spread that Edison
himself, accompanied by a few scientific friends, had made an
experimental trip to the moon. At a time when the spirit of mankind was
less profoundly stirred, such a story would have been received with
complete incredulity, but now, rising on the wings of the new hope that
was buoying up the earth, this extraordinary rumor became a day star of
truth to the nations.
And it was true. I had myself been one of the occupants of the car of
the flying Ship of Space on that night when it silently left the earth,
and rising out of the great shadow of the globe, sped on to the moon. We
had landed upon the scarred and desolate face of the earth's satellite,
and but that there are greater and more interesting events, the telling
of which must not be delayed, I should undertake to describe the
particulars of this first visit of men to another world.
[Illustration: _I had myself been one of the occupants of the car
of the flying Ship of Space on that night, when it silently left the
earth, and, rising out of the great shadow of the globe, sped on to the
moon._]
But, as I have already intimated, this was only an experimental trip. By
visiting this little nearby island in the ocean of space, Mr. Edison
simply wished to demonstrate the practicability of his invention, and to
convince, first of all, himself and his scientific friends that it was
possible for men--mortal men--to quit and to revisit the earth at their
will. That aim this experimental trip triumphantly attained.
It would carry me into technical details that would hardly interest the
reader to describe the mechanism of Mr. Edison's flying machine. Let it
suffice to say that it depended upon the principal of electrical
attraction and repulsion. By means of a most ingenious and complicated
construction he had mastered the problem of how to produce, in a limited
space, electricity of any desired potential and of any polarity, and
that without danger to the experimenter or to the material experimented
upon. It is gravitation, as everybody knows, that makes man a prisoner
on the earth. If he could overcome, or neutralize, gravitation he could
float away, a free creature of interstellar space. Mr. Edison in his
invention had pitted electricity against gravitation. Nature, in fact,
had done the same thing long before. Every astronomer knew it, but none
had been able to imitate or to reproduce this miracle of nature. When a
comet approaches the sun, the orbit in which it travels indicates that
it is moving under the impulse of the sun's gravitation. It is in
reality falling in a great parabolic or elliptical curve through space.
But, while a comet approaches the sun it begins to display--stretching
out for millions, and sometimes hundreds of millions of miles on the
side away from the sun--an immense luminous train called its tail. This
train extends back into that part of space from which the comet is
moving. Thus the sun at one and the same time is drawing the comet
toward itself and driving off from the comet in an opposite direction
minute particles or atoms which, instead of obeying the gravitational
force, are plainly compelled to disobey it. That this energy, which the
sun exercises against its own gravitation, is electrical in its nature,
hardly anybody will doubt. The head of the comet being comparatively
heavy and massive, falls on toward the sun, despite the electrical
repulsion. But the atoms which form the tail, being almost without
weight, yield to the electrical rather than to the gravitational
influence, and so fly away from the sun.
Now, what Mr. Edison had done was, in effect, to create an electrified
particle which might be compared to one of the atoms composing the tail
of a comet, although in reality it was a kind of car, of metal, weighing
some hundreds of pounds and capable of bearing some thousands of pounds
with it in its flight. By producing, with the aid of the electrical
generator contained in this car, an enormous charge of electricity, Mr.
Edison was able to counterbalance, and a trifle more than
counterbalance, the attraction of the earth, and thus cause the car to
fly off from the earth as an electrified pithball flies from the prime
conductor.
As we sat in the brilliantly lighted chamber that formed the interior of
the car, and where stores of compressed air had been provided together
with chemical apparatus, by means of which fresh supplies of oxygen and
nitrogen might be obtained for our consumption during the flight through
space, Mr. Edison touched a polished button, thus causing the generation
of the required electrical charge on the exterior of the car, and
immediately we began to rise.
The moment and direction of our flight had been so timed and
prearranged, that the original impulse would carry us straight toward
the moon.
When we fell within the sphere of attraction of that orb it only became
necessary to so manipulate the electrical charge upon our car as nearly,
but not quite, to counterbalance the effect of the moon's attraction in
order that we might gradually approach it and with an easy motion,
settle, without shock, upon its surface.
We did not remain to examine the wonders of the moon, although we could
not fail to observe many curious things therein. Having demonstrated the
fact that we could not only leave the earth, but could journey through
space and safely land upon the surface of another planet, Mr. Edison's
immediate purpose was fulfilled, and we hastened back to the earth,
employing in leaving the moon and landing again upon our own planet the
same means of control over the electrical attraction and repulsion
between the respective planets and our car which I have already
described.
When actual experiment had thus demonstrated the practicability of the
invention, Mr. Edison no longer withheld the news of what he had been
doing from the world. The telegraph lines and the ocean cables labored
with the messages that in endless succession, and burdened with an
infinity of detail, were sent all over the earth. Everywhere the utmost
enthusiasm was aroused.
"Let the Martians come," was the cry. "If necessary, we can quit the
earth as the Athenians fled from Athens before the advancing host of
Xerxes, and like them, take refuge upon our ships--these new ships of
space, with which American inventiveness has furnished us."
And then, like a flash, some genius struck out an idea that fired the
world.
"Why should we wait? Why should we run the risk of having our cities
destroyed and our lands desolated a second time? Let us go to Mars. We
have the means. Let us beard the lion in his den. Let us ourselves turn
conquerors and take possession of that detestable planet, and if
necessary, destroy it in order to relieve the earth of this perpetual
threat which now hangs over us like the sword of Damocles."