Upon the foothills of the new and titanic mountains that were once the
Hindu Kush, were many holiday centres, whence the young men and women of
Asia were wont to seek Alpine dangers and hardships for their souls’
refreshment. It was in this district, and shortly after a summer dawn,
that the Martians were first seen by men. Early walkers noticed that the
sky had an unaccountably greenish tinge, and that the climbing sun,
though free from cloud, was wan. Observers were presently surprised to
see the green concentrate itself into a thousand tiny cloudlets, with
clear blue between. Field-glasses revealed within each fleck of green
some faint hint of a ruddy nucleus, and shifting strands of an infra-red
colour, which would have been invisible to the earlier human race. These
extraordinary specks of cloud were all of about the same size, the
largest of them appearing smaller than the moon’s disc; but in form they
varied greatly, and were seen to be changing their shapes more rapidly
than the natural cirrus which they slightly resembled. In fact, though
there was much that was cloud-like in their form and motion, there was
also something definite about them, both in their features and
behaviour, which suggested life. Indeed they were strongly reminiscent
of primitive amoeboid organisms seen through a microscope.
The whole sky was strewn with them, here and there in concentrations of
unbroken green, elsewhere more sparsely. And they were observed to be
moving. A general drift of the whole celestial population was setting
toward one of the snowy peaks that dominated the landscape. Presently
the foremost individuals reached the mountain’s crest, and were seen to
be creeping down the rock-face with a very slow amoeboid action.
Meanwhile a couple of aeroplanes, electrically driven, had climbed the
sky to investigate the strange phenomenon at close quarters. They passed
among the drifting cloudlets, and actually through many of them, without
hindrance, and almost without being obscured from view.
On the mountain a vast swarm of the cloudlets was collecting, and
creeping down the precipices and snow-fields into a high glacier valley.
At a certain point, where the glacier dropped steeply to a lower level,
the advance guard slowed down and stopped, while hosts of their fellows
continued to pack in on them from behind. In half an hour the whole sky
was once more clear, save for normal clouds; but upon the glacier lay
what might almost have been an exceptionally dark solid-looking
thundercloud, save for its green tinge and seething motion. For some
minutes this strange object was seen to concentrate itself into a
somewhat smaller bulk and become darker. Then it moved forward again,
and passed over the cliffy end of the glacier into the pine-clad valley.
An intervening ridge now hid it from its first observers.
Lower down the valley there was a village. Many of the inhabitants, when
they saw the mysterious dense fume advancing upon them, took to their
mechanical vehicles and fled; but some waited out of curiosity. They
were swallowed up in a murky olive-brown fog, shot here and there with
queer shimmering streaks of a ruddier tint. Presently there was complete
darkness. Artificial lights were blotted out almost at arm’s length.
Breathing became difficult. Throats and lungs were irritated. Every one
was seized with a violent attack of sneezing and coughing. The cloud
streamed through the village, and seemed to exercise irregular pressures
upon objects, not always in the general direction of movement but
sometimes in the opposite direction, as though it were getting a
purchase upon human bodies and walls, and actually elbowing its way
along. Within a few minutes the fog lightened; and presently it left the
village behind it, save for a few strands and whiffs of its smoke-like
substance, which had become entangled in side-streets and isolated. Very
soon, however, these seemed to get themselves clear and hurry to
overtake the main body.
When the gasping villagers had somewhat recovered, they sent a radio
message to the little town lower down the valley, urging temporary
evacuation. The message was not broadcast, but transmitted on a slender
beam of rays. It so happened that the beam had to be directed through
the noxious matter itself. While the message was being given, the
cloud’s progress ceased, and its outlines became vague and ragged.
Fragments of it actually drifted away on the wind and dissipated
themselves. Almost as soon as the message was completed, the cloud began
to define itself again, and lay for a quarter of an hour at rest. A
dozen bold young men from the town now approached the dark mass out of
curiosity. No sooner did they come face to face with it, round a bend in
the valley, than the cloud rapidly contracted, till it was no bigger
than a house. Looking now something between a dense, opaque fume and an
actual jelly, it lay still until the party had ventured within a few
yards. Evidently their courage failed, for they were seen to turn. But
before they had retreated three paces, a long proboscis shot out of the
main mass with the speed of a chameleon’s tongue, and enveloped them.
Slowly it withdrew; but the young men had been gathered in with it. The
cloud, or jelly, churned itself violently for some seconds, then ejected
the bodies in a single chewed lump.
The murderous thing now elbowed itself along the road towards the town,
leaned against the first house, crushed it, and proceeded to wander
hither and thither, pushing everything down before it, as though it were
a lava-stream. The inhabitants took to their heels, but several were
licked up and slaughtered.
Powerful beam radiation was now poured into the cloud from all the
neighbouring installations. Its destructive activity slackened, and once
more it began to disintegrate and expand. Presently it streamed upwards
as a huge column of smoke; and, at a great altitude, it dissipated
itself again into a swarm of the original green cloudlets, noticeably
reduced in numbers. These again faded into a uniform greenish tinge,
which gradually vanished.
Thus ended the first invasion of the Earth from Mars.