The Space Machine

i

During the weeks that followed, Amelia and I explored the Martian city as thoroughly as possible. We were hindered by the fact that we had perforce to go everywhere on foot, but we saw as much as we could and were soon able to make reasonable estimates as to its size, how many people it contained, where the major buildings were situated, and so forth. At the same time we tried to make what we could of the people of Mars, and how they lived; to be honest, however, we did not find much satisfaction on this score.

After two nights in the first dormitory we found, we moved to a second building, much nearer to the centre of the city and more conveniently sited by a dining-hall. This too was unoccupied, but its previous users had left many possessions behind them, and we were able to live in some comfort. The hammocks would have been unbearably hard on Earth—for the fabric of which they were made was coarse and unyielding—but in the light Martian gravity they were perfectly adequate. For bedding we used large, pillow-like sacks filled with a soft compound, which were similar to the quilts used in some European countries.

We also found clothing that had been abandoned by the previous occupants, and we wore the drab garments over our own clothes. Naturally enough they were rather large for us, but the loose fit over our clothes made our bodies appear larger, and so we were able to pass more readily as Martians.

Amelia tied her hair back in a tight bun—approximating the style favoured by the Martian women—and I allowed my new beard to grow; every few days Amelia trimmed it with her nail-scissors to give it the wispy appearance of the Martians’.

At the time all this seemed to us a matter of priority; we were very aware that we looked different from the Martians. To this extent, our two days sojourn in the desert had been to our unwitting advantage: our sunburned faces, uncomfortable as they were, were a credible approximation of the Martians’ skin-hue. As the days passed, and our complexions began to fade, we returned one day to the desert beyond the city, and a few hours in that bitter radiant heat restored the colour temporarily.

But this is taking my narrative ahead of itself, for to convey how we, survived in that city I must first describe the place itself.

ii

Within a few days, of our arrival, Amelia had dubbed our new home Desolation City, for reasons which should already be clear.

Desolation City was situated at the junction of two canals. One of these, the one by whose banks we had first landed, ran directly from north to south. The second approached from the north-west, and after the junction—where there was a complicated arrangements of locks—continued to the south-east. The city had been built in the obtuse angle formed by the two canals, and along its southern and western edges were several docking accesses to the waterways.

As near as we could estimate it the city covered about twelve square miles, but a comparison on this basis with Earth cities is misleading, for Desolation City was almost exactly circular. Moreover, the Martians had lighted on the ingenious notion of entirely separating the industrial life of the city from the residential, for the buildings were designed for the everyday needs of the people, while the manufacturing work was carried out in the industrial areas beyond the city’s periphery.

There were two such industrial concentrations: the large one we had seen from the train, which lay to the north, and a smaller one built beside the canal to the south-east.

In terms of resident population, Desolation City was very small indeed, and it was this aspect which had most prompted Amelia to give it its unprepossessing name.

That the city had been built to accommodate many thousands of people was quite obvious, for buildings there were many and open spaces there were few; that only a fraction of the city was presently occupied was equally apparent, and large areas were laid to waste. In these parts many of the buildings were derelict, and the streets were littered with masonry and rusting girders.

We discovered that only the occupied parts of the city were lighted at night, for as we explored the city by day we frequently found areas of decay where none of the towers was present. We never ventured into these regions at night, for quite apart from being dark and threatening in their loneliness, such areas were patrolled by fast-moving vehicles which drove through the streets with a banshee howling and an ever-probing beam of light.

This sinister policing of the city was the first indication that the Martian people had inflicted on themselves a régime of Draconian suppression.

We often speculated as to the causes of the under-population. At first we surmised that the shortage of manpower was only apparent, created by the quite prodigious amount of effort poured into the industrial processes. By day we could see the industrial areas beyond the city’s perimeter, belching dense smoke from hundreds of chimneys, and by night we saw the same areas brightly lit as the work continued; thus it was that we assumed most of the city’s people were at work, labouring around the clock through work-shifts. However, as we grew more used to living in the city, we saw that not many of the ruling-class Martians ever left its confines, and that therefore most of the industrial workers would be of the slave class.

I have mentioned that the city was circular in shape. We discovered this by accident and over a period of several days, and were able to confirm it later by ascending one of the taller buildings in the city.

Our first realization came as follows. On our second or third full day in Desolation City, Amelia and I were walking northwards through the city, intending to see if we could cross the mile or so of desert between us and the larger of the two industrial concentrations.

We came to a street which led directly northwards, seeming to open eventually on to the desert. This was in one of the populated areas of the city, and watch-towers abounded. I noticed, as we approached, that the tower nearest to the desert had stopped rotating to and fro, and I pointed this out to Amelia. We considered for a few moments whether or not to continue, but Amelia said she saw no harm.

However, as we passed the tower it was quite obvious that the man or men inside were rotating the observation-platform to watch us, and the dark, oval window at the front mutely followed our progress past it. No action was taken against us, so we continued, but with a distinct feeling of apprehension.

So taken were we with this silent monitoring that we fetched up unexpectedly and shockingly against the true perimeter of the city; this took the form of an invisible, or nearly invisible, wall, stretching from one side of the roadway to the other. Naturally enough, we thought at first that the substance was glass, but this could not be the case. Nor was it, indeed, any other form of material that we knew. Our best notion was that it was some kind of energetic field, induced by electrical means. It was, though, completely inert, and under the gaze of the watch-tower we made a few rudimentary attempts to fathom it. All we could feel was the impermeable, invisible barrier, cold to the touch.

Chastened, we walked back the way we had come.

On a later occasion, we walked through one of the empty quarters of the city, and found that there too the wall existed. Before long we had established that the wall extended all around the city, crossing not just streets but behind buildings too.

Later, from the aspect of the roof, we saw that few if any of the buildings lay beyond this circle.

It was Amelia who first posited a solution, linking this phenomenon with the undoubted one that air-density and overall temperature in the city were higher than outside. She suggested that the invisible barrier was not merely a wall, but in fact a hemisphere which covered the entire city. Beneath this, she said, air-pressure could be maintained at an acceptable level, and the effect of the sun through it would be closely akin to that of a glasshouse.

iii

Desolation City was not, however, a prison. To leave it was as easy as it had been for us to enter it initially. On our journeys of exploration we came across several places where it was possible merely to walk through some specially maintained fault in the wall and enter the rarefied atmosphere of the desert.

One such fault was the series of doors and corridors at the railway terminus; there were similar ones at the wharves built by the canals, and some of these were immense structures by which imported materials could be taken into the city. Several of the major streets, which ran towards the industrial areas, had transit buildings through which people could pass freely.

What was most interesting of all, though, was that the vehicles of the city were able to pass directly through the wall without either hesitation or detectable leakage of the pressurized atmosphere. We saw this occur many times.

I must now turn the attention of this narrative towards the nature of these vehicles, for among the many marvels Amelia and I saw on Mars these numbered among the most amazing.

The fundamental difference lay in the fact that, unlike Earth engineers, the Martian inventors had dispensed with the wheel entirely. Having seen the efficiency of the Martians’ vehicles I was, indeed, forced to wonder how far Earthly developments in this field had been retarded by the obsession with the wheel! Furthermore, the only wheeled vehicles we saw on Mars were the crude hand-carts used by the slaves; an indication of how lowly the Martians considered such methods!

The first Martian vehicle we saw (not counting the train in which we had arrived, although we assumed that this too was without wheels) was the one which had raced through the streets that first dismal night in Desolation City. The second we saw was during the morning of the next day; that too was moving at such a lick that we were left with a confused impression of speed and noise. Later, however, we saw one moving more slowly, and later still we saw several at rest.

To say that Martian vehicles walked would be inaccurate, although I can think of no closer verb. Beneath the main body (which, according to its use, was designed in a fashion more or less conventional to us) were rows of long or short metal legs, the length being determined by the kind of use to which the vehicle was put. These legs were mounted in groups of three, connected by a transmission device to the main body, and powered from within by some hidden power source.

The motion of these legs was at once curiously life-like and rigidly mechanical: at any one time only one of the three legs of each mounting would be in contact with the ground. In motion, the legs would ripple with a quasi-peristaltic motion, the two raised legs reaching forward to take the load, the third one lifting and reaching forward in its turn.

The largest vehicle we saw at close quarters was a goods-haulage machine, with two parallel rows of sixteen groups of these legs. The smallest machines, which were used to police the city, had two rows of three groups.

Each leg, on close examination, turned out to be made of several dozen finely-machined disks, balanced on top of each other like a pile of pennies, and yet activated in some way by an electrical current. As each of the legs was encased in a transparent integument, it was possible to see the, device in operation, but how each movement was controlled was beyond us. In any event, the efficiency of these machines was in no doubt: we frequently saw the policing-vehicles driving through the streets at a velocity well in excess of anything a horse-drawn vehicle could attain.

iv

Perhaps even more puzzling to us than the design of these vehicles was the men who drove them.

That men were inside them was apparent, for on many occasions we saw ordinary Martians speaking to the driver or other occupants, with spoken replies coming through a metal grille set in the side of the machine. What was also quite clear was that the drivers were in positions of extraordinary authority, for when addressed by them the Martians in the street adopted a cowed or respectful manner, and spoke in subdued tones. However, at no time did we see the drivers, for all the vehicles were totally enclosed—at least, the driver’s compartment was enclosed—with only a piece of the black glass set at the front, behind which the driver presumably stood or sat. As these windows were similar to those we saw on every watch-tower, we presumed that they were operated by the same group of people.

Nor were all the vehicles as prosaic as maybe I have made them appear.

Confronted, as we were, with a multitude of strange sights, Amelia and I were constantly trying to find Earthly parallels for what we saw. It is likely, therefore, that many of the assumptions we made at this time were incorrect. It was relatively safe to assume that the vehicles we thought of as drays were just that, for we saw them performing similar tasks to those we knew on Earth. There was no way, though, of finding an Earthly equivalent for some of the machines.

One such was a device used by the Martians in conjunction with their watch-towers.

Directly outside the dormitory building we settled in, and visible to us from our hammocks, was one of the watch-towers. After we had been in occupation for about eight days, Amelia pointed out that there appeared to be something wrong with it, for its observation platform had ceased to rotate to and fro. That night we saw that its light was not on.

The very next day one of the vehicles came to a halt beside the tower, and there took place a repair operation I can only describe as fantastic.

The vehicle in question was of a type we had occasionally seen about the city: a long, low machine which, above its drive-leg platform, was an apparent mass of glittering tubing, heaped in disorder. As the legged vehicle halted beside the watch-tower, this confusion of metal reared itself up, to reveal that it possessed five of the peristaltic legs, the remainder of the appendages being a score or more of tentacular arms.

It stepped down from the platform of the vehicle, the jointed arms clanging and ringing, then walked the short distance to the base of the tower with a movement remarkably like that of a spider. We both looked, for some clue as to how the thing was being driven, but it seemed that either the monstrous machine had an intelligence of its own, or else it was controlled in some incredible way by the driver of the vehicle, for there was plainly no one anywhere near it. As it reached the base of the tower, one of its tentacles was brought into contact with a raised metal plate on one of the pillars, and in a moment we saw that the observation platform was lowering. Apparently it could lower itself only so far, for when the platform was about twenty feet from the ground the tentacular device seized the tower’s legs in its horrid embrace, and began to climb slowly upwards, like a spider climbing a strand of its web.

When it reached the observation-platform it settled itself in position by clinging on with its legs, and then with several tentacles reached through a number of tiny ports, apparently searching for the parts of the mechanism which had failed.

Amelia and I watched the whole operation, unnoticed inside the building. From the arrival of the legged vehicle to its eventual departure, only twelve minutes elapsed, and by the time the iron monster had returned to its place on the rear of the vehicle, the observation-platform had been raised to its erstwhile height, and was rotating to and fro in its usual way.

v

So far, I have not had much to say about our day-to-day survival in this desolate city, nor, for the moment, will I. Our internal preoccupations were many and great, and, in several ways,more important than what we were seeing about us. Before turning to this, though, I must first establish the context. We are all creatures of our environment, and in disturbingly subtle ways Amelia and I were becoming a little Martian in our outlook. The desolation about us was reaching our souls.

vi

As we moved about the city one question remained ever unanswered. That is to say: how did the ordinary Martian occupy his time?

We now understood something of the social ramifications of Mars. This was in effect that the lowest social stratum was the slave-people, who were forced to do all the manual and demeaning tasks necessary to any civilized society. Then came the Martians of the city, who had powers of supervision over the slaves. Above these were the men who drove the legged vehicles and, presumably, operated the other mechanical devices we saw.

It was the city-dwelling Martians in whom we were most interested, for it was among them that we lived. However, not all of these were occupied. For instance, it took relatively few of them to supervise the slaves (we often saw just one or two men able to control several hundred slaves, armed with only the electrical whips), and although the vehicles were many in number, there were always plenty of people in the city, apparently idle.

On our perambulations Amelia and I saw much evidence that time hung heavy on these people. The nightly carousing was obviously a result of two factors: partly a way of appeasing the endless grief, and partly a way of expressing boredom. We frequently saw people squabbling, and there were several fights, although these were dissipated instantly at the sight of one of the vehicles. Many of the women appeared to be pregnant; another indication that there was not much to occupy either the minds or the energies of the people. At the height of the day, when the sun was overhead (we had come to the conclusion that the city must be built almost exactly on the Martian equator), the pavements of the streets were littered with the bodies of men and women relaxing in the warmth.

One possibility that would account for the apparent idleness was that some of them were employed in the near-by industrial area, and that the Martians we saw about the city were enjoying some leave.

As we were both curious to see the industrial areas and discover, if we could, what was the nature of all the furious activity that took place, one day, about fifteen days after our arrival, Amelia and I determined to leave the city and explore the smaller of the two complexes. We had already observed that a road ran to it, and that although the majority of the traffic was the haulage type of vehicle, several people—both city-dweller and slave—were to be seen walking along it. We decided, therefore, that we would not attract unwanted attention by going there ourselves.

We left the city by a system of pressurized corridors, and emerged into the open. At once our lungs were labouring in the sparse atmosphere, and we both remarked on the extreme climate: the thin coldness of the air and the harsh radiance of the sun.

We walked slowly, knowing from experience how exercise debilitated us in this climate, and so after half an hour we had not covered much more than about a quarter of the distance to the industrial site. Already, though, we could smell something of the smoke and fumes released from the factories although none of the clangour we associated with such works was audible.

During a pause for rest, Amelia laid her hand on my arm and pointed towards the south.

“What is that, Edward?” she said.

I looked in the direction she had indicated.

We had been walking almost due south-east towards the industrial site, parallel to the canal, but on the far side of the water, well away from the factories, was what appeared at first sight to be an immense pipeline. It did not, however, appear to be connected to anything, and indeed we could see an open end to it.

The continuation of the pipe was invisible to us, lying as it did beyond the industrial buildings. Such an apparatus would not normally have attracted our attention, but what was remarkable was the fact of the intense activity around the open end. The pipe lay perhaps two miles from where we stood, but in the clear air we could see distinctly that hundreds of workers were swarming about the place.

We had agreed to rest for fifteen minutes, so unaccustomed were we to the thin air, and as we moved on afterwards we could not help but glance frequently in that direction.

“Could it be some kind of irrigation duct?” I said after a while, having noticed that the pipe ran from east to west between the two diverging canals.

“With, a bore of that diameter?”

I had to admit that this explanation was unlikely, because we could see how the pipe dwarfed those men nearest to it. A reasonable estimate of the internal diameter of the pipe would be about twenty feet, and in addition the metal of the tube was some eight or nine feet thick.

We agreed to take a closer look at the strange construction, and so left the road, striking due south across the broken rock and sand of the desert. There were no bridges across the canal here, so the bank was as far as we could proceed, but it was close enough to allow us an uninterrupted view.

The overall length of’ the pipe turned out to be approximately one mile. From this closer position we could see the further end, which was overhanging a small lake. This had apparently been artificially dug, for its banks were straight and reinforced, and the water undermined at least half of the length of the pipe.

At the very edge of the lake, two large buildings had been constructed side by side, with the pipe running between them.

We sat down by the edge of the canal to watch what was happening.

At the moment many of the men at the nearer end of the pipe were concentrating on extracting from it a huge vehicle which had emerged from the interior. This was being guided out of the pipe, and down a ramp to the desert floor. Some difficulty seemed to have arisen, for more men were being force-marched across to help.

Half an hour later the vehicle had been successfully extricated, and was moved some distance to one side. Meanwhile, the men who had been working by the end of the pipe were dispersing.

A few more minutes passed, and then I suddenly pointed.

“Look, Amelia!” I said. “It is moving!”

The end of the pipe nearer to us was being lifted from the ground. At the same moment the further end was sinking slowly into the lake. The buildings at the edge of the lake were the instruments of this motion, for not only were they the pivot by which the pipe turned, but we also heard a great clattering and roaring from engines inside the buildings, and green smoke poured from several vents.

The raising of the pipe was the work of only a minute or so, because for all its size it moved smoothly and with precision.

When the pipe had been lifted to an angle of about forty-five degrees from horizontal, the clattering of the engines died away and the last traces of the green smoke drifted to one side. The time was near midday, and the sun was overhead.

In this new configuration the pipe had taken on the unmistakable appearance of a vast cannon, raised towards the sky!

The waters of the lake became still, the men who had been working had taken refuge in a series of buildings low on the ground. Not realizing what was about to happen, Amelia and I stayed where we were.

The first indication that the cannon was being fired was an eruption of white water boiling up to the surface of the lake. A moment later we felt a deep trembling in the very soil on which we sat, and before us the waters of the canal broke into a million tiny wavelets.

I reached over to Amelia, threw my arms around her shoulders and pushed her sideways to the ground. She fell awkwardly, but I flung myself over her, covering her face with my shoulder and wrapping my arms about her head. We could feel the concussions in the ground, as if an earthquake were about to strike, and then a noise came, like the deepest growlings in the heart of a thundercloud.

The violence of this event grew rapidly to a Peak and then it ended as abruptly as it had begun. In the same instant we heard a protracted, shrieking explosion, howling and screaming like a thousand whistles blown simultaneously in one’s ear. This noise started at its highest frequency, dying away rapidly.

As the racket was stilled, we sat up and looked across the canal towards the cannon.

Of the projectile—if any there had been—there was no sign, but belching from the muzzle of the cannon was one of the largest clouds of vapour I have ever seen in my life. It was brilliant white, and it spread out in an almost spherical cloud above the muzzle, being constantly replenished by the quantities still pouring from the barrel. Th less than a minute the vapour had occluded the sun, and at once we felt much colder. The shadow lay across most of the land we could see from our vantage point, and being almost directly beneath the cloud as we were, we had no way of estimating its depth. That this was considerable was evidenced by the darkness of its shadow.

We stood up. Already, the cannon was being lowered once more, and the engines in the pivotal buildings were roaring. The slaves and their supervisors were emerging from their shelters.

We turned back towards the city, and walked as quickly as we could towards its relative comforts. In the moment the sun had been shaded the apparent temperature around us had fallen to well below freezing point. We were not much surprised, therefore, when a few minutes later we saw the first snowflakes falling about us, and as time passed the light fall became a dense and blinding blizzard.

We looked up just once, and saw that the cloud from which the snow fell—the very cloud of vapour which had issued from the cannon!—now covered almost the entire sky.

We almost missed the entrance to the city, so deep was the snow when we reached it. Here too we saw for the first time the dome-shape of the invisible shield that protected the city, for snow lay thickly on it.

A few hours later there was another concussion, and later another. In all there were twelve, repeated at intervals of about five or six hours. The sun, when its rays could penetrate the clouds, quickly melted the snow on the city’s dome, but for the most part those days were dark and frightening ones in Desolation City, and we were not alone in thinking it.

vii

So much for some of the mysteries we saw in the Martian city. In describing them I have of necessity had to portray Amelia and myself as curious, objective tourists, craning our necks in wonder as any traveller in a foreign land will do. However, although we were much exercised by what we saw, this seeming objectivity was far from the case, for we were alarmed by our predicament.

There was one matter of which we rarely spoke, except obliquely; this was not because we did not think of it but because we both knew that if the subject were raised then there was nothing hopeful that could be said. This was the manifest impossibility that we should ever be able to return to Earth.

It was, though, at the centre of our very thoughts and actions, for we knew we could not exist like this for ever, but to plan the rest of our lives in Desolation City would be a tacit acceptance of our fate.

The nearest either of us came to confronting our problem directly was on the day we first saw how advanced was the Martians’ science.

Thinking that in a society as modern as this we should have no difficulty in laying our hands on the necessary materials, I said to Amelia: “We must find somewhere we can set aside as a laboratory.”

She looked at me quizzically.

“Are you proposing to embark on a scientific career?” she said.

“I’m thinking we must try to build another Time Machine.”

“Do you have any notion of how the Machine worked?”

I shook my head. “I had hoped that you, as Sir William’s assistant, would know.”

“My dear,” Amelia said, and for a moment she took my hand affectionately in hers, “I would have as little idea as you.”

There we had let it rest. It had been an extreme hope of mine until then, but I knew Amelia well enough to appreciate that her reply meant more than the words themselves. I realized she had already considered the idea herself, and had come to the conclusion that there was no chance that we could duplicate Sir William’s work.

So, without further discussion of our prospects, we existed from day to day, each of us knowing that a return to Earth was impossible. One day we should have to confront our situation, but until then we were simply putting off the moment.

If we did not have peace of mind, then the physical needs of our bodies, were adequately met.

Our two-day sojourn in the desert had not apparently caused lasting harm, although I had contracted a mild head-cold at some time. Neither of us kept down that first meal we ate, and during the night that followed we were both unpleasantly ill. Since then we had been taking the food in smaller quantities. There were three of the dining halls within walking distance of our dormitory, and we alternated between them.

As I have already mentioned, we slept in a dormitory to ourselves. The hammocks were large enough for two people, so, remembering what had passed between us earlier, I suggested a little wistfully to Amelia that we would be warmer if we shared a hammock.

“We are no longer in the desert, Edward,” was her reply, and from then we slept separately.

I felt a little hurt at her response, because although my designs on her were still modest and proper I had good cause to believe that we were less than strangers. But I was prepared to abide by her wishes.

During the days our behaviour together was friendly and intimate. She would often take my hand or my arm as we walked, and at night we would kiss chastely before I turned my back to allow her to undress. At such times my desires were neither modest nor proper, and often I was tempted most inappropriately to ask her again to marry me. Inappropriate it was, for where on Mars would we find a church? This too was a matter I had to put aside until we could accept our fate.

On the whole, thoughts of home predominated. For my own part I spent considerable time thinking about my parents, and the fact that I would not see them again. Trivialities occupied me too. One such was the irresistible certainty that I had left my lamp burning in my room at Mrs Tait’s. I had been in such high spirits that Sunday morning I departed for Richmond that I did not recall having extinguished the flame before I left. With irritating conviction I remembered having lit it when I got out of bed… but had I left it burning? It was no consolation to reason with myself that now, eight or nine years later, the matter was of no consequence. But still the uncertainty nagged at me, and would not leave me.

Amelia too seemed preoccupied, although she kept her thoughts to herself. She made an effort not to appear introspective, and affected a bright and lively interest in what we saw in the city, but there were long periods in which we were both silent, and this was itself significant. An indication of the degree to which she was distracted was that she sometimes talked in her sleep; much of this was incoherent, but occasionally she spoke my name, and sometimes Sir William’s. Once I found a way of asking tactfully about her dreams, but she said she had no memory of them.

viii

Within a few days of our arrival in the city, Amelia set herself the task of learning the Martian language. She had always had, she said, a facility with languages, and in spite of the fact that she had no access to either a dictionary or a grammar she was optimistic. There were, she said, basic situations she could identify, and by listening to the words spoken at the time she could establish a rudimentary vocabulary. .This would be of great use to us, for we were both severely limited by the muteness imposed upon us.

Her first task was to essay an interpretation of the written language, in the form of what few signs we had seen posted about the city.

These were few in number. There were some signs at each of the city’s entrances, and one or two of the legged vehicles had words inscribed upon them. Here Amelia encountered her first difficulty, because as far as she could discern no sign was ever repeated. Furthermore, there appeared to be a great number of scripts in use, and she was incapable of establishing even one or two letters of the Martian alphabet.

When she turned her attention to the spoken word her problems multiplied.

The major difficulty here was an apparent multitude of voice-tones. Quite apart from the fact that the Martians’ vocal chords pitched their voices higher than would have been natural on Earth (and both Amelia and I tried in private to reproduce the sound, with comical effects), there was an apparently endless subtlety of tone variations.

Sometimes a Martian voice we heard was hard, with what we on Earth would call a sneer lending an unpleasant edge to it; another would seem musical and soft by comparison. Some Martians would speak with a complex sibilance, others with protracted vowel-sounds and pronounced plosives.

Further complicating everything was the fact that all Martians appeared to accompany their conversation with elaborate hand and head movements, and additionally would address some Martians with one voice-tone, and others in a different way.

Also, the slave-Martians appeared to have a dialect all of their own.

After several days of trying, Amelia came to the sad conclusion that the complexity of the language (or languages) was beyond her. Even so, until our last days together in Desolation City she was trying to identify individual sounds, and I was very admiring of her diligence.

There was, though, one vocal sound whose meaning was unmistakable. It was a sound common to all races on Earth, and had the same meaning on. Mars. That was the scream of terror, and we were to hear much of that eventually.

ix

We had been in Desolation City for fourteen days when the epidemic struck. At first we were unaware that anything was amiss, although we noticed some early effects without realizing the cause. Specifically, this was that one evening there seemed to be far fewer Martians present in the dining hall, but so accustomed were we to odd things on this world that neither of us attributed to it anything untoward.

The day following was the one on which we witnessed the firing of the snow-cannon (for such was what we came to call it) and so our interests lay elsewhere. But by the end of those days when snow fell more or less without let over the city, there was no mistaking that something was seriously wrong. We saw several Martians dead or unconscious in the streets, a visit to one of the dormitories was confirmation enough that many of the people were ill, and even the activities of the vehicles reflected a change, for there were fewer of them about and one or two were clearly being used as ambulances.

Needless to say, as the full realization came to us, Amelia and I stayed away from the populated areas of the city. Fortunately, neither of us displayed any symptoms; the stuffiness as a result of my head-cold stayed with me rather longer than it might have done at home, but that was all.

Amelia’s latent nursing instincts came to the surface, and her conscience told her she should go to help the sick, but it would have been grossly unwise to do so. We tried to cut ourselves off from the anguish, and hoped the, disease would soon pass.

It seemed that the plague was not virulent. Many people had contracted it, and by the evidence of the number of bodies we saw being transported in one of the legged vehicles we knew that many had died. But after five days we noticed that life was beginning to return to normal. If anything, there was more misery about than ever before—for once we felt the Martians had good cause—and there were, regrettably, even fewer people in the underpopulated city, but the vehicles returned to their policing and haulage, and we saw no more dead in the streets.

But then, just as we were sensing the return to normal, there came the night of the green explosions.