The Martian War (16 page)

I had much work to do, and it would take me the rest of the night.

T
aking Jane’s arm, Wells stepped forward onto the surface of the Moon. All around them, the lunar environment buzzed and popped, teeming with a million forms of exotic life. Toward the horizon where the sunlight had first appeared, Wells could already discern an expanding carpet of green, blue, and white, mixed with all the shades in between. Strange plant life emerged from the soil’s night-cold dormancy.

“Normally, the Moon’s gravity would be too weak to hold onto an atmosphere,” Huxley said, “but here in this explosion of fertility, the outgassing of fresh oxygen is enough to provide pockets of breathable air for us.” The professor was the only one who seemed to require an explanation; Wells and Jane
were astounded just by looking around themselves, without a need for textbook explanations.

With a cry of surprise, Jane looked down at her feet as she stopped on the gray lunar soil to see spiky shoots thrusting through the pale dirt as if they were live creatures. Bulbous white lumps sprouted toadstool umbrellas, which kept growing in the nourishing sunlight; within moments, the mushrooms stood a foot high, then as tall as a person’s waist.

“Look at the types! The colors and flowers—like nothing I’ve ever seen.” She hugged him. “They’re strange and beautiful!”

“Like the explosion of life in a desert after a rainstorm,” Huxley said. “These organisms have only a brief window to live their lives and reproduce. We are witnessing a biological frenzy!”

Grayish-white sacs swelled up like balloons, pushing pebbles aside. When Wells bent over to touch the stretched-tight membrane of the growth, the fungal skin burst and showered him with spores. Jane laughed as the force nearly knocked him backward, and his sudden reaction sent him careening much farther than he had expected. Wells found himself sprawled on his back perilously close to a cluster of sword-shaped lavender leaves that waved in an unseen wind.

Embarrassed, he thrust himself to his feet—and continued to rise several feet into the air before slowly landing. “I feel light as a feather!”

Jane sprang after him, her step taking her high into the air, as if she were a pole-vaulter.

“It is the lunar gravity, of course,” Huxley called from behind them. He drew a deep breath of the freshly manufactured lunar air. “Less than a fifth of Earth’s.”

With a mischievous glint in his eye, Wells bounded back
toward Jane. He soared over her head like a bird, then gently landed a hundred yards from their cavorite sphere.

Curious and excited, with no silly social expectations of supposedly proper behavior, Jane launched herself toward Wells. Here, they were as far from disapproving frowns and whispered gossip as any human could be. When he saw that she was about to overshoot his position, Wells jumped into the air to intercept her. They caught each other high above the ground and drifted slowly back to the surface.

“Professor, try it for yourself!” Wells’s already reedy voice sounded even tinnier in the rarefied air.

Huxley attempted to appear dignified. “I have no need for such horseplay, Mr. Wells.”

“Horseplay! I am merely conducting a valid scientific experiment. Where is your curiosity, sir?”

That was all the excuse the old man needed, and the distinguished T.H. Huxley jumped into the air. He laughed as he soared, his robe flapping, his white hair like a comet’s mane around his head. “Ah, this is amazing!” When the professor drifted to a landing, Wells and Jane rushed toward him, but like a child playing a game of tag, Huxley bounded off in another direction. “I feel so young! I had forgotten what it was like.”

Wells himself was delighted with his new abilities in the breathtakingly strange landscape. “For the first time in years, I am unhampered by my own injuries, the aches, the kidney pains.”

The professor felt the same. “Back home my joints trouble me greatly. The weight of Earth pulls me down, but here I feel as if the strings have been cut. I could run to the edge of the world.”

Wells bounded away, laughing. “It feels like I have on seven-league boots. Ah, the places I could traverse on Earth with so much stamina!”

“But at such a speed, Wells, would you have time to see anything?” Huxley called.

“Who knows how much time we have, Professor?” Wells answered. He set off on a chase after Jane, who laughed with him. “We cannot expect to see the whole Moon in a day.”

“Best not to go too far,” Jane said. “If we reach the dark side of the Moon before the atmosphere has thawed, we won’t be able to breathe.”

Around them, the landscape came amazingly alive, transforming into a bizarre forest of cacti and crawling lichens, swollen fungi and jeweled flowers that fluttered like frilly eyelashes. Professor Huxley landed in a thicket and stopped to inspect a cluster of exotic plants, shaking his head with a mixture of amazement and sadness. “Ah, the taxonomy! Would that I could spend a year with sketch pads simply documenting these life forms. Everything we see around us is a new species, never before studied. A single one of these cacti would make a name for us in the natural history community.”

“I could be the author of the very first guidebook of lunar flora,” Jane said, smiling.

Just then they heard a mournful blatting that echoed across the feverishly stirring landscape, but the rugged terrain made it impossible to pinpoint where the sound originated. Ahead of them, the ground rose in black cliffs toward the lip of an extraordinarily large crater, its circumference so great that the rim seemed a straight line. The mournful lowing sound came from one of the ledges that remained in shadow.

“Come, we must find what it is!” Wells sprinted off, prepared
to offer aid to the distressed creature. The slope of the outer crater would have been impossibly steep for any Earthbound alpinist, but in the low gravity Wells hopped up to a broad ledge, balanced precariously, then sprang to another ridge. With the actual lip of the crater still some distance above him, he came upon a startlingly bizarre creature: a huge slug-like thing, fat and soft, its pearly skin blotched with discolorations.

It crawled forward like an immense caterpillar, its entire body rippling with the movement. It had two huge burnished eyes and a pair of slug-like antennae that quested above a round and dripping mouth. The creature let out a plaintive lowing like a cow lost from its barn. Seeing Wells, it blatted as if accustomed to handlers and glad for rescue.

Jane stopped short beside him. “Oh!” The mooncow let out another soft bellow. “So the Moon is home to more than just plant life.”

“Indeed, one might infer an entire civilization.”

Wells looked at the professor. “How do you extrapolate an entire civilization from one stray moon slug?”

“Observe the symbol stained on this creature’s hide, like a rancher’s brand. Obviously an artificial pattern.” He indicated the circle and triangle emblazoned on the mooncow’s bulk. “Also the remnants of a broken harness there on the far side. Some intelligent force has domesticated this animal, and I suspect there are many more—both herders and beasts.” Huxley looked meaningfully toward the high rim of the crater, and the three set off.

The lost mooncow let out a despairing bellow as they left it behind, but Jane whistled for it, and the creature squirmed its fleshy bulk and began to ascend the slope like an inchworm.

Near the top of the crater, Huxley discovered a line of poles fashioned out of a yellowish metal, stakes forming a perimeter fence that was clearly falling down and not well maintained. “You see, Mr. Wells. This was also erected by intelligent hands.”

Wells felt the heavy poles, examined the dilapidated wires strung between them, the collapsing fence. “It appears to be
gold.”

“Quite possible. The precious-metal contents of the Moon have never been tapped by industrialists. Lava flows, meteor strikes, and seismic events may have stirred the valuables to the surface. Who knows what mother lodes lie at the bottoms of these craters?”

Wells frowned. “When news of this comes to Earth, tycoons will doubtless attempt to launch exploitive journeys to the Moon. And they will bring poor workers forced to earn their livelihood and work off their passage back home.” He shook his head. “I fear for the dramatic changes in social order this will bring.”

Jane put her hand on his arm. “It doesn’t sound like a dramatic change at all, H.G.—just more of the same old routine.”

Huxley crested the rise and stood transfixed by the view of the immense bowl. Wells and Jane joined him, gazing with awe upon sweeping pasture lands covered with spiny plants, swollen mushrooms, and juicy foliage. Hundreds of mooncows grazed aimlessly, eating with dozens of mouths on their underbellies. As they traveled over the plants, they mowed, chewed, and digested the alien plants, leaving trails of slime.

Even more amazing, though, were the other creatures: spindly humanoids with whitish-gray skin and large ant-like
heads. They moved like shepherds keeping watch. There were only a dozen of them, far too few for the slug-like beasts, but with frenetic movements they did their best to maintain the captive mooncows. They carried golden staffs that might have been weapons or cattle prods.

“We should attempt to communicate with them,” Huxley said. “It will be the first encounter between Earthlings and, if we return to the Latin root,
Selenites.
Moon men.”

Behind them, the lost mooncow lumbered to the top of the crater, saw the pastures and its fellow slug-creatures, and let out a joyous hoot. The slug-like beast careened at full speed, tumbling down the slope as fast as the convulsions of its slippery underbelly could take it.

The commotion drew the attention of the Selenite shepherds. They could not help but see the trio of human forms standing exposed on the top of the crater. The lunar shepherds reacted frantically, raising their cattle-prod spears, chittering in confusion, as if waiting for instructions.

Huxley raised his hands in greeting. “Both of you do the same,” he muttered urgently to Jane and Wells. “We will be not only scientific observers, but Earth’s first ambassadors to another civilization.”

Jane pointed to a steep switchbacking path that led down to the crater floor. “Gentlemen, shall we go and meet them?”

The three set off, taking great strides toward the confused party of Selenites. Wells noticed numerous paths laid down on the lunar soil. Cave openings led into catacombs that passed through the crater wall and beneath the surface. Jane pointed out the ruins of house-like structures, collapsed towers and amphitheaters, obviously the signs of a once-great civilization
now fading into nothingness.

As Wells noted the crumbling structures, the signs of once-vast pastures and industries, he was uncomfortably reminded of the old castle ruins he had seen in England. Once the golden age had passed, local peasants had used the bricks and stones of the great citadels to build minor cottages. For decades, the locals scavenged the ruins of great castles. The lunar civilization, once great, now seemed little more than the backbone and trappings for daily life among these uncivilized remnants.

The ant-like drones surrounded them, holding their golden spears and chattering in a buzzing, clicking language. Wells drew Jane close, but Huxley stepped forward boldly. “We come in peace, as representatives of humanity. From Earth!” He pointed toward the sky.

The Selenites paused, then formed a protective circle around the humans. One of the Selenite shepherds set off at a scuttling walk toward the nearest tunnel opening, while the others nudged the three visitors forward, leading them into the underground city.

“I hope they don’t have a war dance and a cookpot waiting for us at the end of this passage,” Wells said.

“I encountered headhunters in New Guinea,” Huxley said. “They were most fierce and frightening, but in the end they proved to be no real threat—not at that time, at least. Let us hope we have similar luck here.”

The tunnels snaked around, full of side passages and branchways worn glassy smooth, as if termites had bored through the crust, following some sort of grand geometric plan. After an interminable time—it could have been an hour or as much as a day—the Selenites brought them into a cavernous
central chamber lit by phosphorescent fungus placed on the walls in artistic patterns. The blue-white bioluminescence gave an ethereal caste to the grotto. Everything shimmered with a pale silver glow.

At the center of the room another creature perched on a dais—grossly distorted but reminiscent of the Selenite species. Its body was atrophied and tiny beneath an outrageously enormous head, a quivering mind within a skull that seemed as large as a small asteroid. The head was so huge it was supported by a framework of rings and rods that held the brain upright. The creature’s actual face was small, like a tiny speck on a globe, and it had a slit for a mouth tucked under a complex set of gleaming jewel-like eyes arranged in a pattern. Wells counted eight of the twinkling gem-eyes on its head.

The Selenite drones brought the three humans to a halt in the middle of the chamber, and they faced the scrutiny of the awesome brain of the Moon. Huxley stepped forward. “We come from the planet Earth, the blue sphere you see in your sky. We have no weapons—”

You are invaders.
Words rang through their heads, a communication that appeared in Wells’s thoughts with no voice attached.
You have come to destroy what remains of our civilization.

“No,” Jane chimed in. “It is only the three of us, and we came here by accident.”

Wells felt a splitting headache pulse through his skull, as if nimble fingers were sorting through index cards in his mind. From the wince on Jane’s face and the perplexed scowl on Huxley’s, he knew they felt the tingling, high-pressure mental probe as well. Finally the communication resumed.

Now I have learned everything about you, and I see that you tell the truth. You are no threat to our civilization.

The Moon leader raised spindly hands, and the Selenite soldiers backed away from the captives, relaxing their hold on their pointed golden staffs.