The Martian War (17 page)

I am the Grand Lunar,
said the telepathic voice.
I am the ruler of a once-vast civilization. We Selenites were peaceful, productive creatures. We maintained a perfect social order
—
until everything was broken, most of our people lost, our entire way of life destroyed.

Wells, thinking of the cholera bacillus in sealed vials within their cavorite sphere, asked, “What happened? Was it some awful plague?”

No
, the Grand Lunar answered.
Selenites are immune to all diseases and infections. We eradicated them from our biology long ago.

Huxley looked at the giant pulsing brain. “Then how could your utopia have been so completely destroyed?”

The Grand Lunar responded with a shudder of never-forgotten terror transmitted by thought waves. The three humans could feel the fear and revulsion within themselves.

This destruction was caused by the Martians.

FROM THE JOURNAL OF DR. MOREAU

The dead crewman lay on the shadowed lower deck of the steamer. Fortunately, no one had discovered him yet.

In the uncertain light, I gathered the syringes from where Lowell had scattered them. Only one of the glass barrels had broken; the rest lay intact—a fortunate occurrence, for I would need them to keep feeding the Martian. After pocketing the syringes, I put my hands under the dead crewman’s arms. The bully stank of sour sweat, dirt, and urine. I was not surprised to find that he had fouled himself upon his death, as many animals will do.

Moving quickly, I dragged him along the dim corridors. It was well after dinner, and at night the ship grows quieter. Every few moments I paused to listen, fearing that someone might come to investigate all the commotion. Still I heard no shouts, no pounding footsteps. Perhaps no one had heard the man scream after all.

I hid the corpse inside my small cabin until I could properly dispose of it, then hurried back to wipe up any remaining bloodstains from where he had died. No one would ever know what had really happened to the brute.

With my door firmly latched, I spread the pallid body onto a makeshift operating table and proceeded to drain the remaining blood from his circulatory system—I saw no sense in letting it go to waste, if this was indeed the nourishment our specimen required. When I finished, I had several beakers of fresh blood. The Martian regarded me hungrily as I worked. It made no sound, but its tentacles waved as if stirred by air currents.

I reassembled my medical kits, gathering up the vials scattered on the floor of my laboratory. I would have to begin the next step quickly, if I had any hope of success. After the crewman was dead, his delicate organs and tissues would begin to spoil.

Turning my back on the Martian, I surreptitiously slipped a potent sedative into an open beaker of blood. The Martian was as large as a bear, and I could only guess at the proper amount of anesthesia it would require. I came back to the cage, holding the beaker of scarlet fluid, and stared at my specimen, looking for some sign of communication in its eyes. If it was ravenously hungry, perhaps I could trick it.

The Martian reached out with its tentacles and touched the beaker. I let it draw the glass between the bars of its cage. I then offered it two of the intact syringes, and the Martian rapidly began to inject the blood into itself. I watched with a morbid fascination as the beaker was drained.

I noted the signs of sickness on the Martian’s flesh, discolorations, blotches. Maybe the fresh blood would keep it strong for a while, but I intended to effect a more permanent cure of the Earthly germ. As soon as it was time.

When the sedative rapidly began to take effect, the captive Martian seemed astonished that I, a lowly human, could have deceived it. As the alien struggled against imminent unconsciousness, I turned to the dead crewman on my operating table, stripped off his shirt, mopped sweat and grime from his pasty chest, then disinfected his skin. He must be clean before surgery.

I prepared my operating tools as best I could. Normally, I harvested organs from a still-living donor in order to ensure their freshness and integrity, but I had no choice right now. Much finesse is required when grafting organs from one species onto another. The pieces don’t fit properly together, and junctures must be rigorously sealed. In addition, I had only a minimal working knowledge of the Martian anatomy, unlike other vivisection subjects upon which I had so often practiced. But I could draw some generalizations, and I did my best. The Martian’s very survival was at stake.

I used a scalpel to cut into the redhead’s flesh, after which I took up a heavy bone saw to crack open his sternum. Then I began my longest and most exhausting surgery ever.

I grafted the crewman’s strong heart and fleshy lungs into the Martian’s body. It was bloody work, but necessary. The two organisms were not meant to coexist, but I forced the
issue. Neither the dead crewman nor the dying Martian had any choice.

With my surgical apparatus, and the expertise I had developed over years of working with dissimilar species, dragging them unwilling up the evolutionary ladder, I now applied connections and junctures. This was what the Martian needed to survive.

I took meticulous care that the tools were sterile, that the sutures were tiny and even, that the components from two different planets matched perfectly. I took no shortcuts with my vital work, in the hope that the grafts would heal properly and the organs continue to function, so that this hybrid creature could survive on Earth. It would be able to breathe our air and, with the crewman’s blood, perhaps even find a bit of immunity to fight off our terrestrial germs.

In my travels around the world, I have discovered many unusual drugs and medicines from the jungles of Borneo and Thailand, from uncharted islands in the South Seas. I always keep a store of them in my medical kit. Some of these substances—poisonous lichens and fever-reducing fern leaves—proved to be quite beneficial in helping one body accept the organs from another. Otherwise, biological instinct leads to a rejection of what does not belong there.

Finished with the surgery, I sewed up the Martian’s tough brown skin and applied sterile cloths. I wrapped more bandages around the incision sites and hoped the alien would heal quickly, for within ten days the steamer would reach New York harbor. I did not want the specimen weakened while we moved it down to Boston and Percival Lowell’s family holdings … .

Much later, a shaken and half-drunk Lowell returned and looked stupidly at what I had done. But nothing else could shock him. He had told the captain his fabricated story, and the man believed him implicitly.

“That redhead was a rogue,” the captain said, “always getting into brawls, never doing his share of work. I’ve had to club him several times myself, and I had more than half a mind to kick him off the ship once we reached port. You’ve saved me the trouble, Mr. Lowell. I doubt anyone will miss him, certainly not the man he was bunking with.”

Stunned at how easily we got away with the crime, Lowell had downed three, perhaps four, snifters of brandy before coming back to find me finishing my efforts. He stared aghast at the redhead’s mutilated body, but I soothed him. “The poor victim was already dead, Percival. But I used him to keep our Martian alive.”

“Of course you did.” Lowell’s words were somewhat slurred. If I was lucky, he would go back to his cabin and drink even more brandy; by morning, he might have doubts about what had occurred here.

“I need your help in one last thing, Percival. The two of us must toss the body overboard.”

At first Lowell quailed at this, but five minutes later he dully reached down to take the dead man’s feet after I had wrapped him in a bloodstained sheet to keep his cut-up form together. We hustled along the silent corridors, climbing metal stairs. Each time, I took a careful look and waited until no one was there to see.

It was the darkest part of the night, when all other passengers were asleep and only a skeleton crew remained
at their duties. We soon reached the open salty air and the starlit darkness, and wasted no time. The breeze was brisk, carrying the dampness of impending storms. The waves behind us were choppy.

“Come, Percival. No time to delay.” We hoisted the dead crewman. “Up, up—heave.”

In a flash, the redhead tumbled overboard, his loose arms and legs still flopping, pale skin showing through his torn clothes. The splash made almost no sound at all, and the steamer forged ahead, leaving him far behind within moments. Soon only the fishes would know what we had done.

Lowell and I stood together at the rail, quietly looking into the milky wake of the steamer. “It was what we had to do, Percival,” I said. Without a word, he turned and went back to his stateroom.

I stayed on deck for a while longer and then went back to my patient.

I
n the underground chambers of the Moon, the Selenite servants prepared a banquet for the three humans. The pale drones brought forth platters of soft fungus meat and decanters of sap as sweet as honey.

At first, they hesitated to eat the proffered food, but they were far from their cavorite sphere and their supplies. Huxley inspected each item, sniffing it and frowning uncertainly. The aromas were certainly tantalizing and appetizing. Wells and Jane looked to the older man for his guidance. Finally, he surrendered to his hunger and took a bite, then several more. Seeing Huxley’s implied approval, Wells and Jane fell to the banquet with great gusto.

After Wells had consumed much of the honey-like sap liquid, he began feeling giddy and fuzzy. Huxley and Jane decided to stop drinking, preferring not to become intoxicated at such an important moment under the awesome gaze of the Grand Lunar.

Next, they were served a buttery-tasting meat that purportedly came from the mooncows; the slug-like herd animals matured rapidly and were butchered for food each lunar cycle. It seemed that everything on the Moon moved at a frenetic pace, like desert flowers bursting into bloom after a rare downpour. Unfortunately, the once-admirable lunar civilization had not recovered so swiftly after the Martian attacks.

“We too have learned of the threat from Mars,” Huxley said, between bites. “Precisely what happened when the Martians invaded the Moon? And when did it occur?”

The Grand Lunar studied them, its enormous throbbing brain supported by a heavy framework. Finally, a series of horrific images and memories poured into their minds, conveying the full spectacle of the disaster.

Once, lunar society had been a complex web with many different castes: drone workers, soldiers, thinkers, engineers, builders, shepherds, and farmers, all guided by the Grand Lunar’s incredible intellect. Their hive-like society had been diligent and peaceful. They had no rivals, no enemies. For millennia the Grand Lunar and its predecessors had maintained the number of Selenites at the perfect level for proper functioning.

Then the Martian invaders had come.

Cylinder after cylinder had been launched from Mars to crash upon the Moon’s day side, at the height of Selenite productivity. At first, even the Grand Lunar did not know what was happening. Large-eyed Selenite astronomers, who also
spied upon Earth, had noticed the green flashes from Mars and so were able to determine the origin of these terrible spacecraft.

While the cylinders cooled in their new craters, the Martians assembled large mechanical walkers, giant tripod devices equipped with powerful weapons. Heat rays incinerated the Selenite observers who had gathered to welcome the visitors from the red planet.

The first Martian attack was immediate and terrible. Thousands of Selenites were slaughtered outright by the awful heat rays, and the Grand Lunar was forced to withdraw the soldier-drones until Selenite scientists could develop appropriate defenses. The Moon’s engineers and thinkers turned their knowledge to building immense weapons.

Since lunar society functioned as a single vast and efficient machine, the Selenites could combine their skills with focused determination; thus, they swiftly developed and produced new defenses. As the Martians began their march of destruction across the lunar surface, the brave Selenites rallied. They used newly synthesized explosive devices to blow up the Martian cylinders, but more and more of the deadly projectiles rained down from space.

The Martian invaders attacked with their heat rays, forcing the Selenites to take even more violent measures. Desperate, the Grand Lunar authorized the most terrible bombs imaginable. The round craters of these incredible explosions now peppered the whole surface of the Moon.

The invaders from Mars had kept coming, and the heat ray decimated the Selenite population. The Grand Lunar bred and produced army swarms to defend the Moon, but the Martian conquest could not be stopped. Loyal drones and soldiers had
massed here in this chamber in a last stand to defend their leader, the core and soul of Selenite society. They planned to fight to the death.

The Martians, however, had no intention of utterly destroying lunar civilization, nor of seizing the Moon as new territory. With their red world dying, the Martians needed more slaves, more food, and more resources. They wanted to take huge numbers of Selenite captives back to Mars, no doubt to be put to work on the Martian canals and industries. Their conquest finished, the hideous invaders loaded their return cylinders with hundreds of thousands of Selenites, cramming them in like packaged goods, and departed for the red planet.

Still tenuously connected to their leader, the captive Selenites had sent their last mental messages home. The voyage to distant Mars was long, and they had been crowded aboard the vast conquering ships. Cut off from the Grand Lunar, they did not know what to do. They were bullied and tortured by the dominant, tentacled monstrosities.

In the vision, Wells could taste their fear and helplessness. The drones could not fight back, and their puppet strings were cut once they’d been taken from the Moon. Aboard the transport ships they stood shoulder to shoulder, the bulk of the lunar population dragged off to another planet. Those who survived the journey became the seeds of an endlessly oppressed slave corps on Mars.